Krasemann - Blog Post "Fulfilling 15"

Elizabeth Anderson defends her position against Tyler Cowen's critique in an at times aggressive but hugely successful manner. Overall, I would like to question the application of private government to higher-up corporations that pay their employees well into the six figures (this relates to my previous blog post). It seems that the argument against inhumane treatment differs from those workers making minimum wage with no alternative to earn money to the investment banking analysts who despise their jobs but are adequately compensated and have opportunities to pursue similarly lucrative engagements elsewhere.

 Cowen establishes that "Anderson seems to be offering a largely negative portrait of how business economies of scale interact with the personal freedoms of works" (110). In short, Cowen seems to believe that the problem of private government is no where near as serious as Anderson makes it out to be. He concludes his critique and disagreement of much of Anderson's argument by saying that "the good news is that even the nonacademics among us do not toil under the supervision of communist dictators", meaning oppressive bosses that enforce inhumane and unjust work conditions (116).

Admittedly, I found myself nodding along to Cowen's points while reading his critique. However, it took but one paragraph from Anderson to uncover the inherent flaw in Cowen's argument. Overall, he fails to consider the system of private government that occurs in work places far less lucrative than his own work space, namely those of Walmart or other massive corporations that work their employees into the ground while paying them minimum wage. Anderson offers countless qualitative and quantitative (for the economists out there) statistics refuting Cowen's point by demonstrating the magnitude of inhumane work conditions and activities, including but not limited to sexual harassment, violence, and severe humiliation. She points out that Cowen fails to consider people in far less comfortable positions from his own, since he uses himself as an example of successful trade-offs in a work environment.

Despite Anderson's successful defense of Cowen's critique, I wonder if Cowen simply failed to acknowledge the system of private government for those less fortunate (such as Walmart workers), or if he was only attempting to relate Anderson's argument to the private governments of more high-paying corporations and companies. Anderson states that "I believe that existing market orderings are distorted by the state's prior allocation of unaccountable power to employers over employees"(138). I am not sure if Cowen would necessarily disagree, as Anderson implies. While Cowen does fail to consider the inhumane acts of bosses in many work settings, I question whether he simply meant to relate his argument to work situations such as his own. 

In my previous blog post, I considered the example of Goldman Sachs, a notorious investment bank that was recently in the headlines for some analysts' reports explaining how unhappy they were in the work environment. How does this type of setting apply to private governments? Are the analysts being treated inhumanely? It is clear that they are compensated far better than Walmart workers, but they may still be subject to similar horrific treatments of sexual harassment, for instance. Cowen may argue that the analysts are agreeing to these tough work hours in return for sufficient compensation and, arguably more importantly, the name Goldman Sachs on their resume. With this example in mind, I wonder if he would apply the same logic to the statistics of inhumane work place activities that Anderson brings up in her defense. The situations are vastly different, so I question whether the same logic can be applied and if so, how successfully.