> Is there a reason not to have open salary information?
The right to privacy? The right for two consenting adults to contract privately without interference from the State?
The right to privacy? The right for two consenting adults to contract privately without interference from the State?
Why does your salary deserve to be kept private? I'm trying to think of a reason that isn't some people feel awkward about it being open? If salaries are open I think that would go away and people would be more free to talk about money.
Finally in almost every company I have worked in everyone tries to work out what everyone else is on to better negotiate their own salaries, it just makes it difficult to mention...
See how it goes? You could literally use the same argument for any privacy concern ever.
However, this isn't the same thing and there is no benefits for other people knowing that I can think of; there may be lots of benefits for knowing everyone's salary.
I just gave you a benefit, people being more open about their sex life could be a good thing for society. Should we force people to tell how many time they have intercourse then based on your logic?
The problem is with major wealth holders, e.g. people or families with assets in excess of say $1bn, who generate disproportionate gains when held to the effort they put in.
Making $50m a year with $1bn isn't hard. I can do that. But those people don't spend that $50m in extra gains. It accumulates. And you get a massive snowball effect.
Compound interest is great and a pillar of capitalism, but past a certain point it can get problematic.
I posit that a few things are not that harmful to make public, except in some cases that varies for each individual (like being in a witness protection program) if someone already has the means to identify you as you (such as a full name). Some of those things would be your address, what vehicles you own, wether or not you have stock in corporations, wether or not you're married, your age, your level of education and some other things. I don't see how the knowledge about these things can be used to blackmail you through social stigma, unless you did something illegal. I have the same feeling towards pay checks.
The discussion is wether or not pay checks are too private to disclose publicly, not if it's ok to release everything about everyone.
Are you aware that laws are enforced by government force? That is to say, if you don't obey to a law, cops will be sent to your house and if you resist they will point guns at you and shoot. This is a non-controversial fact that both leftists and right-wing economists, politicians and philosophers agree upon.
Now, with that in mind, I don't like guns and I think they should only be used in extreme situations. I don't consider knowing people's paycheck to be one of these situations where gun violence should be used and therefor I'm opposed to this law forcing people to publish their income as I think gun violence would not make sense in this case. If people do not want to publish this private information, then let them be. That's just my opinion though, if you believe it is worse it to kill people who resist giving up the amount of their paycheck (because that's how every law is enforced if one resists), then you're right, this law is great.
Really? A tort will get you a fine, refuse to pay it and they will send you to jail, resist your arrest and they will use their guns. No way around that.
You're stretching the concept of the monopoly on violence and the "men with guns" metaphor to absurdity, when the "violence" in that context involves all compulsory interactions with the state, including mere arrest and detainment, or even having to buy postage stamps to send a letter.
More fundamentally, you pay taxes on your private deal with your employer but the government is just a third party involved in that transaction, the same as your bank. Neither the government nor your bank makes the amounts of tax you pay or what you earn public, them knowing doesn't really impact your privacy in any meaningful way. I don't quite understand how you've got from "well the government knows what you earn so everyone should!".
I don't consider that something being a "societal good" automatically overrides peoples right to privacy, different people will consider different things to be private, many would consider that my personal medical data would be better off open to the public in fine detail as it would help medical research but this is generally not the case (in the UK at least) and neither should it be.
Hacker News might just be the only place where you can see howls with rage at the thought of recruiters and HR asking them their salary in their current job with the obvious intention of not offering much more than that and arguments that this information should be accessible to everyone without question in nice little searchable databases anyway...
Think about real estate. I think it is immensely helpful for the public to have access to the sale price of houses. Imagine if the only people who had this information were a handful of real estate agencies. An individual buyer would have to go by a few scattered, probably inaccurate, whispered anecdotes. People who aren't part of an inside crowd would be at a terrible disadvantage in negotiations.
Unfortunately, that's pretty much how it goes for salary negotiations.
Also - the two consenting adults who contract privately you've mentioned, where do they turn if the deal goes south? If they feel one side has broken the contract, perhaps tortiously? Certainly, enforcement of contracts, to an extent, is within the realm of the state. I'd avoid too much tinkering, but a few ground rules to ensure an open, competitive, and, yes, transparent market, seems very reasonable to me, and very consistent with the concept of lightweight government.
In fact, I think transparency might take care of a lot of things the government tries to manage at a more granular level downstream.
In job hunting, the employers are the buyers.
professors in the UC system have public salaries, like any other public employee, and it isn't a linear communist apocalypse for salaries like you think. prof still work hard to move and create departments, etc. and the salaries vary wildly, not just with seniority.
...on the other hand, senate and congress does prove your point. ironically with people elected spewing the same liberal pipe dreams against the very way they get paid and accumulate retirements.
Professors have public salaries because their salaries are paid by the public. I don't think anyone here is arguing against being able to know how much your employees make, that's kind of a given.