A Possible Solution to Wage Slavery

today i stumbled across a website from another old fart who can't be pigeon-holed; his name is charles hughes smith (https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-50-trillion-plundered-from-workers.html). this particular post of his interested me, because i have thought about this particular thing for some time now, but didn't know how to approach it. it turned out that writing a letter to him helped my put my own thoughts in order, and this posting is the result.

his view is interesting, and is perhaps somewhat leftist, but he seems willing to discuss things, so I found his contact and sent him this email (please excuse the use of capital letters; i often use proper capitalization when writing to people so as not to put them off. stackoverflow once gave me a ration of s**t for not doing so, so i removed all my posts and deleted my account):

Mr. Hughes:

I see from your blog and website that U claim to be non-partisan. I
just discovered U today, so I haven't read any of your books yet, nor
have I been able to read all your writings, so I'll just take your word
for it.

I use the term "wage slavery" in the subject line ironically, because I
don't think that one needs to work for somebody else to be successful.
Instead, I believe that one should find something that one wants to do,
then find a way to get paid for it by customers. Since that only works
out rarely, the second-best approach is to find something that one can
tolerate doing, then find a way to get paid for that by customers. I
even encouraged my children to take that approach, but with little
success; they took the same route I did, which was to take a job
working for somebody else. It was not until I got laid off by a
company that I knew was stupidly managed that I tried my hand at my own
business, but because I hadn't worked on my own before, I tripped over
all the usual things and went belly up. Fortunately, that was not the
end, but in the meantime, I suck the socialist teat and take Social
Security (FDR's Ponzi scheme to buy votes for the nazicrat party). The
money I get today is taken from today's workers, who will never see
that money; if they are lucky, they will get money from future workers,
but I suspect that the national government will be much different then,
and hold out little hope for them.

But I digress; I have asuggestion that U might want to consider. I
don't expect U to answer me, or to support the idea, or even to read
this far. Instead, I expect that U will be offended by the rant above
and delete the email. If so, so be it. I apologize for the rant, but
I am tired of being called a racist, a white supremacist, and a fascist
by people who use Brownshirt tactics and silence speech they don't
like. My suggestion comes about after a couple of decades of thinking
about things, and after decades before that working for other people,
most of whom made my life miserable (I a slow study, obviously).

First of all, nobody cares about a business like an owner. If U have
skin in the game, U give a s**t; if U're an employee, U will get paid
unless your employer goes belly up, and even then, U might be able to
get some recompense if U can find a good bottom-feeder (lawyer). The
national government enforces rules on employers that give the employee
a lot more control than the eighteenth-century "contract employment,"
in which the individual worker had a "contract" with the employer, who
in reality had all the power in the relationship. Still, as I and lots
of other working folks can tell U, having the national government
enforce a few rules rarely evens the relationship. In my case, before
I was laid off, I had taken the job in 1997 at age 45, but began
looking for another job by 2000, because the people running the company
didn't know how to run a business. I was *very* well paid, but got no
offers at any salary, because my skills were too specialized; I was
trapped, because if I left at an entry-level engineer's salary, I would
not be able to pay my mortgage or put enough food on the table.
Regardless of what they said, potential employers all considered me too
old to know how to write code. No matter the cause, I am certain
that many older workers fall into this sort of trap.

I have worked for about fourteen different employers in my career. My
political views started out liberal in the early 1970s (I have always
been a registered nazicrat), but reality re-educated me, and I became a
conservative over ten or so years. Nevertheless, I never thought about
"workers," the "proletariat," or the "bourgeoisie," because none of
that had anything to do with me. Every time I took a job, I had a
positive attitude; when I saw trash on the floor or in the parking lot,
I would grumble about lazy bums and pick it up myself. After some time
on the job, my grating personality would lead me to unhappiness, and I
would quit caring and find another job. In the 1980s, I got a
subscription to Forbes Magazine for cheap, and expected that I would
never read it, because it would be all about money and investing. I
liked (and still like) money as a tool, but investing had never
interested me. To my surprise, Forbes articles were about the *people*
who ran businesses, and I began to grasp that people who start
businesses are folks who see an opportunity to make money while
creating something, or performing a service, that other people saw as
worth paying money to get. I finally understood that the *owners* of a
business were the only people who *HAD* to care about the business, or
it would fail; nobody else would *ever* care.

Finally, when I owned my own business (in 2017), I learned that
although I liked helping my customers, there were a lot of
responsibilities that I had, and if I did not discharge my duties,
the responsibilities would not be fulfilled, and the business would have to
spend money because of that failure. In the end, I ran out of money
and had to fold. It was a visceral lesson: Take care of business,
not matter what the task is, or there will be no business. The reason
an owner scrapes bubblegum off the sidewalk in front of his store is
that nobody else will do that, and maybe customers will be more
receptive to his offers if they aren't grumbling about a**holes who
spit their gum out onto the sidewalk.

While my business was operating, I collected the national Ponzi scheme
checks, but I also worked part-time at Home Depot (which let me choose
my own schedule; the only proviso was that I had to work one weekend
day per week). The pay was only $12.00 per hour, but it was the most
satisfying job that I have *EVER* had. I worked in the electrical
department, and I got to help people solve their electrical problems.
It turns out that helping people is the *BEST* job that there is, and
in a total surprise to me, the management of the company did a lot to
enable me to help customers. I only left because of health problems
(common to old farts like me, I'm afraid). It occurred to me that if
U pay people to be on premises at certain times, they will eventually
settle in and be present, but put forth a minimum effort in other
responsibilities. This is only human; work is hard, and everybody
wants a big paycheck for doing nothing. What needs to be done is to
make employees be as entrepreneurial as owners; they need to care,
not just be present and make minimum efforts.

Some socialists believe that by having The State own all the means of
production and service (communism), everybody can share in everybody
else's success. The problem with this approach is the tragedy of the
commons: If nobody owns the farm, then nobody cares about the farm,
and not much gets done. Even the Pilgrims had to learn this lesson the
hard way, and many starved to death while learning the lesson. Other
socialists believe that the stupid stinking masses can be allowed to
create, own, run, and profit from businesses, but only so long as The
Party is strictly obeyed (fascist Italy, nazi Germany, fascist PRC).
BTW, the PRC is fascist, because no communist would allow the means of
production to be owned by anybody but The State.

I believe that what needs to be done is to make employees owners.
Capital is used to fund the construction and operation of businesses,
but the quality of the capital varies with the type. It could be cash,
but not all currencies are equal, or have the same liquidity; it could
be letters of credit, which depend very much on the issuer of the
letter of credit, and less so on the opinions of others; it could be
funds of stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments, which also
vary in quality. The bottom line is that money quality *always*
varies. As it happens, no business can run without capital, but no
business can run without labor, either. A very small business like
mine can succeed by just the labor of the owner, but most businesses
that are successful begin to grow, and thus need more labor than one
person can contribute. Thus, labor is as important to business as
capital, but it is not treated the same. This needs to change.

I am not urging that all employees be converted to owners; I know lots
of people who *want* to be employees, not owners, because they don't
want the hassle. They are willing to put up with crappy supervision,
poor working conditions, and long hours, so long as the national
government enforces certain work rules. It used to be that unions used
to enforce a lot of those rules, but unions don't have the same goals
as the companies which employ their workers, so the cross-purposes
often priced the employers out of the market (I'm looking at U, UAW and
Detroit). Nobody should be forced to be an owner. As a potential
employer (even though I don't currently have a business), I even
consider "employing" somebody as an extended job interview. A business
could hire somebody for a year, or a month, or six months, or whatever
*contracted* period, after which the employment would end, and the
employee would be voted in as an owner by other owners, whether they
had purchased their ownership via labor or capital, with the owners who
had worked most closely with the potential owner bearing the most
weight, and the capital the least, unless it was a special project or something.

The "gotcha" with ownership is that, although an owner cannot be fired
or laid off, the money earned by the owner (whether purchased with
capital or labor) - the dividends paid per share of stock - can go up,
but they can also go down. An employee of such a company would have a
contract for an amount paid per hour, or for the entire employment
period, and by contract, that amount could not change - pretty much
like most employees now, except that there is not really a contractual
obligation on the part of the owners. Thus, employees transitioning to
ownership would have to accept that their "pay" would depend on how
well the company did, not on the national government enforcing
employment rules. I don't think that most current employees would be
willing to accept that.

There would have to be a lot more thought put into this, of course; for
instance, what do U do with an owner who aggravates all the other
owners (and/or employees) with whom he comes into contact? An owner
who purchases ownership with capital doesn't face this situation, but
perhaps his participation could also include his labor. Thus, the
capital owner could apply to the company to purchase further ownership
by using his labor to help out. If he is an a**hole, the laborers with
whom he worked can vote him out. The same should be allowed for an
owner who purchased his ownership with labor. From where would the
money for "dividends" come? I would suggest that all the money from
capital investment be combined with the budget for labor, and the pool
divided between all owners on a per-share basis. If an owner is forced
out as a laborer, his ownership would not end; the shares his capital
and/or labor had purchased would still be his, but going forward, only
his voice at annual stockholder meetings would count. Of course, *all*
owners would be able to vote on accepting the labor or capital of any
potential owner, but those who were not actively laboring would be
weighted less, because the quality of labor can only be judged by those
with whom the new laborer works, while the intentions of potential
capital investors can be equally scrutinized by all current owners.
Needless to say, of course, the national government would probably have
to change its rules, although I guess that such a business could be
organized as a partnership, although I like that idea less.

I'm sorry if this bores or offends U; it's just that I have never seen
anybody propose anything like this, and U seem to care about labor.
Instead, I see power-hungry political types trying to dictate how the
national government will force everybody to participate in the economy,
with jail time if U refuse to participate, or even if U complain. Both
the nazicrats and the Stupid Party are more interested in power than in
freedom, and I don't hold out much hope for my children and
grandchildren, who will most likely grow up in the dictatorship of the
USSA. I am closer to the day of my death than to the day of my birth,
so this probably isn't going to affect me any more than getting a
bullet put into the back of my head because I have a big mouth, but I
care about the freedom of my fellow citizens, and I hope that a
solution something like this will help free them from government
supervision or slavery to the elites. If U have read this far, thank U!

of course, this is far too long a message, so he probably won't even read it, even though he says that he reads most of his email, but cannot respond to everybody (a very reasonable attitude, if U ask me). even so, i'm glad i wrote it, because it gave me an opportunity to put my thoughts on my blog. read and enjoy, and hate me if U must.