084 - Council of War
Well, employees’ rights - you can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them, right? Oh, yes - depending on whether you are an employer, you can in fact live without them. It’s interesting, though, how they create their own cute whirls and eddies in the eternal sea we call employment market.
And you really get a feel for the limitations of globalization when you look at how different these distortions are between regions and countries. Talking about Germany - where it just so happens Triple Six, Inc. originates - employees are so well endowed with rights, that it is a miracle of its own that the German workforce has not been completely replaced by robots yet.
There is something to it, after all: In a surprising, slightly magical way, both sides in Germany seem to get along quite well and maintain a relatively satisfactory level of productivity. Having rights does not necessarily mean you have to exercise them, and German workers are notorious for not using their rights.
The whole inherent conflict between employees and employers in Germany seems to have shifted from the legal arena to the psychological one, and scare tactics are working wonders. Employers have become quite proficient in pyschological warfare, and in times of need manage quite well in corralling their workforce. Good old Karl Marx would surely be inclined to raise an eye brow…