This pig is obviously a capitalist libertarian private property owner stand-in. If you exploit other people’s labor by paying them a wage lower than the value of their labor, you are effectively stealing from them. Profits are theft via extortion.
You may say “they both agree to this, that’s what makes it ethical”. I disagree. If you are held at gunpoint, you will do what the person says, it doesn’t mean it was willing. This is called being “under duress”. If not working for a property owner means that you face homelessness, starvation, and police violence; your life is similarly threatened.
the reason why you’re faced with homelessness if you don’t work for a company is because we don’t have an universal basic income. therefore, truly “free will employment” can only exist if there’s strong enough social safety nets sothat you don’t need to work. only then can the property of the owning class actually be accumulated through a series of “freely entered into” contracts.
And even if they’re not being held at gunpoint, a difference in available information between the parties can make it unethical. Consoder if the employer says someone’s labor is worth x amount, but it’s really worth significantly more. But then the employer doesn’t disclose that and does everything in their power to make sure the employee doesn’t know the true value than their labor, that’s effectively lying and therefore unethical.
Willing agreements can only be ethical when all parties involved are fully informed. It’s one of the fundamental principles under age of consent laws
For sure. I’m only taking issue with the last panel’s broad assertion that any gain of property is the result of violence. The landlord in this comic is an asshat.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, […] knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.
Unethical is a matter of prospective and degrees.
This pig is obviously a capitalist libertarian private property owner stand-in. If you exploit other people’s labor by paying them a wage lower than the value of their labor, you are effectively stealing from them. Profits are theft via extortion.
You may say “they both agree to this, that’s what makes it ethical”. I disagree. If you are held at gunpoint, you will do what the person says, it doesn’t mean it was willing. This is called being “under duress”. If not working for a property owner means that you face homelessness, starvation, and police violence; your life is similarly threatened.
the reason why you’re faced with homelessness if you don’t work for a company is because we don’t have an universal basic income. therefore, truly “free will employment” can only exist if there’s strong enough social safety nets sothat you don’t need to work. only then can the property of the owning class actually be accumulated through a series of “freely entered into” contracts.
And even if they’re not being held at gunpoint, a difference in available information between the parties can make it unethical. Consoder if the employer says someone’s labor is worth x amount, but it’s really worth significantly more. But then the employer doesn’t disclose that and does everything in their power to make sure the employee doesn’t know the true value than their labor, that’s effectively lying and therefore unethical.
Willing agreements can only be ethical when all parties involved are fully informed. It’s one of the fundamental principles under age of consent laws
For sure. I’m only taking issue with the last panel’s broad assertion that any gain of property is the result of violence. The landlord in this comic is an asshat.