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Are you a libertarian if...

Are you a libertarian if you support this?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 53.8%
  • No

    Votes: 12 46.2%

  • Total voters
    26

waas

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Are you [still] a libertarian if you support business owners being able to exert power over employees?
 
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Are you a libertarian if you support business owners being able to exert power over employees?

As long as that power isn't protected by the government, then yes. In most cases today you'll find big business is using the government as their muscle to protect their power. In a truly free market, an employee makes a voluntary contract with an employer, and no work will take place until both parties are happy with the terms of the deal.
 
Are you a libertarian if you support business owners being able to exert power over employees?

How silly.

I am a business owner, and I exert power by very nature of my owning the business. That doesn't mean I am a libertarian by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, neither does it mean I don't pay a few of them more than I make, myself, but that is quite another story.
 
Are you a libertarian if you support business owners being able to exert power over employees?

I will offer a side-observation. Thomas Jefferson had argued that if you do not have economic independence, you do not have political independence, as it was argued that your employer could coerce you to vote for the man they so choose. Now, in his era there were public ballots, so it was an entirely different era...but the question is still somewhat interesting.
 
Gonna have to be a little more specific...
Waas and I had been talking about it in another thread, so he made this thread and the question intentionally ambiguous because he wanted to try to catch me in a logical contradiction, which so far hasn't worked.
 
As long as that power isn't protected by the government, then yes. In most cases today you'll find big business is using the government as their muscle to protect their power. In a truly free market, an employee makes a voluntary contract with an employer, and no work will take place until both parties are happy with the terms of the deal.

I see, so as long as it's not the government infringing upon liberty, you're okay with it.

And a market like the one you describes does not exist. In reality, competition for jobs exists, and due to the need to sustain yourself, workers will take any position that helps them earns them a salary.
 
I see, so as long as it's not the government infringing upon liberty, you're okay with it.

And a market like the one you describes does not exist. In reality, competition for jobs exists, and due to the need to sustain yourself, workers will take any position that helps them earns them a salary.

A company without the power of government coercion can not infringe on liberty. People have a right to enter into voluntary contracts for work. How can one voluntarily have one's rights infringed?
 
A company without the power of government coercion can not infringe on liberty. People have a right to enter into voluntary contracts for work. How can one voluntarily have one's rights infringed?

I'm sorry, but that's a rather narrow definition of freedom. Just because I voluntarily sign an employment contract, it is not an indication that I possess liberty or that I am free in a broader sense of the word. It may simply be an indication that I chose the best option out of a menu of horrible options.
 
I'm sorry, but that's a rather narrow definition of freedom. Just because I voluntarily sign an employment contract, it is not an indication that I possess liberty or that I am free in a broader sense of the word. It may simply be an indication that I chose the best option out of a menu of horrible options.

And it would be, say, Kinkos' fault that you had a menu of horrible options? Were they not the ones who provided you better options than your other choices?
 
Sure, the employees have the liberty to walk away.
 
A company without the power of government coercion can not infringe on liberty. People have a right to enter into voluntary contracts for work. How can one voluntarily have one's rights infringed?

Are you simply illiterate? I explained to you that the need to generate income forces an employee to choose between unsavory employment options. And before you go on the expected tangent: No, when there're plenty of workers available, employers won't be forced to raise their offered wages to compete; inversely, employers with high offered wages will lower them to compete with institutions paying less.
 
Are you simply illiterate? I explained to you that the need to generate income forces an employee to choose between unsavory employment options. And before you go on the expected tangent: No, when there're plenty of workers available, employers won't be forced to raise their offered wages to compete; inversely, employers with high offered wages will lower them to compete with institutions paying less.

Oh, I'm plenty literate, I just don't buy into the bull**** that you're pushing. Any individual company isn't responsible for the macroeconomic health of our country. I would say the government is far more responsible for the situation we're in. I know that you know big business and our politicians are in bed with each other. Your solution however is to give these horribly corrupt politicians MORE power.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Name any government in history where the leaders have had excessive power, and you'll find a pretty ****ty situation. We need to destroy the relationship our politicians have with business. It's a disease.

And what happens if they walk away? Starve, or find another job.

So in your mind, the poverty and massive unemployment in our country stems from Kinkos, or Mom and Pop's Printing Shop and not other factors?
 
And what happens if they walk away? Starve, or find another job.

Not the problem of the business owner just so long as someone takes their place. Shocking that nobody is entitled to me hiring them or keeping them isn't it? Bring back slavery or indentured servitude and you would have a moral argument, otherwise, your worker's wants do not exceed my needs.
 
Are you [still] a libertarian if you support business owners being able to exert power over employees?
Isn't the freedom advocated by libertarianism defined in relation to government?

I suppose one would still be a libertarian in the literal sense if they support businesses exerting power of employees, but depending on the extent of the power exerted, one would betray certain principles of libertarianism, namely that man should be as free from coercion as possible.
 
Are you [still] a libertarian if you support business owners being able to exert power over employees?

Not if the business owner tries to electrocute someone. ;)
 
I'm sorry, but that's a rather narrow definition of freedom. Just because I voluntarily sign an employment contract, it is not an indication that I possess liberty or that I am free in a broader sense of the word. It may simply be an indication that I chose the best option out of a menu of horrible options.

I seriously hate that justification, because it's indicative of Marxists and pseudo-communists trying to argue about the concept of "wage slavery", saying that "well, work or die isn't much of a choice, is it?".

Choice is just that - choice. Not every situation needs to have a "winner". Your best option is to maximize good, but also to minimize bad. That's just simple utility function.

Job offers position. You accept or you don't. It's pretty much black and white.

It's more of an option in that measure than any job that is unionized, because unions strip away choice like nothing else in business can.
 
Oh, I'm plenty literate, I just don't buy into the bull**** that you're pushing. Any individual company isn't responsible for the macroeconomic health of our country. I would say the government is far more responsible for the situation we're in. I know that you know big business and our politicians are in bed with each other. Your solution however is to give these horribly corrupt politicians MORE power.

You don't buy into my "bull****"? Is that why you address not one of my points? In any case, I know our politicians are "in bed" with corporations, which is why I'm a argue for campaign finance reform and restrictions geared at lessening the influence unaccountable entities have on politics and society.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Name any government in history where the leaders have had excessive power, and you'll find a pretty ****ty situation. We need to destroy the relationship our politicians have with business. It's a disease.

Where do you get nationalist from our conversations? Go to my profile and read what I've written under the bio category, or, perhaps, my posts.

So in your mind, the poverty and massive unemployment in our country stems from Kinkos, or Mom and Pop's Printing Shop and not other factors?

Did I ever say that? First, you're only barely touching upon the quoted post. I believe that economic problems stem from the divide between the creators of wealth and the upper class.
 
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Not the problem of the business owner just so long as someone takes their place. Shocking that nobody is entitled to me hiring them or keeping them isn't it? Bring back slavery or indentured servitude and you would have a moral argument, otherwise, your worker's wants do not exceed my needs.

Interesting. To you, the exploitation of workers and the widening of the gap between rich and poor is fine, provided the label slavery is absent.
 
Interesting. To you, the exploitation of workers and the widening of the gap between rich and poor is fine, provided the label slavery is absent.

No that is your one-sided world view speaking, not me. If the government forced you to spend money at my business whether your needed the goods or services or not, then equity would dictate that the government would have greater say in how I do business as part of that exchange. If you are not forced to do business with me, then it is none of your business what my relationship with my employees are. I haven't had anybody jump on the underground railroad and they still give me something for Massa's Day, so my down-trodden slaves must be content.
 
No that is your one-sided world view speaking, not me. If the government forced you to spend money at my business whether your needed the goods or services or not, then equity would dictate that the government would have greater say in how I do business as part of that exchange. If you are not forced to do business with me, then it is none of your business what my relationship with my employees are. I haven't had anybody jump on the underground railroad and they still give me something for Massa's Day, so my down-trodden slaves must be content.

How sad. You really think I'm addressing your business specifically.

The government not intervening in certain practices opens the door for abuse, something our country has a long history of. I'm not saying it happens at your place of business specifically, but using yourself to characterize the country as a whole is ridiculous.
 
Did I ever say that? First, you're only barely touching upon the quoted post. I believe that economic problems stem from the divide between the creators of wealth and the upper class.

Seems like a bigger problem is that you can't differentiate between those who create goods and those who create wealth.

Guess which one is easier to do...which is directly related to their relative value to society and scarcity.
 
How sad. You really think I'm addressing your business specifically.

The government not intervening in certain practices opens the door for abuse, something our country has a long history of. I'm not saying it happens at your place of business specifically, but using yourself to characterize the country as a whole is ridiculous.

Why not if you are criticizing me specifically? "Exploitation of labor" is what a job is. The widening gap between the rich and the poor may have to do with the welfare system trapping poor people, not lifting them up, and data-point liberalism avoids that the gap is largely stock performance, financial markets, and foreign investments that driving it, not the productivity of hourly domestic work. If you look at it over time, the high end mirrors the financial markets, but the low end is unaffected by the swings in financial markets.
 
Seems like a bigger problem is that you can't differentiate between those who create goods and those who create wealth.

Guess which one is easier to do...which is directly related to their relative value to society and scarcity.

You think creating a business is the same thing as creating wealth? Are you denying that it's the workers who maintain it through labor? Labor sustains the economy, not intellectual property.
 
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