Michael: Most people think the biggest threat to their freedom is the government. What if the most invasive, unaccountable, and arbitrary dictator you'll ever face is actually... your boss? Kevin: Whoa, okay. That’s a spicy take for a Monday morning. My boss is mostly afraid of the new coffee machine, but I see your point. Michael: And what if I told you that the whole idea of the 'free market' was originally designed to prevent that kind of dictatorship, not cause it? Kevin: Okay, now you’ve really got my attention. That sounds completely backward. That’s the explosive argument at the heart of Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) by Elizabeth Anderson. Michael: Exactly. It’s a book that fundamentally challenges how we think about work, freedom, and power. Kevin: Elizabeth Anderson... she's a big name in philosophy, right? I feel like I've heard her name in academic circles. Michael: A huge name. She's a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, and this book actually grew out of her prestigious Tanner Lectures. She’s not just an economist; she’s tackling this as a fundamental question of freedom and democracy, which gives the whole argument this incredible weight. It’s been widely acclaimed for providing a new framework to understand work, though it's definitely stirred up some controversy. Kevin: I can imagine. So, where does she even start with a claim as wild as 'the free market was supposed to save us from our bosses'? That sounds like a history lesson I definitely skipped.

Michael: Well, she starts by taking us back in time, way back to 17th-century England. And you're right, it's a history that's been almost completely forgotten. She argues that before the Industrial Revolution, the ideal of a 'free market society' was a radical, progressive, even a left-wing cause. Kevin: Hold on. The original free-marketeers were... leftists? My entire political compass just shattered. What does that even mean? Michael: It means their goal was to create a 'free society of equals.' At the time, society was a web of hierarchies. You were subordinate to the king, to the church, to the local lord, to the master of your guild. Your life was governed by someone else's arbitrary will. Kevin: Right, a world of masters and servants. Michael: Precisely. And radical groups like the Levellers saw the 'free market' as a weapon to dismantle all of that. To them, a free market meant breaking up the big, oppressive monopolies—the state-granted guilds that decided who could practice a trade, the state church that dictated what you believed, the aristocratic landowners. Their dream was a world of small-scale, independent producers. Kevin: So, farmers with their own land, artisans with their own shops, traders who weren't controlled by some massive, exclusive company... Michael: Exactly. Think of Adam Smith’s famous example: the butcher, the brewer, and the baker. We get our dinner not from their benevolence, but from their self-interest. Anderson points out that the deeper meaning here is that you meet them as an equal. You aren't begging for a handout from a superior. You're making a deal, peer to peer. Your needs have standing. It’s a relationship of dignity. Kevin: I’ve never thought of that quote in terms of dignity before. I always just thought it meant people are selfish. But you’re saying it’s about mutual respect. Michael: That was the original vision. A society of widespread self-employment, where everyone could be their own boss. That was the definition of economic freedom. Thomas Paine and even Abraham Lincoln championed this ideal. Lincoln’s vision for America was a place where a young man could work for wages for a little while, save up, buy his own tools or land, and become independent. The wage-earning part was supposed to be a temporary step, not a lifelong condition. Kevin: A nation of entrepreneurs, essentially. That sounds… well, amazing. So what on earth went wrong? How did we get from that egalitarian dream to… well, the modern office park? Michael: In a word: factories. The Industrial Revolution. Anderson argues this was the cataclysmic event that shattered the dream. Suddenly, you needed massive amounts of capital to build a textile mill or a steel foundry. The lone artisan with his tools couldn't compete. Kevin: Economies of scale. Michael: Exactly. Adam Smith also gave us the pin factory example to show how the division of labor could make production hyper-efficient. One worker draws the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it… you know the drill. Ten workers together could make thousands of pins a day, where one working alone could barely make a few. Kevin: So it's more efficient, but you lose the independence. You're no longer a master pin-maker; you're just a pin-cutter. And you don't own the factory. Michael: And that’s the crucial shift. The gap between the employer who owned the factory and the employee who only owned their labor became a chasm. The path to self-employment that Lincoln envisioned started to disappear for most people. You were no longer a temporary wage-earner on your way to independence. You were just… a worker. A permanent subordinate. And the ideology of the free market, which was born to liberate people, was ironically co-opted to justify this new form of subordination. Kevin: Wow. So the very idea that was meant to dismantle hierarchy ended up creating a new, even more powerful one. Michael: A new, private one. And that brings us to the core of her argument, the part that is so provocative and, once you hear it, so hard to ignore.

Kevin: Okay, let's get to it. The 'communist dictatorship' line. I mean, that's a quote from the book, right? She actually says that? It sounds like a massive exaggeration. Michael: It's her exact phrasing, and it's intentionally provocative to wake us up to a reality we've stopped seeing. Her point is that most workplaces in the United States operate as private governments. And these governments are not democracies; they are dictatorships. Kevin: What does she mean by 'government' though? A government can tax you, imprison you, make laws you have to follow. My boss can't throw me in jail. Michael: Can't they? Think about it. A government is an authority that can issue orders and back them up with sanctions if you disobey. Your employer tells you when to show up, when you can eat, when you can go to the bathroom. They tell you what to wear, what to say to customers, and sometimes even what not to say on your own time. And if you disobey? You get fired. For most people, that means losing your livelihood, your health insurance, maybe even your home. That's a pretty severe sanction. Kevin: Okay, when you put it that way, 'sanction' feels like the right word. But it’s still my choice to be there. Michael: We'll get to that. But first, consider the scope of this power. Anderson packs the book with chilling, real-world examples. She talks about Walmart's policy of prohibiting employees from having casual conversations on duty, calling it "time theft." Kevin: Wait, you can get in trouble for just talking to a coworker? That's insane. That's not about productivity, that's about control. Michael: Then there's Apple, who for years made their retail workers wait in line, off the clock and unpaid, for up to half an hour every day to have their personal bags searched. Kevin: Unpaid? So Apple was literally stealing their employees' time while accusing them of 'time theft' for talking. The irony is staggering. Michael: But the most horrifying example she gives is from Tyson Foods, the poultry processor. Reports emerged that they were so restrictive about bathroom breaks to keep the production line moving that some workers were forced to urinate on themselves, while supervisors allegedly mocked them. Kevin: That's not just a bad job. That's a fundamental violation of human dignity. It's degrading. It’s monstrous. Michael: It is. And Anderson's point is that these aren't just a few 'bad apple' companies. This is what can happen when you have a system of absolute, unaccountable authority. Your boss can fire you for being too attractive. For not supporting the right political candidate. For something your kid did. In most of the US, under the 'employment-at-will' doctrine, they don't need a good reason, or any reason at all, as long as it's not illegal discrimination. Kevin: Okay, but hold on. This is the core of it for me, and for most people, I think. If it's that bad, you can just leave. You can quit. That's the freedom. It's not a real dictatorship if the door is wide open. Michael: I'm so glad you said that, because that is the single most common objection, and Anderson has a devastating response. She says that arguing a worker is free because they can quit is, and I quote, "like saying that Mussolini wasn’t a dictator, because Italians could emigrate." Kevin: Wow. Okay. That... lands hard. Michael: It reframes everything, doesn't it? The ability to exit a system of domination doesn't make the system any less a system of domination while you're in it. The costs of exit are incredibly high for most people—you lose your income, your security, your health insurance. You might have to uproot your family. It's not a simple, frictionless choice. You endure the daily indignities because the alternative is catastrophic. Kevin: So the 'freedom to quit' is really just a choice between subordination and destitution. That's not much of a choice. Michael: It's what she calls republican unfreedom. You might not be actively in chains, but you are living at the arbitrary mercy of another person's will. You have a master. And that is the reality for the majority of the workforce.

Michael: And that's her whole point. The 'freedom to exit' is an illusion of freedom that masks real subordination. So if quitting isn't the answer, what is? How do we actually make work free? Kevin: Right, because it feels like we've just diagnosed a terminal disease. Is there a cure, or do we just accept that work is a dictatorship? Michael: She argues there is a cure, but it requires us to fundamentally change how we think about the workplace constitution. She uses another powerful historical analogy: the law of coverture. Kevin: I'm not familiar with that one. Michael: For centuries, when a woman married, her legal identity was completely subsumed by her husband's. She couldn't own property, sign contracts, or keep her own wages. He had the right to control her, and divorce was nearly impossible. Now, would anyone today say, "Well, she was free because she consented to the marriage"? Kevin: Of course not. You'd say the institution of marriage itself was unjust and oppressive. The background rules were rigged. Michael: Exactly! And Anderson says the modern employment contract is the same. We "consent" to a job, but we are consenting to a set of background rules established by the state that grant nearly all power to the employer. Freedom of contract doesn't justify an inherently authoritarian relationship. Kevin: So we need to change the background rules. How? Michael: She outlines a few key strategies. First, enhance exit rights—for example, by banning non-compete agreements that trap workers. But more importantly, she talks about establishing the rule of law and substantive constitutional rights within the workplace. Think of it as a workers' bill of rights. Kevin: So a 'workers' bill of rights' would mean, for example, that your boss can't fire you for a political post you made on Facebook on a Saturday? Michael: Precisely. It would protect your off-duty speech and privacy. And it's shocking how little protection most workers have. She cites data that only about half of U.S. workers have even partial legal protection for their off-duty speech. A bill of rights would also guarantee basic dignities, like the right to use a bathroom, so you don't need a federal agency to step in like they did after the Nabisco case, where women were being suspended for needing to use the restroom. Kevin: It seems so basic, yet so revolutionary. But rights on paper are one thing. What about having actual power? Michael: That's her final and most important point: Voice. Workers need a real say in their governance. The most obvious way to achieve that is through revitalized labor unions and collective bargaining. Union membership has plummeted in the last 50 years, especially in the private sector. It's now in the single digits. Kevin: And with it, the collective 'voice' of the worker has gone silent. Michael: It's been silenced. And Anderson argues we need to restore it. Whether it's through unions, works councils like they have in Germany, or other models of workplace democracy, the goal is the same: to make workplace government a public thing, accountable to those it governs. To turn these private dictatorships into something more like workplace democracies.

Kevin: Wow. So this whole time we've been having this massive public debate about the government taking our freedom, we've been completely ignoring these private dictatorships we voluntarily walk into every single day. Michael: Exactly. Anderson's ultimate point is that we have a massive ideological blind spot. We've been trained to see the state as the only potential threat to liberty. We have what she calls a kind of political "hemiagnosia"—like the neurological condition where you can't perceive one side of your body. We can't perceive private, corporate power as a form of government. Kevin: But it is. It governs our lives in incredibly detailed ways. Michael: It governs our lives more intimately than the state ever could. She says we're told the choice is between free markets and state control, but most of us live under a third thing entirely: private government. And once you see it, once you have the language for it, you can't unsee it. You start seeing it everywhere. Kevin: It makes you wonder, what little bits of your freedom have you unknowingly signed away at your own job? What arbitrary rules do you follow without even thinking about it? Michael: It's a powerful question. And it's one we should all be asking. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What's the most surprising or arbitrary rule you've ever had to follow at work? Find us on our socials and share your story. It's time we started talking about it. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.