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Chomsky points this out in this [1] interview. >Incidentally, there’s an interesting book that just came out finally, says some of the obvious things about thi
by prolikewh0a 8y ago
Chomsky points this out in this [1] interview.
>Incidentally, there’s an interesting book that just came out finally, says some of the obvious things about this, by a woman named Elizabeth Anderson. She’s a philosopher and an economist. It’s called Private Government or some name like that, but her point is that, which is a major point, yes, there is a government, but governments can be repressive. But most of our lives are under private government, which she says are indistinguishable from communist dictatorships.
>Any business, for example. If you subject yourself to it, you become essentially a slave of the institution with no rights, give away your liberty, and so on.
>....And when the Industrial Revolution came along, everything changed. You could only survive by being subordinate to a major corporate structure, and wage labor became the norm.
[1] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-the-fairway https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam...
- pmiller2 8y agoSpecifically, the concept of being so beholden to an employer as to be essentially forced to obey their (nearly) every whim is called “wage slavery”[0]. While it’s not nearly as bad as the days of the “company town,” [1], when workers could be paid in company scrip good only at company stores[2], while renting company living quarters, more people are wage slaves today than will admit it, and they get angry when you suggest they are! [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store
- GW150914 8y agoAren’t some of these mega corps contemplating building their own employee cities? We could see people forced to re-learn just what a company town implies, and all out of a drive to centralize in SV and lower housing costs.