Ron Paul and the Employer/Employee Relationship

Your post shows you are an ignorant about free market. You pretend helping the working people, but your ideas actually will hurt them. Please educate yourself at http://www.mises.org before writing absurdities.

I truly believe that the employee is much more powerful than the employer. I'm an employer, and I know my employees are worth more to me than vice versa.

First, an employee who leaves is very costly to replace, even a low-wage employee. There is training them on the new software (even McDonald's uses computers). There is the cost to find a new employee. There are possible background checks. There is the loss of income when the position is unfulfilled.

Secondly, an employee who gets fired has a significantly lower overhead to recover to survive. 6 months of savings, which even a low-income employee CAN save before leaving their parents' home, is difficult for a business to provide capital to protect during downtimes. A $20,000/year job is relatively easy to find. A company with a $500,000/year overhead is difficult to come up with if just 3 or 4 employees out of 20 leave.

this issue has been misinterpreted on quite a scale.

Voluntary rights and rape and slavery are not to be grouped together. Rape is specifically different than sexual intercourse because the act is involuntary! Same thing for slavery.

Nothing about Ron Paul's ideas include allowing rape or slavery but rather thats where he thinks the government should focus their efforts - on justice. Also, employers that breach their contract with their workers, whether they force extra work or what not, should be protected by contract law.

Interesting question: should prostitution be legal? If you believe in liberty, it should.

If your job contract stated that you accept sexual harassment - it would be only a form of prostitution contract. Which, as stated earlier, should be perfectly legal.

What we have here is: a contract that did not say anything about harassment/prostitution/etc. The employer starts harassing/requiring sexual contact etc. The employee has 2 options: subdue - thus tacitly amending the contract as agreeing with such behaviour - or refuse, quit the job and possibly require reimbursment based on breach of contract of the employer.

Now - what's wrong with that?

I don't agree with your interpretation of Dr Paul's words.

If an employee WANTS TO HAVE a relationship with their employer they should quit the job or accept the consequences of his OR her actions. It is the EMPLOYEES choice to have the relationship. You have to have personal responsibility for your own actions, so if you are strung out enough where you can’t afford to give up the job then DON’T GET INVOLVED IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR BOSS.

In fact, your whole article disregards the ideal of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.

It also disregards the idea of competition in that if company A won’t provide something then either a new Company B or an existing company C that do will make them regret it.

As someone that worked a Union job … you have little to no understanding of how unions work. The workers themselves hardly ever see the benefit of the union they have to PAY to be a member of to get a job.

The Enron crooks got what was coming to them. This is a a property rights issue if I ever saw one. Haliburton is pocketing billions of the taxpayers money in a no-bid contract given by another crook - Dead Eye Dick Cheney. Blackwater is another that wouldn't exist in its present size without the illegal and unconstitutional war that Dr. Paul wants to end faster than it started. Dangerous imports? Are you blaming Dr. Paul for the paint that China uses? I don't get your point there, because as soon as a product is found to be dangerous, everyone stops purchasing it. Are you insisting that Ron Paul is forcing us to buy Chinese products with lead in the paint? As for the housing bubble, that was created by the Federal Reserve System, which in case you don't know, is NOT part of our government. It is a private club of private bankers, who Ron Paul would like to stop and has spoken against their fiat inflationary money system for untold years. Get your facts right before you go off spewing at the mouth. None of your arguments hold water as far as I'm concerned. As for workers rights, the states all have laws on the books to protect workers, and that would not change. Nor would the ability to organize and unionize for better benefits and protections. The Libertarian philosophy is that the Federal Government in this country has stuck its fingers into everything that the US Constitution does not allow it to do. It has usurped the powers of the States. It's time to cut the giant down to size and return the power to the States, where the People can control it much easier. Get rid of the Federal Reserve. Get rid of the IRS and the Income Tax. That will give you alot more money to donate to the do-gooder cause of your choice. Look, if you live in a city with 100,000 taxpayers, then keeping your income tax will bring about $2 Billion into you local economy each year. All business will grow and new businesses willl start. That poor lady who was sexually harrassed and quit her job will be able to find another rather quickly, as there most likely will not be enough new employees to fill the need. That will also make her worth more in pay. Employers, in a booming economy, always have to raise wages to attract new employees. Its the law of supply and demand. So Richard, think things through a little better before you begin to write next time. It is really wonderful that you care enough about something to actually take part in the political dialogue. For that I send kudos. But please, get your facts right first.

"...i stayed for 33 years." In all that time, did you ever defend the women you saw being mistreated by taking the abusers to task regardless of their relationship to you? Like your boss for instance.

Your getting a little extreme here. For a country that has gone in such a f ed up direction, I think some constitutionalist, libertarian ideals is what we need to get back on track. Just as with Bush, it only can last so long.

We must also acknowledge that related to the issue of personal liberty & freedom is financial liberty. The average middle class worker currently pays the vast majority of their income to Taxes, Interest on Debt & Inflation. While they have some control over the interest part of the equation, they have less control of the tax & inflation issue. You forget that financial freedom needs to be covered when discussing this issue since the employee would retain much more weath under a Paul administration. Since he would help bring back a sound currency, help cover some of our debt obligations by ending our empire building campaigns, abolish the abusive IRS & Federal Reserve system.

Most articles I have seen with criticism of Dr. Paul's positions are are poorly researched hit pieces that rely on distorted facts. Your article is of a much higher quality and raises genuine issues about which many people will disagree with Dr. Paul.

If you believe the Government should care for you, for your whole life, and you are willing to give up your liberty in exchange for the promises of an altruistic authority then Dr. Paul is not your candidate. If you believe the Government should manage every detail of every private business and homogenize the business practices of every employer, then Dr. Paul is not your candidate.

If you understand that Freedom does not mean perfection, just that everyone gets to seek perfection in the way they decide is best then you should take a good look a Dr. Paul. If you love Liberty you will vote for Ron Paul.

I still don't understand how you can be so harsh to Dr. Paul, he is right. I know you think that you are the everyman in this situation and that all people have trouble with jobs or are single mothers. Why would you wish to work for someone that ignorant? I think the proper recourse when sexually harassed is to tell the superior of the person harassing you and wait for disiplinary action to be made. If there is none taken or if the person in question is the head of the company you should quit. Go tell the media, picket out front, and point out that these guys are assholes. Do you ever realize that just by working for these kinds of guys you are bettering their economic situation? Why would you still want to support them even if the government comes in; slaps their wrists, tells them they were bad, and causes them to cease openly harassing you. Wouldn't it be much better to voice a loud "f*ck you" when the harassment occurs? I think so.

You can try to slander Ron Paul and his positions. But the fact is with a Ron Paul presidency, those "single mothers having a hard time" will actually have more money on their pay stubs. Ron Paul will put an end to the inflation, he will end the I.R.S. How? Very simple- Restore the Republic and not furthering the Empire! Ron Paul is the only one dealing with these problems, he realizes that the elite are the only ones who benefit from the FED. Wallstreet doesn't think we're in a recession but you know who do? Those same mothers who are having a hard time, those same fathers too, their children and the Middle Class in general. The middle class is the work force of this country and we have to decide whether or not we want to continue paying into this welfare state, paying into the fraudalent social security system OR decide that we have had enough of this cradle-to-grave government, and have had enough of others staying victims to capitalize off us over our broken system of taxes and welfare reward systems.

Ron Paul is the only one who is addressing these issues, and judging by his outstanding donations he is not alone.

It is time for Ron Paul and the revolution to restore the republic, and end the welfare state.
Personal responsibility works better when their is no failsafe safety net set up for those who decide that others should pay for their shortcomings. End it now.... Ron Paul in 08, do it for yourself- your kids and the future.

The decision to hire and the corresponding decision to accept work is equivalent to a mutual contract. Do you really think a successful business would stay in business long with ridiculous behavior against its good employees? Many qualified candidates would refuse to work there (unless the pay was astronomical) and ideologically opposed customers would refuse to buy from the business. Your comment suggests that, if/when allowed, Walmart would repeal its own anti-harassment/discrimination policies... How silly. In this day and age employers know they have to play by certain rules even where the law does not require.

If, during a Ron Paul presidency, the Congress decided to remove the multiple layers of unnecessary regulation surrounding employment, he would not veto it. That's all. So don't worry, you can still vote for Dr. Paul without fear of an imminent change in things like labor laws. Mainly with Ron Paul you get a less militaristic foreign policy, a veto power against runaway spending, and an honest statesman to lead the national dialogue.

The other candidates will only continue the policies that are wrecking our economy and squandering the wealth created by generations of Americans. They're all telling you what you want to hear. Dr. Paul is letting us know what we need to hear (what the bureaucrats don't want you to realize).

Socialists/Marxists refuse to address the central question that private property and property markets are designed to answer: how to deal with scarcity. The central economic problem is how to distribute scarce goods. A scarce good is any good for which there is NOT enough of it to go around. In other words neither a corporation nor a democratic workers collective can make enough of these scarce goods to give to everyone.

Both capitalism and socialism agree that to get these scarce goods a person must do work. Vis-a-vis power relationships the worker is no more free or empowered when the chairman of a "democratic workers collective" explains to the worker how work he must do to get a scarce good than when the chairman of a corporation (or any other employer) tells the worker how much work he must do to get the scarce good. In either case the worker is following orders from the collective (of which he is a small voice) or an owner (for which in the US there are other employment possibilites).

Think about it there are only a limited number of scarce goods. Therefore workers must be ranked in terms of priority to decide who gets which goods. This means there must be a ranking system. If the socialist system is rational, it will rank workers by productivity. If the capitalist system is rational it will rank workers by productivity. Socialists and capitalists may disagree on how productivity is measured but in either case the worker takes his orders from the ranker or boss.

Funny, how many pro union people I've heard say this time and time again. It's just not how modern economics works. Now with a modern court system and entrenched views on how the work force operates, this doomsday approach to scare the "working man" just does not hold any water. The market does what the market does, and the modern worker better be up to speed. It's not nor has it ever been the governments duty to prop up the worker, sure we are at the mercy of the employer to have ethics, but I don't work for the ones that don't.

I also was employed for a number years in a manufacturing facility in which women outnumbered men. Although I knew of a number of romantic relationships almost all of them were between peers and, as far as I know,none of them were coerced. Maybe I was just unaware, but as a union steward, I think I would have heard something, even if unofficially. Does that mean that sexual harassment does not exist in the workplace? Of course not, especially as defined by the ridiculous standards of the politically correct, federally mandated, litigation lawyer supervised modern workplace. Like most problems which we try to solve at the federal level, the cure becomes worse than the disease. Again, Dr. Paul does not deny that the states would have the right to legislate conduct standards between employer and employees. And would never deny the right of the an employee to bargain a contract (either individually or collectively) that would make abusive behavior by the employer prohibitively expensive.

Beyond that, however, any employer that would fail to hire (or lose through abuse) a well-qualified or trained employee would soon find himself at an economic disadvantage. Assuming of course that we can get the federal government out of the business of creating anti-competitive business environments and subsidizing big business by giving them a ready supply of illegal immigrants with which to intimidate their workers into accepting lower wages. That is the REAL source of abuse in the American workplace. But that is another story.....

Ron Paul stands for individuals making bona fide choices about their material and spiritual condition. To say that he's "pro-employer" misunderstands the necessary division between public and private action. Offering a person paid employment does not automatically make one an appendage of the state, which utilizes its taxing power to confiscate a percentage of the very first dollar earned.

Ultimately, those of us who are employees must stand up for ourselves. If an employer is not performing to our expectations or open to changing their course of action in a given situation, it ought to be our duty to pursue other opportunities in order to pursue our material happiness.

To assume that persons are generally not able to effectively act in their self-interest without assorted decrees and strictures handed down from the mountaintop populated by wayward knight errants is an admission that we as a people collectively are incapable of self-government.

The posturing of this piece reminds me of why I am a libertarian, in addition to the ordinary political process stumbling over itself when it comes to those who do not fall into staid, rigid categories (and predicatable belief systems) related to race, creed, and sexual orientation. But America is very much the embodiment of the democratic despotism so well-articulated by Tocqueville.

Also bear in mind Albert Jay Nock's sublime "golden rule of sound citizenship," namely that when you give the state the authority to do something FOR you, you also necessarily give it the power to do something TO you.

If an employer is not meeting basic health and safety regulations, which Paul properly believes should be a function of state government, then there should be recourse through state goverment channels, whether it be the WIC or the courts. (Remember that our federal Constitution is a grant of limited and enumerated powers, whereas state consitutions are limitations on plenary powers; this distinction, even though a qualitative nullity in practice, gets conveniently ignored all too often by policymakers and the chattering class alike.)

On that note, perhaps the rest of United States can follow the lead of the developments in Sacramento, where the public sector employee unions are the tail largely wagging the public policy dog -- where value for taxpayer money is not even in the equation, much less a consideration. Right now, many of the choicest jobs for mid-level magagement are found in state and local government, with the taxpayers footing the tab for rather extravagant retirement benefits. Unfortunately there is no formal recourse for those of us not among those select employees or those partisans receiving tens of millions every election cycle beyond choosing between bad and worse.

The right to work means just that: the right of an individual to pursue a chosen occupation without joining a labor cartel exercising coercion by forcing a "closed shop." I guess that prospect is just too much bona fide liberty for some, especially those in the Bay Area Leftist circles. To which I answer, just as I do to overweening government: DON'T TREAD ON ME.

The employer who said "lets rape her" was committing a threat, but if it was clear to her that he was joking it was merely insulting in a practical sense. But as to employees having a right to a job, this is not something the employer has any responsibilty to provide. Perhaps the state government should have to provide the job.

People should have a right to insult each other and harrass each other, but not necessarily threaten each other.
I do sympathize with the single mother who needs a job, but her need for a job does not justify taking away the right of the employer to do as he wishes with his own company. The company is his property, not the state's property. The state has no right to force him to use it to take care of the states poor.

If the people of the state want to give some incentive to businesses who do not discriminate on the basis of race or willingness to commit sex acts, that would not offend me so much. But the business owner should not be forced to join that program.

I think you are missing out on the other possibilities. I can imagine that the free market would provide the same services that you otherwise want the government to provide. That is, there would be private certification authorities and blacklists that would allow companies to demonstrate that they are voluntarily complicit in educating employees about sexual harassment and punishing those that violate the terms. If workers wanted these services from the market, they would be there. You wouldn't even consider working for a company that was blacklisted or that didn't get certifications for this purpose. Likewise employers would lose out on many potential hard-working employees and their products would be boycotted. (And the competition between the blacklists and/or certification authorities would reduce the possibility of corruption in the system.)

However, we've learned to rely on government to give us those things, and since the government has a monopoly on the "service", we end up getting worse results than we could get through the free market. And we pay more for it.

"You wouldn't even consider working for a company that was blacklisted..." Or perhaps you would if they were willing to pay you enough above what a certified company was willing to pay.

In the early 1990's, in my early 20s, soon after the Soviet Bloc collapsed I lived in eastern Europe for about two years. I learned firsthand that in theory communism and socialism is very seductive in their appeal for workers' rights. Where else has there been so much 'power to the worker' propaganda? In reality, those systems destroy the human spirit, greatly reduce production and incentive to do anything, and generally make life miserable. Think of how many people tried to escape those social and economic systems - literally risking their lives to do so. Although I often pondered the root reasons why people in the Soviet Bloc showed no initiative (at least in relation to Americans), I really didn't grasp it well until I read Atlas Shrugged years later. Ayn Rand obviously had a good handle on what those systems to do to the minds of people, and their minds are reflected in their haggard, downtrodden faces. The USA is essentially socialist now, and is moving towards to a more fascist socialist state. We need less government, not more. I live on the fringe of a terrible ghetto in Philadelphia and spoke to the owner of a huge old factory building, the kind that can be converted into nice loft apartments. It's been falling apart over the decades and is filled with junk. The owner said he wanted to make apartments (and in so doing, improve the neighborhood, provide housing (an increase in quantity of housing reduces housing costs overall), and provide what would have been hundreds of jobs for laborers and contractors, etc. The owner said the municipality wanted too much, and so this monolithic 50,000 sq ft eyesore sits there. So many times I've heard of someone not wanting to participate in some income producing venture because he'll 'have to pay taxes on it.' Government must get out of the way of property owners and entrepreneurs who are at the vanguard of leading us all into prosperity. No system is perfect, but the freest societies always seem to do best and be happiest. North and south Korea, I assume, are essentially culturally and ethnically the same. I'm sure the south koreans under the more capitalist system have a much better life.

The situation you describe conveys a lack of a judicial system or institution to enforce the terms of the contract. This is certainly not what Ron Paul is advocating.

If sexual harassment occurred, the employee should sue for damages, plain and simple. Ron Paul has explicitly declared his concordance with the ability of individuals to unionize.

Ron Paul professes an extraordinarily simple message: Respect for individuals. Respect for laws and the constitution.

So why did you stay there. If you knew the law was being broken you were part of the proplem. I own a small shop in Atlanta I would like to think I treat my people well. The have vactions paid sick days retirement and insurance. I also work some union people ( Georgia is a right to work state). But my employers work for me not the other way around. When I spend years traing a man and I just started making money and he now demands more money what choice do I have. If he is a key man I give it to him or he quits. Should I be able to force him to stay.No it is a two way street.It is the free market and it is the best route to go
http://www.crazyforliberty.com

"Enron, Haliburton, Blackwater, dangerous imports, and those responsible for the mortgage lending crisis, ..."

Funny thing is that these are all GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED corporations! Corporate welfare is the problem we face in this country NOT "free markets." When are the rest of you working people gonna realize that government is controlled by the elite! They use government programs to fund their own businesses and regulations to wipe out competition! What we need is no regulation except strict anti-trust laws that protect the market from tyrannical monopolies.

The Mortgage lending crisis is a result of market manipulation by the Federal Reserve... who's on the federal reserve? the corporate elite..... Once again more government = more elitist control.

In conclusion,

Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate that will improve the conditions of the poor and middle class in this country.

"You wouldn't even consider working for a company that was blacklisted..." Or perhaps you would if they were willing to pay you enough above what a certified company was willing to pay. Absolutely! That's the rub. You would be compensated for your level of discomfort, but that puts the company at an economic disadvantage. The company would not be able to compete, and could not last very long unless it had a monopoly status (which, I think, would be rare in a truly free market) or attempted to rectify the situation. It has an economic incentive to comply. As always, profit is a valid motivator, because a company stands to profit more by being the worker's friend.

Prosperity has a way of changing a few things. You mentioned that there weren't very many manufacturing jobs, and felt lucky to have the job you had. This is a symptom of poor economy, something that Ron Paul would like to overhaul.Where I live, we had a Ron Paul of our own. The rest of Canada wondered what the Hell we were thinking to elect such a person. Alberta was in terrible debt and recession. If you were lucky enough to have a job, you suffered for it. Unionized shops had devestating layoffs. Anyhow, our Premeire decided free markets,(real free markets, not corporations coddled by government) was the way to go. It was tough going for a few years, but now the debt is paid, we run at a surplus, and the economy exploded. Minimum wage is a joke, but not in the way you think. It's legislated somewhere around 8-9 dollars an hour. You see, the economy is so hot, you couldn't pay someone minimum wage, they'd laugh at you, walk accross the street and get hired for exactly what they want. My cousin's teenage daughter makes 13.00 an hour working at McDonald's, plus benefits. When you have real free markets, the corporations are kept in check through real competition. No special legislation, no sweet heart deals, no corporate welfare. Our prosperity also helped the rest of the country's prosperity. Don't know if you've noticed, but our dollar went from 60 cents us to a dollar ten. So, our cost of living must be through the roof, right? nope, it's on par with U.S. standards. Actually, I think you guy's still pay more for housing, despite the bubble bursting. Anyhow, we need workers like crazy, there's too many jobs that have been created. Perhaps instead of sending your sons and daughters to kill or be killed for oil, you could send them up here to help us work in the oil industry. Last time I checked, Iraq is ranked sixth on the scale of who supplies oil to the US. Canada ranks first. I assure you, we are far more friendlier, and the beer's pretty good too.

And at the end of the day, in a Paul administration, the government doesn't get to tell you how much of your hard-earned money you get to keep because there is no income tax.

woops, my name is leanne not richard, like the post shows. I'm the one talking about the economy in Alberta.

So you were aware that your employer was harassing women and instead of saying anything at the time to your boss you decide to hop on a high horse several years latter? I guess its much easer to hope fed.gov will solve your problems than stand up for what your believe is right?

There is no such thing as a limited government which also contains enforcement of private property and contract law.

Legalizing underground economies could limit the violence associated with certain industries (guns, drugs, prostitution) but could also result in a much stronger police state than we have now, since the state would become the one trying to enforce that a junkie pay back a dealer for heroin they couldnt afford. Without bankruptcy law and without regulations on lending, law enforcement for the pay back of loans would also require a lot of physical power by the state. Landlords can kick out tenants who don't pay rent but they do so through the power of the state, otherwise it would be a matter of the physical strength of the landlord and their friends against that of the renters and their friends that would determine ownership.

One could assume that enforcement of agreements and contracts would somehow be natural and not require a lot of power but if one looks at Russia right after the fall of the USSR, parts of Afghanistan and Somalia today and parts of countries like Colombia we can see the results (traditional religious laws governing in isolated areas with various sized warlords/gangsters fighting over the rest of the country for control of turf).

Traditional economic theory treats the human desire for power and willingness to disobey laws as something external to the system of study....BUT market forces are not fundamentally different from political forces yet somehow neo-liberals and Libertarians assume some magical aspect of markets that results in a much better outcome than we see in reality (where our laws and regulations were shapped by market forces). The grouping of human actions into economic transactions and political transactions makes no logical sense (strangely people like Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham and the like didn't accept the idea that economies were separate from politic and both saw a need for governments beyond what their followers would have one believe today).

To a very real extent, we have things like the FDA because market forces (in that case mainly food producers worried about the unfair competition from companies producing bad quality food) demanded it. We have labor laws because market forces (workers and also businesses worried about unrest) demanded them. We have public education because market forces (partly business) demanded it. We have Social Security because market forces demanded it and we have most of the rest of government because at various points businesses and/or individuals demanded it.

Power is a complicated thing and so is government and to a very real extent a company in a one company town (which exists less now but existed in many places in the US in the 1800s) is the same a local warlord/dictatorship or an unelected oligarchy. People could chose to try to start their own businesses but if everyone is renting and nobody has enough capital labor, action to change employment becomes the same things as a popular revolution against a state. There is a very fine line between having to choose a business to work for to survive, having to join a gang/mafia group to belong to in order to survive or having to pledge alegiance to a state.

Libertarians would have one believe there is something fundamentally different about states but doing so is placing states outside of normal reality in an almost religious sense.

Someone one often hears from economists if market forces are acting in a clearly destructive direction is that the issue is imperfect information and somehow this is a rare but minor thing that can then be brushed aside in the overall discussion of how great the effects of deregulation are.

The problem is that imperfect information can only be reduced through something that looks like a government and without imperfect information markets wouldn't really exist in their current form.

Look at something like Chinese toys with lead paint. Addressing impercect information issues would require testing, labeling and public education on the effects of lead. That requires a government agnecy to test, examine imports and make sure they are labeled and a public education system that teached about the effects of lead.

Then one can ask what markets would look like without imperfect information. FIrst off, we wouldnt have ads since the entire point of ads is to inform people with either the truth, a spin or lies about products. There would likely also be more monopolies since people tend to often make mistakes in purchasing that result in them buying inferior yet no less cheap products that keep a wider set of companies in business than would exist if poeple always bought the best buy out there.

"And at the end of the day, in a Paul administration, the government doesn't get to tell you how much of your hard-earned money you get to keep because there is no income tax."

Ron Paul could pull troops from Iraq but there is no chance that he would be able to end income taxation as President on the most unlikely of chances of his getting elected. Even if the US public also became Libertarian and voted in a Libertarian Congress a lack of an income tax for just a year would result in so many problems (from all roads becoming toll roads to millions of children having to stay at home alone all day as their parents worked as public schools closed....) that it would at most last a few months...

It is easy to debate Libertarian theory as if it is something serious but the truth is Libertarians are so out of touch arguing with them is like debating with 9/11 conspiracy theorists or people whop don't believe in evolution.