> Dan Lyons is misrepresenting us when he implies that we believe that employees should be loyal to companies even though companies show no loyalty to employees.
I didn't read it like that. It's pretty clear from your statement (even taken out of context) that you expect lower loyalty on both sides.
On the other hand there are bosses that would like loyal employees, even though they're not loyal themselves. They may even get a simulacrum of loyalty, as the fear of unemployability increases with unemployment itself. (Unless we take rather drastic measures, unemployment will continue to rise. Next in line are drivers.)
Beneficial mutual relationship under Ricardo's law of comparative advantage is great, but we must not forget that some people, organization, or even countries, may have no comparative advantage. What are we to do with them? We can let organizations and countries collapse, but surely we shouldn't just let people die?
Finally, it's not clear that work is really voluntary when the alternative is not being able to eat: employers face this conundrum much less often than employees do. There's a fundamental asymmetry there that when strong enough turns "voluntary" into plain old blackmail. (As a white male programmer, I don't believe the asymmetry I face is that strong. The neighbour who works at Starbucks however…)
The issue of what individuals who lack currently marketable skills should do is a tough one. Note that I didn't say unskilled...skills that once were valuable can become less valuable quite rapidly in our fast-changing world.
Since we can't predict the future, we shouldn't blame those individuals who were unlucky enough to have invested in now-worthless skills. As a society, we need to understand that investing in re-training so that someone can find a new job is far better and less expensive than either putting someone on the dole for the rest of their life, or letting people "die in the streets," which is as nonsensical as it is callous.
Note that re-training may not be enough, if structural unemployment is still significant. To describe this problem, I like the analogy of feeding dogs in a desert island:
1 desert island with nothing to eat, 100 dogs. Every day, a chopper comes in and drop 95 pieces of meat. 95 dogs can eat, the 5 slowest are left starving. A dog trainer sees that, and decides to train the slower dogs so they can eat. And they do. Now 5 other dogs are left starving.
My current take on this is, employment is overrated. We should find other ways to live our lives.
I think the realization of this reality is one of the things driving the basic income movement. I will be very curious to see if that experiment works out. I honestly don't know if it will or won't.
While we're at it, there are 2 kinds of proposal for guaranteed income:
Basic income tends to postulates that humans have needs they deserve to satisfy (food, shelter…), even if they don't have any marketable skills. Basic income is a kind of charity.
Salary for Life tends to postulate people are productive, even if no money is involved. An elder couple looking over their grandchildren do something useful, even though they're explicitly paid for it. Unemployed people don't just slack off, they often work for free. Work deserves income, and that's what Salary for Life is: not charity, but the recognition of one's worth to society.
There are also practical differences: Basic income tends to be financed with income tax. Salary for Life proposes to be financed with "Non-wage labour costs" (yuck, what a crappy name).
Finally, basic income is mostly compatible with capitalism, and can only increase as much as the need for labour decreases. Salary for Life on the other hand is inherently socialist, and mostly needs the abolition of lucrative property (you can still own your house and your stuff, but you can't rent a house or own a factory).
I didn't read it like that. It's pretty clear from your statement (even taken out of context) that you expect lower loyalty on both sides.
On the other hand there are bosses that would like loyal employees, even though they're not loyal themselves. They may even get a simulacrum of loyalty, as the fear of unemployability increases with unemployment itself. (Unless we take rather drastic measures, unemployment will continue to rise. Next in line are drivers.)
Beneficial mutual relationship under Ricardo's law of comparative advantage is great, but we must not forget that some people, organization, or even countries, may have no comparative advantage. What are we to do with them? We can let organizations and countries collapse, but surely we shouldn't just let people die?
Finally, it's not clear that work is really voluntary when the alternative is not being able to eat: employers face this conundrum much less often than employees do. There's a fundamental asymmetry there that when strong enough turns "voluntary" into plain old blackmail. (As a white male programmer, I don't believe the asymmetry I face is that strong. The neighbour who works at Starbucks however…)