Here's the situation:

1. X was hired by company C with a salary and employment contract

2. This all happens in San Francisco

3. Some time later there is a dispute

4. X hires lawyers to talk to C's lawyers and they're negotiating

5. C revokes X's access to the company code repository, to join zoom meetings, to even enter the office at all. So X can't officially see anyone at C for work purposes, attend any meeting, go to his desk, or enter the premises. Nor can he speak publicly about the situation at all on the advice of lawyers.

6. C does not cancel the employment contract and X is still being paid

7. "Is C working for X?" at that point in time?

   1. obviously, legally YES - C is their legal "employer"

   2. but also, they are clearly doing no work for X, so NO

   3. If X's friend asks X, are you working these days? X would say "well, I'm getting paid by C but I'm not doing any work" so socially NO

   4. X's religious leader asks him "Are you working hard wherever you have committed to do so?" X would answer NO

   5. X's conscience would ask him "Remember back when you were 15 and decide that no matter where you work or what you'll do, you'll work at it as hard and honestly as possible, and if you don't feel it's the right thing to do, you'll immediately leave and do what you know you should do?" and X will know that he isn't following that principle, and will not consider himself to be working in the right way.

   6. X's physical trainer asks him "I have a new full-time training program that was just invested which greatly improves health and life. But, it requires 8 hours a day. Hmm, if you were working, you wouldn't have the time or energy to commit to this program. But I wanted to mention it to you - can you join it?" X would say "Oh, actually I can join that, no problem." So the trainer logically thinks "Okay, so X isn't working right now."

Normal manifold legalism would probably say the answer is YES. But I'm more and more inclined to answer NO here. Legalism has gotten so far into our language, that people will say objectively crazy things like "X is working for C" when actually X may be lying in bed all day doing nothing, and not have contributed any work to C in months. That's insane. Shouldn't we just answer "No, of course not, X isn't doing any work so they're not working, duh"?

Sure, legalism does the best job at defining its terms, and is one of the most "judgeable" systems we have, where even though the answers may be screwy, at least they're somewhat consistent. But on the other hand, it just feels dehumanizing that otherwise smart, perceptive people would agree that "X is working for C" in the situation above. That's sick and it's as insane as if we time traveled to the middle ages and asked people to describe their world and how it worked, and then we just laughed at them for how dumb and deceived they were.

Note

Not including raw YES/NO options because single bits of data from people who haven't demonstrated anything about their model aren't that useful.