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Comment by arrrg | Hacker News Reader

In general people need to work to live dignified lives. To me the natural consequence of this is that you cannot employ people and treat them any way you like. They are not like machines, their dignity has to be preserved.

There are several ways to achieve this (plain old regulation being one of those tools), but allowing people to freely associate without that association being the reason to fire them seems like another pretty obvious and great tool.

I don’t really understand why the vision of companies as empires with absolute monarchs seems so appealing to people. That seems like a disgusting vision to me that we should strive to avoid. Since people aren’t machines.

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You bring up some interesting points, but I respectfully disagree.

Companies are subject to the scrutiny of customers, shareholders, the stock market and a highly competitive job market. This creates a level of democratic accountability that, in my opinion, exceeds even that of Scandinavian countries.

As a Tesla employee, I have many options regardless of my talent or leverage, unlike when I don't like my country's policies where my choices are limited.

> Companies are subject to the scrutiny of customers, shareholders, the stock market and a highly competitive job market. This creates a level of democratic accountability that, in my opinion, exceeds even that of Scandinavian countries.

Democratic accountability to the investors and owners of capital, sure, but not to the employees (the subject at hand) or society (what a "Scandinavian country" would be focused on).

Some people want to change the world. Others want to go slow and want a life.

Why not leave those who want to go faster and change the world alone? There are other companies.

You cannot change the world alone, that’s an infantile Randian fantasy.

You need help from other people to succeed.

You don’t need to be an absolute despot to achieve even the most ambitious goal. Look at NASA and what they manage.

NASA sort of is against your point right? the Apollo program had lots of deaths and accidents and unsafe working conditions but it went to the moon. Maybe NASA now has good working conditions and employees have dignity but they haven't done anything nearly as impressive to the wider public

Fun thing is that Ayn Rand did allegedly heavily rely on other people: "Ayn Rand Was A Needy Parasite (And Why You Should Follow Her Lead)" https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelschein/2019/01/24/ayn-ra...

If Tesla were a startup with a dozen employees, I'd buy your argument. But Tesla is a manufacturing company that hires people that need to compete for a job to make enough money to feed themselves. None of the people categorizing images do so because they believe in a vision. The power dynamics are entirely different here and the one thing that helps workers achieve a semblance of power is unions. That's the reason unions are protected.

Unions want to change the world. They just want to change it in a way that leaves the Musks of the world with less money. Don't be confused, this isn't about "change the world" vs. stagnation, it's about the spoils.

I don’t see the kind of utopian equilibrium you are describing manifest itself anywhere.

The central question is how do you prevent a race to the bottom? And I just don’t see that manifesting itself if abolish labor rights (which to me seems to be what you are advocating for).

People already don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to their employer. How will you make sure that there are enough jobs for people "want(ing) to go slow"? (Toilet breaks, overtime that is actually paid, parental leave, reasonable limits on work time, ergonomic and safe work places, unlimited and paid sick leave, a reasonable amount of vacation time, i.e. more than a month, etc. This is all standard where I’m from and unions help enforce this.)

What part of moving fast requires treating employees like shit? (Where my definition of treating like shit is not having any of the things listed above in brackets?)

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