That employment is exploitation is evidenced by profits. Employment is a commodity. Any business expects to get more value out of a commodity. Not to break even.

> If employment is violence, we should end it. But then almost everybody would die.

Everyone would die? Are you assuming that employment gets eliminated and nothing is replaced by it?

Anyone who is against the employment relation wants something different. Not something farcical like voluntary self-elimination.

Can you accept that two parties can make an exchange that leaves them both better off? If you can’t accept that, there’s no real point in any further discussion.

> Can you accept that two parties can make an exchange that leaves them both better off?

Yes.

> If you can’t accept that, there’s no real point in any further discussion.

There’s a lot of assumptions packed in to this statement.

But you can be the arbiter of the Overton Window. I know that I am swearing in church.

Of course! I don’t think I said it couldn’t be mutual.

It is correct that the business expects that your time and energy is worth more to them than it is to you. Profit.

But then literally every trade between two people—trading four sheep for one cow, say—is exploitation in both directions. I expect to benefit more from the product I receive than I can profit from what I give away. I have plenty of milk but need some wool for clothes. But to improve my own situation is somehow to abuse the other person!?

You’ve seemingly declared every form of economic transaction immoral.

> But then literally every trade between two people—trading four sheep for one cow, say—is exploitation in both directions.

No. That could be a win-win. One might be a sheep farmer, the other a cattle/cow farmer. They both gain from exchanging these livestocks.

For an employee? See the value produced versus the wages earned. There’s the exploitation.

The nice thing about one single universal value—money—is that it makes things like this obvious. Just look at the numbers. It’s just one, single currency. Much easier than comparing livestock...

Part of the profits come from employment of capital. Almost no company relies solely on labor, they typically rely on both labor and capital (machines, buildings etc.). Owner of capital wants compensation for their investments, and he gets it via profits. Meanwhile, workers want compensation for their work, and they get it via wages. The exact split between compensation for capital and for work is a subject of negotiation (and often laws).

The capitalist has more assets and commodities than just the labor commodities? So what?

> If employment is violence, we should end it. But then almost everybody would die.

You need to try out for the jumping to conclusions olympics team, that was an impressive leap there!

Jokes aside, we can absolutely reject the basis of our current economic system on the basis that it is cruel and violent and replace it with something better, and it would be far from the first time we did that. By your logic, the end of feudalism or the abolishment of slavery should have killed entire countries...

And I doubt you are about to explain to us that slavery is not violence (that's one of those ultra-libertarian thoughts of yours you probably shouldn't randomly blurt out).

I’m not saying that violence is bad. Farming is violence. Mining is violence. It’s a compromise we make. But ending a session of it shouldn’t be traumatic.

And yes, in many cases it’s a win/win. Without farming, many animals would have been hunted to extinction. Instead, they are amongst the most numerous on the planet, but that isn’t much consolation for the march to the slaughterhouse.

Sacrifices are made. Compromises are accepted. Often, it’s good. Often it’s exploitation. Often it is perhaps worse than slavery, and often it is a path to relative wealth.

It shouldn’t be part of one’s identity or sense of worth, to be a really exploitable person, even if it’s to your own advantage at times.

> Farming is violence. Mining is violence.

That's only true if you use a definition of "violence" which is so far outside the accepted definition as to make conversation impossible. Farming and mining are in no way violence unless you resort to idiosyncratic definitions.

I guess if you limit “violence” to violence against humans only? I’ve always thought that violence was applicable to animals and plants as well, so I guess we differ there.

Intentional harm that causes death is firmly in the violence category, imho.

the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy is pretty much the accepted definition, afaik

I’m not thinking of violence as some kind of universal bad thing though, it’s part of the natural world.

You are using a word in a way it is seldom used.

You could define your take up front.

Or better yet, figure out the words other people will be able to recognize and understand you, without unnecessary linguistic gymnastics.

Huh. I don’t think in my experience that the term violence is seldom applied to things outside of humans, and IME the terms economic violence and social violence, emotional violence, and many others are common parlance. Perhaps we come from different cultures. At any rate, given the definition I find in several dictionaries I think my point stands. I will concede that coercion, exploitation, or extortion might be better descriptors.

The term violence, when applied in any context, is applied in context. With a scope and meaning determined as much by tacitly accepted scope as it is by lexicon.

So, to all of your questions— “no”. You are wrong, on all counts, because you are using language itself to set a scene where it has no right, attempting to have a meaning context-free applied to one contextual—- but only when it suits you. That isn’t conversation or discussion— it’s performative, and so you cannot be correct where there is no correctness to be had, only performance.

I agree with you on context, but given my original context :

“Employment is almost always exploitation on one side or the other, with the best case being mutual exploitation.

Employment inherently involves paying less for your work than it is worth. In an ideal situation, in exchange you get access to tools at a cost less than they cost to access on your own.

It’s inherently violent on some level. Ending violence shouldn’t be traumatic.”

I invoke violence in the context of exploitation or coercion. It seems clear to me that “inherently violent on some level” clearly invokes an unconventional interpretation of “violence” implicitly aligned with the previous context.

I have to conclude that a misconception of what was meant by “violence” here is either pedantism, low reading comprehension, or intellectual belligerence for the sake of grandstanding on a point. I really am having a great deal of difficulty substantiating a more charitable interpretation.

Perhaps you are accidentally missing the OP in this case and are missing the entire contextual picture?

You are right, some people are stretching that word a lot.

I don’t think that’s changed how most people interpret the word. More of a weakening of its meaning often with an activist or persuasive bent.

Toxic is another word similarly getting stretched and watered down by some.

> Farming is violence.

This would definitely fall into the stretched / watered down pattern.

I don’t think the other strong words you are using are any different in this context.

I am not saying you don’t have a point, but over dramatizing can make it hard to relate to, when people are being expected to accept a level of verbal shrillness that isn’t necessary to make a point.

Humanity is certainly damaging a lot of ecosystems, not by any single farmer, but in aggregate. Change is normal, but we are driving it faster than nature can keep up with. It is a problem.

But outside of poetic or proselytizing use, violence usually means inflicting intentional harm, not a problem of conflict between reasonable local tradeoffs (creating food being a positive use of land) vs. the global impact that needs to be balanced too.

Losing your house because you couldn't pay the mortgage is violent, or at least backed by the threat of violence: what happens if you refuse to leave?

In a looser sense, so are having your utilities cut off, losing your children because you can no longer afford to care for them, skipping meals, driving an unregistered car that will get you into an altercation with the police, and everything else that comes as a result of poverty and unemployment.

I'm a little baffled by what you believe the consequences of a layoff are.