If companies are people, employment is a relationship, and an intensely toxic and abusive one at that.
@mawr Employment is def. a relationship.
I don't believe it has to be unhealthy, toxic or abusive: at the core you are just trading skill/time/energy for money.
However, most capitalism-driven companies have massive power imbalances between the corporate apparatus and employees, and only seek to “maximise sharholder value”... in the short term. :V
@kellerfuchs I have a hard time seeing any relationship as healthy and non-abusive when it's mandatory. Your only alternate option is to become homeless and starve to death.
You also generally don't really get to chose where you work. They chose you, and you hope they won't make you suffer too much.
@mawr @kellerfuchs Employment will only be a healthy relationship when people have the freedom to stay single without the fear of dying.
@kellerfuchs @literorrery When the only system we've ever lived under has been capitalism, it's hard to even recognize its fundamental flaws as more than the acceptable status quo.
Stockholm syndrome is as close an description as I can imagine to describe this-- though it implies that things were not always this way. Battered person syndrome might be a bit more apt. We're conditioned to expect and accept abuse from employers 'cause it beats starvation and homelessness.
@literorrery @mawr Right, not-US perspective here (also, possibly a bit of Stockholm's syndrome?).
I definitely agree that healthy employment mostly cannot exist when it predicate your access to basic necessities.