From: keithl@loop.uucp (Keith Lofstrom;;;520-1993)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Employee vs. Employer rights
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:34:39 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Launch Loop, Portland OR

Imagine someone you don't know and don't especially like showing up at your
front door.

They show you a copy of some law, which says YOU - wage slave, previously-a-
non-employer YOU - must hire them to do whatever they want to do, and pay
them regularly, and fill out lots of paperwork to prove you aren't abusing
this person.  Meanwhile, your wages from your job have just become random,
with 3x pay one week and no pay the next.  Yet you still must pay someone
else's wages on time.  Plus overhead, extra taxes, insurance, etc.

Oh, and did I say that this person can sue you in court for whatever they 
wish?  Do dangerous things to third parties and make you responsible?  


Fortunately, as an employee, or a student, which most of you are, they cannot
do this to you - yet.  They can do all these things to another group of people
called "employers", who are people very much like you who have the misfortune
to have some idea they wish to implement or service they wish to perform which
requires more than one person to do.  

I am an independent contractor;  I could use some help, but I will put it off
as long as I can.  Another friend had two employees;  when the burden got too
great, he checked out the hard way.  That's three or more potential jobs lost
right there;  multiply by millions, and you now know where unemployment comes
from.  

Of course you only want to put all these burdens on "the big guys";  you only
want to help us "little guys" - as long as we shut up and follow orders, of
course.  The problem is, when deal-making time in Washington occurs, somehow
it's the little guys that get the shaft, and the big guys that get the
government bailouts.  This is intrinsic to the nature of the political machine,
and minimized only to the extent that government is minimized, reducing the
amount of power available to misuse.

I would love to see a world where employers cherished their employees, saw to
their slightest needs, enobled and enriched them; and meanwhile pleased their
customers, their neighbors, and their suppliers.  In this real world, however,
you can't have everything you want, and good intentions end at the dura mater.
The empirical effect of restrictions on employment is less employment.  The
effect of calling all employers bastards is to drive away non-bastard 
employers.  Demand evidence of compliance and you will get it only from liars.
Abuse someone in hopes of improving them and you have simply increased the
amount of abuse in the world.  

If you want to improve things instead, think about how things would have to
change before YOU became an employer, and make things happen that way.  When
there is a surplus of employers, and the unemployment rate drops to a couple
of percent, it will be a lot easier to winnow out the worst employers, though
I bet you a cookie the market will do it faster than any goverment agency can.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom       keithl@loop.klic.rain.com     Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Power ICs
Newsgroups: alt.individualism