Tag: free enterprise system

Opportunity

submitted by jwithrow.Opportunity

Too often we associate the word opportunity with the availability of jobs. We tell our young folks to go where the opportunity is so they march off to the nearest metropolitan city to join the rat race.

How come we never tell our young people that they have the ability to create the opportunity themselves?

We think that the answer to this question is largely because we have been shaped by centralized government education. We refer to it as government education because the Department of Education has gradually imposed itself upon our school systems over time. Whereas we once had school systems that were beholden to parents and local communities, we now have federally mandated curriculum, Department of Education approved textbooks, and compulsory education laws bullying parents into compliance.

Our government subsidized educational system is focused on itself, not those it purports to serve.

The primary educational system (K-12) is focused on molding kids into obedient students that can one day be productive cogs in the wheel. Creativity and critical thinking are subverted by the centralized curriculum and the centralized structure. Students are taught to be dependent on the ‘expert’.

The higher educational system focuses on selling degrees at an enormous price made possible by the abundance of government student loans. The system touts the ability of college graduates to obtain high paying corporate jobs after graduation as justification for the high costs.

The result is that we are conditioned to be obedient worker bees that do not question authority and we base success solely upon income level.

And the rat-race perpetuates.

Even if the college graduate is able to obtain a high paying corporate job, the cost of servicing student loan debt offsets some of this income. And speaking from experience we can say that most of these corporate jobs do not offer a very rewarding experience.

Most of these jobs represent nothing more than a cog in a giant bureaucratic wheel in which employees are required to perform the same menial tasks repetitively day in and day out. Their input is not welcomed and their output is not appreciated. These jobs require employees to sit in a small cubicle under a fluorescent light for at least forty hours every week. And it is not uncommon for commute times to be greater than an hour for many employees also.

The quality of pay is high with these corporate jobs but the quality of life tends to be fairly low.

This doesn’t sound much like opportunity to us.

It’s time to re-examine the way we think about what opportunity is. Technology is rapidly changing the marketplace and the jobs that traditional education prepares us for are diminishing.

But this is a good thing! The diminishing jobs are centralized and boring. The new opportunities are decentralized and exciting! One but has to recognize opportunity knocking.

A Frank Letter to the Homeless Man Under the Bridge

By: Paul Rosenberg,

letter-to-homeless

I see you standing here, asking for help, about once a week. You are always polite, and I respect that. I’d like to do something for you… something that would matter long-term. Giving you a few notes or coins now and then may be fine, but I’d really like to improve your situation more permanently.

In other words, I’d like to give you a job.

I used to hire people, and I especially liked hiring people who had been denied breaks. I did that whenever I could. If you and I could be transported back in time, I’d hire you. And I’d feel good about it, because I think having a job would do you a lot of good.

That fact is, however, that I can’t hire you, and I’d like you to know why.

I used to run my own contracting firm. I enjoyed the work and I liked being able to drive past a building and say, “I made that.” Having employees, however, was torture. I liked having them in some ways, of course – I liked the guys and it made me happy to see them take care of their families with paychecks that I signed. That was very gratifying. But it wasn’t enough, and there are three reasons why:

#1: Making Payroll

My first problem was simply cash flow. I was solely responsible for having enough money in the bank every week, and that could be nerve-wracking, especially when customers weren’t paying their bills on time. It’s not fun to think that a family won’t be able to buy groceries if you can’t collect your invoices.

Still, that part didn’t cause me to give up on employees. It was hard, but so long as my employees were working, we were making money, so there was always something coming in at some point. Somehow, I was able to pull it off.

#2: Being Hated

Over time, some of my employees became jerks. This seemed to grow from envy and from stupid ideas about labor versus management. These guys decided that I was getting rich off of them, and demanded I pay them more – more than they deserved and more than the company could afford.

And the really nasty part was this: It was always the guys I had done the most for who hated me most. And as soon as I sat down with them and explained why I couldn’t pay them more, they started stealing from me.

I fired the thieves, of course, but these experiences really soured me on employees. I had not only given these guys a job, but I had legitimately felt good about helping to feed their families. In return, they hated me, called me names, and stole from me.

By itself, that was almost enough to make me swear off employing people, but not quite.

#3: The IRS

What really drove me over the edge was dealing with the government and the IRS in particular. They were abominable.

I had to file forms with every payroll, and if anything on them was wrong, they penalized me – heavily. And if I paid them a single day late, they penalized me – heavily. And if they said I did something wrong – even if I didn’t – there was no way to change their verdict. Reason and evidence simply didn’t matter.

I eventually talked to a tax lawyer who explained the situation to me. He said:

Forget about fighting, Paul. There is no ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in tax court. You’re automatically guilty, and you have to try to prove yourself innocent… which is very hard and very expensive. Just pay them. I know you hate that, but you have no other choice. Fighting them would ruin you.

It wasn’t just the money that got me about this – it was that they were nasty, arrogant, heartless tyrants. Having the facts on my side didn’t matter. Intelligent arguments didn’t matter. Either I paid what they demanded or they would hurt me worse.

In many ways, it wasn’t much different than the local gang of street thugs demanding protection money.

So, that’s why I can’t hire you: Having employees locked me into a single role in life, that of a despised slave. When I finally realized that, I walked away.

I was lucky that I had the ability to move into specialties and to thrive in difficult niches; other guys probably couldn’t have.

So…

What I really want you to know is this:

I’d like to help you. You deserve a chance at a decent job. I’d like to be the guy who gave it to you, but the system demands that I must live as a slave in order to do so. And I won’t do that.

I very much wish that things were different, and I feel sorry every time I drive by that I can’t hire you. But I would never ask anyone to live as a slave, and I won’t live that way myself.

I wish you well, and if life in these parts should ever pull back from the present reign of oppression, I hope to run into you. And on that day, I hope to either hire you or do business with you.

We would both have much to gain from it.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]