I'll start with a little back story. back when I was still a statist, Before I became fully anarchist voluntaryist and embraced the non-aggression principle, I actually developed an entire socio-economic political system including a new constitution with minimal external input. I even named it....Modified Socialism Under Earned Direct Democracy, or M.S.U.E.D.D. for short, and before all the ancom hating ppl shit their shorts trying to be the first or most aggressive to tell me how I'm an idiot or engage in any other ad hominem attacks, know that most of what I developed was strongly based on voluntary acceptance and participation, and non aggression. If there is interest in the fullness of what I came up with expressed, that will be for a future post. I only mention it because the economic portion of it is based in the concept of non exploitation between employer and employee. Let's start with the first key element of employing another. Demand for a service or product that you provide has become too great for you to meet on your own. At this point you have two options a. employ employ someone else to meet market demand , or b. Forgo any growth to your profits from providing said service or Goods beyond what you can accommodate yourself. If you choose option A you NEED that employee to meet demand. You may not need any specific individual and therefore the inclination is to pay as little as possible to get SOMEONE to do the work you need done, but the fact is you need an employee just as much or more than the employee needs you. Especially since anyone that can learn to do the work for you could also learn the same things for the purposes of competing with you and possibly cut into your market share. With that mutual need in mind is it really concionable for an employer to pay an employee less than a certain percentage of the value of the product of their labor, just because there are many people to choose from and make to compete for that job? In my mind the answer is a resounding no. I know ....you put the work in to grow to the point of needing an employee....ect ect ect, but the converse of that is you have already reaped the benefits of that work as much as you ever will on your own, so is it really unfair to keep your profit off of the product of their labor to a minimum? The idea that an employer should get the benefits of growth to their business and it's material assets and still take home as large a portion as possible of the employees production by paying the minimum the job market will bear is exploitative. Like stateism the ideas of exploiting others for personal gain has been ingrained into us, and like statism, that does not make it right. My model involves the employer and employee agreeing on a set percentage of the product of the employees labor going to each after the employees share of the overhead (not including further expansion costs unless the employee is also building a share of ownership in the growth). in cases of multiple employees the same could be applied based on the productivity of each employee. Furthermore, in cases where the employer builds business enough to go hands off their income after expenses should never excede 5x the pay of the lowest paid employee(base pay), and no more than 3x base pay for a manager. There is no moral foundation in the idea that one is entitled through hard work to make an excessive percentage of an employees production, when that employee must work just as hard or nearly so to earn a measly paycheck.
Now I know that with taxes, work comp, and unemployment obligations for employers in this statist hell this business model is not really achieveable... But if we can shake off the yolk of governmental exploitation can we consider minimizing our exploitation of one another just because we have that position of leverage as employers?