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        The concept of the private government of the modern workplace as described by Anderson in Chapter 2 of   Private Government   enforces a double jeopardy on women in particular. In her paper “Unstrapping the Straitjacket of Preference” Anderson asserts that “bargaining theory recommends that, if women are to improve their situation, they ought to seek employment outside of the home” (page 35). Women’s situation is also improved as work allows women to create an identity outside of the home through joining larger group identities (page 36). Putting this dilemma in the language of   Private Government , women suffer under the patriarchal private governments of the home, where fathers and husbands exert arbitrary and unaccountable power over them. To create identity, they must then join additional private government outside of the home and in the workplace.             While many...

 In Chapter 7, Anderson refutes Tyler Cowen’s critique and maintains her position that private companies exercise far too much control over the lives of their employees and are effectively “communist dictatorships in our midst.” (Anderson 37). Much of Anderson’s response criticizes Cowen for not looking beyond his own tenured professor experience of work. She outlines numerous reports of worker abuse and legal cases across a variety of industries to show that Cowen is ignoring the experience of the bottom half of American workers.   Anderson’s ferocious defense against Cowen is convincing, but I’m a little skeptical of her claim that the pre-industrial legacy of self-employed work keeps Americans from seeing the role for government in the private sector. Since at least the New Deal era, America has passed laws and regulations that protected workers against employers. For instance, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is still in effect today, established the first minimum w...

In chapter 7 of her book, Anderson disagrees with Cowen's account that "the dicatorial power of companies" are not worrisome if the costs of exit are low. (pg. 109) She argues that even if workers are able to exit easily, if the choices of workplaces are of same conditions that the workers originally exited, then workers are in no better of a position had they not exited. She argues that of the four ways to promote the freedom and equality of workers: "exit, rule of law constraints on employers, constitutional rights and voice," she argues that voice is essential. (pg. 133) Workers need to be able to have a voice to be able to protect themselves against the despotic powers of their employers. She then goes on to give an extensive list of empirical evidence that shows the abuse of powers by employers and I personally found her argument pretty convincing.  One economist that came to mind was Angust Deaton, a nobel price winning economist, who wrote Death and Desir...

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...

 Here is the outline for today's discussion as well as some definitions we will be covering: Chapter 1  Question: Is the difference between Smith and Marx ideological (capitalism versus communism) or are their differences merely empirical (pre versus post Industrial Revolution)?  Sarah’s blog post : historical context Locke Hurley’s blog post: Locke’s appeal to the tacit consent to the use of money under libertarian and egalitarian views Chapter 2 definitions Private government of the modern workplace: arbitrary and unaccountable power over those it governs (page 45) Firms as communist dictatorships, internal structure of authority “Government exists wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in one or more domains of life” (page 42) State governments or workplaces can be public or private governments, “The privacy of a government is defined relative to the governed not relative to the state” (page 45) Struggles for enfranchisement a...

       In chapter 2 of her book Private Government, Anderson debunks many commonly held beliefs in theory and in public discourse about employee interactions in the market, that award much more freedom to the employee than what is actually experienced. Some examples of this include how Alchian and Demesetz are “hoodwinked by the superficial symmetry of the employment contract” when they see “quitting as equivalent to firing one’s boss,” when in reality quitting is often more costly to the employee doing the quitting (56). One especially interesting argument Anderson presents, is in her discussions of the theory and discourse around firms. In this chapter Anderson presents the theory behind why firms exist instead of “why production is not managed by independent contractors acting without external supervision” (51). However, after this Anderson cleverly notes that after giving so much attention to clearly explaining why firms function differently than markets and are ...

In chapter two of  Private Government , Anderson outlines the way in which the ‘private sphere’ of employee-employer interaction is actually a form of private government and has the potential to be abused and mistreated in similar ways to public government. She describes much of firm-ruled private government as a “communist dictatorship,” permeating most of the modern workplace (39). She highlights all the ways that firms have taken on authoritarian hierarchical tendencies since the industrial revolution. She even acknowledges the fact that “the key to the superior efficiency of hierarchy is the open-ended authority of managers,” (52). It’s interesting that she compares the workplace to a communist dictatorship when one of the world’s current economic superpowers, China, is run exactly like that. While the benefits debatable of authoritarianism’s benefits to productivity, one cannot deny the striking similarity of Anderson’s “modern workplace” and China’s entire state, both in the...

     It is interesting to consider colleges and universities in Anderson’s context of private government. Anderson equates private companies with private governments. Anderson outlines various reasons why this is the case. Her thesis more or less lies on the argument that the Industrial Revolution changed the course of capitalism, as it allowed certain companies to monopolize efficiency. This change disallowed self-employment in a variety of industries, and those people needed to find jobs at factories - “With the Industrial Revolution, the pervasiveness of markets in labor returned manufacturing workers to an even deeper state of subjection to their superiors than before” (36).      Whether true or not, the narrative that a college education is a prerequisite for a good job is popular. I think this notion is similar in its effects on the educational space as the Industrial Revolution's relevance to the job market. Students are incentivized to go to colleg...

  In Private Government , Elizabeth Anderson outlines her argument that the current state of capitalist societies that function under corporations are essentially “private governments,” which is defined as follows: “The economic system of the society run by this government is communist. The government owns all the nonlabor means of production in the society it governs. It organizes production by means of central planning. The form of the government is a dictatorship. In some cases, the dictator is appointed by an oligarchy…” (38). The power of the CEO as analogous to a dictator is the part that Tara criticizes here because the power of a CEO is more checked than that of a dictator.  However, this claim is not substantiated from a pragmatic or principle perspective. From a practical standpoint, a few things can be said. Workers are not usually the shareholders. The existence of shareholders might mean that a company’s leadership can be checked by the public, but minority activi...

In her paper, Private Government, Elizabeth Anderson uses historical and philosophical context to develop her argument that modern capitalism sets up internal governments in market firms that dictate large parts of employee’s lives, often to the detriment of state legal protections. It is essential to distinguish that these internal governments do not simply ‘govern’ their workers but “dominate them” (xxii). Anderson develops her argument with a discussion of the historical context of free-market capitalism. Free markets were intended by various social movements to be the driving force behind the extinction of hierarchical societal divides and gross inequalities in wealth.  For some time, this approach worked. In the Lincoln era, many citizens were self-employed and were the sole proprietors of their businesses. A free-market economy, during this time, allowed for an explosion of opportunity. America “was the leading hope of egalitarians on both sides of the Atlantic” (23). Market ...

  In the first two chapters of a Private Government, Elizabeth Anderson lays out the current structure of the private government in society. She admits that “the notion of a private government may seem a contradiction in terms” but that considering the example of a firm or company, it makes sense that the structure follows that of a government but the proceedings are nonetheless private to those within the firm or company (Anderson 41). Anderson’s explanation and critique of private governments made me consider the case study surrounding Goldman Sachs and its analyst program.   Several weeks ago, a report was released that contained the writings and opinions of analysts at the notorious investment bank, Goldman Sachs. The analysts more or less tore into the company, with several going so far as to say that they would rather be homeless than work another day at Goldman Sachs. Another analyst said working at the company has been the most stressful time o...

       In Chapter 2 of Private Government , Elizabeth Anderson delves into egalitarianism before and after the Industrial Revolution, especially in relation to the Leveller movement. Anderson describes how the Levellers were committed to egalitarian social movements, but were also proponents of private property and free trade. Today, those two things may seem diametrically opposed, but Anderson explains that the Levellers believed that “support for free trade formed an essential part of a larger program of liberating individuals from interlocking hierarchies of domination and subordination” (8). The egalitarian Levellers opposed monopolies, and believed that free trade would liberate “small artisans from arbitrary private government” and expand opportunities for self-employment (15). Relatedly, Adam Smith believed that “in a fully free market, the commercial and manufacturing sectors would similarly be dominated by small-scale enterprises, run by independent artisans...

The key passage here is Par. 50, in which Locke appeals to tacit consent to the use of money.  The libertarian reading of Locke takes this tacit consent to the use of money effectively to avoid violating both the spoilage and the sufficiency ("enough and as good") provisos on justified holdings, allowing for legitimate radically unequal holdings in the state of nature, even for the impoverishment of some.  This also sets up the libertarian understanding of the state as established simply to police such a radically unequal distribution, not to engage in redistribution.  Anderson's egalitarian reading of Locke takes this tacit to the use of money only to avoid violating the spoilage proviso.  Inequality in possessions can be justified up to a point through appeal to the work ethic, but any additional inequality that might result in the state of nature after the invention of money, in particular inequality that leads to real scarcity and impoverishment, now VIOLATES THE...

In Chapter 2 of Private Government , Elizabeth Anderson presents her argument for the dictatorial nature of private government. In doing so, she identifies CEO’s as the dictator, where “those dictatorships have the legal authority to regulate workers’ off-hour lives” as well as their lives in the work environment (39). Given this account, I felt it important to consider the role of gender in her argument, and how the disproportionate percentage of male CEOs contribute to this dictatorial work life that is so prevalent in daily life. As of 2019, women held 30 CEO positions in S&P 500 companies, accounting for only 6% of all CEOs. With Anderson’s discussion of employment at will contracts and general treatment of employees outside of work, I wonder how different it would be with more women in charge. Because the default contract for employment is employment at will, “workers, in effect, cede all of their rights to their employers, except those specifically guaranteed to them by law”...

  In Private Government , Elizabeth Anderson contends that most modern workplaces function as private governments under which the people unfree. This blog post aims not to dispute the fundamentally unfree nature of the people under these private governments. Rather, I aim to highlight a potential disanalogy between dictatorial private governments and modern corporations, or at least emphasize the increasing complexity of this analogy, through the role of shareholders.  First, it is important to briefly summarize the structure of the “private government” that Anderson puts forth. In her view, “the dictator [of the private government] is the chief executive officer (CEO), superiors are managers, subordinates are workers” (39). The language of “dictator” is certainly strong; Anderson somewhat qualifies the unitary action of the dictator by acknowledging “The oligarchy that appoints the CEO exists for publicly owned corporations: it is the board of directors” (39). The CEO has...

In Unstrapping the Straitjacket of Preference , Elizabeth Anderson unpacks Sen’s critique of preference and the multiple purposes it serves actually show that preference is not simply one ‘dogma’ which economists can use to solve all their problems. The three purposes of preference that Sen identifies are “a) to describe a person's choices; b) to represent whatever motives underlie a person’s choices; and c) to represent a person’s welfare,” (22). He claims that these are actually three different things: choice, underlying motive, and welfare. Further, he argues that people often choose to act in ways that do not maximize their preferences on the basis of what he calls ‘commitment.’ This idea of commitment is best described as counter-preferential choice because it is when people act on principle as opposed to preference. This action is still rational, despite not advancing the preferences of the individual because it is based on socially and ethically desirable principles (24). ...

In Elizabeth Anderson’s essay “Unstrapping the Straightjacket of ‘Preference,’” she adds to Amartya Sen’s argument for raising suspicion against the concept of economic preferences that define rational human choices as ones that advance an individual’s welfare. This stems from a misunderstanding that people’s preferences always align with advancing themselves: “Preference conceived as a choice or motive fails to do so, because people have motives wide than and sometimes even counter to their self-interests, and often choose accordingly” (23). Instead of framing people’s choices as individual, self-interested ones, Anderson proposes the idea of “collective agency.” She maintains that if people can identify a problem that can be resolved by joining forces, then they rationally and morally should, and this “Practical identification with others does not require any prior acquaintance or relationship” (31). In fact, two complete strangers can find an association with one another that “would...

  In “Unstrapping the Straightjacket of ‘Preference,’” Elizabeth Anderson extends arguments made by Amartya Sen to provide a theory for the rationality of committed action. Anderson swiftly walks the reader through an argument that begins with addressing problems in the reasonings provided for outcomes in the prisoners’ dilemma, develops and tests a new theory through various examples and case studies, and is able to extend the argument to as grand of claims as expanding the “community of identity to the whole of humanity” and finding the point where “rationality coincides with morality” (37). In her argument, the decisions made by the individuals in the prisoners’ dilemma would be based on their ability to see themselves as common members of a social group and rephrase their question to “What should we do?” (28). However Anderson moves beyond this conclusion to a driving factor for individuals to be capable of seeing themselves as common members that “depends on a prior determinat...

It is interesting to consider Anderson’s comments on voting within the context of other social issues, namely climate change. But I think a very similar argument could be made for not eating meat. Anderson places importance on identity derived from a group. This group identity makes it easier to explain behavior that is not utility-maximizing but is socially and morally intuitive. Anderson’s case in point is voting. Anderson shows that there is no reason to value voting if you want to maximize your utility. This is uncontroversial. One individual vote does not really matter, making the time required to cast that vote meaningless under consequentialism. Of course then, this criticism carries into altruistic views as well. If a vote has zero sum, then standing in line and filling out your ballot is not act-consequential, and one could spend that time doing more altruistic activities. Unfortunately, voting takes some portion of time so “there is always some inconvenience. So I ought not t...