I’m a man of compassion, just don’t let me down, I do consider this stealing from me, when I’ve always given so much more than I got.
I’m also a man of correlations and bottom lines. And pragmatism rules the roost, or as someone else put it the other day, the key is proceeding with a cool head and a warm heart.
So that whereas my sympathy lies with sharing and respecting the underdog, you can’t have underdogs take over, they’re unfit for the job. But you can’t let greedy bastards ruin our lives either, so that’s where alternating democratic rule comes in.
The Dutch have this effective economic ‘polder’ model, creating peace in the ranks by having worker’s representatives, not the unions, witness the major obstacles corporations face in the free market place, from a free seat or two on the Board. And while not allowed to call the shots, Labour at least witnessing the agonies of management, first hand. That not everything is a lie, exploitation, oppression of the working man, by hard-driving entrepreneurs small and large, but that sacrifice is required sometimes from both Socialism and Capitalism with a human face.
Of course I’ve also seen hot-headed, short-sighted, jealous, possessive labour leaders and their syndicates smother the goose with the golden eggs: killing companies with their stupid intransigence.
Of course, the tail can never wag the dog, it goes without saying, but this is still news to some. And in the XXI century people raising a balled fist, vowing to fight for the proletariat, donning red scarves and going to workers’ pick-nicks with banners and flags, roaring the words of the Internationale as if it were 1889, is laughable and unimaginative.
Yet this is what a good number of leftist leaders, particularly in Latin countries, still practice while facing a crisis of world proportion, only contaminating the situation with further ruin, unwilling to simplify hiring and firing, even with a safety net.
I compare these antiquated, anachronistic leftists with domestic abusers, husbands with small minds and deep fears and insecurities, battering their wives. Husbands to whom everything is betrayal and ownership of another person or their job, their right, those apt to kill and maim the woman or the company who’s kept things together all those years, often in deep, deep pain, but unable to keep things the way they were. Men unable to divorce, remarry, change jobs, because they’re afraid and so they strike out. Stuck in a mental prison from where they abuse even their own children, and co-workers and God knows who else, unable to manage and control the slightest bit of happiness, men without balanced pride.
When I was younger I changed jobs 20 times, nearly always ending up better than I was, but courage playing a large part in this. And employment rules and regulation making it prohibitive for people to be hire and fired in an international commercial cauldron, in the end not helping workers at all. For once they are let go, they’re never hired again. But a flexible system consistently adjusting and creating new openings by letting others go, compensating them but still letting them go, also gives constant birth to a whole slew of opportunities and the odd new love as well.
Fluidity of the labour market it’s called, and it works, everything else a poor second cousin, leading to atrophy and nepotism and, yes, class poverty by being trapped as before.
And murder, of course.
PS There’s another way of doing it. In some languages the meaning of the word conserve is identical to the word preserve. If the English voted in the Preservatives rather than the Conservatives, they would never be in Labour again…
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