April 3, 2007 - “Economics for Real People” vs. Vulgar Libertarian Bullshit from Corporate Press Releases

[And with all due respect to Gene Calahan who wrote a book by the same name. This article is about bad times for employees of Circuit City.]

“Like many companies,” says this revealing article in Businessweek, “Circuit City has a set of company values, which it conveniently lists on its website. First among them: 'Our associates are our greatest assets.' Last week some 3,400 of them learned what that means. Their jobs were eliminated solely because the company decided they were getting paid too much. Clearly, the company doesn't value them as 'great assets.' If it did, it would realize that firing employees because they've performed well enough to earn raises demoralizes everyone else. What kind of inducement is it for employees to work hard and excel if their reward might be a pink slip? And why would people want to shop at a store where the low premium on service is so loudly trumpeted?”

Oh the joys of being a wage slave! Those folks did everything the company asked them to do, and did it well; and their reward is to be kicked to the curb. But I hear some people actally like being wage slaves AKA corporate employees, because working for yourself is such a risky, tiresome and heavy responsibility. Whatever. Some people like S&M too.

As for me, I'll take the risk of fending for myself and come what may, rather than put my future in the hands of the corporate types and politicians who dominate American style state capitalism.

03.01.07 Some Stuff I Found After the Fact

Doesn't that always happen?

When a Stranger Calls
“I'm not comfortable with clients calling me at home. If a situation is urgent and I need to speak with a client, I'd rather call the client myself than have my home phone number distributed to people I don't have personal relationships with." This is what Businessweek’s advice columnist said to tell your boss when she gives your home phone or personal cell number to contractors, vendors, clients, and whoever-the-hell-else without asking you first. Now what pray is your rejoinder if the boss then says: “Take the *&^%* calls bitch, or you’re fired!”?

The Gospel of the Wage Slave
“First, starting way back in the 1950s, you had to be ‘positive’ to get ahead in business, i.e., ready to see the glass half full even when it was lying shattered on the floor. Then, somewhere in the first few years of the 21st century, the bar was raised to ‘passionate.’ It wasn’t good enough to feel ‘positive’ about spending your day doing cold calls to potential customers in Dayton, you be had to be ‘passionate’ about it. And now, apparently, even that isn’t good enough – you have to develop a YES! Attitude, as in throwing back your head, balling up your fists, and screaming YEESSS!!! The purveyor of this new over-the-top, fan-like, enthusiasm is Jeffrey Gitomer, in his brand new Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. What attracted me to the display in the bookstore was the odd packaging: a hardcover, but smaller than the average paperback, with a bright red ribbon for a page-marker (a biblical touch, someone in the publishing industry explained to me.) “

02.27.07 - Vulgar Libertarianism, Chattel Slavery, and Wage Slavery Cont’d

Actually Z., the preceding essay wasn’t a response to John DeLaubenfel’s column at Strike the Root. I posted that essay so as to have an easy and simple way to get my thoughts out onto the web so that I can refer to vulgar libertarian issues with a link, when needed, and so that I don’t have to continually re-Google and then compose and type unique answers each time I get asked questions about it. However, I’ll still take the compliment; so thanks!

John feels, (if I understand him correctly), that because in America there exists a somewhat freer, (for now) market for labor, and that with the 13^th Amendment added to the USC in 1865, making involuntary servitude illegal, that (ta-dah!) my concept of “wage slavery” (and some other people’s as well) must therefore be wholly impossible. Which, by the limited reasoning he uses, seems to be true; and which to my mind is a fine example of VLA.

Here is brief and non-technical comparison of “chattel slavery” versus what it means to be a “wage slave”, that I shamelessly cribbed from a Yahoo service meant to help kids with their homework. I am not an econo-Geek, and so I’ll leave the highly technical economic jargon to the websites and writers who are. But I do know and feel oppression when I see it, and have no compunctions about saying so. Or to admitting when I think someone has proved me wrong by more convincing evidence or a better argument. So with that preamble, let me begin.

“Chattel slavery is [like] owning a person like he/she was an animal.

Wage slavery is having someone in debt to you and [who is then] forced to work it off. The person working it off only falls deeper in debt, and is never able to pay off the original debt.

In chattel slavery the owner is able to kill, rape, and torture their property. Although killing was sometimes seen as the most extreme, and rarely done. The slave was nothing more then property.

Wage slavery existed in different parts of the country during different periods in history. The sharecropper would buy his supplies from the landlord at high prices. The sharecropper would then give half of his crop to the landlord for just using his land. The rest he could sell for a profit. The profit was never able to pay off the landlord though. Thus the landlord got money for half the share of the crop, plus the money for selling supplies at higher prices. This would in turn keep the sharecropper working the land in order to pay a debt off that could never be paid off.

Another version of this works like this. A coal miner lives on company property. The only store within miles is the company store. The company store sells everything at high prices. The miner goes in debt from the company store every month. Thus is forced to work every month to pay a debt that keeps on increasing by the month.

The only similarity is that the landlord/slave owner gets work done for a minimal cost while keeping the slave/worker from being able to leave.”

Chattel slavery can only be held in place by brute force, whether by a state or a private (that is, a non-state entity) oppressor. It just won’t work any other way. So, with that understood, let’s move on to the form with which chattel slavery was contrasted with.

People in modern America society get bogged down doing jobs that they don’t really like or want to do, but really have no choice but to do them. They get into debt up to their eyeballs in order to buy crap that they only think they need or want. Needs and wants, which if they examined them just a little more closely, they’d see are more trouble than they’re worth; and leading to a craving for possessions which end up owning them. They are on a self-imposed life style which to me constitutes a kind of slavery over the free human spirit. The selling of the most precious commodity (if one care’s to think of the irreplaceable and very limited seconds, minutes and hours of one’s lifespan as a commodity), all in order to pay off VISA, make their payments on their SUV or for other such like, and all of which strikes me as being a self-imposed form of spiritual slavery levied upon our real life circumstances, in real time. Time being one thing that can never be replaced or regained, at whatever price. I wonder how much people should care what their credit report says about them after they’re dead?

Now, some people have jobs that they like and pay them well enough; and so they wholly discount the concept of slavery to debt, to greed, to unlimited desire for things and such like, as impossible. I disagree.

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