As a person with family living under an actual dictatorship, I’d like to point out some differences.
You can leave a job. You’re generally not killed for poor performance at a job.
I’ll stop there. I think that’s enough to shatter this very poor comparison.
You can leave a job
This is true for most people, but not all. Of course not being able to do so would constitute a form of slavery, but that is just the reality for a lot of people and I think if we are honest about the world we should admit that. Do agree softly on not downplaying political dictatorships though.
Oh people can absolutely leave jobs. It’s eating they can’t stop doing. I mean they can stop that too, I guess.
If we’re going to invoke literal slavery then I don’t think self immolation is off the table to mention either.
With regards to the literal definition of slavery I would argue it is not only restricted to chattel slavery, since that would deny most cases of forced and unfree labour. That someone can control a person, effectively owning them, without a mandate from any government or law is precisely the point. It shows the need for a more democratic approach to work and makes evident a discrepancy within self proclaimed free and democratic societies. That is what I think is the point being made by OP, not to belittle those who live under oppressive dictatorships (which is horrible and often an order of magnitude worse), but to remind those that don’t that for big parts of their lives they are not truly free themselves either.
I understand what’s being said, I just don’t find it valid or useful. People’s choices being limited is not to be equated with slavery. Someone having influence over someone is not to be equated with slavery. Living in a dictatorship is not to be equated with slavery. Slavery is slavery and working at a job is neither slavery nor living in a dictatorship.
Further, democracy is not some absolute freedom void of all controlling influence from others. Choices are limited under democracy too. I think the word you’re looking for is anarchy.
It is more than fair to disagree, after all there is somewhat an hyperbole hidden behind wordings like “a form of slavery”. However, I do think the sentiment is an important one: that freedom and democracy are usually exempt from our work lives, even if we are living in democratic countries, and that it does not need to be as such.
You think working for a corporation is the same as living under a dictatorship?
Yeah, this thought is someone trying to compare apples to oranges.
Then there’s the throw away comment of how you barely know anyone there, that’s a personal thing. I work for a small company now but I used to work for a hospital with over 2,000 employees, I didn’t know most of them but I knew the 100 or so people I interacted with pretty well and did things outside of work with many of them on more than one occasion.
As I walk through the front door of my air-conditioned office building and say hello to the receptionist I can’t help but feel this is just what it was like living under Marcos or Pinochet.
/s
Plenty of people live comfortable lives under dictatorship, you can compare that office worker to a citizen in Qatar and they’d probably live similar lives materially.
You could also compare the sweat shop worker for the company that office workers company contracts their manufacturing out to, to the migrant pseudo-slave workers in Qatar.
the migrant
pseudo-slaveslave workers in Qatar.Think you had a typo there^
To the level that the corporation has control over your life, yeah. What do you think banana republics are? The more the company can control your life, the more its undemocratic nature becomes apparent. Working for a small company in a competitive market might not look like a company town, but it has the same fundamental structure as one. The main difference is that the small company has to offer a good deal to their employees compared to competitors. If the company is the only hirer in town, then they’ll suddenly not have as much motivation to treat you well. If they control the housing, means of travel, and cops as well, you’re basically enslaved.
The CEO can take away your livelihood at a whim, destroying your future career, and everyone has to tug the forelock.
Dictatorships are not bad in and of themselves. A benign dictatorship could be the most effective form of governing, there’s just no mechanism to stop them when they stop being benign.
And on the flip side a CEO can improve and expand many people’s careers and therefore wealth.
A dictatorship like Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Hitler, etc can flow all the wealth and power to themselves, oppressing the people under them.
The point it: You can’t talk about best case scenario of one and not the other. Usually, as it’s human nature, both are going to sequester wealth and power for themselves over the people under them, but a bad dictatorship is leagues worse than a bad company/CEO.
Yeah, there’s good CEOs and bad ones. But the hierarchical power structure is the same.
CEOs are like kings of their empire.
HR is like the court jester
Exactly. It’s soul-crushing, but generally not body-crushing.
The overlap of people willing to let themselves be beat down and exploited at work, and the people that would actually fight and die for democracy is slim to none.
Resource extraction companies are notoriously bad employers. I’d bet there’s more of an overlap in those sort of jobs.
I have a problem with the willingly in this thought.
The issue is that people are pretty unwilling to be homeless or starve if there’s an alternative (no matter how terrible).
Working is the worst way to prevent yourself from starvation and homelessness except for all of the others.
Lots of people are not willing to die for democracy, some even fight against it out of ignorance or powerlust.
No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.
-George Patton
Careful you might start thinking about democratizing the workplace. If you start doing that you might wind up one of us filthy syndicalists
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
That’s not what dictatorship means
Does it matter what you call it?
Someone tells you what to do, and you have to obey or else you lose your housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities.
To the person at the receiving end, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a government official or middle manager ordering them around.
Someone tells you what to do, and you have to obey or else you lose your housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities.
This is so wrong. You are not entitled to basic necessities. You have to provide them for yourself, that is the natural order. This is what most of humanity did for milenia via subsistence farming and it sucked.
Sooner or later people decided that working in a factory sucked a little less than working in the field. Then more recently, people decided working in an office sucked a little less than working in the factory.
Employment is not slavery. You can quit anytime.
I think they just want to roleplay some ideology that doesn’t actually exist or possibly function. This is another reminder that comment scores have nothing to do with how sane or correct the comment is lol.
Just because A and B have overlap doesn’t mean A = B. My boss can’t throw me in a jail cell or have me shot.
Yes, because that’s not what happens lol. You don’t immediately lose those things unless you sit around and do nothing. That’s true of literally everything, even communism.
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You went off into a completely separate topic. Also union fights for workers, but it does not imply a democracy. It just means being able to fight back against exploitation. There will still be a CEO in charge and you’ll have no say.
Sorry.
Directorship*
Functionally, they are the same.
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I would starve without a job. (without welfare, in some countries, this is not enough)
There is an order of magnitude here. In a way, I’m being hyperbolic. But I do want to highlight the similarity between the two.
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What job (aka enslavement apparently)do you have irl
Factory worker.
Definitely not a rollform operator if that is the case. Machine builder?
So how would a factory line work without leadership lol
Voting for a leader democratically does not mean that there is no leader.
That makes zero sense in a workplace context
I have my ideas.
What’s your job?
Search for a new job since your current one is treating you terribly
You are incorrect. I absolutely run my businesses as a dictatorship because I’m the owner. We don’t “vote” on what to do, if you don’t like my ideas you are FIRED. Same goes for my tenants, if you don’t like my rules then get out of my property!!
I dictatorship would mean they’d die if they didn’t do what you liked lol. It’s in a government context, not a contractual obligation. A tennet can find another place to live, and a worker can find another company.
You do not know what you are talking about. If you want to run your business as a democracy fine but you won’t be successful. I will continue running mine with an iron fist as a dictatorship.
It’s literally the definition, you are just objectively wrong
You are wrong, and stop telling me how to run my business
Frankly, I’m a coward. There’s very little I’d be willing to die for and democracy certainly isn’t one of those things.
I’m sure plenty of Ukrainians thought the same pre invasion. Seen a fair few IT technicians flying fpv drones on the frontline
Plus, just working in a munitions factory makes you a target, and Russia has been indiscriminate in their targeting the civilian population
I doubt I would suddenly get brave if the U.S. was invaded. I’ve never even picked up a gun.
I feel like most ukrainians aren’t fighting for democracy. They’re kleptocracy is marginally better than the one in Russia, but not worth dying over. Their fighting either for nationalism and hatred of Russian imperialism that’s oppressed them for centuries, or personal honor and fear of being called a coward by their wider social group.
In general nationalism and personal honor are the main reasons people will voluntarily sign up, outside of personal gain and mercenaries. In the west that nationalism gets tied up with ideas of democracy, but if a dictatorship took over the u.s. I doubt there’d be much of a difference in volunteers for the next war.
survey research from the MOBILISE Project reveals a staggering 35 percentage-point rise in Ukrainians’ support for democracy over just three years. Ukrainians moved toward greater support for democracy between 2019 and 2022 precisely because ordinary citizens were able to observe democracy in action and working even in the face of major compounding crises
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/why-ukrainians-are-rallying-around-democracy/
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The dominant cultural ideology blinds us to the obvious contradictions.
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You can go to work for yourself, you can’t fork your own country.
I don’t have a choice. If I wanna do the kind of work I enjoy and pays enough to feed my family, I have to submit to corporate dictatorship.
There is a difference even between an autocracy and a dictatorship. There’s a difference between specialization and dictatorship.
The things you don’t fully grasp should get questions; not the host outrageous label you can think of at the time.
