A repository containing the framework for a democratic revision of a labor organization
This repository is meant to represent the governance structure of an organization whose primary function is to participate in economic activity. That is, this repository defines the governance structure of a company with workers and products and revenues and profits and all of the things that come with running a company. This repository currently represents a theoretical structure for an economic organization that does not currently exist. The organization is designed primarily to organize the labor of technology professionals in a remote-first setting, but its principles and in some cases its techniques could be adapted for use in other types of organizations.
This document attempts to make a sound argument that the current state of labor causes substantial unnecessary suffering to individual laborers and robs them of the fruits of their labor to provide for the benefit of the small percentage of people who own capital. Those who own capital repeatedly and without hesitation make large sacrifices to laborers' personal freedoms, health, and well-being for comparatively miniscule additions to capital owners' personal fortunes. The current state of affairs is unacceptable and it is the goal of this repository to make an attempt to demonstrate what a reorganization of labor control and profit-sharing might look like.
People all over the world have recognized that Democracy, for all its flaws, represents the best known way to govern large groups of individuals. Despite widely recognizing the benefits to members of societies which uphold the ideals of freedom, democratic participation, and transparency, and equally recognizing the flaws and dangers of autocracy and secrecy, most societies of the world have allowed that the basic unit of economic organization be entirely autocratic and authoritarian. Admittedly within some limits imposed by democratic governments, the employer you work for determines what you work on, how your work is used, how the profits of your labor are spent, and to a frightening degree how you live your life outside of your work relationship. Additionally, while individuals do have some degree of control over which employer they choose to work for, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of employers are autocratic and unnecessarily callous toward the concerns of their employees, and individuals' ability to choose an employer which respects their health and happiness is virtually nonexistent.
Over the period from 1970-2020, we've seen productivity skyrocket while wages stayed the same in real terms. The inflation-adjusted GDP per Capita roughly tracks the average economic output of an individual laborer. The linked graph shows that in real terms, a single laborer in the United States in 2020 produces roughly 10x the economic output compared to the same laborer in 1970 on average. Comparatively, in real terms, the median income of that laborer has increased by roughly 1.5x according to this graph. There is much data and much written about the disparity here, so the choice is made not to defend these numbers here but to take as an assumption that laborers are not being paid their fair share of profit, and almost certainly by a huge margin. This document instead asserts that a primary cause of this disparity is laborers' lack of control over the organizations which direct and distribute the profits of their labor.
In cases where physical presence is not required, employers restrict the areas which employees can live to reap some perceived or actual productivity benefit at the employee's expense. Even in the case where a physical presence is required to produce useful work some or all of the time, taking extended leave whenever someone desires should be an option without sacrificing job security. An individual should be able to live wherever they choose based on their family's location, their interest in food or culture, or simply the whims of their curiosity. Instead, employees typically have between 2 and 4 weeks each year where they are able to be in any location they choose, the remainder of the time they are required by their employer to be in a single physical location. It's not clear how much productivity benefit there is to colocation, although certainly some. How much of that gap can be closed by more effective remote work culture and tools? How much can be achieved through periodic colocation or retreats rather than constant colocation? How much happiness is living near family worth to an individual laborer? Or living in an area where they don't face substantial discrimination? Employers all over the world have been clear in their policies: despite a lack of rigorous evidence that requiring colocation is substantially more effective than other strategies, they are willing to sacrifice the freedom of mobility of their workers for a chance at small gains in productivity.
Employees have very little control over how their labor is used. An ideological pacifist would have an incredibly difficult time finding a company which does not do any business with the defense industry in any way, shape, or form. A vegan has little ability to control whether or not their company participates in the mass market animal product industry. A climate change activist has little control over whether or not carbon emissions associated with their labor are offset. It is often the case that laborers produce work for a company, the company retains a disproportionate share of the profits, then the company funnels funds into lobbying to weaken labor rights or campaigns to prevent unionization. In this way, companies force laborers to participate in their own subjugation. Laborers should have a substantial power in the way their work is used and how the company conducts business.
Workers should have democratic control over the organizations they participate in. No individual should be able to substantially control the output of entire groups of people. Much has been said about how to restructure governments and nations to restore this power to workers. This document has a much more modest goal: to provide a realistic option for the organization of labor under the current legal and economic climate. Through this, the hope is that a greater share of economic organizations will be controlled by laborers in a democratic fashion, and that laborers will have more freedom to choose democratically-styled organizations over authoritarian ones and control the results of their own labor. While unlikely, it is hoped that in the far future democratic economic organizations become the norm, and very few individuals will be railroaded into an authoritarian economic organization as is commonplace today.
constitution.md contains the core of the concepts of the organization. Start by reading that. Everything else is subordinate to the text of the constitution file.