Re: Force
Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 5:54 pm
MrA, with the words you're posting here, you're showing that you don't understand causation during the employment process. In the real world, people can be compelled to accept contracts that are not in their best interest. Compulsion in this instance is due to the disparity of starting positions. Employers have leverage that the employees lack. The employee is "compelled" to accept the job offer because it is at least better than their current position. It is the lesser of two evils. Given the choice to work for less than you're able to live on, or not work at all, people choose work. Since income is lower than minimal subsistence requires in this condition, people are forced to have 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet.No, I do not. An employer and potential employee reach an agreement between each other on their own terms.
By claiming that you're standing up for individual's rights, you're actually trampling on those rights. Subverting the rights of the employer in many cases is required to protect the rights of individuals. If you think that a hands-off approach is best, you're unwittingly allowing people to subvert each others rights in a way that rarely leads to adjudication. It's indentured servitude.
The consequences of trying to protect the rights of "businesses" by not restricting them are that these "businesses" violate the rights of individuals. When there is leverage or duress during the writing of a contract, the "agreement" simply cannot be fair. Employees rights are violated when employers "rights" are unrestricted. By protecting the employers rights, you are violating the employees rights. Saying that they "agreed" ignores the leverage the employer holds.But, if governmental intervention occurs in any of this, it's a violation of their rights. There is no way around that. The principle of individual rights is paramount. To Rand. To me. But obviously, not to you. You'd rather violate rights. In the name of 'fairness".
It's a semantics game where you pretend no one's "rights" are violated. But the rights of the employee are without question violated, even in those cases where they "agree". Because the agreement is made under duress or informational asymmetry. This is how the world actually works. This is happening now and has happened throughout human history.
Being forced into subsistence living is the consequence of protecting what you define as "rights". It is class warfare, where leverage is held by employers via their ability to organize. A third party is required to protect the rights of individuals against the rights of the market.
You can't have a utopia where "all rights" are granted. Unless you violate the "rights" of businesses in some aspects, human suffering will ensue.
No, this tidbit does not relate to what I'm referring to when I mention fairness. This bit from Mr. Mowen is a good example of where the market works. It's an example of where the market should be allowed to work. If there is some unfairness between Boyle and Rearden in how they're operating, the lines of dialogue you posted doesn't show it. Fairness does not mean keeping the incompetent afloat. That is stupid, we can agree here.I’ve been waiting six months for an order of steel from Orren Boyle— and now he says he can’t promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has shot his market to hell, there’s a run on that Metal, Boyle has to retrench. It isn’t fair— Rearden being allowed to ruin other people’s markets that way. . . .
What fairness means is that the baseline rules allow for the same opportunities, unburdened by the leverages that come with entrenched interests. This fairness cannot be had in the under-regulated dystopia of Objectivism.