The limiting nutrient in any ecosystem determines it's health. It doesn't matter how much you've got of anything, the die-offs (and the blooms) are always determined by abundance or shortage of one factor. When food was expensive, it provided this function for the economy. People would do anything, endure any indignity, suffer any abuse to avoid hunger.

But we've solved that problem. Food is cheap, thanks to corporate farms, government subsidies and food stamps. In spite of the absence of a free market in food production and distribution, it's not only cheap and plentiful, it's profitable. So where is the new worker constraint going to come from? Housing? Energy? Health Care?

It doesn't matter how hard you work, how much money you've got, how much you save, or how financially responsible you are; as long as a routine sickness or injury can bankrupt you, you will endure whatever it takes to keep insurance, or failing that, a nest egg to replace it: anything, any indignity, any abuse. The situation becomes more desperate as insurance becomes scarcer and more expensive.

It would be myopic and paranoid to claim the economic centers and their masters have deliberately engineered things this way, but it would also be pollyannish to think they are not taking every advantage of it they can. Everyone wants to maximize their income, as well as every other aspect of job satisfaction. But most of us are also willing to take risks to better our situation, and if we see an opportunity we'll take the chance, even if it means occasionally taking a hit and having to start over. And we are also willing to give up a financial advantage if keeping it requires us to compromise our dignity and self-respect. People are more likely to do this if they know they have some kind of safety net, however incomplete it may be.

The more people are absolutely dependent on their employers for their livelihood, the more they will have to accept the decisions their employers impose on them. The other side of the coin, of course, is that sooner or later most of us are going to have to show up for work, there truly is no such thing as a free lunch. The real issue is where do we draw that line. Fortunately, the increases in productivity brought about by technology and organization suggest part of the fruits of that
productivity can be invested in human dignity and freedom.

As long as our society is psychologically and ideologically divided into employees and employers, or if you prefer, consumers and producers, the safety net will always represent an indispensable guarantor of freedom of choice for the former, and an expensive and frivolous indulgence for the latter. This is why every single effort to expand social welfare, beginning with the abolition of human servitude and child labor laws over a century ago to our current struggle over health insurance, has been so bitterly resisted. Think of the arguments that have been leveled against industrial safety and health, product standards, the 40 hour week, the 8 hour day, welfare legislation, unemployment assistance, in short, anything that might cut into the expanding profits brought about by increased worker productivity. Don't those arguments have a ring of similarity to them? We've been hearing them since the beginning of the industrial revolution.