7 ms·
What makes you think salary is a matter of privacy? In a lot of countries, many government jobs come with publicly disclosed salaries. Why do you think a job in
by foo101 9y ago
What makes you think salary is a matter of privacy? In a lot of countries, many government jobs come with publicly disclosed salaries. Why do you think a job in a private sector should maintain secrecy for salaries?
Privacy applies to private data. Whether salary should be considered private data is the point of argument here. Nobody is arguing about doing away with privacy altogether. So what is your point?
- patrickaljord 9y agoMy point is that what two consenting adults contracts is part of their privacy unless you're an authoritarian State.
- foo101 9y agoExcept most contracts in the private sector (IT, finance, etc.) are not between two consenting adults. They are usually between one consulting adult and a huge corporation, a corporation that can choose to pay a certain class of people unfairly and still survive in business. It is in the interest of such corporations to maintain this asymmetry of information where they can know your salary and all your colleagues' salary but would discourage you from knowing your colleague salary. If you think salary being private data is the obvious assumption, then think again, maybe you have been conditioned by years of employment in the private sector to believe that salary is private data. In many cultures and in many type of jobs, it is not considered private data.
- patrickaljord 9y agoI see that you hold the belief that consenting adults willingly working are being forced to do so, I do not share this belief that corporation are forcing anyone to work for them. Maybe you have been conditioned by years of State education to believe that employment does not imply consent between two parties but is a forced procedure. Many philosophers do not agree with that and consider work contracting to be consented between willing adults.
- ithkuil 9y agoMaybe you have been conditioned by your own luck to believe everybody actually has a choice
- patrickaljord 9y agoPoint me to anyone who has had a gun pointed at them to be forced to take a job and I will agree with you.
- foo101 9y agoThe parent comment never implied that anyone was forced to take a job at gun point. Why are you putting words into our mouths? The parent comment implies that not everybody has a choice. This is true and this is not necessarily the same thing as being forced to take a job, much less at gun point.
- patrickaljord 9y ago> The parent comment implies that not everybody has a choice. That's where we disagree I guess, I think you always have a choice unless force is being used against you (such as in rape, murder, armed theft etc).
- foo101 9y agoYou don't have a choice when every corporate in your city would try to lowball prospective employees belonging to a certain class into accepting a lower than market rate salary.
- patrickaljord 9y agoI'm not seeing anyone forcing anyone or removing choice from anyone in your argument.
- RaleyField 9y ago> a corporation that can choose to pay a certain class of people unfairly You can choose not to be part of that corporation.
- fzeroracer 9y agoAnd how would you know you were being paid unfairly unless someone made their salary public? That's the issue here. You could be working for a company and never know you're being grossly underpaid until Bob casually mentions his salary being 15-20k over yours despite joining at the same time.
- adharmad 9y agoDon't companies like Glassdoor solve this problem? You don't need to know everyone's salary as long as you know the average, median and maximum in a specific corporation in a geographical area. I don't see how making everyone's salary public will help more than knowing the average/median etc.
- krona 9y agomany government jobs come with publicly disclosed salaries. Knowing what public servants and politicians earn passes the most basic of public interest tests. What I earn, however, doesn't.
- foo101 9y agoFair point. I chose a poor example there. A better example would be: Engineering jobs (not the IT or software kind but licensed engineering jobs) in many European and Asian companies have publicly disclosed salaries.