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Ka-pi96 on 15 July 2023
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VAMatt said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Governments ended slavery, and continue to do so. Just the other day I saw a thread on reddit from a Lithuanian guy in the UK who had his passport stolen by his boss and was having all of his (below minimum wage) pay taken by his boss to pay for rent and a made up 20k debt. The overwhelming majority of people suggested he contact the police ASAP. Because preventing slavery like that in 1st world countries is what the government does. Do you seriously think the police should just say "meh, not our problem, get a better job" when contacted about something like that?

How is having legal requirements to treat employees a certain way "slavery"? Do you even know what that word means? So you think a boss should be able to fire any employees that refuse to have sex with him with no legal repercussions at all? Madness.

And don't give me this "get a better job" crap. The vast majority of people on this planet can't just walk into a new better job. They would if they could, but they can't. And even if they're currently looking for a better job being unemployed doesn't pay the bills so they're forced to continue whatever job they currently have. Why on Earth shouldn't their employers be legally required to actually treat them like humans with dignity and respect rather than being able to exploit them and threaten to fire them for any little thing?

Wanting minimal regulation is one thing, but none at all? Seriously?

You're pointing to isolated cases where you think government did something good. I've never said, nor would I ever say, that government is incapable of doing good things. What I'm saying is that government is a net negative.  For every good thing it does, it does two bad ones.

Institutional slavery has existed in this world because government allowed it to. Government tracked down and captured escaped slaves in the United States just 150 years ago, for example.  Government in China is capturing and enslaving people right now. 

Anyway, if you look objectively at the institution of government and all the harm that it has and currently is causing around the world, then I don't want to see how you can possibly want government intervening in employment relationships.

Easy, I'm a European and I've heard plenty about the stuff that goes on at US companies/to US employees. The things unions there are trying to fight for we already have as legally protected rights in Europe. Even now I live in Japan the labour protections are much better than what the US gets (even if they're regularly unenforced due to people not actually reporting their company's bad behaviour). Should probably still be better with more done to combat misogyny though. The US probably isn't even half as bad as some countries either, it just gets a lot more attention.

Governments can be bad, yes, but that doesn't mean them sitting back and just twiddling their thumbs is the solution, especially when there are good things they can do instead.