Why Work Marriages Make Sense
blog.joelx.com
blog.joelx.com
People do not stay in romantic relationships to avoid "the trauma of getting dumped". They stay because their partner is who they are looking for, someone who enriches their life. Healthy people sting for a bit when dumped, but they get over it and find someone new.
Also, the boyfriend/girlfriend stage doesn't match up with what I've seen: people who dump their boyfriend/girlfriend "because someone better comes along" usually find that the new person isn't better at all, and in the meantime they've labeled themselves as fickle and capricious in the minds of friends and prospective dates. Rather, it's time to end a relationship when your continued partnership is making you unhappy, regardless of whether there is someone better out there. And as long as you are happy, you are unlikely to be more happy with someone else.
I'd argue that even with these corrections, viewing work like a romantic relationship still makes no sense. The cornerstone of romantic relationships is equal emotional investment, and the idea that beneath all the trappings, we're fundamentally all just people. Business is different because:
1. There is an inherent power imbalance between employer and employee. A company is never going to love you back, nor will you ever fulfill as important a role for it as it does for you.
2. Companies will and should respond to changing market conditions. Those changes sometimes mean that whole roles disappear, and employees who want to perform those roles can and should go elsewhere. A romantic relationship is hopefully based on qualities more fundamental than "what professional role do I want to occupy?"
3. If a company refuses to make hard choices about employment and market positioning, the market makes it for them, with the result that everybody is hunting for a new job.
The Ancient Greeks had a fairly extensive literature on such relationships, which tended not to end well for the human, even when the human is exceptional. The gods... err... corporations can always behave irrationally, so even "irreplaceable" people can get dumped.
plenty of people do, in fact, stay in relationships for this reason. also to avoid being alone in general. not everyone has noble motives for the relationships they maintain. to think otherwise is quite frankly a bit naive.
i do agree with your larger point though.
'happy' is a multidimensional concept. There are many 'shades of grey'.
If your life experience does not include enough warning flags for the potential negative consequences of this model on the firm, on its non-"married" workers, on its "married" workers, on its workers' families, on its customers, and on the wider society, flag me down two weeks from now and I will go into them at substantial length.
>Some companies today and many companies of yesteryear had a different relationship with their team members: that of the husband / wife level of commitment.
The relationship was more like parent & child than that of husband & wife. That's what it was with the 1950s automotive companies and Japanese corporations decades ago. The common adjective when discussing those companies was "paternalistic" and not "spousal".
The author should research the rigid labor situation in France and see how it's handicapping their economic growth. They don't have the political will to push through labor reforms and their young workers face 25% unemployment rates.
A husband+wife employment model in America would weaken instead of strengthen its economic power.
"[The Losers have] given up some potential for long-term economic liberty (as capitalists) for short-term economic stability."
It makes a certain amount of sense, but so do the other positions of the "Clueless" or "Sociopaths". If you are ambitious, then the "Loser" deal is clearly a bad one.
[1] - http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
It's the Clueless who believe that their loyalty to their employer is matched by their employer's loyalty to them (hence, "clueless"). They're the ones who stick with the firm, rise into middle management, diligently play the company line, and then get abruptly disillusioned when the firm institutes mass layoffs.
Otherwise it's just delusional. My labour goes to the highest bidder.
"The Clueless are the ones who lack the competence to circulate freely through the economy (unlike Sociopaths and Losers), and build up a perverse sense of loyalty to the firm, even when events make it abundantly clear that the firm is not loyal to them. To sustain themselves, they must be capable of fashioning elaborate delusions based on idealized notions of the firm — the perfectly pathological entities we mentioned. Unless squeezed out by forces they cannot resist, they hang on as long as possible, long after both Sociopaths and Losers have left"
I've seen former coworkers build these delusions, even when the ship was sinking and what was left of management was clearly mistreating them.
> So why would they want to be exclusive? Mostly because they want their significant other to be committed and not leave them whenever the significant other has a better option.
Realistically, I think it probably is true, sadly, that many people might see committed relationships this way. And if it is true, I would take that as at least a partial explanation for why the divorce rate is so high.
This is totally anecdotal, but from my observations, the marriages I've seen and known that have succeeded the best were not based on a trading of commitments, at least not in this very game theoretic sense. They were based on actual, legitimate love, and that's all there is to it. Love doesn't mean you can't be attracted (even very attracted) to someone else, but it means that any such attraction pales in comparison to the companionship you share with the one you love.
Uh, no. Monogamy is rooted in, basically, the following issues:
1) Germ control. You can get deadly diseases by sleeping around casually.
2) Sex leads to babies and human babies do best with two parents. It is a big burden and our species is designed to do the two parent thing.
3) It takes 15-20 hours a week to build and maintain real intimacy. There simply isn't enough time in the week to have lots of different genuinely intimate lovers. The math suggests that most people can sustain no more than two genuinely intimate sexual relationships.
Marriage stats suggest that humans aren't at all monogamous, most marriages end in divorce, and most people cheat.
People in a marriage, in theory, should remain loyal for life.
Good point though for most large companies.
I think that sort of relationship should really only existing for a few types of government jobs to block regulatory capture [if you have a job for life with good pay and retirement...the only way to lose it is to be caught being bribed] and teaching [which politics might meddle with].
Please don't take my comment personally. I watched people who were loyal for 10+ years get laid off recently and it kind of has made me angry about the idea of that kind of loyalty to a legal fiction.
"The company can be sure that that person will show up each day and do their best to do good work." <- no, the company managers can feel they're getting the best they can get. Not the same thing at all (it's all about perception).
Sorry I'm too tired to refute the rest of the confusion but to leave something of value to think about: the way our brains operate have optimised us to think about people. Disney make some objects like creatures because is easy for kids to pick up on anthropomorphised objects.
There might be something of value to research in the antropomorphisation of the company-employee relationship but my radar says it's easily going to end up hacking unaware or unpowered humans into company drones.
Watch this: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-corporation/
From Dante to this.
"Progress"
Most people stay in jobs for an average of a few years. It is dating as best.
Seems like a very contrived argument with no particular value derived from this analogy, apart from in fact, not making sense.