Catmatic Leftist
26th May 2011, 22:29
Person 1:
Slavery is not legal. Producers cannot force anyone to take a job, nor can they force people to work for less than they deserve. People earn a direct value of the time they invest.
I started working for a company about 4.5 years ago staight from college. I worked very hard at this new employer and after 1.5 years I was promoted to run a facility across the country. A year after that I realized my employer was not doing things right, so I quit. I started my own company doing the same thing. Things got a little dry a few months ago so I went to work full-time for another employer. I now work a full time job, and run my own business. I control my life and who I work for. In a free society we all can do this. No one is tied to anyone.
Production cannot exist without a person creating the means of production. A person trades part of their life via time and energy invested to create a business. Since this person has part of their lives invested in the creation of the means of production they own the means of production just as they own their own lives. If you take ownership of this production in any way you are stealing the producer's life. That being said, the producer does not have the right to steal from others by forcing people to work him/her without compensation for their time. The producer also does not have the right to harm the environment of which he/she shares with others.
Person 2:
The exploitation you're talking about has nothing to do with property rights, it's about power. During the industrial revolution, corporations were unleashed from their restrictive corporate charters to make profit with impunity. The "little guy" had no voice, and if he didn't like it, he was fired, which eventually led to worker's unions, etc. The same thing goes on in other countries today largely because of the economic policies imposed on those countries by the World Bank/International Monetary Fund.
I am personally very anti-corporation and feel the world would be much better off if all we had were small businesses, so I fully agree with you that exploitative employers is a serious issue and corporations need to be kept on a short leash. However, I do not agree that this sort of exploitation flows naturally from property rights. The communism you're alluding to suffers from the same problem as all forms of collectivism-- it places the needs of a group over the rights of an individual and it is up to the government to decide what is best. No one in the history of government has ever made a decision that was bad for them, personally, in favor of what is good for someone else. So it ends up merely deferring the exploitation rather than removing it. A democratic republic is based on the notion that the rights of the individual must supersede the rights of a group, or else minorities have only the rights that the majority allows.
Slavery is not legal. Producers cannot force anyone to take a job, nor can they force people to work for less than they deserve. People earn a direct value of the time they invest.
I started working for a company about 4.5 years ago staight from college. I worked very hard at this new employer and after 1.5 years I was promoted to run a facility across the country. A year after that I realized my employer was not doing things right, so I quit. I started my own company doing the same thing. Things got a little dry a few months ago so I went to work full-time for another employer. I now work a full time job, and run my own business. I control my life and who I work for. In a free society we all can do this. No one is tied to anyone.
Production cannot exist without a person creating the means of production. A person trades part of their life via time and energy invested to create a business. Since this person has part of their lives invested in the creation of the means of production they own the means of production just as they own their own lives. If you take ownership of this production in any way you are stealing the producer's life. That being said, the producer does not have the right to steal from others by forcing people to work him/her without compensation for their time. The producer also does not have the right to harm the environment of which he/she shares with others.
Person 2:
The exploitation you're talking about has nothing to do with property rights, it's about power. During the industrial revolution, corporations were unleashed from their restrictive corporate charters to make profit with impunity. The "little guy" had no voice, and if he didn't like it, he was fired, which eventually led to worker's unions, etc. The same thing goes on in other countries today largely because of the economic policies imposed on those countries by the World Bank/International Monetary Fund.
I am personally very anti-corporation and feel the world would be much better off if all we had were small businesses, so I fully agree with you that exploitative employers is a serious issue and corporations need to be kept on a short leash. However, I do not agree that this sort of exploitation flows naturally from property rights. The communism you're alluding to suffers from the same problem as all forms of collectivism-- it places the needs of a group over the rights of an individual and it is up to the government to decide what is best. No one in the history of government has ever made a decision that was bad for them, personally, in favor of what is good for someone else. So it ends up merely deferring the exploitation rather than removing it. A democratic republic is based on the notion that the rights of the individual must supersede the rights of a group, or else minorities have only the rights that the majority allows.