Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Oz State to ban bosses snooping on emails

From: Mike Lorrey <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 09:30:56 -0700 (PDT)

--- Brett Paatsch <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> The idea of providing with a job the necessary tools to do that job
> did not traditionally automatically include giving employees the
> right to use those same tools for their own purposes or
> convenience.  The employee/employer master/servant relationship
> seems to be shifting in this case in a direction 
> towards employee/servant empowerment. It will be interesting to see
> if the trend can gather any political steam.

Having worked as a hourly mechanic required to own his own personal
tools while working in a company garage with company heavy equipment,
where I not only worked on my own vehicle, but worked on the vehicles
of company bus drivers, vehicles of family members, etc. it seems to me
that the company needs to or does accept the distinction between
'personal tools' and 'capital equipment'. A technology company doesn't
issue knowledge workers a company brain when they are employed, the
employee comes with their own highly valuable brain, i.e. a computer
which the employee employs in the service of the company. Thus the
employee is paid for labor of the persons personality (i.e. their
software) plus use of employee equipment (their brain, i.e. hardware).
Ergo, while being treated as employees, todays knowledge worker should
be treated as a contractor. In exchange for being an employee, the
employer offers additional benefits which may include use of company
equipment.

When uploaded personalities come to exist, will an employer be required
to hire that personality as a contractor rather than an employee if the
personality operates on their own personal hardware?

> 
> Personally I would have suspected that laws would have tended to
> develop to 
> favour the employers rather than employees in this area because
> employees 
> would not be politically well organised enough to oppose the shift
> towards 
> greater surveilance of their activities. I'd have thought that most 
> employees would not object to clauses being placed in employment
> contracts 
> etc.. Perhaps they will. Perhaps I am wrong.
> 
> Brett Paatsch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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