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A not entirely unreasonable point. Our economic system gives too much leverage to employers; if Alice hires Bob, Bob has a lot more to lose than Alice does; thus Alice can make unreasonable demands knowing that: 1. Bob will probably back down first, and 2. if he refuses, she won't have any difficulty finding someone more desperate. If we try to patch specific abuses with rules like 'don't make sex with one's boss a condition of employment', we end up playing Whack-a-Mole as Alice keeps finding more indignities to inflict on Bob, and campaigns against any intervention with the argument that Bob 'voluntarily' agreed to her terms, in the same way as the victim of a highway-man 'voluntarily' agreed to hand over his valuables.
Under full employment, however, if Alice demands that Bob offer her sexual favours, or forgo safety equipment in order to work faster, or stand up for his entire shift even though he could do his work just as well sitting down, or answer his phone at zero-dark-thirty for something could have waited until morning, or refrain from eating rice on Tuesdays, &c. &c., Bob is more likely to leave, and, having done so, is less likely to experience financial hardship as he can readily find a more reasonable employer, while Alice, less able to find anyone who will accept her onerous terms, will be incentivised to be more reasonable herself.
In such a system, the libertarian argument that Alice and Bob mutually agreed to whatever terms would be much more likely to hold water.
Does this apply to all aspects of employment contracts, or only to sexual favors? Is Bob bound by anything in his employment contract, or can he break it as he sees fit because he is being held hostage by reality?
It applies to unreasonable provisions, i. e. ones Bob only accepts because Alice can afford to hold out longer.
It doesn't apply to 'doing the task for which he was hired, to a reasonable standard'.
Why doesn't it apply to doing the task for which he was hired? Certainly, in a wage dispute, Alice's ability to hold out longer is equally if not moreso present.
Because that is a reasonable expectation.
If you are looking for a meta-level principle that will determine what is and isn't reasonable for Alice to demand, without having to think about the object-level details, I'm afraid that There Is No Royal Road To Geometry.
Which is why we have unions and minimum-wage laws.
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An that's why I always say the best anti-rape policy is to lower the minimum wage and fight the unions.
Doesn't the US have full employment already, therefore Bob was not raped?
But then you have the problem of people who work full-time who still can't afford the costs of an existence worthy of human dignity.
That goes in the wrong direction; unions are an attempt to solve the very problem I am alluding to, namely the gross imbalance of power between Alice and Bob!
Perhaps 'full employment' was not the exactly correct term; I am referring to the balance of power between management and labour, and economic circumstances in which the lack of an agreement has similar costs to both sides.
I don't think that's a real thing. What about a 15k$/year life is below human dignity? The only real indignity is starving, plus maybe not having a (small) roof over your head. And minimum wage workers are far from that. In most western countries, even those who refuse to work, who are supported by the rest of society, are far from that.
Only the imbalance between union members and the boss. The unemployed are screwed. It creates a new class of protected workers who cannot be fired, and so make hiring more risky and expensive, increasing unemployment.
So essentially, you admit there's full employment, yet there's still no way to get you to accept that workers have agency/they aren't raped when they have sex with their boss? Only if there's a new system, full communism or something.
I think achieving the lack of any real unemployment in a society (like the current 4% in the US) is of primary importance, and a great boost to the agency, bargaining power, and psychological health of workers. So I'm very sceptical of any attempts to help workers that could increase unemployment (raising minimum wage, anti-firing legislation, etc). What they gain in salary or security, they lose in bargaining power - that's not a good trade over the long term.
'Existence worthy of human dignity' is how it is described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, meaning more than mere survival. Living in a bare closet, eating tasteless gruel, dressed in rags, and staring at a blank wall when not working or sleeping, would not be 'worthy of human dignity' even if it isn't 'starving'.
'Full employment' in the economic-statistical sense is necessary but not sufficient for the concept I am attempting to point to.
If Alice wants an employee who will provide sexual favours/stand up for hours on end doing tasks that can be done sitting down/not eat rice on Tuesdays, and Bob wants a steady pay-cheque without involving genitals/allowing him to sit down if he can still get his work done/letting him eat whatever he feels like on whatever day he pleases,
The thing I am trying to point to is 'economic conditions in which Bob does not almost always yield first, and, in the absence of agreement, Bob's future is not vastly harder than Alice's'. It can be present in some circumstances while simultaneously absent in others; thus it is not adequately captured by a single figure, although it is more common with lower unemployment.
The other direction is not a good trade either -- a worker deserves a living wage (in the FDR sense, adjusted for the material progress of broader society) and security from being fired arbitrarily or for un-justifiable reasons and the ability to set reasonable boundaries. This is not an impossible trilemma unless one imposes the constraint that neither Alice's profit margin nor privileged social position be in any way inconvenienced.
Minimum wage workers have garish clothes, and spaghetti bolognese, and libraries, and dancing parties – oh, how they laugh and play together!
Who dares to call their lives unworthy of the dignity of a human?
Depends on the terms offered. If alice lists all of her demands in the interview, I think most people would refuse to work for her, especially if she’s ugly and they love rice.
Pretty easy for Bob, and Pretty hard for Alice I imagine, see answer 1.
If Jack wants a woman who will provide sexual favours, and else leave him be, and Susan wants a man who will buy her a cup of coffee and listen to her stories and dine at her parents’ and kill a spider.
I just want romantic conditions in which Jack does not almost always yield first. /s
I think in your search for a purely equal relationship, where consent is perfect, free from pressure, the entire concept of voluntary relationships gets dissolved.
Is there any salary amount where you will say : 'ok well that's a shitload of cash, I admit, the workers must have freely consented.' ? Because if 19th century-Celestial-body-NOS had agreed to the hypothetical, we would have reached that amount.
That goes without saying: As the gruel price decreases, so does the living wage.
Seems to me you’re just promising an imaginary state where workers are free/not coerced/secure/rich/ and no one is unemployed, and I don’t think science or history backs this ‘you-can-have-it-all’ utopia. Regardless, what measures are you proposing?
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