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Your modern day analogy fails. Corporations prefer contractors because they can use the power asymmetry to extract more value for lower pay. Formal employment

Your modern day analogy fails. Corporations prefer contractors because they can use the power asymmetry to extract more value for lower pay. Formal employment is favoured by a democratically elected state, as it works to restore the power balance to the voters through appropriate regulation (assuming of course you live in a modern well functioning democratic society - which I understand is not the case in many places).

7495743 5y ago
I strongly disagree. Having been both an employee and a contractor, both in the gig economy sense and the consultant sense of the word, I very much prefer and felt much freer as a contractor. I think the reason states prefer people to be employees is probably the same reason the Roman state mandated farmers and sharecroppers stay on the land, it makes us much easier to tax and control. There is probably also the added benefit that it's more difficult for employees to move into a position were they can compete with the corporations that pay for the politicians campaigns in democratically elected states.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  There are real benefits to the usual employment arrangement that have nothing to do with power asymmetry or making it easier for the government to turn people into serfs. The employee might benefit from that arrangement because it lets her insure against inevitable random fluctuations in productivity, and stabilize her income. (Newsflash, "profit sharing" is a bad thing for most employees. It's not what they generally want.) OTOH, the employer can lower workers' turnover or 'churn', and incent them into contributing to long-term enhancement of firm-specific capital. Building this sort of capital is in fact one of the main ways in which workers can contribute to any organizational endeavor; even though it generally happens tacitly, it can be far more relevant in practice than any overtly assigned 'tasks'.

7495743 5y ago

I strongly disagree. Having been both an employee and a contractor, both in the gig economy sense and the consultant sense of the word, I very much prefer and felt much freer as a contractor. I think the reason states prefer people to be employees is probably the same reason the Roman state mandated farmers and sharecroppers stay on the land, it makes us much easier to tax and control. There is probably also the added benefit that it's more difficult for employees to move into a position were they can compete with the corporations that pay for the politicians campaigns in democratically elected states.

zozbot234 5y ago
There are real benefits to the usual employment arrangement that have nothing to do with power asymmetry or making it easier for the government to turn people into serfs. The employee might benefit from that arrangement because it lets her insure against inevitable random fluctuations in productivity, and stabilize her income. (Newsflash, "profit sharing" is a bad thing for most employees. It's not what they generally want.) OTOH, the employer can lower workers' turnover or 'churn', and incent them into contributing to long-term enhancement of firm-specific capital. Building this sort of capital is in fact one of the main ways in which workers can contribute to any organizational endeavor; even though it generally happens tacitly, it can be far more relevant in practice than any overtly assigned 'tasks'.