From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Date: 18 Aug 92 20:03:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: eskimo.1992Aug18.200339.11480
Organization: >>> Eskimo North (206)-FOR-EVER <<<

In article <901@nazgul.UUCP> bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
>In article <1992Aug16.234808.13295@eskimo.celestial.com> kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:
>/In article <897@nazgul.UUCP> bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
[...authoritarian things Boeing, out of vast forbearance, refrained from
committing upon the supine body of Walter, deleted...]
>/Well, what stopped `em? [ :) :) :) ].  Fear of litigation, that's all.
>
>Exactly. The Constitution and the force of law. We at last agree on something!

But, Walter, this is exactly what many of us no longer have a great amount of
faith in.  While being good ideas in the abstract, the concrete reality seems
to be pretty far removed.  Somehow the distance between the abstraction and
the reality needs to be lessened (read restored).

>/A company "thinking like a country" (I used to work for
>/one many years ago, I know) thinks nothing of using intimidation and/or
>/threats to guide the conduct of their employees, even trying to extend their
>/control to people's conduct and/or/on their own, unpaid time.

The metaphor I wished to evoke here was "thinking like a mountain", as an
inexorable force, sweeping all before it.  It is ludicrous to think of
negotiating with such an entity.

>The key phrase here is "used to work". I infer from this that you quit because
>you didn't like it. Great! Ask a political prisoner sometime how easy it
>was to quit when they didn't like it...

I quit when conditions became intolerable, when the tension between
tolerability of the current situation vs opportunities elsewhere was resolved
in favor of the latter, just like both employees all over the world, and
political prisoners all over the world.  Being unemployed and being a
political prisoner share a lot of properties, among which is a rather
precarious control over one's existence, and a possible despair, or loss of
hope, which is the resolution of the above tension in the other direction.

[...]
>Have you ever paid someone to mow your lawn? Did you not agree on a price?
>Did both of you live up to your side of the bargain? Was any force involved?

I interacted with a real live human being, acting in their own interest,
just as I was.  There was give-and-take, and a process that converged
toward an agreement, the outcome of which was not predetermined.  No force
was required.  The friendly logic of inquiry/answer and persuasion governed
the process.  To contrast this with the crude imitation of human interaction
that passes for agreements with corporations is to commit an error of
discrimination, more worthy of a space-alien holding a human mask, with
air-tubes showing and valves hissing.

>When you agree to work for a corporation, you basically agree to exchange
>labor at their direction for money. You also have the right to terminate the
>agreement, usually with 2 weeks notice.
>
>/>All Boeing employees are free
>/>to *leave the company* if they don't like it.
>/You seem almost grateful that you were allowed to do this, as if this were
>/something they didn't really *have* to do, but, out of the goodness of their
>/hearts, permitted.
>
>I'm grateful to live in a country where my right to leave is guaranteed by
>the Constitution and by law. I am not dependent on the enlightened benevolence
>of any corporation.

I'm grateful to myself and people like me who think that while it's a good
idea to codify our beliefs on pieces of paper like the Constitution, that
before those ideas can be worthy of reverence, they have to be acted out in
real life.  Use it or lose it.

>/>The citizens of the east-bloc
>/>countries were forcibly prevented from leaving. If they did manage to escape,
>/>their families got persecuted. Can you honestly compare this to Boeing?
>/What one does with bullets,
>/the other does with a click of a mouse and a flurry of IP packets.
>
>I have an aversion to bullets entering my body.
>
>/Really, Walter, the differences you cite are ones of degree only.
>
>OK, I admit they are differences of degree. Sort of like the difference
>between ice and steam is a difference only of degree :-)

The difference of which you speak is "phase", which might be a pretty
good analogy; if we say for the sake of argument that "phase" means
"aspect of matter".  Ice and steam are 2 distinct phases, or aspects, of
the same material, water.  Just so, the dire consequences of political
dissidence in the EastBloc is a *different* "phase" of *authority*, or
control of choice, than is "submission to company regulations" or
"termination of employment".

[...]
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
e-mail me at kurt@eskimo.celestial.com for a copy of Bob Black's essay,
"The Abolition of Work"
Newsgroups: pnw.general