Drawbacks to Collectively Run Companies - Jemma

 I generally agree with most of Anderson’s argument about the pervasiveness of excessive control in the modern workplace. As Anderson argues, government is not limited to the state, and private companies can and do impose massive constraints on individual liberties. However, Anderson also argues that certain requirements imposed by state or private governments can enhance our freedoms.

According to Anderson, the state can counteract private government by enforcing constraints on negative liberties, which in turn can generate further negative, positive, and republican freedoms. Anderson raises the example of the state imposing requirement on employers to refrain from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and writes that this constraint “enhances the republican and negative freedom of workers to express their sexual identities and choose their sexual and life partners. It also enhances their positive liberties, by enabling more people to move out of the closet, and thereby increasing opportunities for LGBT people to engage with other of like sexual orientation. The state’s imposition of negative liberty constraints on some people can thereby enhance all three liberties of many more” (48). This line of logic makes sense: constraining certain negative liberties in turn generates greater liberties in other respects. It can also be expanded to apply to requirement imposed by private companies themselves, such as under a worker’s bill of rights. However, Anderson argues that protections imposed by private companies under a bill-of-rights type model wouldn’t go far enough in practice, and that “there is no adequate substitute for recognizing workers’ voice in their government” (69). So, according to Anderson, workplaces should operate similarly (in a way) to state governments: “it must be made a public thing to all the governed––accountable to them, responsive to their interests, and open to their participation” (71).

I don’t dispute that workers should have a voice in their companies, or that they should have a say in determining their own rights. However, I do want to bring up an example of a case in which workers rights might limit efficiency, or overall societal wellbeing: teachers’ unions. Many critics argue that unions allow bad teachers to stay in place, and generally cause student performance to decrease. I don’t know enough about the issue to argue one way or the other; however, it does make sense that in certain cases, what is best for workers might not be best for society as a whole. So, for example, teachers might benefit from a union that makes it difficult for them to be fired, but students and the workforce more generally would not. 

Then again, society as a whole often doesn’t benefit from the decisions of private companies when they are run by a select few individuals, either (take the decisions of oil companies or big Pharma). So, perhaps third-party checks on companies are the solution here, and the power structure within the companies themselves is irrelevant. However, governmental constraints on companies to prevent benefitting workers “too much” at the cost of society as a whole seem difficult to impose. I wonder how Anderson might suggest that we address these challenged raised by collectively-run companies.