Some Videos of Note
Part I of The history of Argentina's economic collapse and what may come.
The late Jacques Ellul authored over 50 books, some of which famously explored the limits of technology and the dangers it poses to modern society.
The Illiberal Legacy of Liberalism
Phillip Blond at Villanova University: Well worth the 90 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/villanovauniversity#p/a/u/1/S2LWc5DIQrc
Mr. Blond notes that we are witnessing the simultaneous collapse of the Left and Right because, at base, they are the same thing. One proposes a libertarianism of sexual morality: all "liberty" is about choice, and all choices are equal. Those who try to impose any restrictions interfere with liberty.
The other proposes an economic libertarianism, where isolated individuals make autonomous choices guided by the invisible hand. Behind both of these is a bankrupt account of liberty. We end with a society founded on "rights," rather than goods. In our radical individualism, we abandon all shared notions of good. Each person's good is incommunicable, therefore there can be no community of goods, only radically isolated individuals bound together only by thin, contractual relations, and the state can have no other legitimate function than to enforce contracts. Hence, it is small wonder that we have abandoned the old and don't care for the young.
Liberalism (of the Left or Right) cannot deliver what it promises: Liberty. Instead, the polity of self-interested individuals becomes the war of all against all as each isolated individual seeks to maximize his private good at the expense of all others. And the state, instead of shrinking to the mere guarantor of contracts, becomes the only force capable of policing the incessant warfare, becomes the supreme arbiter if all relations. Indeed, since the notion of objective good is discarded, the good itself becomes an arbitrary quantity, and each seeks as much of this as he/she can get. The state becomes the means to achieve the "greatest good for the greatest number," but has itself no mechanism to determine what the good is. "Push-pin is as good as poetry," as Jeremy Bentham noted, and the community has no interest in encouraging the Bard more than the game, and no right to do so. Only the market, whether political (one man, one vote) or economic (one dollar, one vote) can distinguish the relative worth of each. The only "good" in these markets is equality of men with men (and women).
In response, Mr. Blond proposes "The Civic State." This state is based on three principles: re-moralizing the markets, re-localizing the economy, and recapitalizing the poor. It is a state of shared values and objective truths. It is not a static society, since man's knowledge of this truth is always approximate; we are always in the mode of discovery, and hence we are always journeying through history. Still, there is sufficient confidence in what we have learned to state "this is good" and "that is bad" and "this is worth more" and "that is worth less." It is a state that admits not only of private goods, but of the common good as well.
This poor summary does not do the subject justice (and what makes no sense should be blamed on me rather than Mr. Blond). (There is a somewhat longer summary here.) But I think it would be a good thing if we, as distributists, began a conversation on Phillip Blond's work. So if any of our esteemed contributors would like to comment, I encourage them to do so. And if any of our readers would like to submit an article that is too big for them combox, please send it directly to me.
The Closing of the Conservative Mind?
No fan of Frum am I, but this is disturbing:
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1601/groupthink-right-would-make-stalin-proud
Steelworkers with Mondragon
Keynote speech by Rob Witherell
Western Mass. Jobs with Justice Conference
March 6, 2010
· An official unemployment rate of 10%
· A real rate of unemployment and underemployment of 17%
· Millions of good paying jobs lost, including 2 million manufacturing jobs in the past year alone
· Stagnating wages
· Frozen pensions and inadequate 401(k) plans
· Sky rocketing health insurance costs
· Millions of people without health insurance
· Millions of people falling into poverty
· Millions of people receiving food stamps to feed their families
· Millions of people homeless and millions more struggling to stay in the homes they have
In the middle of the worst recession we’ve seen in the past 70 years, conservative politicians in Washington, DC are defiantly putting the purity of their ideals before the reality of the painful consequences. Congress is not a high school debate club. People need help, not talking points.
Wall Street executives, who were part of creating this crisis, were the first ones with their hands out, asking for help from Main Street taxpayers. We gave them billions and billions of dollars. As panic began to recede, they gave some of those billions back rather than have to live with the few strings attached. These fat cat executives are trying to avoid accountability and transparency, regardless of the cost. The millions of dollars in bonuses being paid again to executives, while insulting to the rest of us, are less harmful to our economy and our communities than the fact that little has changed in how Wall Street works. Years of increasing deregulation have left us with a Wild West of finance where anything goes.
Corporate executives have not done much better. In response to this crisis, corporations cut pay, laid off workers, and closed operations – too often as the first option rather than the last. Year after year, shedding jobs and shuttering plants has become an all too familiar pattern in what remains of our manufacturing sector, as production, investment, and jobs are shifted to other countries with the fewest amount of labor and environmental protections possible.
The result of years and years of neglect have left us an economy that is rotting from the inside out. Our manufacturing sector has been hollowed out and our standard of living has at best stagnated, or worse, declined. Under the added weight of the financial crisis, our economy nearly collapsed.
Due to decades of decay, we no longer have an economy capable of a quick recovery. The “good” news announced yesterday was that we “only” lost 36,000 jobs last month. If last year’s stimulus bill has been effective as economic triage, and most likely it has been, then there is still a long, uncertain road to rehabilitation and recovery.
So what are we to do?
Maybe we need to rebuild from the ground up. But how? What should our blue print look like? What historical examples might we look to?
Let’s imagine the situation in the Basque region in 1943. Still devastated from the Spanish Civil War, most notoriously the bombing of Guernica in 1937, the Basque region continued to be punished by Franco’s regime, which forbid use of the Basque language and repressed Basque culture. Thousands were murdered for supporting the Republican forces, including the priest that Father Arizmendi replaced two years earlier, and nearly Father Arizmendi himself.
High unemployment. No social safety net. No pensions. Little access to capital and investments.
It is in this context that Father José María Arizmendiarrieta started up a small polytechnic school that was the seed for the phenomenon we know today as the Mondragon cooperatives. In 1956, five graduates of that school, with the assistance of Father Arizmendi, started the first Mondragon cooperative, Ulgor. A little over 50 years later, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation employs over 100,000 people, with nearly all of them worker owners, and over $20 billion dollars in annual revenue.
Maybe there’s hope for us after all.
So, what can we learn from them?
To start with, let’s always remember that these cooperatives were started and supported not out of some utopian ideal, but rather a very pragmatic means of helping people put a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and food on their tables. The goal was, and remains, to create jobs that can support their families and their communities.
The success of the Mondragon cooperatives comes from putting people first. Prioritizing people before profits – imagine that. We have become so conditioned to think that companies must prioritize profits above all else, usually for the sake of some group of unnamed, unknown shareholders, that’s is hard for us to imagine any alternative.
Now keep in mind that this is no utopia, this is a highly competitive, for-profit business – just organized differently than most . As the saying goes at Mondragon: “This is not heaven and we are not angels.”
At its best though, Mondragon could be a better way to run a business. A business that is sustainable, supports jobs, supports families, and supports communities.
So how has Mondragon been able to put people first and still be competitive, growing, and profitable?
The first thing we might want to consider are the ten Basic Principles of the Mondragon cooperatives:
· Education
· Sovereignty of labor
· Instrumental and subordinate nature of capital
· Democratic organization
· Open admission
· Participation in management
· Wage solidarity
· Inter-cooperation
· Social transformation
· Universal nature
How many corporate mission statements are out there where you can find ideals like “sovereignty of labor” and the “instrumental and subordinate nature of capital”? Not many, I’m sure. Yet these principles are why job creation and sustained employment are top priorities. Even during economic downturns, when unemployment is high, as it is now, the amount of layoffs within MCC are few and limited in duration. As noted by Judy Schwartz in a recent article, “During the 1980s, when Spain's unemployment hit 27 percent, Mondragon’s hovered below 1 percent.”
As a worker owned cooperative, ultimately all profits are kept by the workers. Although some portion of profits are pooled with other coops and used for finance, education and R&D, a significant piece of the pie is distributed directly to workers in the form of profit sharing or put into the workers’ individual capital accounts. Shared risks become shared rewards.
Another key differentiation for Mondragon is the principal of democratic organization with “one person, one vote”. Every worker-owner owns an equal share and has an equal vote through “one class” ownership. All worker-owners can participate in the General Assembly to elect its Board of Directors, which is comprised of fellow worker-owners in the cooperative. The Board appoints management within the cooperative for a limited term. Workers also directly elect a representative, internal Social Council to advise the Board and management on a range of employment issues, including wages and benefits.
Mondragon cooperatives also subscribe to a principle of wage solidarity. In most cases, the highest paid worker in the cooperative makes no more than 5 times the lowest paid worker in the cooperative. In contrast, CEO’s at many multinational corporations take over 400 times the pay of the lowest paid worker. Wage solidarity means there is less disparity among workers and the communities in which they live, reinforcing the equality, and quality, of ownership.
Finally, the principle of social transformation means that a key part of the coops’ mission is to support and invest in their communities by creating jobs, funding development projects, supporting education, and providing opportunity. Their communities, in turn, support the coops.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is plenty we can learn from Mondragon. If we are going to dig ourselves out of this recession, we need every good example we can find. A business model that makes employment a priority and solidarity a principle would certainly reflect some of the key values of our Union.
I had the opportunity to visit Mondragon in September 2008. I was in nearby Bilbao for a different meeting when a good friend, who also happens to be Mondragon’s North American Delegate, suggested I go meet with the President of Mondragon Internacional at that time, Jesus Herrasti. In a good conversation, we found our organizations shared many key principles and ideas.
Over the year that followed, more conversations involving more people began to turn to specific ideas on how we might work together on projects in the U.S. and Canada.
In the context of the severe recession, we ultimately thought this was an idea and a partnership that shouldn’t be kept under wraps until we figured out all the intricacies of launching a specific union co-op project.
The USW and Mondragon announced our alliance on October 27, 2009, with little more than a common set of principles and a general framework of how our alliance would work. Risky? Absolutely. Success is by no means guaranteed.
How do we define success though? Is success only the physical manifestation of a USW/Mondragon affiliated coop?
Despite still being in the preliminary stages of this alliance, I would argue that it has already been a success. Since our October announcement, we’ve gotten interest from people in all corners of the U.S. and Canada, plus the UK, France, Australia, and of course, Spain.
Maybe success is shining a spotlight on a really interesting idea, at a time when it is desperately needed.
But can it work here?
I’ve heard a number of people wonder openly about whether such an idea could really take root in an American culture steeped in individualism. I would reframe such questions in a slightly different way though. In the midst of economic devastation and oppression, the people who originally formed and supported the Mondragon cooperatives did so out of necessity to feed and provide for their families. They started their own schools, created their own jobs, provided their own health care and met their own banking and financing needs. Theirs is a story about self-reliance and pragmatism, not just idealism. Shared values such as self-reliance and ownership have deep roots in our culture and history. In the middle of this economic crisis, people are desperate for answers. Since our announcement, I’ve gotten email and phone calls almost every day from people asking, pleading, for help.
We have a real opportunity to rebuild our economy from the ground up, in a way that is sustainable and creates good jobs. We cannot afford to wait for someone else to do it for us.
So, what is the Union’s role in this?
There are natural and historical alliances between the cooperative and labor union movements. Where those have diverged, we believe now is an important opportunity to bring them back together.
With Mondragon’s assistance, we will seek to closely implement their worker-owner model in combination with our collective bargaining model in a way that makes the workplace more participatory and more accountable to the workers, but also protects the interests of the workers and establishes guidelines to ensure that all workers are treated fairly.
We must ensure that ownership means more than just the value of a share.
A core part of this hybrid will be to transform the role of the Social Council into a Union Bargaining Committee. To sustain this model, we must also ensure a dynamic labor-management relationship rooted in partnership, understanding the needs of both the business and the workers, and respect for the advocacy roles each must take on.
Now some of you may be wondering why the USW is spending this much time and effort trying to develop coops. Well, we are indeed probably working outside of our comfort zone, but to me, that’s one of the aspects of my Union that I’m most proud of.
Leadership means taking risks.
My Union is undertaking this effort, like so many other things we do, because we know we cannot afford to rest on our heels. We cannot afford to insulate ourselves in the ongoing work of negotiating contracts and processing grievances. We must do more. For our members and for all workers.
We fight to protect the jobs we already have and the industries in which we work, but we also believe that our Union can play an important role in creating new jobs, developing better business models, and growing new industries.
We are in this alliance with Mondragon because we believe there’s got to be a better way to run a business that is sustainable and accountable to its workers and its communities.
We know change is hard.
While we must understand and learn from the past, we must not be beholden to it. We cannot simply tell ourselves “that’s just the way it is” or “that’s the way it’s always been”. We must set our own course for the future. Our children, our grandchildren, and everyone else that comes after us depend on it.
I have a small poster hanging above my desk with this quote from Margaret Mead:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Father Arizmendi and five of his former students started a small co-op in the Basque region in 1956.
Imagine what we can do.
We have the power to change the world. The people right here, in this room, have the power to change the world, in ways both big and small.
What are we going to do with it?
We cannot afford to sit on our hands, we must act. We have the power and the responsibility to act. We can create good jobs. We can create jobs with justice.
Now let’s go do it!
Plutonomics, Citibank, and the Doom Cycle
Regular readers of this column (and there might be some) know by now that I am given to rants against the banks, accusing them of being plutocrats and oligarchs, and sometimes descending into even stronger language. But I did not expect to receive confirmation of this thesis from the nation’s biggest bank. Citibank uses a term to describe our economy which has never occurred to me, “plutonomy,” an economy run for the benefit of the rich. This is the term we find in a Citibank investment advisory letter from March, 2006. The memo (which Donald Goodman mentioned in his last post) is rather remarkable. It sounds like a satire written by some mad Distributist (like me, for example). But no, they are in deadly earnest, and unlike the mad Distributist, they are quite happy about the situation.
On Citibank’s analysis, in the
The writers of this letter point out that in other places, such as Japan and much of Western Europe, the rich were confined to pretty much the much the same share they had in the 80’s, but in the plutonomies, such as the US, the “capitalists benefit disproportionately from globalization and the productivity boom, at the expense of labor.” In other words, the imbalance is not necessary, but a creation of particular forces within the plutonomies.
Citibank does note that the rich face some problems. For example, the CLEW Index has rising much faster than the Consumer Price Index. And what is the CLEW, you may ask? It is the Cost of Living Extremely Well, which measures such essential items as the price rise in Beluga caviar or a suite at the Four Seasons. Pity the poor rich. As the authors note, “In 2005, the CLEW Index rose 4%, while US CPI rose at 3.6%.” Well, no wonder the rich have to claim such a large share of the income “at the expense of labor.” What laboring man really needs Beluga caviar in his lunch box?
The Citibank analysts note that plutonomy explains many of the conundrums in the economy. For example, they note that the rising price of oil did not dampen demand, for the simple reason that the price means nothing to the rich. They can fill their Hummers and Porsches with what amounts to spare change, in effect outbidding everybody else, who must economize in hard times. The economy of the many should drive down usage, and therefore the price, but that simple market wisdom does not work in the face of great imbalances.
Another conundrum explained by this imbalance is the low savings rate. It is received wisdom that Americans are profligate, especially the poor and middle classes. They don’t save, which is precisely why they are poor, and because of their bad habits the nation has a net negative savings rate. The truth is otherwise, as the authors point out. The bottom 2 quintiles were actually saving at a respectable 7% rate in 2000. Meanwhile, the top 20% were actually dissaving (their word, not mine) at a rate of 2% of their considerable incomes. But since they so dominate income, their dis-savings consumed everybody else’s savings, leaving no net national savings.
The authors do note one threat to the hegemony of the rich:
[T]he rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfranchisement remains as was – one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation (on the rich or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in a push-back on globalization – either anti-immigration, or protectionism.
In other words, Joe the Plumber might get a brain and actually start voting against the policies which keep these people in power. But I doubt it. Most people subscribe to the “John Gault” myth that the rich are rich because they have earned their incomes by contributing to the productive powers of the economy. And some have. But by and large, the increasing share that the rich get is not due to productive power, but to political and economic power, and particularly the power to free themselves from any public obligations,through lower taxes, for example, or any public control, through de-regulation, especially of the finance industry. And here we get into arcane matters to which Joe the Plumber does not give much thought. At least, not now. And probably not until the situation becomes so bad that it can no longer be ignored. I think that day is now in sight.
Why? Because this situation has been building for 30 years, and has involved repeated crises, all of which have been covered by an increasing scale of government intervention in behalf of the rich. The authors of the memo venture no explanation of why the rich have been able to claim a larger share. For that, we need to turn to the analysis of Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF. And Johnson finds a “doom cycle” built into the very structure of the financial system, ever since the Reagan Revolution. Johnson summarizes his analysis in this short film.
He finds that since Reagan, the banks and other financial institutions have an in-built incentive to take ever-greater risks, and to grow as large as possible. This is because the risk rewards are asymmetric. The bankers can make massive amounts of money by taking massive risks. But when the bets fail, they can get bailed out. Thus, there are great rewards for success, and no penalties for failure. The profits are privatized, the losses are socialized. How far are they socialized? The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the portion of the public debt attributable to bailouts amounts to 40% of GDP. And then there are the 8 million jobs lost. That’s a lot of socialization.
What deregulation has set up is a doom cycle. An increased incentive to take risks, resulting, initially, in out-sized profits, then in massive failures, creating a need for bailouts, which leave the same people in charge, and the game begins again. Already, the profits of the banks are rebounding to pre-crash levels, but not on the strength of their lending to productive businesses (which by and large they aren’t doing) but by the same risky ventures that got us here in the first place. We are already repeating the cycle.
The rewards from the finance sector far outstrip the profits from manufacturing and other non-financial sectors of the economy. But in a sane economy—in an economy that is not actually a plutonomy—this cannot happen. The purpose of finance is to assist productive activities, and the rewards cannot logical exceed those of the things they finance. Yet that is precisely what has happened.
Further, the grip of the financial sector over the economy continues to grow. In the 1990’s, the Big 6 financial institutions controlled assets equal to 20% of GDP; today their assets are 60% of GDP. “Too big to fail,” and getting bigger by the moment. This is in an industry which, as Simon notes, “involves massive abuse of consumers, where they speak openly about ‘ripping the face off their customers.’”
But plutonomies are not stable, and doom cycles end in doom for everybody involved. The task of Front Porch Republicans, I believe, is to save what can be saved, and build what must be built. Up to this moment, that task has been theoretical; soon it will be actual.
Read more...The Red Tories in Washington
And Philadelphia. Previously, I had written about Phillip Blond and the Red Tories. Thanks to the efforts of the folks at the Front Porch Republic and others, Phillip Blond will be speaking at Georgetown University on March 18, and Villanova on March 22. And he will have an all-star cast to comment on his work: Andrew Abela, John Milbank, Ross Douthat, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, and Daniel McCarthy. These should be first rate events. I wish I could go myself, but I hope some readers of this review will go and give us all a report. More details on the event click here.
Phillip runs an excellent "think tank" ResPublica, which has it own blog, The Disraeli Room.
Hudge and Gudge Watch: Big Business squashes your rights
It is common thinking among conservatives that the government getting too big is the only problem, and once that is dealt with our freedom will be secure.
However, this view forgets that big business can be just as bureaucratic and invasive as big government.
Recently this year, a hospital decided that it will no longer hire anyone who smokes. You thought the government was the only one running the anti-smoking campaign? Think again. It was neither the first nor will it be the last.
According to the hospital's new policy, anyone who tests positive for nicotine in their drug screening will now be considered in the same group as illegal drug users. From the article:
As part of the pre-employment drug screen, they will be looking for nicotine. If a prospective employee tests positive for nicotine, the offer of employment will be rescinded. Even nicotine gum or the patch would make a potential employee ineligible.
Officials with Memorial say the new policy isn’t designed to save money on health care costs, but because a hospital should set a healthy example to the community.
“I understand the concerns people have, but we are here for the health of our community,” Brad Pope, vice president of human resources said. “Like it or not, what’s proven is that tobacco is the most preventable cause of death and disability in the United States. I think the Chattanooga and surrounding communities should expect this from Memorial.”
Thus, based on an unprovable statement with no evidence to back it up (as the majority of people who smoke do not even die from it) Gudge is now going to tell his slaves what they can do when they sit at home in their living room in a manner that concerns him in no way whatsoever. Now what concerns me here is not that a majority of us here at the Review smoke (even though such contributes to our sober and balanced atmosphere), nor the fact that I smoke and I love smoking and would no sooner part with my pipe than I would with food, I might very will have a distaste for smoking and be alarmed by this event.
Mr. Pope has decided that he is the Pope of the holy office of discipline in his company, and he is going to regulate not just what the employees of his temple of Asklepios do while they're there, or with company things (which he is within his right to do), but what they do with their own things at home (which he is not). Imagine Dr. Smith at home in his living room. He decides that he should like a small cigar to go with his coffee while he reads his a very thrilling novel. No, my Pope (that is of the HR department) will fire me. Or again Dr. Smith is invited out for a round of drinks with some friends, but wait, they smoke. Not only might nicotine get in his blood stream from second hand smoke, but he will get it on people at work through third hand smoke. So Dr. Smith is now forced to contract his social circle.
Moreover, as Mr. Pope has pontificated, the hospital is not treating smokers in the same class as those who use illegal drugs because they think it will save them money on insurance, but because they are positively opposed to the thing in itself, irrespective of whether or not the research behind it is correct. The hospital is not saying "do not smoke in the building around the patients" etc. which is reasonable on various levels. They say do not do it at home. What else might a Mr. Pope decree with the dubious infallibility of statistics and studies? What about obesity? We saw the spectacle of a woman nominated for Obama's Surgeon General who was slightly pudgy, shapely might be the correct description, rejected on the basis that she was fat and this would send a bad message. What if Chatanooga's Pope should decide that the hospital needs to set the standard and fire anyone who is fat (or perceived to be fat, since our society has a strange and unhealthy obsession with being skinny, the goal should be to acquire fitness)? Dr. Smith, even though you are an award winning pediatrician who has worked with children for 20 years, you don't set the example of what a healthy person should look like because you are fat. You have been excommunicated.
Then it comes down "If anyone should on his own time eat at McDonalds, anathama sit." If that sounds far fetched and ridiculous, think again. It follows exactly from big business getting the power to determine what you can and can't do. The Nazis embarked on a massive anti-smoking campaign, and the reason was if people could accept the government's right to regulate their personal behavior, they could accept the principle that the government can regulate other behavior, and they selected that which was becoming scientifically unpopular and thus could have the weight of doctors, scientists and the gestapo behind it. Soon any behavior seen as unpatriotic, much like "counter-revolutionary" in the Soviet Union, became criminalized. How has big business gotten this power might you ask? Gas prices. Not from the gas prices, but rather the gas prices show us how they have gotten a strangle hold on us. We can't afford to lose our jobs, particularly in a volatile economy, and we can't afford to not work. This is why when gas prices went over $4 people continued to buy, although other sectors of the economy weakened, not because people are addicted to oil, but because without it we can't get to work, and end up living in the street.
In truth, big business is little different than big government. They think that they own you, the former because they pay you, the latter because they take from you. Next it becomes, I don't like the Pope (because Mr. Pope correctly observes that there can only be one at one time) so anyone whose religious affiliation is Catholic must be sacked. This has already been done for any appointment in congress who might be Catholic and faithful to the Church. Then perhaps you drink coffee. Coffee is found to cause heart problems based on these studies, so drink tea instead. Testing positive for coffee in your system will lead to rescinding of job offers or firing. Then, it will become more ridiculous, not to mention stressful without that cup of kona in the morning. On the other hand, in Michael Novak's estimation that might be a boon to capitalists in the medical field.
One may not like smoking, I for example detest cigarettes, but proudly smoke a pipe and cigar, but none of that really matters. What matters is neither big business nor big government (hudge and gudge) believe in the family. They both believe the man who works for them is but a cog in their machine, and that his is their cog in their machine. The big business doesn't believe in the family because it is inconvenient for him, the government because it believes it is the Pater Familias. Since the two become more and more alike, the two begin acquiring the other's traits, like a married couple who begin to behave like each other. The family becomes inconvenient to the state, because the state brings about a new concept of the family that clashes with tradition, so it forces compulsory education where its policies are right and mom and dad are wrong, or children can be taken away because parents taught the wrong values. The big business begins thinking it is the head of the family, and begins to control it. Yet that is the future because big business and big government are the same thing.
Now the libertarian, or some other fool who doesn't believe in the effects of original sin but sees man only in a vacuum of reality, might remark, well, work somewhere else. The market will not allow them to continue for long if that is what people want. In a vacuum that might even work, but in reality it is senseless.
In the first place, one may not be able to get another job. Let's even say he can, to get away from a tyrannical HR Pope, he must contend with other businesses which will eventually adopt the same thing. The libertarian fails to take into account what is fashionable, except in the metric of selling garbage, which capitalism does very well. It takes good products, like a bit of virginia cut tobacco leaf rolled up into a natural tobacco paper, into a disgusting capitalist product half tobacco and half chemical filled saw dust and bleached paper, not to mention fiberglass filters. It is good at selling crap, but we must not forget that when the wealthy put their wealth to something, it creates an effect irrespective of what people want. The wealthy want women to be dressed up like prostitutes even at age 4, so they flood stores with clothing of this style and mark it $4. A sweet dress such as girls about 4 should be wearing, $20. There is no market force involved, but the forces of the wealthy and social destruction. Nevertheless, let us say again that Dr. Smith has several children, and as costs go up providing for his family has gone up. So maybe he can't leave, but wishes to escape the bull of his HR Pope, yet is stuck there. So he must change certain virtues he engages in at home to suit his employer, which are but the beginning of the first. Most men will fall into this category, especially when real unemployment numbers factor in pretty high.
It is much like the gas prices. The market can bear it not because that is what people want to pay, but what they must pay to avoid being fired and living with their family on the street. It is why people worked 15 hour days before government correctly began regulating big business, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. The big business is betting that if you don't like it you will step in line, because (especially in this economy) you must or else risk joblessness and homelessness.
Nevertheless, let us suppose that Dr. Smith does move. He moves to a new city where he knows no one, that he doesn't care for because that is where he could get a job without a Pope of the home as well as the workplace.
Why should a man leave off of hearth and home and go to a new place? There are all kinds of legitimate reasons, war, or personal tragedy, or some other calamity, but not because he is required to give up smoking at his former job! Its ludicrous. Hearth and home are no longer the sacred domains of the family, but subject to the whims of the bureaucratic befuddlements of Hudge and Gudge. The Caesars rose to many heights, they also descended to many lows, but they never descended so low as to try and be worshiped as the gods of the hearth and home. Big business has done Caesar one better.
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