Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Trained Slaves

"Free enterprise" sounds fresh, clean & good -- but too easily and too often, freedom is subverted corruptly for private profit.

This is not to say private profit is bad. Corrupt business practices are bad.

The good worker should be allowed to go into business independently.

But the 'haves' protect their domains. Bosses keep their workers in check. Too many free citizens are shunted to conditions of bare survival, subordinate lives that grow more rigid. Our masters have leverage and good reason to lean on the banks, to press them to deny loans, to keep finance away from workers with aspirations. Violence & arson are also used as weapons to cripple new ventures.




We might say workers need to stand up for themselves. If employers take advantage, that's part of capitalism. Not all laborers want to be business owners. What one person sees as a good secure job, another condemns as exploitation.

Workers who care for their work and bring positive passion to their jobs find themselves ensnared. Dispassionate work is more survivable, though it threatens the entire edifice. Work requires more than trading time for money. Thus is the system broken. Workers eventually get staked in the heart at their workplace; they're fully disposable. Making workers true stakeholders involves profit sharing, or in the case of public sector jobs, community esteem for social service.

But the real tragedy is in our school systems. We force the children to attend, and train them to be obedient. Slavish conformity is too often demanded by our school systems. Clever, eager, creative children are shaped to become trained slaves & dancing monkeys. A conniving 1% exploits the community, and tries to hobble future generations to continue to serve them.