4 ms·

When has this specific thing happened before?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
powersurge360 4y ago
It isn't literally the same thing as a company town but the concept from the headline at least is close enough to cause a pretty visceral reaction. Honestly, even as explained in the top level comment I am uncomfortable with my corporate employer having any rights to my property after I leave their employ no matter how 'weak' they may seem. Work should be a fair exchange of labor or product for capital, imo. It's more a symptom of housing being used as an investment than as actual housing for humans that this is considered a good deal. If housing wasn't increasingly difficult to come by, this wouldn't even be on the table as a compelling offer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
- smeej 4y ago
  The restriction that you have to own it for 3 years because you're getting it at cost seems aligned with nearly every government mortgage subsidy. They're normally loans that have to be repaid if you sell within a time period. And ROFR at market value after that doesn't seem like it has any negative effect on the seller. And, to be clear, these restrictions would apply to someone who was still an employee and wanted to sell, not just to someone who wasn't an employee anymore. The restrictions are because of the financial considerations being offered at the purchase of the home, not because of the employment relationship.
  - donmcronald 4y ago
    Yeah. It's not super terrible. The restrictions are pretty reasonable to keep the company from being overrun with people that take a job, buy a house, and leave. I don't think it's great for competition since smaller companies won't be able to offer the same incentive, but it does create downward pressure on the housing market and at least the employees end up owning a major asset. Another way to look at it is the company providing enough total compensation for their employees to buy a house. It almost seems unnaturally altruistic which kind of freaks me out. Lol.
- ilyt 4y ago
  But if you leave before X years you get.... affordable housing for that period rented below market rate to you. So employee lose what exactly ? (I assume) they wouldn't be able to mortgage a property at market rate without it > If housing wasn't increasingly difficult to come by, this wouldn't even be on the table as a compelling offer. Well, the city doing exact same thing would certainly be preferable, but this is still helping the problem
carlosjobim 4y ago
Throughout almost all of human history. An exceptionally few persons of any population owned their own dwellings, most people were a variant of servants/serfs/slaves to the landed gentry. Today's ruling generations decided that this order of things had to come back - and here we are again.
rukuu001 4y ago
Coal mining towns mostly. Companies built worker housing (and charged for it), paid workers in scrip that could only be redeemed at the company store. It became de facto slavery.
- chasd00 4y ago
  yes, there's a famous song "16 tons" written about it too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons
ethbr0 4y ago
Cotton/plantation sharecropping, ~1860-1950 in the US south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping Generally exploitive features include: an exclusive buying right by a certain party (allowing them to set prices), incidentals and necessities of life only being purchased from a certain party, mortgaging future assets in exchange for current goods/services (often with steep or complex credit terms), and restrictions on free sale of assets to arbitrary third parties (preventing price discovery and realization of fair market value). As GP observed, these specific modern agreements generally avoid those pitfalls.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  > As GP observed, these specific modern agreements generally avoid those pitfalls. That’s why I asked for when this specific thing had happened before, rather than “when has an employer ever done a bad thing”
kipchak 4y ago
Some examples are the TVA/Arthur Miller's Norris TN, Pullman Chicago, Fordlandia in Brazil and Lowell MA (mills), with the latter 3 being popularly known mostly for the associated labor strikes.
tiedieconderoga 4y ago
How about Ford, in Dearborn MI? They were really into controlling their workers' behavior outside of work. If Ring had existed in Henry Ford's time, he would have had surveillance cameras in every home, reporting to Ford's internal sociology department. https://askus.thehenryford.org/faq/169797 https://askus.thehenryford.org/faq/169797 https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-resources/popular-topics/sociological-department/ https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita... The Ford Homes are not to be confused with Fordlandia, Henry Ford's disastrous attempt to build a utopian rubber plant in the Amazon rainforest.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  This is such a visceral "oh no" for so many people that I've seen part of the rising tension of multiple horror movies, including one released this year, be either revealing or highlighting that an employee will be sleeping on employer-owned property, which the viewer is expected to implicitly understand to be dangerous. Which, in the horror tradition, goes back to gothic horror—Dracula, the live-in governess, that kind of thing. It's a well-trod trope that this situation makes one vulnerable. Now, none of this (and even my original post) means it's necessarily a bad idea—but that, the actual history and the way we read that situation in fiction, is why people are inclined to immediately have a bad reaction to such a plan.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

It isn't literally the same thing as a company town but the concept from the headline at least is close enough to cause a pretty visceral reaction. Honestly, even as explained in the top level comment I am uncomfortable with my corporate employer having any rights to my property after I leave their employ no matter how 'weak' they may seem. Work should be a fair exchange of labor or product for capital, imo. It's more a symptom of housing being used as an investment than as actual housing for humans that this is considered a good deal. If housing wasn't increasingly difficult to come by, this wouldn't even be on the table as a compelling offer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

smeej 4y ago
The restriction that you have to own it for 3 years because you're getting it at cost seems aligned with nearly every government mortgage subsidy. They're normally loans that have to be repaid if you sell within a time period. And ROFR at market value after that doesn't seem like it has any negative effect on the seller. And, to be clear, these restrictions would apply to someone who was still an employee and wanted to sell, not just to someone who wasn't an employee anymore. The restrictions are because of the financial considerations being offered at the purchase of the home, not because of the employment relationship.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  Yeah. It's not super terrible. The restrictions are pretty reasonable to keep the company from being overrun with people that take a job, buy a house, and leave. I don't think it's great for competition since smaller companies won't be able to offer the same incentive, but it does create downward pressure on the housing market and at least the employees end up owning a major asset. Another way to look at it is the company providing enough total compensation for their employees to buy a house. It almost seems unnaturally altruistic which kind of freaks me out. Lol.
ilyt 4y ago
But if you leave before X years you get.... affordable housing for that period rented below market rate to you. So employee lose what exactly ? (I assume) they wouldn't be able to mortgage a property at market rate without it > If housing wasn't increasingly difficult to come by, this wouldn't even be on the table as a compelling offer. Well, the city doing exact same thing would certainly be preferable, but this is still helping the problem

carlosjobim 4y ago

Throughout almost all of human history. An exceptionally few persons of any population owned their own dwellings, most people were a variant of servants/serfs/slaves to the landed gentry. Today's ruling generations decided that this order of things had to come back - and here we are again.

rukuu001 4y ago

Coal mining towns mostly. Companies built worker housing (and charged for it), paid workers in scrip that could only be redeemed at the company store. It became de facto slavery.

chasd00 4y ago
yes, there's a famous song "16 tons" written about it too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons

ethbr0 4y ago

Cotton/plantation sharecropping, ~1860-1950 in the US south. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping Generally exploitive features include: an exclusive buying right by a certain party (allowing them to set prices), incidentals and necessities of life only being purchased from a certain party, mortgaging future assets in exchange for current goods/services (often with steep or complex credit terms), and restrictions on free sale of assets to arbitrary third parties (preventing price discovery and realization of fair market value). As GP observed, these specific modern agreements generally avoid those pitfalls.

lazyasciiart 4y ago
> As GP observed, these specific modern agreements generally avoid those pitfalls. That’s why I asked for when this specific thing had happened before, rather than “when has an employer ever done a bad thing”

kipchak 4y ago

Some examples are the TVA/Arthur Miller's Norris TN, Pullman Chicago, Fordlandia in Brazil and Lowell MA (mills), with the latter 3 being popularly known mostly for the associated labor strikes.

tiedieconderoga 4y ago

How about Ford, in Dearborn MI? They were really into controlling their workers' behavior outside of work. If Ring had existed in Henry Ford's time, he would have had surveillance cameras in every home, reporting to Ford's internal sociology department. https://askus.thehenryford.org/faq/169797 https://askus.thehenryford.org/faq/169797 https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-resources/popular-topics/sociological-department/ https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita... The Ford Homes are not to be confused with Fordlandia, Henry Ford's disastrous attempt to build a utopian rubber plant in the Amazon rainforest.

yamtaddle 4y ago
This is such a visceral "oh no" for so many people that I've seen part of the rising tension of multiple horror movies, including one released this year, be either revealing or highlighting that an employee will be sleeping on employer-owned property, which the viewer is expected to implicitly understand to be dangerous. Which, in the horror tradition, goes back to gothic horror—Dracula, the live-in governess, that kind of thing. It's a well-trod trope that this situation makes one vulnerable. Now, none of this (and even my original post) means it's necessarily a bad idea—but that, the actual history and the way we read that situation in fiction, is why people are inclined to immediately have a bad reaction to such a plan.