it's weird that we are prepared to die for democracy, yet willingly enter dictatorships daily for work and spend the majority of our waking lives with people we vaguely know
As a person with family living under an actual dictatorship, I’d like to point out some differences.
You can leave a job. You’re generally not killed for poor performance at a job.
I’ll stop there. I think that’s enough to shatter this very poor comparison.
You can leave a job
This is true for most people, but not all. Of course not being able to do so would constitute a form of slavery, but that is just the reality for a lot of people and I think if we are honest about the world we should admit that. Do agree softly on not downplaying political dictatorships though.
Oh people can absolutely leave jobs. It’s eating they can’t stop doing. I mean they can stop that too, I guess.
If we’re going to invoke literal slavery then I don’t think self immolation is off the table to mention either.
Unless you're a literal slave (which is a different problem) you're free to leave those jobs, just you might have to move (leaving family and friends) or you might never make as much money/your lifestyle suffers. That's vastly different from "if you leave your job we may literally kill you or throw you in a prison cell where you won't see daylight for days, weeks, months, or years."
Don't get me wrong, those people trapped in their jobs by circumstance are not in envious situations (and in many contexts their issues should be taken seriously), but they're still way better off than many in true dictatorships.
You can argue that both don't provide "real choices" but one really doesn't provide choices.
Not sure I'd die for democracy.. it's a popularity contest where 80 year old millionaires compete to see who looks best in a suit.
Freedom, sure. But that's not the same thing.
You're describing a representational democracy. What do you think about direct democracy?
That's elections, democracy is a system of government by consent
But I agree with the current state of US and UK politics, 2 party systems are only better because a 1 party system is even worse
You think working for a corporation is the same as living under a dictatorship?
Yeah, this thought is someone trying to compare apples to oranges.
Then there’s the throw away comment of how you barely know anyone there, that’s a personal thing. I work for a small company now but I used to work for a hospital with over 2,000 employees, I didn’t know most of them but I knew the 100 or so people I interacted with pretty well and did things outside of work with many of them on more than one occasion.
As I walk through the front door of my air-conditioned office building and say hello to the receptionist I can't help but feel this is just what it was like living under Marcos or Pinochet.
/s
Plenty of people live comfortable lives under dictatorship, you can compare that office worker to a citizen in Qatar and they'd probably live similar lives materially.
You could also compare the sweat shop worker for the company that office workers company contracts their manufacturing out to, to the migrant pseudo-slave workers in Qatar.
To the level that the corporation has control over your life, yeah. What do you think banana republics are? The more the company can control your life, the more its undemocratic nature becomes apparent. Working for a small company in a competitive market might not look like a company town, but it has the same fundamental structure as one. The main difference is that the small company has to offer a good deal to their employees compared to competitors. If the company is the only hirer in town, then they'll suddenly not have as much motivation to treat you well. If they control the housing, means of travel, and cops as well, you're basically enslaved.
Exactly. It's soul-crushing, but generally not body-crushing.
The CEO can take away your livelihood at a whim, destroying your future career, and everyone has to tug the forelock.
Dictatorships are not bad in and of themselves. A benign dictatorship could be the most effective form of governing, there's just no mechanism to stop them when they stop being benign.
And on the flip side a CEO can improve and expand many people’s careers and therefore wealth.
A dictatorship like Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Hitler, etc can flow all the wealth and power to themselves, oppressing the people under them.
The point it: You can’t talk about best case scenario of one and not the other. Usually, as it’s human nature, both are going to sequester wealth and power for themselves over the people under them, but a bad dictatorship is leagues worse than a bad company/CEO.
I have a problem with the willingly in this thought.
The issue is that people are pretty unwilling to be homeless or starve if there's an alternative (no matter how terrible).
Working is the worst way to prevent yourself from starvation and homelessness except for all of the others.
The issue is that people are pretty unwilling to be homeless or starve if there’s an alternative (no matter how terrible).
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but I've been homeless before and I don't think it's an "issue" that I don't want to go back to that.
It's not an issue, that's just an effect of the sarcastic phrasing. There's kind of an embedded notion within the original thought that people actually do this by choice. I think most work in dictatorial companies because there's really no other choice except destitution.
Working is better than being homeless for most people. Because you can, doesnt mean everyone can.
The overlap of people willing to let themselves be beat down and exploited at work, and the people that would actually fight and die for democracy is slim to none.
Resource extraction companies are notoriously bad employers. I'd bet there's more of an overlap in those sort of jobs.
Lots of people are not willing to die for democracy, some even fight against it out of ignorance or powerlust.
That's not what dictatorship means
Someone tells you what to do, and you have to obey or else you lose your housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities.
This is so wrong. You are not entitled to basic necessities. You have to provide them for yourself, that is the natural order. This is what most of humanity did for milenia via subsistence farming and it sucked.
Sooner or later people decided that working in a factory sucked a little less than working in the field. Then more recently, people decided working in an office sucked a little less than working in the factory.
Employment is not slavery. You can quit anytime.
Just because A and B have overlap doesn't mean A = B. My boss can't throw me in a jail cell or have me shot.
Yes, because that's not what happens lol. You don't immediately lose those things unless you sit around and do nothing. That's true of literally everything, even communism.
You are incorrect. I absolutely run my businesses as a dictatorship because I’m the owner. We don’t “vote” on what to do, if you don’t like my ideas you are FIRED. Same goes for my tenants, if you don’t like my rules then get out of my property!!
It's... not weird at all. Democracy is a form of governance that permeates all our lives and controls the state that has a monopoly of violence that can be used against us and take away our rights. It's not something we can opt-out of so it's important that everyone has a say in it.
Small groups forming to do things like commerce or non-profits or whatever are completely voluntary and can't take our rights away. The fact is, these authoritarian-like structures are efficient and effective. Even employee-owned corporations tend to organize this way by electing the officers.
Would love to see more companies experiment with democratic organizations though.
Arguably technology has changed this paradigm a lot. More people now just means more thinkers, who work best not under stress
No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.
-George Patton
We have a choice not to work?
Choosing death by starvation is not a choice. Work or die, slave.
Sartre would disagree, but then Sartre was a professional philosopher.
You think a company should pay you even if you decide not to work? As much as I wish the universe rained down food, housing, and smart phone but the reality is that it cares not of you get a meal at the end of the day.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
sure, just sign up to like 10 credit cards, max them out getting good reliable camping equipment, and take a large loan out for one of those survival vans and flea the country
sure, just sign up to like 10 credit cards, max them out getting good reliable camping equipment, and take a large loan out for one of those survival vans and flea the country
This must be the same thought process of the people I see living in camping vans and tents down the street from me.
On which border is it common to cross from a democracy to a dictatorship for work?
I think the idea is that most workplaces are dictatorships
Careful you might start thinking about democratizing the workplace. If you start doing that you might wind up one of us filthy syndicalists
Don't threaten me with a good time!
Frankly, I'm a coward. There's very little I'd be willing to die for and democracy certainly isn't one of those things.
I'm sure plenty of Ukrainians thought the same pre invasion. Seen a fair few IT technicians flying fpv drones on the frontline
Plus, just working in a munitions factory makes you a target, and Russia has been indiscriminate in their targeting the civilian population
I doubt I would suddenly get brave if the U.S. was invaded. I've never even picked up a gun.
I feel like most ukrainians aren't fighting for democracy. They're kleptocracy is marginally better than the one in Russia, but not worth dying over. Their fighting either for nationalism and hatred of Russian imperialism that's oppressed them for centuries, or personal honor and fear of being called a coward by their wider social group.
In general nationalism and personal honor are the main reasons people will voluntarily sign up, outside of personal gain and mercenaries. In the west that nationalism gets tied up with ideas of democracy, but if a dictatorship took over the u.s. I doubt there'd be much of a difference in volunteers for the next war.
You can go to work for yourself, you can’t fork your own country.
The dominant cultural ideology blinds us to the obvious contradictions.
I worked for a cooperative once. It had its upsides. But it eventually lost steam because of the diffusion of responsibility. At its peak it had a strong core council of 5-7 official members looking after it and it flourished. But it was somewhat of a labor of love and over time they had kids, moved away, etc and eventually there just weren’t enough committed core people to keep it going.
A small business generally has one person who is ready to do absolutely whatever it takes to make it a success. This can be game changing. All their skin is in the game. If they have to skip a paycheck they do. If they have to work all night they do.
You know, a dictator, as you call them -_-
And if you work at a company and the leadership becomes burdened with other life events? They delegate management to someone whose job it is to keep things running smoothly.
Co-ops can work that way too lol, there's a co-op in Spain with 75,000 employees.
TL;DR people forget that like 90% of businesses fail, of fucking course co-ops are no different
Noo! But you see, when communard syndicalist cooperatives fail they expose the inherent contradictions within socialism itself!!!
I don't have a choice. If I wanna do the kind of work I enjoy and pays enough to feed my family, I have to submit to corporate dictatorship.
There is a difference even between an autocracy and a dictatorship. There's a difference between specialization and dictatorship.
The things you don't fully grasp should get questions; not the host outrageous label you can think of at the time.
In a workplace you're trading your labour, skills, and time for money. Think of it more like a convenience store, do you get to vote for the guy behind the counter, do you get to vote for the prices of the products? How would a convenience store be able to function if the customers could vote on these things?
Democracy works with government because most voters are also taxpayers. There's a an incentive not to vote for things that aren't affordable because the people voting have to pay for it.
Plenty of businesses function with workers in control.
Also, the basic understanding (though not totally accurate) is that customers do vote on prices by choosing what, where, and when to purchase. The issue is they don't organize to vote on it, and businesses do shady deals to rig the vote.
In a workplace you’re trading your labour, skills, and time for money. Think of it more like a convenience store, do you get to vote for the guy behind the counter, do you get to vote for the prices of the products? How would a convenience store be able to function if the customers could vote on these things?
Isn't that supply and demand? If something doesn't sell enough, it stops being on the shelf. You vote with your purchases.
Some places even give out surveys where you would rate the person who helped you. Some places take those surveys seriously and if you get bad ratings, they fire you.
Every single civilization with every single type of governance in human history requires most people to work. That will continue to be the case for a long time into the future.
Is the current system perfect? No. However it does allow for a greater degree of latitude than basically everything that came before it. It also has safeguards to ensure there's some sort of safety net if you fall on hard times.
You also mentioned democracy. Assuming you live in America, you can vote in a way that introduces reform to the system.
Starting a violent revolution is a last resort sort of thing.
cognitive dissonance or something
Yes that actually the key difference. We willingly enter those communist dictatorships and we are not prisoners there but can leave.
That is fundamentally different than a place like a communist dictatorship country, which builds walls to turn itself into a prison.
Being willing to enter and able to leave a dictatorship makes it a whole different thing than a dictatorship you are born into, and cannot leave.
Consent is everything. Like, a person can tie you up, beat you with a whip, pour hot wax on your skin to burn you, and put clothes pins on your nipples, and it’s okay as long as there’s consent. That is, objectively, a bad way to treat someone. But consent changes everything.
And it goes the other way too. Helping a person without their consent is wrong. This is the problem with a lot of the social movements these days: not seeking consent from those they seek to help.
People are not willing to die for democracy.
People are willing to die doe their cunt tree.
In the US? I only work full time because of the constant threat of death if I don't.
If you think about it, Thomas Hobbes was right but on a smaller scale. Society only works when people submit themselves to their bosses.
Did he say that?
Well, he argued that we should all submit ourselves to an absolute sovereign, by which he meant a king or queen. Unfortunately he kind of lost out that argument since most places have rejected absolute monarchy, but luckily, people can still submit themselves to the new ruling class of business and property owners 😊
Democracy, the God that failed.
In my country i can choosr who runs it...
I cant, at my job
But i can easily choose to quit and find a different job, or start my own company. I dont have those options, when it comes to my country.
Not everyone can just quit and do a different job or become a freelancer, and some people can just packup their stuff and move to a different country without issues.
So, I don't understand your point.
Tankies would support the USSR (a dictatorship). This logic is Socialist. More like, pro-union, but then a bit more radical than that.
And spot on that you'd be in prison for disagreeing with your boss in the good old USSR.
I see a lot of that kind of sentiment here.
OP I'm familiar with your sentiment. This rhetoric is too ideological for most, I'd dial it back and try again. Most are allergic to leftist words and ideas. Union recruiters say to never even use the "U" word, and even saying burgeosie will have libs mocking you.
Some might say it is not radical enough. OP made an okay point and doesn't need to placate reactionaries.
The power a government has over you, and the power your employer has over you, are totally different.
The government is legally authorized to separate you from your possessions, your freedom, and even your life in extremis. Your boss can't do any of that and if they try the government should stop them.
Some people believe democracy is what prevents the government from punishing you capriciously, or allowing corporations to just do whatever they want to you. So they are willing to die to defend it.
I would say traditional liberal ideals are closer to what they'd want to defend than democracy itself, and I don't 100% agree in either case, but I can see the point of view.
If you think your boss can just murder you I'm not sure what to tell you.
there was just a work email put out where I work about how employees shouldn't be going to the bathroom super often and if they are in the bathroom they should only be doing bathroom things.
I can't report them for that but it is fucking extreme and dehumanizing. To be policed in the bathroom. Because company time is more important than bodily functions. Or whatever other reason someone might be in the bathroom.
I get this sucks but you can quit your job and walk away from your employer, theoretically.
If the government decides to separate you from your possessions, your freedom, or your life, you can't walk away from it and find a new government.
Your boss and your government are just totally different.