| Topic Name: |
How Do You Like Working In Corporate America? |
| Message Name: |
You've figured out... nothing. |
| Date Posted: |
03/19/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
So far, all the discussion has circled around two alternatives: Big Business, unrestrained, which is what we've had to put up with for most of our working lives, or Communism, which has failed dismally as a political system.
As a balding white male in his 60's who was laid off six months ago and has essentially no prospects of ever working again in spite of a lifetime of positive accomplishments in some fairly sophisticated fields, I can tell you that both are shams and both are political positions unrelated to economic reality.
There is no reason why Socialism can't work - witness the French aerospace industry - the usual reason it fails is because it's manipulated by politicians for political points, not run as a business. Communism can also work in theory - the Israeli kibbutzim come to mind - but fails easily if all the participants don't buy into the whole story.
What worked in this country, and it worked very well from 1946 to about 1976 with very few blurps, is regulated capitalism. Free enterprise - because that's what generates new wealth - with balancing controls that protect the interests of the workers. What kind of controls? 1. unions - until they let themselves get greedy and ignored world ecenomic realities, they fought the main fight against the depredations of selfish managements; 2. government - because some excesses can only be restrained by an agency with the force of law at its command.
The inverted progress of the last thirty years has been the result of unions losing touch with the real interests of their members, and government openly siding with management, against the interests of both the workers and the shareholders. |
| Message: |
LESIMON hit it right on the head, and I agree.
You either end up as one of the laborers, without much hope for a prestigious position, or as part of the hated upper management that doesn't care about its employees.
Knowing that the government has shifted towards aligning with businesses, the only solution is to break out of the mold and start you own business. Little by little, and with hard work (and some government help) you'll begin to rip the corporate benefits you can only hope to achieve working for someone else.
Besides, there is always the satisfaction of calling your own shots which will eventually remunerate you greatly.
My humble opinion...
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