Is work tyranny?

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This may be illegal in your state. No employer should have the right to prohibit anyone from they've fired from seeking employment elsewhere, even with a competitor. Check the laws in your state.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act may apply, as well.

Please Ruveyn, just humor me if you do not mind and please answer my question. Depending upon your answer I may have a point to convey or I may be misinterpreting things as they are.

Are all of the employers the same or the very least extremely similar in philosophy, outlook, underlying beliefs, personality, desires, their tenets, their assumptions, etc?

If that was true, which it isn't, then there would be no companies in existance that maintain shoddy industrial relations and every company would treat their employees with exemplary dignity.

Despite that, some of the most successful companies in the west treat their staff like absolute crap.
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/08/14 ... n-america/

They get away with it by carpet-bagging staff in towns and cities where there were already no employment choices to begin with.

A worker is only free to walk from a job as far as there is a meaningful alternative of work choices available.

Taking the least worst of many not so good choices is exercising free will. A person choosing not to work for the evil capitalists could (a) starve (b) beg (c) borrow or (d) steal. So there are alternatives to working for the Evil Capitalists.

ruveyn

this flies in the face over each persons inherent instinct to pursue as dignified an existance as possible. Moreover for many individuals, begging borrowing, or choosing to steal is not optional because they already have a delicate balance due to family commitments and depending on culture, relying on welfare, criminality or handouts places people in a invidious position because ironically enough, those that trumpet the merits of the existing economic arrangement are first to criticise welfare recipients as freeloaders and workshy job dodgers. So the choice really boils down to wage enslavement or destitution and public contempt.

Not really; the essential condition is "as possible". If the only possible alternatives to working for the "Evil Capitalists" are starvation, prostitution, panhandling, borrowing, and theft, and if people really do have an "inherent instinct to pursue as dignified an existence as possible", then a person is exercising free will. Even if the choices are only two in number, then choosing one or the other is a free-will action.


Then there is no problem, as they have freely chosen to maintain their personal status quo



If only there weren't so many freeloaders and slackers in the Welfare system, maybe there wouldn't be such a stigma.


Again, believing that employment is "enslavement" is an erroneous belief system.

Here are the available choices:

• Start a business and earn a profit.
• Get a job and earn a wage.
• Move to the wilderness and live off of the land.
• Enlist in the military and risk being killed by another enlistee.
• Borrow money with an indefinite payback time at zero interest.
• Get on the dole and be paid for doing nothing.
• Steal from others and eventually get caught.
• Panhandle and put up with the scorn and contempt.
• Rely on the charity and goodwill of family, friends, and religious institutions.
• Prostitute yourself for others' pleasure and accept whatever support they give you.
• Join a religious order and live under religious authority.
• Volunteer for medical research.
• Make excuses for why you won't try any of these things.

There may be more choices, but they are choices - no one is forcing you to accept any one of them.

More choices = more liberty. Less choices = less liberty. Capitalism gives me less choices than Anarchism would, therefore capitalism is closer to slavery. Chattel slaves have choices, they are just very reduced. Many of those choices you pointed out require money. I don't think you have a point.

Fewer choices does not equate to no choices at all, unless you have only one choice to make.

My point is that as long as you have choices, you are free, and that this is sufficient reason to choose the most advantageous option.

Your point is that as long as even one choice is denied, you are a slave, and that this is sufficient reason for not choosing any option at all.

bear in mind, i did all along say 'meaningful choices'. Turning to criminality, pan handling or begging are not meaningful by any stretch if any level of dignified living standard is the objective. If starting a business was viable, almost everyone would be doing it. The responses so far smack of the condescension of a privileged sociopath.

If you are going to refer to such extremities, in the vein of prostitution or voluntary begging as 'choices' then the concept of choice becomes redundant in terms of defining who is a slave and who is not.

Is a slave any more free, on the basis that he has the 'choice' of suicide or an escape attempt? Slaves also had the option of buying their freedom. Does that make them any freer?

Never claimed

Is a prisoner free because he has the choice to make an escape attempt? Is he free because he has the choice to twiddle his thumb left or right? I think its silly to say someone is free because they have choices, and especially if many of them aren't practical. Slaves and prisoners have multiple choices. I believe freedom should determined by how many practical choices you have, rather than the presence of multiple choices. You are arguing for less choice.

Rushking and Thomas both of you arguing against the wrong thing. Rueven and Fnord are technically correct. We always do have choices. It is a tautology. With free will comes the fine print. All of our outcomes to our choices may be negative. I believe this is called a catch-22.

They also have the choice to revolt against the Evil Capitalists.

I dont see work itself as a tyranny. Yet it can be, if we humans let it happen. The thing is, if every person on earth had a full time job, we would produce more stuff, then we needed as society. So instead happening work as tyranny, we have the possibility to relax a bit. Share the existing necessary work with each other, so everyone had something from it.

The thing with the sharing is, if we all would share, then noone could afford himself an 120´ television. So part of us is tyrannizing ourself for material stuff and part of us are tyrannized from their workgivers, so they can buy themself an 120´ television in their Lamborghini.

Though some choices have more probability of churning out negative outcomes than others. You didn't disprove my argument.

All Bosses are tyrants.

Whether you are a freeman or slave, we always have choices, that I was never disputing. The point is that some choices are more empowering than others and the range of choices you have depend who you are. Choices alone do not necessarilly equate to 'freedom'. It is not the number of choices you have that matters, but the bargaining power behind each individual choice you have.

There was a stage before the American union that slaves in the CSA were living better than some of their 'free' brothers and sisters in the north because they were guaranteed a roof and 3 squares whereas the 'liberated' were at the mercy of the market.

I think the problem here is that not only is the concept of 'freedom' a weasel term, there are different types of freedom. You will often hear reactionaries crow about 'freedom of choice' but seldom will you hear them laud freedom against poverty, homelessness or exploitation. Choice is a poor benchmark for freedom. Having few or no choices is not necessarilly the worst of all scenarios (for example homeless people comitting crime just to get to prison for shelter) while it is possible to have an array of choices and be bitterly unhappy. Unless you are a member of the economic elite, the current arrangement seeks to curtail both your choice and happiness.