INSIGHTS into CAPITALISM
A former neighbor of mine was an anarchist as well as horse-race fan. He thought good neighbors should save money by sharing tools; and so, he often shared mine.
He complained to me one day that the executive leaders of big companies were being paid much to too much. I replied like this: "You like to go to races, don't you?. At the track only the first three, fastest horses win, right? But those three winners are the only reason that all the other horses are brought to the race. And higher stakes bring in faster horses, right?"
He had to agree and I continued my analogy something like this.
Capitalism is similar to the horse race ... but in Capitalism most of the slower "horses" get paid too. They are not paid as much as their leaders, but they are still paid, just for "running".
Besides that, in a free capitalistic society we have at least four (4) free-will options we can pursue. If or when we think that our boss makes too much money we can either:
1) Outrun the boss (or out perform them) and take their job. If you are still of a mind set to lower your own executive wages your Board of directors will appreciate the gesture, and you will have less competition for your job.
2) Leave that company, start a competing business and be the "boss" (an "entrepreneur" - most complainers can't spell the word, much less become one 😐). Then, if you are true to you own code, you can work very, very hard and pay yourself less than your former boss. That may lower your product costs and you can try to drive him out of business 😓,
3) Learn how you company actually works in detail, especially learn the financial part, and determine what you would be willing to pay someone else, with just your current skills, to do your current job (putting your own discontent aside). Depending on how that compares with similar jobs, that should either a) make you more content with your own salary, or b) it will give you the incentive to ask for a raise, or c) change companies. Either way you skills will be improved.
4) Just keep the job and whine about it being "unfair", like most of those people do who can't actually do any of the first three.
(Some, like my former neighbor, would take option 5, and desire to destroy Capitalism... and most of your above options with it. But the horse track kept him out of any real political competition.)
Unlike the horses, Capitalism gives us real choices.
Just sayin'...
I wish the real world really worked this way, that any of those four options were actual.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that was more true decades ago, but in my 14 years of corporate work experience, plus being a writer and running a few of my own businesses, plus wider observations and listening to the stories of other people, plus looking at the statistics related to upward mobility (it's trending rather downward these days), this isn't true of capitalism in 2017. It's rather more rigged nowadays.
Plus it's not really a choice between socialism and capitalism. That's a false dichotomy. One can criticize the flaws in a thing that you'd rather like to save. Sort of like when I take my writing to a critique group. They don't redline my stories because they want them destroyed. ;) If we can't fix the flaws, then we can't save the whole system.