parallel universe

Our realities differ: we don't live in the same world!

As a child, I could hardly suppress a gag reflex just hearing the word "asparagus." Today I find that stuff exquisite and delicious, as my parents had prophesied. We experience "soft" differences with other people--like a variety of opinions, theories, ideas, tastes--and "hard" ones, like two asparagus worlds defined by observable physical phenomena of a different nature. You may love strawberries while your boyfriend needs to be rushed to the next emergency room if he tries just one innocent strawberry. Parallel universes of the hard kind. No, it's non-negotiable. Some of us enjoy what may kill another.

For the time of the cold war, we witnessed socialist countries--member states of the Warsaw Pact, for instance--on one side of the fence and societies believing in a more or less free market on the other side. Fence? Not really: a wall, barbed wire, mine fields, and trigger-happy men guarded the line between those two worlds. People lost limbs and lives in the attempt to leave one universe and to enter the other. As a general rule, socialist governments and societies had a keen interest for their subjects not to mingle with the enemy, with evil capitalist pigs on the other and naturally greener side of the "fence." Negotiations were political charades, rituals bare of real meaning or purpose. Nobody expected to convince the other guy of anything.

Today, there are still--and again--socialist countries of one type or another. Charley Marx's legacy, as outdated and dusty as it truly is, continues to ail along through the 21st century. But that is not surprising. Interesting is what has happened under the surface. For Mr. Marx, religion was "the opium of the people." Over the course of some 150 years, socialism has become a new religion and the opium of the people. The tool of choice for thugs like Hugo Chávez and sick bastards like Kim Jong-il to oppress their helpless subjects. If socialist economies were ideal environments, you wouldn't need excessive violence to keep your people in your country, putting up with hearty tree bark for breakfast. On the contrary, the masses would be eager to enter your worker's paradise, but it looks as if North Korea is not today's immigrant country of choice. At least not yet.

What about religion, you ask? It has become irrelevant. Irrelevant not so much for believers, but as a dividing force it is significantly less important than it once was. The discussion of socialist ideas versus free market economy separates us more than differing religious denominations or the existence of religion per se.

Let's get to the fun part, shall we?

Socialism--employed here as a general term, including a garden variety of its ideological offspring--used to be at the root of revolutionary movements against establishment and capitalists. According to Forbes magazine, a nest egg worth $900 Million has successfully trickled into Fidel Castro's socialist lap, and Mr. Chávez can't wait to follow into his hero's footsteps. Not bad for a revolutionary and murderer to end up richer than the Queen of England. Who says that socialism doesn't pay? Not only does it pay, but it's the perfect setup for capitalist progress as well. Enter China: more millionaires pop up in China than anywhere else on Earth.

The ideal symbiosis. If you own a company, employ socialists. They will serve you well, and they will hate you more--as a good socialist should--if you don't allow them to benefit financially from your profits. The worse you treat them, the more loyal they will be to your company and to their musty beliefs. If you have socialist ideals on the other hand, seek employment at a capitalist firm who happily finances you and such luxury as your whimsical theories. As a bonus, you'll find plenty of ways to hate your--self-chosen!--"oppressor."

The fight against the outsourcing of jobs proves that today's socialists are not engaged in an uprising against the evil bourgeoisie. Hell no! Marx would drastically increase the rpm while rotating in his London grave could he see that employees, "the owners of labour," are begging to maintain their status quo. Benefit: it allows them to stay socialists a bit longer.

That's what has become of the good old "class struggle:" Capitalists need socialistic oriented employees, and socialists need capitalist employers if they don't want their theory to collapse.

As employers, we run our businesses following capitalist principles and nothing is wrong with that. Strange only that from the largest corporation down to the tiniest mom and pop operation at the corner, employers do NOT care to employ capitalists: employers feed socialist employees who receive a paycheck whether they work hard or hardly at all. Employees expect to get benefits and an occasional pay raise, but neither employer nor the employee's union will permit them to work as efficiently as they could and would. Employees who are eager to work overtime are often considered a burden. The last thing an employer wants is for paychecks to reflect true performance and real market value of the employee. Capitalist employers somehow believe that their profit relies on employees with socialist values.

As employees, we live in socialist work environments. How so? For the average employee, few things matter besides showing up for work. Individuality, character, initiative, and creativity are worthless assets. Even the influence of your performance on your income is negligible. You are "a unit," most decisions are made for you, your responsibilities are limited, your ideas and even high levels of competence can easily turn into liabilities. If you really love your job you are likely to be a sick, twisted individual who thrives on bureaucratic irrelevance, on promotions based on back stabbing more than on cold hard currency paid in exchange for the market value of your productivity.

Employees give up because the very elements that make capitalism exciting and adventurous are meticulously filtered out of their lives. No risk, no opportunity, no freedom. Small wonder employees are bored out of their minds, hate every minute of their unproductive and meaningless lives, while looking forward to retirement. Uh, at least we can blame evil corporations for depriving their poor wage slaves of well-deserved profit and freedom?

No, we can't! Most employees--naturally we must include government employees--despise and condemn profit taking. And nothing scares average people more than freedom. Freedom is the last thing they want.

Conclusion: employers grant their employees a favor by allowing them to live their socialist dream a couple of decades longer than they could realistically afford otherwise. 87% of Americans experience the luxury and the privilege of hating their jobs in monetary limitation, while the rest of us have to make do in freedom and happiness.

And what about the opium thing? Why is socialism the new religion and opium? 'Cause socialists insist to lie and to be lied to. They don't fight to get out. They fight to stay in their universe marked by struggle and limitation. They get teary eyes, for instance, when some prick promises higher minimum wages. Milton Friedman said, "There's a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won't find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs." That was in June 1995. To this day you can gain political mileage out of selling opium to the masses, promising the blue out of the sky.

Nobody will convince a socialist to switch universes and to live happily ever after as a member of a free market economy. Neither will a capitalist eagerly leave freedom--and risk--behind and voluntarily clip her own wings of thought and action. Both appear to like where they are.

Just in case: if you catch yourself bitching about your lot, you gotta choice to make which universe you want to live in. No stupid "class struggle" or fight necessary. Your "oppressors" are imaginary!

Egbert

P.S.: If you are wondering how a bastardized Marx would sound today, substituting "socialism" for "religion:"

"Socialistic suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Socialism is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."