Oink, oink!

Aug 17, 2008 22:17


It's official: I'm an evil capitalist pig, oppressing a poor wage slave in a third world country, and dispossessing him from the productive surplus of his work for my own selfish profit!

Sure, I didn't make (and adamantly oppose) the statutes that prevent him from moving to a first-world country, where he could sell his valuable services for more than I can afford. Sure, I have to pay him almost three times what he was previously making in my bid to convince him to serve my multi-national company. Sure, he'll be working on a much more interesting project than he was at his previous job, under much better work conditions. Sure, I'm taking all the risks: in the faint hope of some uncertain future profit, I'm committing to months or years of bleeding money regularly and foregoing any short-term plan of parenthood, while my employee will be spending the same months and years in the certainty and comfort of a regular salary with which to enjoy family life. But you see, I'm the employer, a tyrant giving orders, so of course I'm evil, whether I'm an incompetent bungler, or much worse, a taker of profits.

At least, thus goes the formal discourse of the many factions of socialists. For the real reason why I'm evil in their eyes is not that I'm an employer. Indeed, if I were a goon of the State or of any other emanation of the Collective, embodying The People's Romance (gracias, PLIMO), then my employership would be pardoned, as well as any wealth I generate for myself. Not only would I not be the godawfullest monopolest exploitest of an employest, instead I would be the incarnation of everything that's Good about Society, leading All Of Us towards our Shared Destiny; my arbitrary orders would not be unbearable tyranny, they would be the Sovereign Will of The People, to be enforced with arbitrary ruthlessness upon any reluctant antisocial miscreant. But I'm a individual who dares to follow his own purposes and who refuses to submit to my Social Duties as proclaimed by the anointed representatives of the Common Good. And that is my mortal sin. Forget employership. The reason I'm irredeemably evil is thus: I'm selfish.

As for my venture, it doesn't have a name yet, but if you know me, you already know what it is all about. News at 11.

entrepreneurship, cognitive dissonance, a posteriori, pig, wages, socialism, capitalism, libertarian, tunes, selfishness, self-righteous, en

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