In regards to socialist/communist confusion, OP primarily refers using the term "socialism", except at the end where they use "socialist communist countries", likely referring to the self-proclaimed socialist countries that strive/strived towards communism. (I'm not sure FEATTATEATTN means here)
There is, for example, no free market for nuclear bombs or for human children, and for a good reason.
Reasons that don't contradict OP's: "Free markets typically stop being opinionated beyond the concept of enforcing contracts/consent." Nuclear bombs only current purpose is indiscriminate eradication of human life and child trafficking is well... child trafficking. They all break consent. The same can be said about slavery, but not labour.
Which brings to the core of this discussion: the free market of labour. The addition of the free market of labour cannot, on its own, result in loss of self-control by either party. Removing it, however, rewards those who benefit the most from the current arrangement, which is most likely to be the employers.
While commodities, and other conventional properties, indeed do not have a will of their own; once appropriated, they become an extension of the will of their owner. With this in mind, labour, capital and commodities aren't different: neither the human actions applied to make bread, nor the machines needed to make bread nor the bread itself care about their prices or how they are used, but their owners do. In both cases, the same human freedoms are being affected in the same way. Slavery is special because the traded resource in question is another human being, someone capable of self-ownership, and the slaver isn't simply dictating on, for sake of simplicity, non-essential part of their body as with labour and commodities, but the slave's whole body and life, thus violating the consent part.
Which segways to your final paragraph. When I mentioned "worker-ownership", I was specifically alluding to worker coops. They not only do not prove what I said untrue, they, both theoretically and empirically (but mostly theoretically, yet), prove it true. One empirical part is the fact that Mondragon's increasing reliance on contractors, for instance. But, more interestingly, is the fact that, presuming that all ~70,000 Mondragon employees are members (they aren't), each would have around 0,0014% share. Given that Mondragon works under indirect democracy, this share doesn't even translate to direct influence. Is this painting the image of worker emancipation? Notice how the corporate power over the individual is still strong - sure smells like capitalism, as defined as "control by those who own capital", except "those" here is a corporation, which is not that different from today.
Given that you brought the slavery, likely for the analogy with wage-slavery - trying to fix workers by making their employers democratic is like solving slavery by making their slavers republics. The proper solution is to give direct private ownership over the means of production to all, but that's likely economically infeasible (but who knows, society where everyone is a capitalist like this would be neat). However, we can fix the issue with coops previously by keeping them small, but to handle the large contingency of workers and their diversity, a lot more coops would need to exist. Furthermore, these coops would need to be able triage workers that fit into their culture, and worker would need to be able to chose coops that satifify them. That implies a free market of labour. It points to the issue being more located in the concentration of power on people, not individuals, which means socialism can't do anything to fix this, specially if it implies getting rid of the free market of labour. Perhaps pushing for coops can help prevent corporate power concentration, but a healthy free market of labour is critical.
The addition of the free market of labour cannot, on its own, result in loss of self-control by either party.
I disagree with this, and it's less true in theory than in practice. The free market is deliberately engineered to push down price to cost of production. In terms of labor, it means your remuneration will be reduced to subsistence wage, and not more. An apple doesn't care about its price, but price of your labor determines your living standard and your freedom.
And where this doesn't happen in the real world, it is actually a consequence of labor market failure, for example, labor negotiations through unions.
(There are also other labor market failures that prop the wages upwards, for example for CEOs.)
So I am not sure how you imagine free market for labor to help workers unless you assume a market failure of some sort.
The individual share of worker within a coop might be low, but it's still better than 0 under a private (capitalist owned) company. Moreover, all the value produced gets redistributed to the workers, not just a portion. (And I agree here that outsourcing Mondragon is bad.)
That implies a free market of labor.
No it doesn't. Free market of labor is more than just a free choice of job, it also means that people who are not involved in the job itself might dictate the conditions of production (for example, it implies no labor laws, so you might die in the summer heat as a consequence). And it is by design.
(I was appalled to find that Hayek defended mining towns. Freedom to change the job my ass!)
The free market is deliberately engineered to push down price to cost of production
The free market is not deliberately engineered for any particular goal, except the free trade between parties. Fundamentally, it's a trading and information system.
Technically speaking, market prices only seek an equilibrium point between supplier and consumers. While, due to human ambitions, there's an empirical pressure for commodities' prices to go down, human labour is different. In case of commodities, you can scale all aspects of productions as long as there are enough. Whereas commodities are constrained by environment, human labour is constrained by the environment and ethics, as you can't just produce people, a hard requirement for human labour. As such, I find that the only cases in which people will be paid subsitance wages are when there's a oversupply of workers and an undersupply of businesses.
So I am not sure how you imagine free market for labor to help workers unless you assume a market failure of some sort.
Because restricting worker/employer relations only makes it harder for switching firms, which empirically favors the more scarce side, which normally is the employers. Making these firms coops doesn't prevent lack of control, as elaborated bellow.
The individual share of worker within a coop might be low, but it's still better than 0 under a private (capitalist owned) company.
The thing is, shares on their own are not ownership proper (the same applies to publicly traded companies, BTW) as it's exclusive. A share is percentage of influence over a corporate process that determines the final allocation of the corporately-owned resources. While the share division might be quasi-continuous, the final decisions are discrete and made by the corporation, for the corporation. In the context of a direct democratic governance, everyone will get a vote, but this vote will only translate into control if it falls in the required majority of a decision. In practical terms, having 1% share doesn't mean you have 1% control over the resources of the company: if a worker consistently fall under minority over all elections, they have effectively 0 control. Alternatively, they might find themself having their way in all elections. Despite having the same shares, two worker may have different levels of influence over the corporation. And that's just direct democracy. Indirect democracy, seem in large worker coops, make this distribution of control even messier. Ultimately, this is all to say that worker coops are still private corporations in the sense that they both alienate individual workers. The details of this alienation may be different from traditional individually owned private corps, but this is not the path for worker freedom. For disenfranchised workers, their only option is to find another corporation that better aligns with their values and goals.
Also, value getting redistributed to workers isn't exclusive of worker coops. Stock options, ESOPs, etc. aren't exactly rare in other private corp formats.
Free market of labor is more than just a free choice of job, it also means that people who are not involved in the job itself might dictate the conditions of production
How so? In a free market, the only ones actually dictating the conditions is the supplier (the worker) and the consumer (the employer). The employer is the one providing the job, so they are involved by definition. The market often informs the employer in their decisions, but this influence is always consented, not forced. (Also, one cannot consent to their own death, no need for labor laws to state that.)
Finally, not sure why you just freely mentioned Hayek without elaborating. I also would like a citation, for the only reference I got was:
There are, undeniably, occasions when the condition of employment creates an opportunity for true coercion. In periods of acute unemployment, the threat of dismissal may be used to enforce actions other than those originally contracted for. And in conditions such as those in a mining town the manager may well exercise an entirely arbitrary and capricious tyranny over a man to whom he has taken a dislike. But such conditions, though not impossible, would, at the worst, be rare exceptions in a prosperous competitive society. (Hayek 2013: 204)
It should be noted that Hayek would consider such dismissal coercive if the action was to result in the unemployed's ruin. As such, wouldn't call this a defense of mining towns.
Comments
In regards to socialist/communist confusion, OP primarily refers using the term "socialism", except at the end where they use "socialist communist countries", likely referring to the self-proclaimed socialist countries that strive/strived towards communism. (I'm not sure FEATTATEATTN means here)
Reasons that don't contradict OP's: "Free markets typically stop being opinionated beyond the concept of enforcing contracts/consent." Nuclear bombs only current purpose is indiscriminate eradication of human life and child trafficking is well... child trafficking. They all break consent. The same can be said about slavery, but not labour.
Which brings to the core of this discussion: the free market of labour. The addition of the free market of labour cannot, on its own, result in loss of self-control by either party. Removing it, however, rewards those who benefit the most from the current arrangement, which is most likely to be the employers.
While commodities, and other conventional properties, indeed do not have a will of their own; once appropriated, they become an extension of the will of their owner. With this in mind, labour, capital and commodities aren't different: neither the human actions applied to make bread, nor the machines needed to make bread nor the bread itself care about their prices or how they are used, but their owners do. In both cases, the same human freedoms are being affected in the same way. Slavery is special because the traded resource in question is another human being, someone capable of self-ownership, and the slaver isn't simply dictating on, for sake of simplicity, non-essential part of their body as with labour and commodities, but the slave's whole body and life, thus violating the consent part.
Which segways to your final paragraph. When I mentioned "worker-ownership", I was specifically alluding to worker coops. They not only do not prove what I said untrue, they, both theoretically and empirically (but mostly theoretically, yet), prove it true. One empirical part is the fact that Mondragon's increasing reliance on contractors, for instance. But, more interestingly, is the fact that, presuming that all ~70,000 Mondragon employees are members (they aren't), each would have around 0,0014% share. Given that Mondragon works under indirect democracy, this share doesn't even translate to direct influence. Is this painting the image of worker emancipation? Notice how the corporate power over the individual is still strong - sure smells like capitalism, as defined as "control by those who own capital", except "those" here is a corporation, which is not that different from today.
Given that you brought the slavery, likely for the analogy with wage-slavery - trying to fix workers by making their employers democratic is like solving slavery by making their slavers republics. The proper solution is to give direct private ownership over the means of production to all, but that's likely economically infeasible (but who knows, society where everyone is a capitalist like this would be neat). However, we can fix the issue with coops previously by keeping them small, but to handle the large contingency of workers and their diversity, a lot more coops would need to exist. Furthermore, these coops would need to be able triage workers that fit into their culture, and worker would need to be able to chose coops that satifify them. That implies a free market of labour. It points to the issue being more located in the concentration of power on people, not individuals, which means socialism can't do anything to fix this, specially if it implies getting rid of the free market of labour. Perhaps pushing for coops can help prevent corporate power concentration, but a healthy free market of labour is critical.
I disagree with this, and it's less true in theory than in practice. The free market is deliberately engineered to push down price to cost of production. In terms of labor, it means your remuneration will be reduced to subsistence wage, and not more. An apple doesn't care about its price, but price of your labor determines your living standard and your freedom.
And where this doesn't happen in the real world, it is actually a consequence of labor market failure, for example, labor negotiations through unions.
(There are also other labor market failures that prop the wages upwards, for example for CEOs.)
So I am not sure how you imagine free market for labor to help workers unless you assume a market failure of some sort.
The individual share of worker within a coop might be low, but it's still better than 0 under a private (capitalist owned) company. Moreover, all the value produced gets redistributed to the workers, not just a portion. (And I agree here that outsourcing Mondragon is bad.)
No it doesn't. Free market of labor is more than just a free choice of job, it also means that people who are not involved in the job itself might dictate the conditions of production (for example, it implies no labor laws, so you might die in the summer heat as a consequence). And it is by design.
(I was appalled to find that Hayek defended mining towns. Freedom to change the job my ass!)
The free market is not deliberately engineered for any particular goal, except the free trade between parties. Fundamentally, it's a trading and information system.
Technically speaking, market prices only seek an equilibrium point between supplier and consumers. While, due to human ambitions, there's an empirical pressure for commodities' prices to go down, human labour is different. In case of commodities, you can scale all aspects of productions as long as there are enough. Whereas commodities are constrained by environment, human labour is constrained by the environment and ethics, as you can't just produce people, a hard requirement for human labour. As such, I find that the only cases in which people will be paid subsitance wages are when there's a oversupply of workers and an undersupply of businesses.
Because restricting worker/employer relations only makes it harder for switching firms, which empirically favors the more scarce side, which normally is the employers. Making these firms coops doesn't prevent lack of control, as elaborated bellow.
The thing is, shares on their own are not ownership proper (the same applies to publicly traded companies, BTW) as it's exclusive. A share is percentage of influence over a corporate process that determines the final allocation of the corporately-owned resources. While the share division might be quasi-continuous, the final decisions are discrete and made by the corporation, for the corporation. In the context of a direct democratic governance, everyone will get a vote, but this vote will only translate into control if it falls in the required majority of a decision. In practical terms, having 1% share doesn't mean you have 1% control over the resources of the company: if a worker consistently fall under minority over all elections, they have effectively 0 control. Alternatively, they might find themself having their way in all elections. Despite having the same shares, two worker may have different levels of influence over the corporation. And that's just direct democracy. Indirect democracy, seem in large worker coops, make this distribution of control even messier. Ultimately, this is all to say that worker coops are still private corporations in the sense that they both alienate individual workers. The details of this alienation may be different from traditional individually owned private corps, but this is not the path for worker freedom. For disenfranchised workers, their only option is to find another corporation that better aligns with their values and goals.
Also, value getting redistributed to workers isn't exclusive of worker coops. Stock options, ESOPs, etc. aren't exactly rare in other private corp formats.
How so? In a free market, the only ones actually dictating the conditions is the supplier (the worker) and the consumer (the employer). The employer is the one providing the job, so they are involved by definition. The market often informs the employer in their decisions, but this influence is always consented, not forced. (Also, one cannot consent to their own death, no need for labor laws to state that.)
Finally, not sure why you just freely mentioned Hayek without elaborating. I also would like a citation, for the only reference I got was:
It should be noted that Hayek would consider such dismissal coercive if the action was to result in the unemployed's ruin. As such, wouldn't call this a defense of mining towns.