California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Business then has to compete with that to attract labour. No other labour law required. Simple competition sorts it out.
That is also has the advantage of being a geographically targeted federal automatic stabiliser that operates far more effectively than interest rate targeting via bank lending, and ends unemployment permanently and forever is just an added bonus.
We have seen how no labor laws combined with competition works, we get: 80 hour work weeks with no over time, no benefits, dangerous work conditions, and even exploitative child labor.
There is legitimate use of contractors in lieu of employees, but UBER and gig economy as a whole are very hiring what are clearly employees, under the law, as contractors in order to skirt regulations.
If we viewed overworking, putting in 60 hour weeks or doing risky work for more money as something unhealthy and greedy, rather than as commendable, free market forces might work better.
How does the 80 hour week person get any labour?
Repeal all the right to work laws and massively reduce the ability of employers to use non compeats (us CA as a model here I think)
minimum wage should not be at the federal level, it is a state by state and city by city issue that should be based upon cost of living in that area. federal laws should protect from working without pay and discrimination. if localities wanted to protect low wage earners they woulds step back occupational license requirements for many positions and reduce the burden of fees and regulatory compliance as well; that twenty to twenty five dollar fee some states charge just for a license may not be bad for you or me but for the low wage earner it is very bad. having to pay five hundred dollars for a license to work is no better, but these costs exist and are not income scaled
You don't. Every full-time employee have right to paid holidays, like we have in every other country in the world.
Maybe we need to consider someone who works more than 15 hours a week full time. Or perhaps the benefits scale for employees based on number of hours worked.
Other countries are able to support higher labor rates because they have protectionist tariffs, such as the VAT. But if the US wants to raise tariffs, all of a sudden we're racist idiots.
Anyway, a lot of what's perceived to be wrong with the US can easily be solved at the state level, but turns out nobody actually wants to foot the bill for these things.
I'd advocate for public funding of loans for worker owned co-ops. 1 employee/owner = 1 share = 1 vote. Vote on wages, vote on bosses, run it like a democracy. Once people have democracy in their workplace, they'll finally demand it out of our government. Businesses will still fail, some will still survive, but ultimately the proven business models (most businesses) should have this more equitable distribution of profits. There's no reason the 7-Eleven should be hauling profits back to Japan, the employees can own and operate local variants and keep the money in the community.
This is how I personally plan on making the world a better place whether I'm a millionaire or have nothing. Organizing and start at least 1 worker-owned cooperative before I die. It's something most of us are capable of doing that truly improves the world where it counts (happiness which comes from a sense of control over your own destiny, and money which the latter equals food and housing).
I'm advocating for government loans to start co-ops. Less of a "sugar daddy" than the massive corporate subsidies going on today. You missed the point on a co-op being worker owned, you have to work there to own a share, and have to own a share to acquire a vote. Ownership and direct democracy in one. Solves a lot of problems economically and socially.
The previous commentator said the government would be involved in setting thease coops up - now may this is not going to be used by the executive for political ends.
I was refereeing the attempt by Tony Benn in the 70's to restructure a uk motorbike manufacturer as a coop.
"I'd advocate for public funding of loans for worker owned co-ops. "
Why regulate when you can compete rubbish jobs out of the system?
Until those businesses which cannot survive in this model go away so even the part time job they had won't be around anymore...
"But what about all the jobs that will close when we make better labor standards" should always be met with "these companies shouldn't exist in that form".
Taken to an extreme: Were abolitionists more concerned with freeing slaves from the labor abuses they were living under, or the long term prospects of the plantations and their business models?
Sometimes the business isn't worth the social costs.
My mother-in-law lived thru the invention of the 'minimum wage' in the US. She saw the damage it did, the thousands out of work because their job wasn't worth minimum pay. The temporary jobs disappearing, part-time workers fired. And full-time workers working double-jobs to do the work of the missing low-paid workers.
It was indeed a hard time. Better times came after the minimum wage. But to cavalierly dismiss jobs with "these companies shouldn't exist" sounds a lot like "let them eat cake".
>>Simple competition sorts it out. Except the fact that businesses eroded work stability and security to shift power dynamic of employer <-> employee massively in employer favor (again largely in case of low end jobs, though (was it) H1-B abuse exploits white collar workers). So employees are desperate to find employment and afraid to loose their current. That really kills any 'wage competition' and is a run to the bottom.
"But the rate of pay increase still was markedly less than historical relationships with labor market conditions would have predicted. Atypical restraint on compensation increases has been evident for a few years now and appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity." by Alan Greenspan [0]
This whole idea of 'market will correct itself out' works great on paper, it just doesn't work in reality when you insert people into equation.
[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/1997/february/te...
We identify two undocumented measurement challenges affecting corporate sector labor shares outside the United States: the inclusion of dwellings and the inclusion of self-employed workers in the corresponding sectoral accounts. Both issues have become more important over time, biasing corporate labor shares downward. We propose two methods to correct for these challenges and obtain `true’ non-housing labor share series. Contrary to common wisdom, the corrected series exhibit stable labor shares across all major economies, except the US, where the corrected labor share declines by 6 percentage points since 1980.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RMTqNNJFUSxeMx9UsObAgqUeb3H...
If you are adding nothing real to the common pool by using up some of your finite hours on this planet for the public good, then you can hardly expect the rest of the public to use up the finite hours of their life to produce anything for you. No amount of financial trickery hides the fact that it is a transfer from those that produce to those that don't for nothing of actual real value in return.
The UBI is a magicians trick that fools nobody once the mechanism by which the trick is pulled is revealed.
Do we tell them tough? Or do we slowly institute more and more programs to only end up where we are again? Keep in mind that Yang is proposing UBI that would replace all other social / welfare programs.
Let me ask you: what do you do now when a mother of 4 doesn't qualify for SNAP or housing assistance, and her 1,2 or 3 jobs isn't enough to cover rent or put food on the table? What do you do now when a SNAP recipient sells their food card and spends the cash? My general experience is anti-UBI proponents don't even know about these issues, and if they do they both don't give a shit and have no more answers than a pro-UBI person.
At the end of the day the current model is failing, I for one would much rather see all the tax breaks offered to the rich be rolled back, including estate taxes and capital gains...because as of now all that was premised on "trickle down economics" or maybe better phrased as poor people can eat the crumbs of the rich, and so far the crumbs haven't made their way down and to date that what the poor have been told..."tough".
That's done because those same cases will be used by legislators to justify reinstating these programs after UBI kills them. When they need to drum up public support they always tug at the heartstrings.
> what do you do now when a mother of 4 doesn't qualify for SNAP or housing assistance
First, I highly doubt a mother of 4 wouldn't qualify for any of those things (net income would be $3,188/mo with 5 members).
Second, you seem to think removing SNAP, housing credits, and others and replacing it with $1k/mo would work. I'd argue most of those benefits are worth way more in many cases.
In Yang's proposal he would give people the option to choose, which I don't think be adopted very well except for those of us who are already doing just fine and would take the extra money to save/invest.
> I for one would much rather see all the tax breaks offered to the rich be rolled back, including estate taxes and capital gains.
The top 10% already pays 70.6% of US taxes and the top 1% pays 39% alone. In comparison the bottom 50% pay around 2.8%. What is the magical number that is enough? And when does it become not worth it anymore for those people to reinvest?
IMO, the government should never be taking more then 50% of someone's income.
No that is only one potential implementation of UBI, and generally the only one acknowledged by the Anti-UBI crowd (in a fear mongering sort of way).
>I'd argue most of those benefits are worth way more in many cases.
In fiscal year 2017, the average SNAP household received about $254 a month, or about $1 per meal. And my understanding with housing is 19 Million people are eligible/qualify, but only 25% get assistance, so its essentially a lottery. I'm fairly certain that 75% who get nothing would prefer the $1,000.
>The top 10% already pays 70.6% of US taxes and the top 1% pays 39% alone.
Those numbers are very consistent with the percentage of wealth owned by these groups. Except, the bottom 50% are paying 3x the % of wealth they own. Maybe the bottom 50% should pay 1% to match the % of wealth they own and then the top 10 and 1 % can pay 3x the % of wealth they own in taxes for a while.
>IMO, the government should never be taking more then 50% of someone's income.
That seems totally arbitrary, but maybe fair if we are talking about wages, the thing is the tax benefits to the rich that I highlight like inheritance/estate tax or capital gains taxes has nothing to do with work and wages...and its exactly why people like Warren Buffet pay less in taxes than his secretary and the rich have been able to transfer vast amounts of wealth and fortunes tax free. Again maybe we could experiment with tax wages at the capital gains rate and capital gains at the rate of wages for a little and see how that goes.
Because it's the most likely to be implemented and is the only one being touted by presidential candidates.
> And my understanding with housing is 19 Million people are eligible/qualify, but only 25% get assistance
Is that 25% get approved out of 19 million applying, or just 19 million are eligible but most dont apply? That's an important distinction.
> Those numbers are very consistent with the percentage of wealth owned by these groups.
You're talking about wealth, I'm talking about investments. Taxing capital gains at a higher rate would just lead to less investment. Less real estate being built which in turn means higher housing prices, less VC funding so less opportunity for jobs, etc. It's taxed lower because it's a higher risk.
> That seems totally arbitrary
It's not. At no point does the government deserve more money than I do for my own work. Yes the government provides that safety net, schools, roads, etc but that is paid for on an individual level way before 50%.
I agree that we need to strengthen laws that allow companies to hide money, but at the same time every single one of us tries to pay the lowest amount every year come tax time; so I can't blame corps for doing the same.
We already have laws and safeguards for irresponsible parents.
Why do opponents of UBI and welfare assume that people being able to misuse the money somehow constitutes an argument against those programs? Why is this theoretical mother of 4 "blowing all the cash" under UBI, but not blowing her food stamps or benefits?
Irresponsible people can be irresponsible under any circumstance, but I don't see anyone arguing against capitalism because poor people could spend their paychecks on junk food, booze and lottery tickets. It's only people under welfare who seem to need a paternalistic moral guardian.
Give people the money they need to live and let them make their own decisions, accepting that there will always be a limit to what governments and society can do.
I foresee that situation playing out and then we will have legislators grandstanding that not doing something is "taking food out of children's mouths" or something similar. Over time that will lead to more and more programs being reinstated as no legislator will want to be seen not helping children/women/etc and then we are back to where we started, but with the overhead of UBI causing more pain.
> It's only people under welfare who seem to need a paternalistic moral guardian.
Generally when people ask for a handout from society, society wants to make sure that handout is being used for the things they said it would be used for. There is nothing wrong with that IMO.
If you want a blank check that's fine, but you have to be willing to let people starve as a consequence to their actions, with 0 exceptions (from the government) to make it work. Otherwise it will be gamed just like every other program we currently have.
Here’s some introductory reading. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
There is also the problem that when everyone has an extra $1k in their pocket each month the price of almost everything will rise to consume it.
Welfare isn't people asking for a handout from society, it's a government program paid for with tax dollars.
Society can complain about having to pay taxes into welfare programs (and often does) but it no more has the right to complain about what recipients do with the money than employers do about their employees.
Also, this becomes a problem in the case of UBI when everyone is getting the handout.
>If you want a blank check that's fine, but you have to be willing to let people starve as a consequence to their actions, with 0 exceptions (from the government) to make it work.
People already starve as a consequence to their actions, sometimes because the restrictions imposed on welfare programs by society make it infeasible for people in need to actually participate in those programs, other times because of bad decisions.
So yeah, I would prefer a blank check, no strings attached, and no moralizing from the crowd that thinks poverty is sin and moral weakness, and that the poor need to be taught a hard lesson before being granted the privilege of a meal.
That's the definition of a handout. The government is the people, and giving someone money for nothing in return is a handout.
> but it no more has the right to complain about what recipients do with the money than employers do about their employees.
That's not comparable at all. With employers there is an exchange of services for money. With welfare there is no exchange. It's meant to help people on hard times, not be a long term income source.
> People already starve as a consequence to their actions
And I'm arguing the rate would be higher with UBI.
> sometimes because the restrictions imposed on welfare programs by society make it infeasible for people in need to actually participate in those programs
Which is obviously bad, but those restrictions are because of previous rampant abuse of the system. Without them, the system would likely no longer exist.
> no moralizing from the crowd that thinks poverty is sin and moral weakness, and that the poor need to be taught a hard lesson before being granted the privilege of a meal.
Yeah I never said that at all. I'm all in favor of helping people for a limited period when they are down, but the system is filled with abuse.
This is a horrible example to use when all three are either a topic of debate to be banned, or have been banned in the past.
Taxes.
> How do you propose to deal with the sudden spike in rent prices that's almost exactly the UBI amount?
Rent control.
> What do you do when welfare faring becomes socially acceptable
Celebrate the reduction in pointless stress and the associated social harms from no longer stigmatizing those with no other choice, while watching more of those who can do more actually doing so as human desires remain unlimited and UBI, compared to existing means-tested welfare, reduces the disincentive to putting effort in to earning additional income.
Rent control is terrible. Even if it would prevent rents from increasing for existing tenants, that doesn't help anyone who doesn't have a rent controlled apartment from before the rents went up. Nor anyone who is looking to buy a home if it causes housing prices to go up. Rent control also discourages home ownership in general because you don't buy if price controls are making it cheaper to rent.
The true answer is this. If people having more money would only cause all of it to go to landlords, that is a dysfunction in the housing market, not the UBI. In a functioning housing market, more demand should primarily result in more construction, not higher prices. If that isn't the case then it has nothing to do with a UBI -- it would also be true if people had more money due to rising wages, or a reduction in taxes or interest rates or healthcare costs.
"What if every time people get more money it all goes to landlords" is a housing problem, not a UBI problem.
Rent control usually requires other interventions (that are usually not undertaken) to be net desirable, but those other interventions are not directly relevant to the problem posed.
> In a functioning housing market, more demand should primarily result in more construction, not higher prices.
Many housing markets are not “functioning”, and while many of the causes for that are policy related in many cases there are natural constraints as well. Any adoption of UBI in the real world is going to need mechanisms adopted that address this in affected markets (which may be more limited in scope than the whole subject area of UBI.).
> "What if every time people get more money it all goes to landlords" is a housing problem, not a UBI problem.
It's a housing problem that t frustrates the purpose of UBI wherever it exists, making it a UBI problem, as well.
Rent control is a malicious political hack for buying off the specific tenants most likely to mount a successful political campaign to actually address the root causes of high housing costs.
> Many housing markets are not “functioning”, and while many of the causes for that are policy related in many cases there are natural constraints as well.
The number of housing markets that naturally cause rents to absorb 100% of increases in local income is so close to zero that they may not even exist. Even if you're on a small island which is already full of maximally tall buildings, without regulatory restrictions prohibiting it, the rents still won't increase past the point that it becomes economical to build housing over top of the sea. That in addition to all of the ordinary possibilities when not restricted by zoning, like subdividing one large apartment into two or three smaller ones for the people who prioritize other things over size of living quarters, which then reduces competition for the remaining larger units and limits how much local income that rent increases can absorb.
> It's a housing problem that t frustrates the purpose of UBI wherever it exists, making it a UBI problem, as well.
Even if you don't have a UBI, you still have to address housing supply issues, because it also frustrates any other means of increasing the wealth of the local population. It's like arguing that a plague is a problem for the Affordable Care Act. Even if that's technically true, you have to address the plague regardless of whether you pass the ACA, and the general problem is not a specific problem when it is resolved through whatever independent means that are necessary regardless.
Because not making enough to support yourself is hard times. You should be actively working to get out of that. Go to school, get a better job, get off welfare. There are tens of thousands of jobs that pay very very well (welding, plumbing, construction, programming, etc). They are begging for people to apply.
Isn't that one of the promises of increased automation? Feature, not a bug.
The gig economy has many, many downsides, but those downsides don't share much at all in common with feudalism, even by analogy.
If we let all words deteriorate to mean simply "good" or "bad" (with gradations of good or badness), we're barely communicating.
doubleplusgood and ungood comes to mind.
IMO the problem with modern political discussion (especially online) isn't vocabulary, it's lack of nuance and empathy. "Good" and "bad" are not really the problem, but rather when you only classify things are either completely good or completely bad with no middle ground.
All I'm suggesting is that we take care in our language and be up-front about subjectivity rather than mask it with objective-sounding reifications. This isn't an attack on morality nor its importance, rather it is an acknowledgment of the fact that such judgments are ultimately based on what we as individuals or as a society find acceptable or unacceptable (i.e., like or dislike). It is perfectly possible to have a strong sense of ethics without claiming that one's ethics are somehow objectively or empirically "true".
There are plenty of examples where the "right" thing to do is not pleasant, it is not socially acceptable, etc because it is instead congruent with a greater ethical structure. Please check out some moral philosophy before throwing the whole field into a bin.
"things I like" and "things I dislike" are far more honest and genuine.
Unless you're talking from a purely nihilistic viewpoint which might be rational to some extent but not really productive. "Nothing matter, nothing is wrong, nothing is right, stuff just happens". Okay but where do we go from there?
But, are shared values the same as good and bad? We generally consider certain forms of lying to be bad but they are not illegal. And, not everyone agrees on those. So they aren't entirely shared. If we go down the rabbit hole of reason and logic on this it's not so simple.
Take the following thoughts:
Killing people is a bad thing. During wars, soldiers kill people. Soldiers are virtuous people.
Do you believe/know that someone could think they believe all 3 of these things? If yes, what are their values?
Everything is situations. It's context. It's why philosophers play with so many variances of the trolley problem. Nothing is clean and easy, everyone is a hypocrite, nothing matters, stuff happens, and trying to rule a group by trying to worry about individual beliefs instead of aggregate beliefs shared among a majority (a slight difference from your statement that I took as "minimal set of shared values" which I assumed you meant applied to literally everyone).
Point is once you get a group above a certain size, there's only ever going to be majority favored ideas, not universally shared.
Calling a type of employment relationship feudalistic because of the amount of power the employer has is at least somewhat descriptive.
/ˈfyo͞odlˌizəm/
noun
the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.
Sure isn't even "somewhat descriptive"
edit for formatting
“The classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof (1944),[3] feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.[3]“. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
It included both economic and military relationships, but importantly: The granting of a landholding to a vassal did not relinquish the lord's property rights, but only the use of the lands and their income; the granting lord retained ultimate ownership of the fee and could, technically, recover the lands in case of disloyalty or death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fief
Thus these relationships where in effect an extreme form of employment even among the nobility. Much like how joining the US Army has more obligations than going to work for Google.
While it doesn't fit a strict definition of "communism", large parts of socialism are very exploitative, which is also a characteristic of communism. And communism is generally regarded as a bad thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
> Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon claimed that independent contracting amounts to “corporations trying to oppress workers.” He continued with, “When you hear about folks talking about the new economy, the gig economy, and the innovation economy, it’s fucking feudalism, all over again.”
I think if you take a look over the wiki page [1], he's probably talking about the similarity between classes. It's also in context about more than just the gig economy. And it's also in reference to what people are saying, the way they talk about it, and the way they are selling it to other people. Not talking about the gig economy itself as a concept.
As an example of something that would be apropos, Industrial Revolution working conditions and employer/employee dynamics would be far better analogies, although obviously imperfect themselves.
Yes it has. Feudalism was that exactly: all society, from bottom to top was based on individual asymetrical pacts between two parts, the vassal and the lord. This kind of relation existed between peasants and lords and between lesser and greater lords.
For example a gig economy employee can withdraw their labour at any time; can choose how much or how little they work (sometimes within some very wide bounds); can often choose where they work; can change from one employer to another and back again freely; in some cases can choose to only work at certain times and locations that have better compensation.
Yes of course there are disadvantages and maybe those should be regulated, and maybe in some cases the relationship is abusive by employers, but the above doesn't sound anything remotely like feudalism to anyone who has even the most basic knowledge about feudalism.
The feudalism term clearly seems to be introduced because of that, not because something's good or bad or whatever, but because it's atomizing labour relations.
- Royalty allows vassals to "own" land in exchange for a portion of the income from the land.
- Royalty has an obligation to protect the vassals while vassals have an obligation to fight for the land owners.
- Similarly, vassals allowed peasants to "own" part of their land and were obligated to protect them in exchange for part of the income from the land.
- Peasants often were not allowed to leave their land (effectively change employers). However, it's not clear to me if this is an inherent feature of feudalism.
In terms of whether any of this is analogous to feudalism:
- I think you could draw a pretty solid analogy in a situation where a corporation provided a major piece of property (e.g. a vehicle) in exchange for continued labor. However, that seems more like something you see in trucking than in the modern gig economy.
- You could maybe argue that situations where a person rents the property they need to do their job (e.g. a car for Uber) is analogous to the way that peasants rented their land. However, a better analogy might be to some of the schemes where, for example, employees are paid in scrip which they also had to use to purchase their tools.
- You could argue that, feudalism is analogous to how working class people in many cities are unlikely to ever make enough to own a house and therefore they only "own" them (via renting) as long as they keep working. However, this seems like it's more about inequality in general than the gig economy specifically.
- The fact that employees often have to keep working for bad employees in order to avoid being labeled a "job hopper", due to a non-compete, or just due to the difficulties of changing jobs has reasonable similarities to peasants being unable to leave their land. However, these are problems that are actually more common in jobs that are outside the gig economy.
- In at least one sense modern employment relationships are worse than feudalism: In feudalism the vassal has an obligation to protect their peasants while a corporation can fire an employee at a moments notice. However, again this isn't restricted to the gig economy.
Overall, I agree with you that feudalism is a poor analogy for the gig economy specifically. However, I think it is a fair analogy for some aspects of modern capitalism as a whole.
When dominant technology was scarce, it-- armor, warhorses, swords, nutrition, training-- was the dominion of feudal lords, which gave them real power over the peasantry.
The crossbow, and then the pike, gunpowder, and advances in organization & discipline such as those coming out of the old Swiss Confederacy and Gustavus Adolphus's Sweden changed everything. The fact that sovereign power relied on sizeable armies of citizenry to wage war was politically enabling for the peasants.
Combined with increased individual agency from economic output due to pre-industrial and industrial advances in tech, and the stage is set for democracy.
Some Swiss still carry their swords, now heirlooms, to the polls. If they did not have swords, they would not have polls.
If technology now removes the economic and military agency of the individual, it will also remove his political agency.
In feudalism, it was common to ascribe the collective success of a nation (or a smaller, land-owning group of people in a given region) to a single individual, the feudal lord. He had the ultimate (and hereditary) authority over the operations of the group, by virtue of successfully coordinating the defense of the group against external threats.
In modern (19th to 21st century) private companies, there is a similar dynamic. There is founder, who is ascribed unlimited power within the domain of his private company, just by the virtue of coordinating its expansion. (He "deserves it" because he "took the risks".) And this power is hereditary - he can decide to pass the ownership of the company to his own descendants.
Sure, the powers of modern capital owners over lives of people are much smaller than in feudalism. But the arguments used to justify the power of capital owners over the operations (and profit distribution) in the company are in principle the same as those used to defend feudal lordship.
In the political domain, humans eventually wisened up and decided that feudal lords should be replaced with democratic republic, because success of a nation is a collective effort, and so the decision making should also be done collectively.
I think this will eventually happen to founders in capitalism too.
The key reason why capitalism isn't "Feudalism 2.0" is because companies compete in a marketplace against each other, and there is freedom of mobility between employees across those companies. So maybe you could say that anti-trust law is a key component to ensure that your analogy is false.
The feudal lords also competed with each other. The freedom of mobility is not relevant if your only choice is just another feudal lord.
It's a neat metaphor in a storybook sort of way, which is why it seems like you are making a political point and not a economic argument.
> The freedom of mobility is not relevant if your only choice is just another feudal lord.
There are ~30 million small businesses in the US, anyone can start one, and many people do. Anyone cannot decide to become a feudal lord; it is a position taken through force and violence and maintained at the tip of a spear.
> In the political domain, humans eventually wisened up and decided ... I think this will eventually happen to founders in capitalism too.
I think capitalism was the "wisened up" part after the prior attempts which don't allow an entrepreneur to take a new idea, bring it into the world, and own the result for themselves. Well, aside from the ~50% which goes to taxes.
I am making an argument that the principal justification for power of these individuals is the same. It's neither strictly political nor strictly economic argument.
"There are ~30 million small businesses in the US, anyone can start one, and many people do. Anyone cannot decide to become a feudal lord; it is a position taken through force and violence and maintained at the tip of a spear."
Actually, you can decide to become a lord, it happens in mafias and gangs around the world till today. The lords in feudalism (unless it was inherited) rose from chieftains of tribes gaining more and more influence (often by using of violence) over more and more people.
Just like starting a business, becoming a chieftain and lord is very risky. In fact riskier, because the stakes are higher, but also the rewards.
Also, while there are small businesses in capitalism, yes, the core of it in practice are large businesses. And just like the lords, the owners of the large businesses are those who can either outsmart the other small owners, or just win the game of taking the risk. The issue I am talking about - winner (founder) takes all - is much more questionable in larger companies.
The fact that there is no direct violence in economic competition between companies doesn't invalidate the comparison I am making.
"I think capitalism was the "wisened up" part after the prior attempts which don't allow an entrepreneur to take a new idea, bring it into the world, and own the result for themselves."
I interpret the history the other way around. The capitalism only happened after people wisened up and figured that the republic is better than monarchy, in the political sphere. This restricted the use of violence in competition for power, and allowed the companies (and their owners) to rise in the economic competition.
But the question why should somebody keep unlimited and indefinite control over something (be it company or state) just by virtue of organizing people around creation of that something still stands.
You're drawing an analogy in the roughest possible terms. "A person can choose to become X", where X is a company or a lord, does not logically imply anything about the two things other than they are both choices. (Everything at some level is arguably a choice, so in fact this says nothing).
Similarly, "Doing thing X is risky" where X is starting a company or starting a gang, is not a logical argument for anything other than two random things are both "risky" (but perhaps in markedly different ways).
> Also, while there are small businesses in capitalism, yes, the core of it in practice are large businesses.
Roughly half of all employment, and the majority of employment gains, comes from small business. Roughly half of GDP comes from small business.
> And just like the lords, the owners of the large businesses are those who can either outsmart the other small owners, or just win the game of taking the risk.
In any competitive environment (be it sports, or selling widgets, or war) there are winners and losers depending on the preparation, skill, and execution of the players. "Football is war" is a metaphor, not a rigorous argument for why the Geneva Convention should apply to football.
> The fact that there is no direct violence in economic competition between companies doesn't invalidate the comparison I am making.
The fact that two things are meaningfully different in almost every sense does though. The only comparisons you've made are only in the most general metaphorical sense.
> The question why should somebody keep unlimited and indefinite control over something (be it company or state) just by virtue of organizing people around creation of that something still stands.
Besides the obvious point that no one has unlimited or indefinite control over anything, the tenants of private property are a well argued philosophical stomping ground. Why anyone should be able to own anything that they pay for... If they ever truly own it, if it is being taxed annually, or merely rented it from the State... If they should be able to keep it, or how much of it their family should be able to keep after they die... Whether a person can fully transfer title in something they create even if they are paid for it...
The fundamental reason that we let people own the things that they create or that they pay for is because that becomes the incentive for people to work hard to create great things, and because it's a way to give meaning to life. The fundamental reason that we don't take everything away from people the moment they die, but merely take just a large share of it, when it's over a certain amount, is roughly similar.
Other countries have tried to do it different ways, and IMO they have all turned out orders of magnitude worse for the wear.
All of those words have well-established and commonly understood meanings.
You and others may disagree with the political or cultural implications behind the way these words are used, but that disagreement doesn't render that rhetoric invalid, or make them meaningless.
Large power imbalance between the workers and those with means? Check. Not in use since Medieval times and thus an analogy unlikely to be confused? Check
An analogy, by definition, only has to bear partial resemblance to the thing being compared. The power imbalance in feudalism and the gig economy is clear.
So no, feudalism does not mean "things I think are bad".
I'd say capitalism, communism, socialism, mercantilism, and every economic system in history, when done at scale, usually end up with some people having far more power than others. If a power imbalance is as deep as the comparison goes, school is feudalism, dating with a significant age gap is feudalism, traffic stops are feudalism...everything is feudalism.
People forget the past all too easily. It took a lot to get us the protections we have today. Giving them up so easily is a mistake.
For those thinking this is overreach and stifling innovation you need to look back at history and realise the same thing could be said about many commonplace workers rights that you take for granted now.
My wife describes engineers as 'smartdumb'.
We're super smart at figuring out technical solutions that enable things like social media, ridesharing and short term rentals.
But we're either willfully ignorant or just plain dumb about the second order effects on society.
And you know what you call it when people discuss the social good? Politics.
That very thing that coincidentally we're not supposed to talk about on this site.
What I think is happening as far as the downvotes is not dependent on the person's field but rather their class or group identification as well as a certain portion of people who are actually worried about maintaining the 'independent' part of this stuff (though that is misguided for things like Uber).
Some people don't understand the perspective or plight of gig workers because they identify as being part of a different segment of society, which precludes them from taking on that other perspective.
You're attributing lack of benefits to work situations and employement agreements instead of unjust government distortion in markets and inefficient regulation.
Also interesting that basically anyone saying anything mildly critical of capitalism is getting downvoted without much response
Carefully regulated capitalism should do fine. This is obviously not easy to achieve.