Does your boss have a right to demand that you behave a certain way on your own time? For example: completely forbidding tobacco use?
Some people argue that this is part of your boss' right to hire who he wants. I am not disputing that right. What I would warn against is the slippery slope of where this leads. Under this scenario, you would be the property of your boss.
You only sell your time to your boss, or looking at this another way, you rent him your body for a certain amount of time each day. He has no claim to your body during the time he is not renting it, nor can he demand to control the time you did not sell him.
Yes, your boss has a right to hire whoever he wants, but if he discriminates in this way, you and I have a right to refuse to do business with him. Any business or dealings. In a free society this could mean shunning him to the point of starving him to death if he chooses to remain a bigot and enough people care.
If a boss wishes to assert ownership of his employees, he is behaving in an evil way. Slavery is still wrong. Your body chemistry is none of his business as long as you are not contagious or radioactive. Unless the substances leave your body and make you into a hazard it is no one's business what you contain, be it nicotine, THC, or whatever. Making your body chemistry a condition of employment is wrong, but still within his rights. It is also a good way to judge the boss' character.
Your boss' rights do not cancel out your rights. You own your own body and life or you own nothing. You can choose to sell yourself to an authoritarian boss. I hope you don't. If fewer people were willing to sell themselves (as opposed to renting themselves) then fewer bosses would be able to assert ownership over their employees. This would increase real freedom even more than decorating lampposts with swinging predators. Who do you spend more of your life around: the boss or a congressman?
Well, I don't believe in hierarchies or bosses, so I must ask the inevitable Anarchist question
ReplyDelete"why do we need bosses in the first place?"
Does a business owner have to do it all by himself? If he hires people to help, do they not need his direction?
ReplyDeleteI have quit jobs because of micro-managing bosses, and just plain incompetent ones. A good boss that knows what he is doing and knows enough to let you do your job is like a breath of fresh air, and doesn't threaten your liberty at all.
A good boss is a leader, not a Ruler. I believe in the value of leaders and the danger of Rulers.
Once again, why do you need a boss? You can have leaders without having a hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteI guess because as the owner of the business he has a greater interest in seeing his venture be successful. Call him "The Leader", "The Boss", or the "Owner", he has a right to make certain his business works. He shouldn't be a jerk about it, but it is a voluntary association. If he is a dillweed, do as I have done and quit.
ReplyDeleteYou're using the voluntaryist argument: "if it's voluntary it's moral." But that's not a valid argument. For one thing, we have no choice to work in a hierarchical system: there are no alternatives. So how can we be said to be free in that respect? Secondly, most "business owners" are acting illegitimately because they have no proper property claims to their means of production. In most of these cases, use/occupancy rules show that the workers legitimately own those means, not the "owners."
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that everything that is voluntary is moral. For example, if you have no real choice but to accept an "offer", then it is not truly voluntary. Most people really do have a choice of whether to work for a bad boss or not.
ReplyDelete"Workers owning the means of production" sounds suspiciously socialistic/communistic to me. I have no problem renting myself to a business owner for a specified time. That gives me no claim to his business.
Is there no value in starting a business and paying the bills which allow it to continue to be a viable concern where the workers can produce? I have no claim to any of the businesses I have worked at, even when I did most of the work and the owner only interfered with production.
"Most people really do have a choice of whether to work for a bad boss or not."
ReplyDeleteThat's not the issue. The issue is whether you have a choice to work under a hierarchy or not. We don't have that choice.
""Workers owning the means of production" sounds suspiciously socialistic/communistic to me."
Well yes, except that as Anarchists we don't believe this should be controlled by unions and governments.
"I have no problem renting myself to a business owner for a specified time. That gives me no claim to his business."
Well, according to property rights it does, but you are free to refuse to take property that is yours.
"Is there no value in starting a business and paying the bills which allow it to continue to be a viable concern where the workers can produce?"
Sure, but that doesn't have anything to do with "being a boss."
"I have no claim to any of the businesses I have worked at, even when I did most of the work and the owner only interfered with production."
Now you're talking like a statist. What claim do the "owners" have? You know very well that the State cannot make any legitimate claim of owning anything.
If your boss sucks, fire him/her.
ReplyDeleteI work independently these days. I'm a freelancer. I have no boss, I have clients. If I don't like a client, I quit taking work for them. Just today I rejected a contract one wanted me to sign because it was too vague, contained too many provisions I couldn't agree with, and there seemed to be no chance of negotiation for real improvements.
There's no hierarchy here. Likewise, when I subcontract a job out, if I don't like the result I don't hire that person again, or try to point out why they performed poorly and get agreement to improve, if I want to preserve the relationship.
Millions of other people work under the same circumstances. Thus I say that "we don't have a choice as to whether or not to work under a hierarchy" is bogus.
Additionally, I can imagine one day in the future that I might want to hire someone to work for me maybe 4 hours a day 5 days a week, answering the phone, dealing with sales issues and handling billing and collections. If I were to do so, it wouldn't be as an "employer" relationship but also based on either a very loose contract-for-hourly-pay agreement or just a verbal deal. Am I a horrible "boss" then? No. How many people do I need to hire to cross that line?
Franc- I'm not talking about the state, which doesn't own anything (only steals it), but a business owner who put his ideas, money, and hard work together to make something of value. If he needs to hire other people to continue to operate, I'm not seeing why the contract must mean the employees own his business.
ReplyDeleteStatists are the ones who make claims on that which is not theirs to claim. That is the whole basis of taxation, permits, and licenses.
Mike- I think the number of people you have working for you is not the point; the way you treat them is. As long as you live up to your end of the agreement I see no problem with the arrangment.
ReplyDeleteI don't think hierarchies are inherently bad. Even in our daily lives we are parts of different hierarchies constantly, all based upon different criteria. If I am learning a skill from someone, I am automatically "under" that person, but in the next moment the hierarchy could change. If I go into the arrangement thinking "this clown is not gonna outrank ME!" I am unlikely to learn anything. This doesn't mean I turn off my brain and let myself be used to my disadvantage.