swait and bitch

In an article deceptively titled "The Worker's Rights Manifesto" (via Digg.com), KAZ lays out a libertarian approach to protecting the proletariat class interests.

You and I, as a workers, have certain rights which are naturally ours, and which nobody should be allowed to take away from us. These rights are choices we are free to make, unless the powerful decide to steal them from us.

1. The right to work for the amount we choose.

   What we earn should be a matter between ourselves and our employers, not something controlled or approved by some government, union boss, or other busy-body.

2. The right to work for whom we choose.

   Where we work should be a matter of which job offer we accept, not controlled by some law or union rule saying that we are the wrong race, or sex, or what someone with our amount of experience is allowed to do.

3. The right to keep the product of our labor, and do with it as we choose.

   The product of our labour is the amount we agree to sell our services to an employer for. It is ours by right, and any authority who takes it from us for their own purposes is wrong, be it taxes or union dues. Having earned it, we have a right to keep it even if we change its form, by buying something with it or willing it to our heirs.

4. The right to decide how we work.

   What if we don't want three weeks off, but would like a little extra pay, instead? What if we want to buy health insurance with a huge deductible for two hundred bucks a year, instead of paying two hundred bucks per month for full insurance, because we have a lot saved up in the bank in case I get sick? Nobody should be able to bully us, with tax "incentives", regulations, or collective bargaining contracts, into taking a generic benefits package that has stuff we don't need, instead of the money or benefits I would prefer.

5. The right to work the way we choose.

   We have a right to decide what is "safe", for ourselves, instead of being locked into some instantly-outdated and rigid "standard". We likewise have the right to decide what way to do things, and again not be shackled by red tape and rules invented by some bureaucracy.

6. The right to become owners / management, and be proud of it.

   If we work hard, and make the sacrifice of saving our rightful income (product of labor), or work in our own time to create a great new idea, we have a right to invest it to create new wealth, becoming an owner, and not be punished for it, or looked down upon as something other than a worker.