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Current Events » in reply to re: Any proof at all would be welcome

re: Any proof at all would be welcome
Robert — (archived)

Even though you and I are contractors, it's clear that I do more tours of duty in the corporate world than you do. Although there's a difference in degree, the term "dispensable cogs" can be applied with equal legitimacy to the way that business looks at workers.

The term "human resources" doesn't bear looking at too closely, because it leads to examining how business views other resources. Do I really have to point out how dramatically that point has been illustrated in the last few years? Having stripmined and clearcut the American labor force, business is cheerfully moving along to extract fresh human resources from other parts of the planet.

So, as you say, looking at the outcome, we have the workers of the Communist regimes of the past, downtrodden brutes whose lives were not their own, but in the hands of a distant and uncaring government bureaucracy; and on the other hand we have a majority of the American workforce whose lives are not their own but who live at the mercy of distant and uncaring business bureaucrats. The American workforce is certainly much wealthier than the downtrodden Communist workers, but for all practical purposes, are we any freer?

This isn't the 1800s, Tom. It is no longer possible to be truly self-sufficient in the modern world. The necessary interdepencies of an advanced civilization result in people being beholden to one another. That's not a bad thing in a truly egalitarian society, because nobody would have undue power over you. But modern America is very much unegalitarian. The concentration of economic power in a very few hands means that, in your network of interdepencies, there are entities with the power to yank your chain very hard. There are entities with the power to give, or to take away, survival itself. And they're not Commie boogeymen.

I think free markets are a great thing. It's capitalism that's proved to be the serpent in paradise, because it's evolved from a necessary tool to fund business, into a tool of pure power. Concentration of wealth undermines individual freedom. That's the part we need to work on.

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