43 - Tyranny at Work feat. Elizabeth Anderson

Summary

Americans hate when the state tells them what to do. They’ve got freer speech, freer access to guns and less regulation on business than any other rich country. 

But they let their work bosses walk all over them. American workers have less rights and worse conditions than workers in any other developed country. Employers can fire employees at will, impose arbitrary schedules and prevent them from forming unions. They tell them what to wear, what they can publicly say and even when they can take a shit. Why do freedom-loving Americans stand for this? 

Elizabeth Anderson is a philosopher at Michigan State University, Ann Arbor. Her book country is in the grip of free-market ideology AKA “libertarianism” AKA “classical liberalism.” According to this viewpoint, any interference by the state in the private sector is a violation of freedom. But when the state won’t defend workers’ rights, they allow employers to subject their employees to a tyrannical form of “private government.” Freedom for the boss means servitude for the worker. 

We talk about the history of this ideology, the consequences for American workers and how the tide may finally be starting to turn. 

Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government

Transcript

Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all.

[00:00:00] Clif Mark: Today on good. In theory, private government, bad working conditions and pissing yourself for freedom. I'm Clif Mark. And this is Good In theory.

[00:00:34] Today on good. In theory, we have Elizabeth Anderson. She is a professor of philosophy at the university of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She's the author of three books, including her latest, which is called private government. We're going to be talking about that today and thank you for coming on.

[00:00:50] Elizabeth Anderson: Thanks for inviting

[00:00:51] me.

[00:00:52] Clif Mark: You're very welcome. And to jump right in. What's your target in this book? What is the. That you're arguing

[00:01:00] Elizabeth Anderson: against. So my target is an ideology that calls itself libertarianism, or maybe, you know, free markets in general, free market capitalism. And, um, what they officially say about themselves, the advocates of this view is that, well, all we want is free markets, and then everybody has freedom of choice and they can choose whatever they want.

[00:01:28] Right. Where to work, what to buy and so forth. And so that maximizes freedom and my critique is that libertarianism is misrepresenting. The society we live in, which is not really so much about markets, markets are just the conduits by which people are channeled into these little private governments. We spend most of our waking lives at work, if we're not retired or children, and what happens to us at work?

[00:02:05] Well, then we lie under the government of our employer who orders us around while we're at work pretty minute early and often enough even also controls what we get to do off duty.

[00:02:22] Clif Mark: So, let me just pause and, uh, take that apart a little bit. Just take it piece by piece. So the libertarianism view is that we should have free markets as in the government should stay out of private business, less regulation, maybe fewer taxes, um, not so many labor laws, that kind of thing.

[00:02:47] And the reason they do this is because. The fear that they're working against is a kind of tyranny or domination by government. The government is going to get in our business, tell us what to do, and really we should be free. And if we're in the private sector, that's up to private citizens and private market actors to decide what they're going to do.

[00:03:06] And, um, the Liberty in libertarianism seems to be the Liberty from any government experience, uh, interference. So it's about free market capitalism. Is that, is that.

[00:03:19] Elizabeth Anderson: That's how it represents itself. Yes.

[00:03:22] Clif Mark: Um, and this argument, what are some of the public policies and stuff that is used to justify?

[00:03:33] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, deregulation is a big one.

[00:03:36] Deregulating the market, especially in the context of labor laws, getting rid of labor unions. Right. If the employer doesn't want it, they don't have to negotiate with labor unions. Right. They can pressure fire workers who want to organize the workplace because

[00:03:53] Clif Mark: unions would just interfere with the Liberty of individual workers to strike the kind of bargains that are good for them is

[00:03:59] Elizabeth Anderson: that that's the theory, right?

[00:04:01] That's a generic, right? I mean, in reality, what workers face when they're not unionized is a contract of adhesion. That is the terms are all dictated by the employer. And unless you're somebody like. A free agent in baseball who has extremely rare talents and can negotiate a specifically tailored package just for them.

[00:04:25] You're just going to accept you, just going to have to accept whatever they offer because back into the

[00:04:30] Clif Mark: shit, most of us are not a hot, free agent baseball players. Yeah. I think, I think most of the listeners will at least be passingly familiar with the view that you're describing. Um, we've heard it somewhere before.

[00:04:42] Who are some big names that are out there defending this position today?

[00:04:47] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, Tyler Cowen has a very popular podcast, uh, and he was one of the respondents in my book, private government, although lately he has been inching away from a pure free market view. Well done well done. Although not so much on the employment context, what's really been moving him away from.

[00:05:09] The patent inability of private businesses and private enterprise to really manage climate change, which is a global crisis that requires pretty powerful state action to cope with.

[00:05:23] Clif Mark: So, so Tyler, Cowen, you see it from politicians probably all the

[00:05:26] Elizabeth Anderson: time, the freedom caucus, Paul Ryan, people like that. And Congress, they're very powerful and I

[00:05:36] Clif Mark: guess.

[00:05:37] Here anyone calling themselves a classical liberal, that's probably seems a little bit of code

[00:05:42] Elizabeth Anderson: for the same thing, the term that advocates use to describe themselves. Yes. And

[00:05:49] Clif Mark: so this view it's really popular, really powerful. I mean, I grew up in the sort of closing act of the cold war. Right. And so it seemed, um, That we only had a choice between two things.

[00:06:04] It was either this, you know, uh, capitalism, freedom, America baseball, or, uh, Soviet dictatorship, Borsch, ice hockey, you know, all the bad things. Right.

[00:06:18] Elizabeth Anderson: That's exactly right. I mean, it was really the fall of communism in like starting around 1989 that led to. View this libertarian free market view that there's all right, this is, there's no alternative to free market capitalism.

[00:06:35] That's what we have. And we got to live with it. Yes, it was the end of history. Correct. That was the theory.

[00:06:44] Clif Mark: So, so I want to get, I want to, now that we have that opposition between the libertarian view versus communist dictatorship, I want to just put a pin in that dichotomy for now. And have you take us back to where this sort of free market libertarian classical liberal view came from and what it was like when it started.

[00:07:06] So who are the intellectual touchstones that people reached back to to justify this, this view of the world?

[00:07:16] Elizabeth Anderson: Advocacy of the free market from the 17th century levelers in England who are very pro worker group, they're actually workers who were demanding a Republican constitution. That's a smaller Republican that is getting rid of the monarchy and the house of Lords, having a democracy really, um, through Adam Smith and the early classical political economy.

[00:07:42] But what they had in mind was a very different system than what is called libertarianism today. So take Adam Smith, the great creator of economic theory, one of the great founders. So Smith is thought today to be an advocate of libertarianism as we call it today. But if you go back and read what he said, he actually thought that there shouldn't be corporations.

[00:08:12] Corporations for just, um, instruments whereby the executives of the firm stole everybody's money in all kinds of scans.

[00:08:24] Clif Mark: There are a couple of examples I can think

[00:08:25] Elizabeth Anderson: of, well, in his day it was the south sea bubble today it's cryptocurrency. Right? Right.

[00:08:32] Clif Mark: So, so Adam, Adam Smith, he's this figure that free market guys are always reaching back to and saying, look, you know, uh, It's the most efficient way.

[00:08:41] This is freedom for all. This is how we have a wealthy society. It's the wealth of nations is because we can have a free market, but Smith didn't really think this, or he thought this is some kind of qualified way.

[00:08:56] Elizabeth Anderson: We have to consider the system that Smith was arguing against in which he thought free markets would be superior to.

[00:09:05] So he was arguing against Merck and tell is. And feudal large ship. Right? And so his argument is if you go back to the feudal times, everybody was in subjection to the landlord, right? They're a tenant who could be, you know, abused by their landlord. They're paying out almost all of their income and rents, or there's some kind of domestic servant inside the Lord's household.

[00:09:36] They have to kowtow and cater at the Lawrence themselves. There, they're getting mountains of money in rents, but they have no other way to spend it as he put it. Then just by maintaining all of these dependence on his manner. Right. So he may be entertains. Lots of people feeds them and so forth, but they all have to obey him every last.

[00:10:02] And they even, you know, the feudal era, they even had their own private armies. They did have to swear loyalty to the king, but really they're running their own malicious sort

[00:10:10] Clif Mark: of. So you've got these, uh, feudal Lords in everyone else's are private servant. Could you just draw a distinction, the distinction between this system and.

[00:10:21] The free market system that Smith is arguing

[00:10:24] Elizabeth Anderson: for. It's definitely, there's very, markets are very primitive in those days and because really the Manor is a pretty self-sufficient unit of economics, right. They grow all their own food. They're eating everything. They produce pretty much right there. And then Smith talks about the rise of commercial society.

[00:10:44] Trade and, you know, spices. And so coming from China and Asia and so forth, you get the rise of international trade and suddenly as Smith puts it, everything for myself and nothing for anyone else is the viral. Of the masters of humanity, right? He's telling you about the Lord's her. So gradient vain, right?

[00:11:12] They don't want it to spend their money anymore. Maintaining dependence. They want to spend it on fancy jewelry and, you know, saffron every day, this kind of stuff. Right. And maybe a ball gown for their wife or something like this. Um, but in order to spend it all on themselves, What that means is then they are demanding crafts right there.

[00:11:38] They're selling, they're buying stuff from retailers and craftsmen in the cities. Those people are liberated, right? Because now, instead of being domestic servants, they're off their, they own their own little shop. They're independent. Right. And that rise of commercial side city, where the Lord's now have to buy all their stuff from shops rather than having slaves or servants produce it for them on their manner.

[00:12:05] Right. Right. It's much better to be an independent businessman than it is to be. You know, a survival subject of your local Lord. So they, those people are liberated, right?

[00:12:18] Clif Mark: And so is this, this is, uh, Smith's vision, right? It's that we have this commercial society where it's all independent craftsmen and farmers trading with each other, instead of all of us kowtowing to the

[00:12:30] Elizabeth Anderson: Lord.

[00:12:31] Exactly. And so the other side of this is of course the agricultural sector. And he RQ stare to that market society. Commercial society liberated them because the Lords, uh, wanted to raise the rents so that they could spend more money on themselves. But the farmers had some bargaining power and they said, well, if you do that, then we want long-term leases.

[00:12:58] And sometimes say could even by their own way, And then they would be independent of the Lord. So in both the agricultural sector and in the manufacturing and commercial sector, you see the rise of a large class of people who are independent of the rich and they run their own business. And what Smith's vision was to pursue that to the max.

[00:13:25] And the way to do that was to abolish the inheritance laws that kept the largest states locked up in the hands of about 30,000 English families.

[00:13:37] Clif Mark: So his, his idea was that if you free up the market and have commercial society, that's actually going to suck all the money out of these rich Lord's industries.

[00:13:47] So that more people can be independent instead of dependent on them. It frees them.

[00:13:51] Elizabeth Anderson: Yes, exactly. And if you break up the largest states, if you enable them to be broken, Then they will be broken up because the Lords are not good farmers. Right, right. They don't pay attention to the details needed to maintain a really efficient farming operation,

[00:14:08] Clif Mark: um, hunting and drinking to do, why are they going to worry about

[00:14:11] Elizabeth Anderson: pharma?

[00:14:11] Yeah. They're busy, you know, hunting down those foxes, right. Playing cards and things like that. Right. And so then they would lose their estates because their bad businessman. And the land would fall on the hand to the most efficient producer who was the yeoman farmer. Right. And so everybody would be independent at that stage.

[00:14:37] Clif Mark: And this is, this is also sort of blinking and early founders, vision of a America, maybe Jefferson. It would be made up of these yeoman farmers of these independent small holders who would all be free?

[00:14:52] Elizabeth Anderson: Is that a absolutely. And America really was at the time in the 18th century, the utopia for people who aspire to.

[00:15:03] Uh, society of free and equal people, at least for white people. Of course, we have to keep in mind that America, you know, you had all the slaves and especially in the south, and of course the land itself, right? What enabled the, all this freedom for white settlers was that the land was yanked away from the indigenous people.

[00:15:25] So you can't think that it's freedom and equality for everybody, but in Lincoln city, It is a stop speech for the 1860 presidential campaign. He basically says that the ideal is, first of all, you have free labor, right? So you had to abolish slavery. He's right out there about that. And the second thing you have to do is to be truly free.

[00:15:55] You have to be self-aware. He's absolutely explicit about this. And that was the origin of the house TEDx, right? You give away this free land and then anybody's a farmer. They don't have to be just a hired hand. They can get their own farm and then there'll be free and independent. And then in the marketplace, people won't meet as equals because everyone is basically a small business person, right.

[00:16:19] And they trade with each other as equals, neither side can call the shots. In terms of economic theory, you have perfect competition there, right? There are so many different individuals provides, you know, selling the wheat and the corn and like the farm implements and so

[00:16:36] Clif Mark: forth. If you're a butcher, I'm a baker, someone else's a farmer.

[00:16:38] We can work something out that's mutual, then mutually beneficial and

[00:16:41] Elizabeth Anderson: we'll have recognize our each other as equals in those transactions because nobody is so big and powerful and rich that they can call the shots on anybody.

[00:16:51] Clif Mark: Okay, so great, great theory. You know, let's free up the market so we can all be independent.

[00:16:56] Yeoman farmers are craftsmen. Uh, why didn't, why didn't that work out? What happened tax

[00:17:02] Elizabeth Anderson: the industrial revolution happened, right? So, you know, S Smith. He had a good idea, which is that if you get to keep a hundred percent of the fruits of your labor, you're going to work really, really hard, and you'll be industrious and frugal and efficient, right.

[00:17:22] You're not going to waste any money. Right. Cause you get to keep all the profits of your own labor. That's the argument for universal self-employment, but what he failed to consider. Was that economies of scale are a real thing. And what all that technology brought in by the industrial revolution, things like the spinning Jenny and later on in the industrial revolution, massive engines that are running, you know, you know, hundreds of machines, right.

[00:17:55] Is that economy of scale are real. And then an individual person can't purchase. Those giant machines, you need to have some rich capitalists buy these things and build a factory, and then the workers, so going to be employees of the capitalist. And so they're no longer we're going to have that independence.

[00:18:17] They're going to have to take orders from the boss.

[00:18:20] Clif Mark: Right? So, so the free market leading to everyone's freedom works in a situation of relative equality. If you know, we were so lucky as to all be independent business. But as soon as you have industry and you need to have these big concentrations of capital in rich people and then employees that creates an imbalance of power.

[00:18:41] Right? Exactly. Yes. And so, I mean, that, that brings us into, I think, uh, you know, the title of your book PRI private government. Um, so what do you, what do you mean by that, in this, in this country?

[00:18:57] Elizabeth Anderson: Yeah. So I define private government is government that is unaccountable to the people being governed. Right?

[00:19:05] It's like somebody is ordering you around and, and they're not accountable to you. Right. And so private government is the opposite of democracy and democracy. Yes. You have, you have office holders who do pass laws that order people around, but if you don't like those laws, Then you don't, you can boot them out at the next selection, right?

[00:19:28] You can boot out the legislators at the next election and, and elect people who are going to change the laws. Right. In

[00:19:35] Clif Mark: democracies, we're free. Uh, private government is like a dictatorship or an absolute monarchy where it's just a private business of the leader, how to run the place. And everyone else doesn't have it say, but we're not talking about that in your book.

[00:19:50] When you're talking about private government, you're saying. In the workplace. When we go to our jobs, we are living under a kind of private government. That's kind of like an absolute monarchy,

[00:20:01] Elizabeth Anderson: right? Yeah. It's not quite absolute, you know, in, in modern capitalism, but I think we underestimate how much power employers have over us, certainly in the workplace.

[00:20:14] There's no question. Right? Our, our work lives are my neutrally governed by our. For the most part. Right? So that even if you're say a customer service representative, you have a script that you have to read and they're monitoring every word. And for all kinds of other office work, you know, maybe there's a camera looking at you or a keystroke logger, and they're checking on what you're browsing to make sure that you're not like playing solitaire or something.

[00:20:45] Right. Like every last moment, there's time and motion control. Of your bodily motions and Amazon warehouses and on the factory floor, right? I mean, our lives are, and the pace of work is determined by our boss, right? So everything we do is very my newly governed when we're at work.

[00:21:07] Clif Mark: Right? So at work, we are being, uh, governed at this minute detailed level, more detailed than any actual government would dare to try to exercise our control of our lives.

[00:21:20] There's a difference, right? Because your boss can't throw you in jail or kill you. So why do we have to obey them? What means do they have at their disposal to exercise control over.

[00:21:33] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, there's the penalty of being fired sometimes being demoted, uh, often enough just being yelled at for not doing, you know, for not working hard enough or whatever, and not doing things precisely as the boss wants.

[00:21:51] And how

[00:21:51] Clif Mark: does all that stuff blink back to the concept of private unaccountable?

[00:21:58] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, that that is a consequence of private government, right? The Amazon workers, even if they're guaranteed a 15 minute break, those warehouses are so big. They don't even have time to get to the bathroom. And then it's not a real break if your whole time is just running to try to use the toilet.

[00:22:15] Right. And so some of them end up having to pee in bottles, same with truckers, right? They're under such an intense schedule. You know, Amazon delivery people. That they, uh, they don't have time. I mean, it's humiliating. It's undignified to be forced to do that.

[00:22:34] Clif Mark: I think that's a really interesting point. So these unaccountable forms of private government, they don't just result in practices that are really bad for workers, the terrible working conditions.

[00:22:47] It's. Humiliating kind of degrading to work under these

[00:22:51] Elizabeth Anderson: conditions. Absolutely. And also just being yelled at all the time. It's really bad. I mean, a lot of bosses are very verbally abusive, emotionally abusive,

[00:23:04] Clif Mark: and they wouldn't be able to get away with this. If,

[00:23:08] Elizabeth Anderson: if workers had a union or some other voice in the workplace, right.

[00:23:16] What

[00:23:16] Clif Mark: I'm, what I'm getting at is that I am very sympathetic to this view, but to take the view of a libertarian, I might say, Hey, look, these conditions are not really so bad after all. If I'm a Amazon boss, I could say there's some of the best wages for unskilled workers in the area. People are free to work there.

[00:23:38] They're free to quit at any time. So if they don't like. It's not a violation of their freedom. They could just go get another job. Um, so what would you say to that? Objection?

[00:23:51] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, a couple of things, what is that? Exit might not be so easy. So a lot of firms make you, uh, sign a contract, a non-compete agreement, which means that if you quit your job, you can't be employed in the same market.

[00:24:10] Uh, for maybe, you know, several years. Okay. So they basically now have kidnapped your human capital, your skills in that industry. And you've got to do something else entirely. So you have to return

[00:24:23] Clif Mark: are those surely, surely an Amazon warehouse worker can go work in another warehouse. Now

[00:24:28] Elizabeth Anderson: it is true in Amazon.

[00:24:30] That's true. But we have, you know, Jimmy John's sandwich maker. Right. Like you can't,

[00:24:38] Clif Mark: you can't go to subway after Jimmy John's

[00:24:41] Elizabeth Anderson: officially. No, you've signed a non-compete agreement. It's ridiculous. What? You can't make sandwiches at another place, or even like summer camps. Like you can't be a summer summer camp counselor at a different camp.

[00:24:54] I mean, summer

[00:24:56] Clif Mark: camps that is astonishing to me. This is for teenagers. Isn't it like.

[00:25:01] Elizabeth Anderson: If they're far more pervasive than you might think. Okay. And of course, in the tech industry, outside of California, where they banned non-compete agreements, but in most other states, the tech industry and even doctors are under nine competes.

[00:25:19] Then

[00:25:20] Clif Mark: why not? Just, if I see a non-compete clause in my contract, why do I take the. To me, the free market argument. It's going to say that employers will offer contracts that are good enough to get people, to take them. And it's just an offer, right? People are free to take them or leave them. So why does offering a bad job to someone violate their freedom when they don't have to accept it?

[00:25:46] Elizabeth Anderson: Because we have to think about the role of the state in according such power to employers in the first place. So what does it even make it possible for them to insist on a non-compete agreement? It's it's because the state has handed them all the chips in bargaining power relative to workers. Right, right.

[00:26:11] And so in a way that the state has already put its thumbs on the scale to give employers this kind of power. But the state should I, I think that the state should rebalance the scales.

[00:26:25] Clif Mark: Okay. So how, yeah. How do we do that?

[00:26:27] Elizabeth Anderson: What, well, I mean, California has banned non-compete agreements, you know, it, this resettled destroyed tech.

[00:26:35] Well, I'm sorry. You know, tech is very, very strike in California. It hasn't really been damaged by not what was the argument

[00:26:42] Clif Mark: for, for getting rid of those with district?

[00:26:47] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, they thought that, you know, unless we have control over our talent, that they can take, you know, ideas that they've been developing at one firm and bring them to another firm.

[00:27:01] Right. And they're explained that this is all their intellectual property. Right. That's sort of the theory.

[00:27:09] Clif Mark: Okay. So we want to get rid of non-compete contracts and. All sorts of bad workplace conditions. And the reason they exist is because of private government, because bosses are unaccountable to their workers.

[00:27:24] And we know that we solve the problem of private government in, in the state sector by having democracy. Right. We, we get rid of the Monarch and we, we have democracy. So how do we solve the problem of private government in the world?

[00:27:40] Elizabeth Anderson: Yeah. So my biggest argument is we should bring in code determination.

[00:27:46] So that's, that's a model that was developed in Europe, primarily in Germany. They did the most experimentation on this even before world war II, but more importantly after world war II. Um, the basic idea is that once a corporation hits a certain number of employees, it has to let workers into. So cottage termination means joint management by workers and the representatives of the investors.

[00:28:19] Right. Which would be from the managerial sector, but they would jointly manage the shop floor, the conditions. Right. And so there's certain stuff that happens in America. That is absolutely unknown. In, in Germany and France,

[00:28:37] Clif Mark: give us some examples. I'm Canadian. We love to hear how awful it is.

[00:28:40] Elizabeth Anderson: Oh, it's like, oh yeah.

[00:28:41] Canada is like way better. It's unbelievable. America is this insanely wealthy country and their American exceptionalism is a real thing in a sense, but not in the way Americans think, oh, like rah, rah, we're uniquely great. Now in fact, American labor conditions are off the charts. Worse. Then every other peer country in the world, there's no right to paid vacations.

[00:29:12] You know, in France, you get, you get the whole month of August off in Denmark, you get five weeks off, paid vacation guaranteed in the Netherlands. You get the government will actually stick a few thousand dollars in your bank account. It's just so that you can afford a vacation.

[00:29:35] Clif Mark: Sounds

[00:29:35] Elizabeth Anderson: great. Yeah. Every place where this exists, people really like it a lot,

[00:29:43] Clif Mark: but also, but maybe that's why America is so rich, you know, the hustle.

[00:29:48] Elizabeth Anderson: Yeah, but who has all that money is the question it's generally not the workers. And so I was actually, I have a friend who is an engineer and, you know, he's working in the United States. Uh, but he, he worked at a German engineering company for awhile. And I asked him, you know, what was he different? So think about it.

[00:30:12] Engineers are very well paid, you know, and have a lot of prestige, you know, in the United States. But I knew that in Germany, they have coded termination and I said, did coded termination make a difference in your work life? And he said, it was unbelievable. They really respect us in Germany. Like he had to experience this before.

[00:30:38] I mean, he thought like, it's kind of like a fish in water. Like they not even aware of the water. Right. And finally it, he goes to Germany and he sees how much respect the engineers have compared to say engineers at Boeing who kept on telling. You know, they're working on the Boeing max and they kept on telling management, Hey, this, this airplane is dangerous.

[00:31:02] It's not ready to ship. We have to fix a lot of things or else it's going to crash. And management just said, shut up. None of your business, we got to ship these planes, meet your deadline. We don't care about your complaints. It's our, you know, our decision and the truth is, is that when those planes crashed.

[00:31:22] The workers, the engineers were absolutely traumatized. You should have read their responses. When the New York times broke the story of the Boeing Mack max crash. I remember reading it intently, the comments which are coming in from Boeing engineers saying basically that they feel that they are, they've been betrayed by the corporation because they wanted to do a good job on this point.

[00:31:49] And they were just told to meet deadlines and shut up. They, they felt traumatized by being ringed into an enterprise that they knew was gonna like kill people. They don't want to do that. Right. And in Germany that would never happen. It's not just that they have a better regulatory regime. It's set the workers wouldn't they wouldn't put up with stuff like

[00:32:14] Clif Mark: coded termination means that they have.

[00:32:16] In the decisions and they would've never that's right. I love that happen. Um, actually I would like to bring this back to the conceptual distinction you're making between private and public government, because what is the difference? Conceptually, when we have code determination, when workers do have a say, that makes it, uh, You know, it's, it's not private government anymore.

[00:32:40] It's not the kind of Ty radical rule by bosses.

[00:32:43] Elizabeth Anderson: Right? Right. Yeah. Because it's precisely that workers have a voice in whatever roles are going to govern them at work. Right. And they can change those rules because conditions on the shop floor or the outcome of the, of basically some kind of consensus.

[00:33:06] Between the representatives of the investors and the workers themselves. And if the workers don't like their own representatives, they can boot them out and elect new representatives.

[00:33:19] Clif Mark: If this is, if, as you say, there's American exceptionalism and these kinds of working conditions are unheard of in the rest of the developed world, why is that?

[00:33:31] Well, what are you guys thinking? Like why, why, why in America? Do people believe in this more than any anywhere else? Even though look, it's exaggerating because in the UK, in Canada, there's very strong libertarian ideological strengths.

[00:33:44] Elizabeth Anderson: Oh yeah, absolutely. But America's really the home run sporting, right?

[00:33:51] America export society, allergy to other kinds. I mean, frankly, I just have to say that I'm shocked. You know, here I am in Michigan and Canada's really just next door. It's only a few miles away and I'm shocked by some of the stuff that Canadian swallow that's been exported by the United States.

[00:34:13] Clif Mark: Oh, we have, we have, what I tell people is that, you know, Americans like, oh, Canada's nice.

[00:34:18] It's better. It's not. Everything that's dumb about America. We also have, we just do it at like smaller scale and with less self-confidence.

[00:34:33] Elizabeth Anderson: You had a leader who wanted to import America's carceral state. Yeah. I know what it's like, just as Americans realizing what an unmitigated catastrophe it is, Canada starting to think. Maybe it's a good idea to jam

[00:34:48] Clif Mark: the scale less self-confidence and like five to 10, 20 years later.

[00:34:54] Elizabeth Anderson: But really you just look, you just look south of the border.

[00:34:57] You see what a disaster it's. Yeah.

[00:35:00] Clif Mark: Um, but why this whole Adam Smith, uh, independent producer utopia that kind of disappeared in Europe, in the 19th century. Right?

[00:35:10] Elizabeth Anderson: So in fact it like, yes, I mean the industrial revolution wiped out the small proprietors. Right. But, and enclosures, and Angland wiped out the yeoman farmers as well, but we'll

[00:35:25] Clif Mark: industrialization in America.

[00:35:27] Wiped out the omen of farmers as well in the small proprietors. You now have corporate America, but you've cut the ideology tied. So why doesn't your dream die?

[00:35:41] Elizabeth Anderson: You know, you really should. There's, uh, there's a really great podcast. It's called the dream season one. It's about multi-level marketing. Nice.

[00:35:53] Okay. It's like a huge scam, but why, but millions of Americans fall for it, right? The dream is self-employment right. You'll be free of the boss. You'll run your own business and you'll get rich and be able to retire early. That's the only

[00:36:10] Clif Mark: form of self-employment available is ripping off your.

[00:36:13] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, they don't see it that way, but yes, in practice, that's what it amounts to.

[00:36:16] But the truth is that it's not just, you're ripping off. Your neighbor was spent, you yourself are getting scammed right now. Of course we have not just multi-level marketing, but every other get rich, quick scheme, like, you know, investing in cryptocurrency where also you get scammed, but right. People are, Americans are constantly running after this dream of self-employment because.

[00:36:43] In fact, they, at some level they understand that being a wage worker doesn't get you anywhere, right. For the most part. So self-employment seems to be the path to independence, to freedom. You you're your own boss. That's dream. So, and it's never really left America even add to this become less and less a realistic option.

[00:37:07] Clif Mark: Right? So this is my real question because. You have the kind of a independent producer, free markets, utopia idea in both Europe and America. And then you have the industrial revolution because the reason you want that egalitarian free market libertarian thing is you hate feudalism. You hate being bossed around all the time and having to balance grape.

[00:37:29] So we'll have a free market. You have a free market that produces an industrial revolution, which created, produces massive inequality. Which is a new kind of feudalism almost. Now these employees are in thrall to capital, to their employers. Um, and so in Europe they say, this is awful. Uh, I guess we'll do socialism instead because this whole liberalism, this free market stuff, isn't working out the way we hoped.

[00:37:55] But in America, you guys just keep say, no, no, no, this is, we're just not doing it. Right. We need more freedom of the market.

[00:38:02] Elizabeth Anderson: Um, and so here's, here's how it's evolved under sort of 21st century capitalism. So now we have gink workers, right? Oh yeah. You already dependent. You're not, you're not like an Uber driver or, you know, driving for door dash, something like this.

[00:38:24] Now the reality is you still are under that. My new control of the planet. Which dictates a million and a half rules about how you conduct yourself. Okay. And do you even have to take a certain number of rides? Like the, the idea is at least you have control over your own time, but more and more, right. You need to be accepting more and more rides for a company to make a profit.

[00:38:52] So, you know, you have less control over your time than you might think, and no control over your wages since it's really Uber and Lyft and those companies that determine how much you get. And it's some cases, they even keep your tips. Right. Right. So it's a lot less, you don't really get to dictate your own prices as you would.

[00:39:14] If you were an independent. And the same arrangements happen all across the economy. So if you look, say at the typical farmer, raising chickens, say, you know, they're in a double-sided contract where they have to buy all of their inputs from some big ag company, including the little chicks, and then they have to sell.

[00:39:39] Their output back to the same company.

[00:39:48] They have to sell their output back to the same company on both ends. The prices are dictated to them by the company they contract with. And they're assuming all the risks of. Bad weather or bird flu or whatever it might be. Right. They're taking all the risks and they're barely making it. And they have to follow the minute instructions of the big ag company about how to raise the chickens and th the size of the sheds that their house and stuff.

[00:40:18] So, in fact, you know, in reality, there, they don't have any more freedom than an employee, but it feels right because of. Legal nature of the contract. Oh, you're your own. You're in business for yourself. But in reality, they're still under the thumb of the big ag company, right?

[00:40:36] Clif Mark: So the independent farmers, the independent Uber drivers, you are an independent contractor, you're an entrepreneur.

[00:40:43] Um, but in fact, that's just an illusion. And in fact, they're cutting this kind of like feeble, feudal, web of authority on both ends where they're completely controlled.

[00:40:52] Elizabeth Anderson: Exactly. Yeah, can

[00:40:55] Clif Mark: we introduce a little bit of a shorter term historical dimension to this? So we talked about a little bit about, you know, how these ideas came up in the 18th century.

[00:41:05] Uh, and this dream has stayed alive in America, but it seems to me that in the late seventies and eighties, there was also a change, right? So this libertarian ideology, was it so strong throughout America's history? Or was there an ideological shift, um, in the past half century that has made it even more than ever this way.

[00:41:33] Elizabeth Anderson: So I think there was an ideological shift against, you know, freewheeling, libertarian capitalism. That place of unions is what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get there. So. Uh, you know, a cataclysmic mom and for capitalism was the great depression. Right, right. And that brought in a new deal, massive state intervention, all kinds of regulations of the employment contract, like the fair labor standards act, which dictated that like worked with actually had to.

[00:42:09] Be paid in cash rather than a script that could only be spent at the company store. Say, if you were a mine worker or some other factory town, right. Give some workers afraid of at least how they're going to spend their money. So they don't have to spend it at some monopoly, shop run by their boss. Right.

[00:42:28] And, um, you know, limitations on hours, maximum hours over time, uh, minimum wage. Right. Worker's got some rights and, you know, ultimately the aspiration of the new dealers was even to bring in what they call the economic democracy by way of labor unions. So labor unions picked right after world war two, but the truth is that the capital's class always hated unions and they love the new deal.

[00:43:05] And at least a certain portion of the capitalist class, right. And they started gathering steam really around the seventies. And you could see a major turn in the mid seventies. There's a lot of other reasons for this post-war economic growth slowed down. Lots of things were happening even in Europe rise of international competition.

[00:43:32] The energy crisis, um, all kinds of things that were happening that weekend labor unions, they were already somewhat in decline, but a pivotal moment of course, was the election of Ronald Reagan. When, uh, you had the air traffic controllers went on strike and he just fired them at all, just like that. And that basically sent a signal, the corporate America, that they were afraid of.

[00:44:01] Basically a paws labor unions fall on and they went on a campaign. It destroyed labor unions. So that vision, if he cannot make democracy that had started to develop in a new deal was utterly destroyed. So now in the private sector, I think

[00:44:21] Clif Mark: only about economic democracy, which just

[00:44:24] Elizabeth Anderson: having a voice in the way the firm is governed.

[00:44:27] Yep. Yep. And labor unions. Uh, voice of sorts in that, right? Cause they can negotiate their contracts, which will in many cases, determine the conditions of work and not just, you know, pay. And so now in the private sector, in the United States, only about 6% of workers are unionized. So, you know, yeah. It's are dead in the private sector almost.

[00:45:00] And, you know, public sector, you have more unions. Um, yeah, but, but it's still very low.

[00:45:08] Clif Mark: Okay. So new deal. And then in the eighties, late seventies, neoliberalism starts, Reagan comes in, gives that a big boost. What about now? Do you see another ideological shift happening? Because it seems to me that the neoliberal consensus is starting to crack up.

[00:45:29] Oh

[00:45:29] Elizabeth Anderson: yeah. I think that, um, this libertarian vision of capitalism, which some people call neo-liberalism has definitely lost its sheen. And another turning point, I think was the financial crisis started in 2007. Lots of people went bankrupt. Um, including people who had played by all the rules. We're not just talking about people who had no income and no job buying a house and then losing it.

[00:45:59] Right. I mean, there's a lot of people who in fact had been paying their mortgage steadily and then they lose their job and they lose her house and they lose all their stuff. They were doing everything right. They were totally responsible. Right. But the recession destroyed him. That happened a lot. And so people started thinking, you know, this freewheeling capitalism where, you know, while Streeters free market trading can bring down the whole system, the whole global economy, right.

[00:46:26] Maybe there's something wrong with that. And so we've seen also with rising inequality, uh, And workers suffering under worse conditions. So like under the pandemic for, during the pandemic, under the Trump administration, Trump speeded up the, uh, slaughter house assembly lines or disassembly lines, I should say.

[00:46:54] Right. And that created COVID hotspots because the workers had to crowd together. And then they're dropping dead. Okay. And, you know, I mean, how much hazardous conditions aren't

[00:47:09] Clif Mark: going to put you on freedom,

[00:47:13] Elizabeth Anderson: maybe you want to live. Right. And so the arrogance of people who are basically can order others around with impunity, even to their deaths, uh, just because their employers.

[00:47:29] Right. A lot of people are really angry at that. So the sheet is worn off. People are seeing the costs

[00:47:37] Clif Mark: well, great. And thank you for the work you're doing in a hastening, its demise. I wanted to ask you about another example in your book, because I think it speaks to this idea that it's not just poor material conditions, which are there.

[00:47:54] Uh, but the humiliating, demeaning nature of living under private government, you had this example about an astronauts strike. Um, can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:48:06] Elizabeth Anderson: Oh yeah. So that was a great case. Um, where on the space station. These, I can't remember what year it was, but the astronauts were had to do perform a lot of experiments, which is fine.

[00:48:23] And astronauts love to do this, but they were being micromanaged. Every last minute of their work lives was scheduled. And they even told like when they had to go to sleep and when their breaks were like, everything was micromanaged and they were harried and stressed out and couldn't stand up. And so finally decided they're just going to turn off the radio, right.

[00:48:48] Michigan control down on earth kid. I don't communicate with them. Right. And, and then they turn it back on and they said that. We'll do all this, but we're going to do it on our own schedule on our own time. And we'll figure out how to do it. You just got to put up with that. Now. Luckily they were many thousands of miles away and they couldn't really be fired since, you know, outer space.

[00:49:15] They were in control of the space station. And so they basically just took over the whole operation and they completed all the work, all the tests that needed to be done to fulfill these experiments, but they did it in their own way. On their own pace at their own schedule. And they did it just fine.

[00:49:31] What they wanted was autonomy. They didn't want to just be micromanaged to bossed around. And my newly monitored, they were saying, look, we're autonomous workers. We can do everything that is required, but let us manage ourselves.

[00:49:48] Clif Mark: I feel like. Super sympathetic to that view and everyone hates being micromanaged.

[00:49:55] But if you take another example from your book, which is that in a lot of poultry, factories and meat, meatpacking, uh, factories, people aren't allowed to go to the bathroom. They have to wear diapers in one case, I think you said in a Bisco, uh, the bosses told workers just to piss themselves.

[00:50:16] Right now, it sounds like, you know, what being told by your boss to pitch yourself is humiliating and shocking, but pissing yourself because of your own devotion to the cause. And freedom is like a kind of autonomy.

[00:50:33] So what is the key difference between the. Astronauts not being, why is it, you know, what is the micromanagement isolate? What is the human good that their lack of autonomy to decide how they did the tasks, uh, eliminate.

[00:50:51] Elizabeth Anderson: Well, I mean, that is autonomy is a kind of freedom, right? So yeah, they still have to do they want people.

[00:51:01] To be free to trade away their freedom at work. Right. Okay. But maybe what you want is to be actually maintain that freedom at work. So, and that's what code determination can offer workers who can't afford to like literally on their own enterprise and be their own boss directly in that way. Right. It gives them a voice.

[00:51:28] And, and how and how their work lives go. Do you

[00:51:33] Clif Mark: see any practical hope for, uh, the decline of private government?

[00:51:40] Elizabeth Anderson: Oh yeah. I think workers are getting more and more pissed off. I think we do need, you know, workers need to organize and to a certain degree, they are more and more. There's more strikes. There really is a shift.

[00:51:54] And, you know, it's, it's the millennials who are realizing, wow, they're really screwed. Right. All the wonderful things that were promised by the capitalist system. Like they're not seeing it. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, that's changing things. There's just more organization. There's a lot of alternative forms of labor organization.

[00:52:14] So it's not just the traditional unions, which I think in many respects have become complacent and more distant from the work. But workers, self organizing.

[00:52:25] Clif Mark: Well, good. And I think on that note of optimism, uh, we could close the discussion of this book, but before I let you go, I was just wondering, um, what are you working on now?

[00:52:37] What are the projects that we might see from you in the near future?

[00:52:42] Elizabeth Anderson: Oh yeah. So I have a sequel to private government that I'm working on. I'm just putting the final revisions. It's called.

[00:52:52] Clif Mark: Hijacked go on

[00:52:57] Elizabeth Anderson: how neo-liberalism took the work ethic away from workers and how they could take it back. And, uh, the idea it's really a history of the process and work ethic from the 17th century to the present.

[00:53:11] And what I'm on earth thing is by working through the history of classical political economy, Smith, Ricardo. James and John Stuart mill, the Ricardian socialists marks, the social Democrats in Germany is I'm unearthing what I call the progressive work ethic. That is the pro worker work ethic, which I think has been forgotten.

[00:53:38] Clif Mark: Uh huh. I like it. I will tell you I'm a little suspicious of. Almost all work ethics, but I can't wait to read the book and, uh, maybe get you back on to talk about it when it comes out. Um, but for now, thank you so much for coming on Elizabeth. Uh, it's been super interesting talking to you.

[00:53:57] Elizabeth Anderson: Yeah. It's a pleasure talking with you.

[00:54:12] Clif Mark: That is our episode for today as ever if you'd like to support the show, tell everyone you know, about it, spread the word. And if you'd like to give us money, head over to patrion.com/good in theory and do it there.