
Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives and Why We Don't Talk about It - lisper
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/private-government-how-employers-rule-our-lives-and-why-we-dont-talk-about-it/
======
Animats
That's a paper on classic union issues written with no reference to labor
history.

There have been companies which really acted like governments to their
employees. Ford.[1] Pullman.[2] The US labor movement arose partly as a
counter to that. And, for a long time, from about 1930 to 1980, companies
backed off on that out of fear of unions and government.

That fear has been lost, and companies are more assertive in employee control.
Abuse of non-compete agreements to make low-level workers indentured servants
would never have been accepted prior to 1990 or so.

US labor history has been erased from public dialogue in the US almost as
thoroughly as Tienanmen Square has been erased from public dialogue in China.

[1]
[https://www.autonews.com/article/20030602/SUB/306020843/the-...](https://www.autonews.com/article/20030602/SUB/306020843/the-
rise-and-fall-of-harry-bennett)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike)

~~~
Mikeb85
More people need to challenge non-compete agreements. In the majority of cases
(especially for non-management employees) they're illegal and don't hold up.

~~~
shims
That's time consuming and expensive. If you found yourself in a situation
where you're signing a non-compete out of desperation, you're lacking in both
time and resources.

~~~
a3n
I was desperate for work and signed a non-compete for a security guard job,
one of the easiest jobs to get. If I got a job at a competitor within N miles
I would have had to pay $Xtimes1000 to my current employer.

Sheesh.

~~~
Mikeb85
No way it makes it to court. Not to mention, what damages would they claim?
Punitive damages for an employee leaving aren't a thing.

~~~
simple_phrases
Doesn't have to make it to court for them to strongarm you into a settlement.
The threat of a lawsuit is enough for many to agree on a settlement just so it
doesn't go to court, even if you'd likely win as a defendant. Lawyers are
expensive and so is the appeals process.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Doesn't have to make it to court for them to strongarm you into a
> settlement.

And what would they threaten you with? Bring that lawsuit before a judge and
they'd laugh you out of the building.

They'd probably have their corporate lawyer write a mean sounding letter,
you'd ignore, no way anything happens beyond that.

~~~
simple_phrases
The nasty letter and threat of a lawsuit are the threats. You have to remember
that for many Americans, a lawsuit means bankruptcy and that in most states
non-compete agreements are lawful.

------
tomrod
If you disagree with the thesis of this article, let me ask you: how many
times have you or someone you know hesitated leaving a current employer due to
benefits uncertainties?

Or more to the point: how many startups never happen because the right people
are unable to manage the personal risk of leaving defined employment?

IMO this the consideration -- human ability is not really allocated all that
well when you're bonded to an employer without cheaper switching costs.

~~~
dahfizz
Even if we accept your premise - people have limited mobility due to benefits
- that is nothing at all like being a government.

Governments by definition have a monopoly on force. A government is a
government because people with guns say so.

You might want to argue that employees have _power_ , but they are nothing
like a government. They don't have force, they don't have jails, they can't
enter your home and give you orders. The worst thing an employer can do is to
stop employing you. That's hardly coercion IMO.

~~~
CogitoCogito
> Governments by definition have a monopoly on force.

I've never heard that definition of government. Also, at least in the US (and
presumably everywhere else), private citizens have the right to use force
under various circumstances.

~~~
ObscureMind
Is the state's army economically funded by a contract established voluntarily?

Can you start a private army to compete (not meaning fight it, but to provide
the same services) with the state's army ?

If you have to pay for it (you actually pay for the army to force you to pay
for it...), and you can't compete with it for the services it provides, it's
not only a monopoly, it's also a tyranny.

~~~
ggg3
not really. you are just too poor. if you had the means to create the right
connections, you could be paid by the army, like blackwater.

------
debatem1
There's an interesting discussion in this about how early market advocates
assumed that in a free market almost everyone would be essentially self-
employed, and how the industrial revolution broke that. It's especially
interesting to think about that in terms of the gig economy.

------
lycidas
Has it always felt this way? I've been reading a lot of Chomsky lately and it
seems at least for a few decades in the later 1900's workers had more power in
the workplace.

~~~
jeremyjh
Yes, blue collar workers used to vote in favor of their own interests. They've
been lured away from doing that for a long time now.

~~~
CryptoPunk
It's in the interest of blue-collar workers to repeal all laws that empower
unions by violating the contracting rights of employers because that will
attract investment into the U.S. manufacturing sector. Outlawing all
employment contracts except those that give enoemous power to the first crop
of employees that votes to form an official union is a short-sighted strategy
for improving worker welfare.

Wage growth in the US and Western Europe has been very stagnant over the last
40 years. Meanwhile wages have tripled over the last 20 years in China.

During the "Gilded Age", which unions and their activists regularly fearmonger
about, wages grew at the fastest rate in US history. And unlike the post-war
era, this wage growth didn't come at the expense of US industry, where unions
extracted enormous unsustainable concessions that culminated in major US
companies declining or going bankrupt. The wage growth in the late 19th and
early 20th century accompanied massive US industrial growth.

The best way to help workers is to embrace Capital. The worse thing you can do
is embrace an anti-capitalist ideology.

~~~
rocqua
Sure, Chinese wages grow a lot faster than Western ones. At the same time,
Western wages remain quite a bit higher than Chinese ones.

Dropping wages in the West would bring a lot of extra work, at the same time,
that work would be paying less. The core thing here is that cost of living,
and hence a living wage in the West is higher than in e.g. China. Due to
globalization, companies can now arbitrage that difference.

------
pmoriarty
Corporations and the government are not brightly distinguishable entities.
Corporate execs frequently serve in government and oversee or give contracts
to the very companies or industries they came from, and it's an open secret
that when powerful government employees retire they get very well paid
positions at those very same companies as rewards for the contracts they
awarded or legislation they passed/opposed when they were in government.

Considering the amount of back scratching that goes on between government and
the private sector, it's a true wonder that there are any consumer protection
or labor laws at all, or that powerful politicians or corporate execs ever
have to face any consequences.

~~~
a3n
> Considering the amount of back scratching that goes on between government
> and the private sector, it's a true wonder that there are any consumer
> protection or labor laws at all

Well keep watching, because the landscape is getting less wonderful by the
day.

------
git-pull
Title: please note this is a _review_ of the book here:
[https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-
Universi...](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Government-Employers-University-
Center-ebook/dp/B06XKGWT56/)

Aside: If you like to compare-contrast US<->EU, I found this paper
interesting: _Why Doesn’t The US Have A European-Style Welfare State?_ (2001)
[https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/why_doesnt_t...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/why_doesnt_the_u.s._have_a_european-
style_welfare_state.pdf).

------
chroma
I'm not sure why anyone takes her argument seriously. Companies don't pull me
over while I'm driving. Companies don't put me in prison. Companies don't
extort me under threat of violence. Companies don't enslave me. Only criminal
organizations and governments do those sorts of things. At worst, companies
can use existing government frameworks to coerce me (and I can use the same
frameworks to coerce them). Typically, all they can do is stop paying me.

Most importantly, people can switch companies far easier than they can switch
governments. Changing jobs is easier than moving between states, let alone
countries. Switching costs could be lower (mostly related to health
insurance), but overall companies are competing pretty hard for workers.
That's why they advertise positions, hire recruiters, and go to colleges and
job fairs. Could you imagine governments behaving similarly? The only thing
that comes close is the military, and that's because their potential recruits
can choose private sector jobs.

~~~
devoply
> Companies don't pull me over while I'm driving.

They very well could pull you over, revoke your license, and forbid you from
driving.... If you were driving on their land or driving their car. They have
to provide no justification for these actions either. They can reassign you to
do something else or simply lay you off with a short notice.

> Companies don't put me in prison. Companies don't extort me under threat of
> violence. Companies don't enslave me.

Companies can put you in prison using the state. Companies can and do extort
workers on certain terms like withholding paychecks and so on. Companies
absolutely enslave people by for instance telling them a myriad of ways in
which they can and can not conduct their lives.

Her argument is that companies are communist dictatorships and they are all
communist dictatorships, so you can not escape their control no matter who you
are working for. Considering that you spend most of your life under control of
such governments either one or another, these governments determine most of
your life.

And I would say indoctrination to such governments starts with schooling which
teaches you to obey and not question such governments.

> Imagine a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must
> obey. Although superiors give most inferiors a routine to follow, there is
> no rule of law. Orders may be arbitrary and can change any time, without
> prior notice or opportunity to appeal. Superiors are unaccountable to those
> they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by their
> inferiors. Inferiors have no right to complain in court . . . except in a
> few narrowly defined cases . . . The most highly ranked individual takes no
> orders but issues many. The lowest-ranked may have their bodily movements
> and speech minutely regulated for most of the day . . . This government does
> not recognize a personal or private sphere of autonomy free from sanction.
> It may prescribe a dress code and forbid certain hairstyles. Everyone lives
> under surveillance . . . Suspicious searches of their bodies and personal
> effects may be routine . . . The government may dictate the language spoken
> . . . It may forbid certain topics of discussion. People can be sanctioned
> for their consensual sexual activity or for their choice of spouse . . .
> They can be sanctioned for their political activity and required to engage
> in political activity they do not agree with.

> The economic system of the society run by this government is communist. The
> government owns all the nonlabor means of production in the society it
> governs . . . The vast majority have no realistic option but to try to
> immigrate to another communist dictatorship . . . (37-38)

~~~
tsss
Why would companies be communist? That makes zero sense.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
They are using "communist" to evoke the idea of a Soviet-style command
economy, not actual communism.

------
musicale
This seems fairly obvious: because many (most?) people can't afford to lose
their jobs (along with health insurance and income that is required for basic
necessities such as food and shelter, not to mention the loss of social
status), company managers routinely rely on the implicit or explicit threat of
unemployment to enable systematic and highly unethical coercion of employees
(e.g. to accept harassment without complaint, to engage in unethical or
illegal business practices, to accept a wide range of harmful and intrusive
restrictions on communication, movement, work and association, to give up
privacy and/or safety, to comply with arbitrary and abusive demands, etc..)

As we have seen recently regarding issues from harassment to non-compete
agreements, this kind of abusive behavior is widespread in spite of labor laws
and public opinion to the contrary.

------
curioussavage
Let’s just get it so my health care isn’t tied to my job anymore ok. Same for
the whole 401k setup.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> Same for the whole 401k setup.

I don't understand that one at all. A huge point of 401ks is you can leave
your employer and you keep all the money, as opposed to things like a pension.

~~~
astura
Unless you're self employed you can't just go an open a 401k yourself, your
employer must offer one. You don't get to shop around for lower fees, better
customer service, or better investment options - you must use the plan and
investment options they give you.

They may change it at any time.

You can only do what you want with your money after you leave your job.

You also can only contribute earned income to tax advantaged retirement
accounts, not unearned income.

------
esotericn
You simply cannot spend all of your income. If you have a full time job, no
savings, and are spending all of your income, or even close (say above 70%,
80%), you are in a full-blown crisis mode situation.

It will manifest itself in all sorts of ways.

If you have a limited supply of basically anything and use all of it the same
issue would arise. If you had 50L of water to use per day, and all of your
activities used 49.5L of it, then you would be in a water crisis, because if
you ever e.g. needed to wash an extra shirt you simply couldn't, it would be
impossible.

~~~
Someone1234
> You simply cannot spend all of your income.

So people making $7.20/hour should be living on $5/hour? People are spending
all their income, but inflation adjusted income has been stagnant for the
middle class and below[0]. Combine this with the costs of living (like
healthcare) increasing and you've created a situation where a lot of
households are struggling to have money left over (or are commonly indebted).

[0]
[https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2018/10/1...](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2018/10/16/u-s-
household-incomes-a-51-year-perspective)

~~~
nitwit005
People in poorer circumstances save at a higher rate elsewhere in the world,
and used to in the US a few decades ago.

The main issue is perhaps what you hint at the end there. Credit has gotten
far more available, so people are no longer used to saving to make purchases,
and are in the habit of going into debt.

~~~
blunte
This is a huge oversimplification. You're completely ignoring so many factors,
including rising housing costs.

This article illustrates it well: [https://www.businessinsider.com/how-high-
income-and-low-inco...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-high-income-and-
low-income-americans-spend-their-money-2017-3?international=true&r=US&IR=T)

The bottom 20% earners spend 40% of their income on housing. The top 20% spend
30% of their income on housing. And keep in mind, that housing that the poor
people are paying for would be considered horrid compared to the housing that
the rich people spend their money on.

If you were to look at the housing prices in the areas that the bottom 20% are
renting/owning, and apply that price to what the top 20% earn, the top 20%
would be spending less than 5% of their income on housing (comparing apples to
apples).

Yes, credit has made it much worse for the poor people. Credit appeared to be
a way to save them from a difficult short term or starting situation, but
predatory lending (provably so) has essentially enslaved them.

The bigger question is, how/why do the bottom 20% start off in such bad
situations (in some countries)? The answer almost always involves corporate
influence of government.

~~~
nitwit005
I'm happy to agree about housing costs, but my main suggestion was that
poverty and the personal savings rate don't have as strong a link as you
seemed to be assuming. You haven't really said anything to contradict that.

------
krupan
So the solution is to start your own business, and then your customers will
rule tyour life.

