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Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives

Elizabeth S. Anderson

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Jun 25, 2025 Doug Poore rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

a fascinating subject to me, the abusive power structures of employment. i learned that adam smith's work was optimistic speculation at the start of the industrial revolution & only considered small business (10 employees +/-). the next person to seriously tackle the subject, actually during the realities of the industrial revolution, was karl marx (conditions which charles dickens immortalized). things had changed. no egalitarian market driven utopia.
the time we spend at jobs is time spent und ...more

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May 01, 2019 Jacob rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, digital, economics, philosophy, history, academia, labor

This is an important topic, although I think the fact that she threw out full workplace democracy as a viable solution is troublesome. My biggest issue with the book was readability. This is clearly aimed at (it even says in the book that she thinks most of her audience is probably) graduate students and professors, so it's a tough read for dolts like me. And honestly, dolts like me are probably the ones who would most benefit from it, so I think it's kind of a shame that she didn't dumb it down ...more

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