ADDENDUM: I wrote the following thoughts on December 17, 2013. I'm in no mood to make these drafts into coherent posts. These were just some free-form thoughts that I had intended to go back to no more than a few days later but never got back to. The momentum is gone, not only from this post but perhaps this blog itself. I don't know how it would've turned out otherwise, but here's a sample of how I think...
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The wall separating our working lives from our private lives has become anywhere from translucent to transparent thanks to the internet. I find it strange that there has been no mass protest in this country to oppose the thinning of this separation. It has allowed employers to keep an unreasonable amount of tabs on their employees through direct spying and snitching.
We are told to live in a state of constant fear as a result. Do not post what you would not want your boss to find out they say. People, especially teachers, have been fired for behavior done prior to their professional lives and during their professional lives even though it was all engaged in during their free time.
The concept of free time seems to be fast becoming a "thing of the past" and this terrifies me. Imagine if the wall separating church and state were again made transparent and you had to join the state religion. To stand up for your beliefs would cost you your livelihood (at best) or even your life (at worst). Your only alternative choice is to defy yourself and what you feel is right. No one would stand for that anymore knowing their beliefs could one day become the "wrong" beliefs. It's why the government in the Constitution is forbidden from sponsoring a state church...but we allow employers to effectively sponsor employer-based churches (example related to ACA-Obamacare) whereby the employer's beliefs are imposed upon their (usually female) employees. This is decried, but the loss of Freedom of Speech ("controversial" opinion posts) and Right to Peaceably Assemble (photos from a bachelorette party let's say) is not.
We are told we are now always on the clock. Everything we say represents our company. No longer are we free citizens. Accepting a paycheck is tantamount to checking your U.S. citizen rights at the door. Accepting a paycheck also means being on the clock for 24 hours while only getting paid for 8.
Related things: why is e-mail considered a separate thing from mail? Does no one who is not a legislator or HR director think that e-mail is not deserving of the same privacy protection as paper envelopes? The same applies to calls made by cellphone versus those made by landline. Does anyone besides those two groups actually feel cellphone calls are okay to tap without a warrant. GPS also applies, as does EZ-Pass. Why have we tolerated the thinning of these walls?
Rage began from #12 unpodcast "Your Tweets Are Not Your Own"
Controversial speech and ideas are the ones which need the most protection but they are the first to get you fired...
Link back to prior posts about teachers/students getting in trouble and NRA-type group for 1st Amendment.
It opens up the possibility of a world whereby employees must belong to the same political party as their boss and vote their boss's way too. Employees should have the same religion and tastes as their employer. I'm curious, if a man working for Coca-Cola was spotted drinking a Pepsi at a party, is that grounds for his termination...or even being associated with Pepsi (assuming he's not drinking any)? An employee who is on the clock is a worker, but off the clock is a potential customer. An employer should want his employees to also be customers, but should that not be earned rather than assumed? Is an employee allowed to consume the products and services of a rival? Why is employee behavior both on and off the clock subject to the morality of his employer, or more generally (when snitching is involved) why is employee behavior subject to the capricious whims of the most conservative person in the room? Why are the most conservative people (or financially well off) the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong?
Yet strangely, none of this has provoked rioting. The solution seems to be unionization and guilds (for professionals). Protection via a union and tenure may be the only way to protect the rights of U.S. citizens from being taken away by their unelected, non-governmental bosses. Because after all, one day your boss might be liberal and accepting and your next boss could be a stick-in-the-mud conservative. Is that any different than having a laissez-faire king who is tolerant of any religious expression being replaced upon his death by a new king demanding the citizenry now all be say Protestant? Is it fair? I don't know. But so long as earning money to make a living is not optional I don't see how threatening a person's livelihood for expressing their 1st Amendment rights (or any Constitutional rights) is any more fair or in any way American. Job retention should be determined solely by competence.
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