I’m with you, Antonio - the only thing I’d say, there are degrees of freedom (e.g. working for yourself still means sacrificing some autonomy but less than in a shit, huge corporation) and that matters. Living with more freedom is better than living with less - we can always improve our circumstances.
I think that many people will think you are being too extreme and that not having a boss is impossible.
But for most of human existence, even until very recently, most working people were farmers, skilled craftsmen (with perhaps a 7 year apprenticeship where you had a “boss”.)
The country was founded / intended for yeoman farmers, settlers and the occasional merchant.
Being your own boss sometimes works. Sometimes you're able to make your enterprise work (at least for a time) and you're able to use your creativity to produce a product/service/artwork that others truly enjoy. But it's a crap shoot in this capitalist system. Everyone is out to get everyone. Most think you have to destroy all competition in order to "win" customers/buyers over. Few seem to think it's better to build a better widget than act like a vicious psycho and destroy others' enterprises.
I have an idea of starting a publisher's co-op to publish those of us who don't quite write mainstream dreck and who espouse non-capitalist viewpoints. But I don't have the technical/computer know-how and large sums of money to get it going. I guess that's why us peons are always buying lottery tickets--we're always hoping to become our own bosses, or at least have enough money not to have another (idiot) boss ever again.
You'd lose your ass in the publishing industry. It's not a smart busniness model today, and hasn't been for decades now. People aren't reading, for one thing, like they did. Even the big publishers must look for the sure things today to stay alive - books by long established star authors and celebrities. They lose money on almost everything else they take a chance on. Look here at substack, who is making money? People dedicated to instructing you how to make money on here, for one thing. That's awful close to a Ponzi scheme, it seems to me. Maybe some of the celebs on here, too. It's just the way it goes. Wanna make money? Don't go into publishing. Maybe try farming. Okay, just kidding. Same result, likely.
Yeah, I know how awful the publishing industry is first hand. My fiction publisher of the last 20 years is no longer accepting any new manuscripts and they're only selling our titles via Amazon, etc., instead of selling them through their own web site (where we made better royalties). You can't get anyone to look at your stuff anymore unless you're a politician, star, influencer, etc. They don't care about your skill--they just want built in sales from your millions of followers. I don't think I'd go into publishing for the money (since you're right about readers) but to keep good ideas out there for those who do read and for the future. And I've tried farming (at least community gardening) and you do get veggies--which are worth more than money. (Now to look into raising chickens...)
As a former full-time employee for a non-profit, almost all of my supervisors had no clue what they were doing and almost always made poor decisions. In my new role as a contractor for another non-profit, there is 0 communication with me. They have no clue what I'm doing. But they want to expand the program because the attendance sheet is full. It makes me think of Mark Fishers "symbols" from Capitalist Realism. As long as something looks good/functional, it doesn't actually have to be good/functional.
If someday society is built upon different values, we might have horizontal working relationship based on cooperation. We lack a common goal. The goal of making rich people richer will always reproduce the patterns that made them rich in the first place.
As recounted by Robert Graves in his historical Byzantine novel Count Belisarius (1938), there was a touching letter written by one of Belisarius’s military subordinates, Pharas, who was tasked with coaxing into surrender Gelimer, the last ruler of the North African Kingdom of the Vandals who was camped out in a desolate but protected area. Pharas explained that the loss of status for a king to surrender should not be considered a great thing in the grand scheme of things:
“Dear Sir and King, I greet you. I am a mere barbarian and totally uneducated. But I am speaking this to a scribe who will record what I have to tell you faithfully, I trust. (If not, I will whip him well.) What in the world, my dear Gelimer, has come upon you that you and your kinsmen stay perched up on that desolate crag with a pack of naked, verminous Moors? Is it perhaps that you wish to avoid becoming a slave? What is slavery? A foolish word. What living man is not a slave? None. My men are slaves to me in all but name; and I to my anda, Belisarius; and he to the Emperor Justinian; and Justinian, they say, to his wife, the beautiful Theodora; and she to someone else, I know not whom, but perhaps it is her God or some bishop or other. Come down, monarch of Mount Pappua, and become a fellow-slave with the great Belisarius, my master and anda, to the Emperor Justinian, the slave of a slave. Belisarius is willing, I know, to spare your life and send you to Kesarorda [Constantinople] where you shall be made a patrician and given rich estates and pass the rest of your life in every comfort, among hoses and fruit-trees and full-bosomed women with charmingly small noses. He will pledge you his word, I am confident, and once you have that assurance you have everything.
Signed: x the mark of Pharas, the Herulian your well-wisher”
Gelimer, touched and crying, came down and surrendered.
The true alphas cannot be found in these mainstream environments, they don't last. They are out there on the fringes, and many of them are in jail. Some get lucky and manage to make a living in the free market somewhere as contractors. As a contractor, they may try to make you their bitch, but it's up to you whether you put up with it. You have no security, but a free person never did, that's just the way it works. Freedom is indeed what you trade for security and the cost is being someone's bitch, indeed. Don't like it? Man-up. Stand up. Tell those pricks you're gonna to tear their livers out with your teeth if they address you like that again, and be prepared to back yourself up. See what happens. Maybe you starve. But maybe your days leading-up are better than a full lifetime as someones' bitch. People today want freedom and security. Impossible.
Agreed. And being able to say no is a healthy part of social equilibrium in any social group.
So when some asshole comes up to you and says hey do you want to go down into a dangerous mine and dig out some rocks so I can make a really big bomb? Then people can appropriately say fuck off.
This is why money is ultimately unworkable. If the lack of money alone can make someone desperate then they can be coerced by money to do just about anything, as we've clearly seen happen repeatedly.
Antonio, this resonates so much. The disconnect between the idea of democracy and the reality of our work lives is stark, and you've articulated it brilliantly. The "freedom" we supposedly have feels pretty hollow when we spend the majority of our time in these hierarchical, often arbitrary, systems. The point about even "alpha" types still playing the game within the corporate structure is spot on. It's not about strength or independence, it's about navigating the power dynamics, regardless of the facade.
Your frustration with the escape routes is also something many feel. Changing jobs often just means trading one overlord for another. Entrepreneurship is romanticized, but the reality is incredibly challenging, and as you said, it can just mean becoming the oppressor yourself. And the lottery? Well, we all dream, right?
Many of us feel this way. It's a systemic issue, and it's not an easy one to solve. Thanks for putting these thoughts into words. It's cathartic to read and know others feel the same.
“Running your own business” is overrated, mostly because it’s one FUCK of a lot of work, and props to anyone who makes it happen for themselves. Me? I’d rather put in my eight hours of being some asshole’s gofer doing the things I’m good at (usually WAY better than the asshole) and let the other people on the team do the things I’m not so good at. The dirty little secret of “your own business” is all those jobs it takes to make a business work? You either do them yourself or pay someone to do them for you. I much prefer having just one job and leaving it at work when I leave for the day.
I’m with you, Antonio - the only thing I’d say, there are degrees of freedom (e.g. working for yourself still means sacrificing some autonomy but less than in a shit, huge corporation) and that matters. Living with more freedom is better than living with less - we can always improve our circumstances.
I think that many people will think you are being too extreme and that not having a boss is impossible.
But for most of human existence, even until very recently, most working people were farmers, skilled craftsmen (with perhaps a 7 year apprenticeship where you had a “boss”.)
The country was founded / intended for yeoman farmers, settlers and the occasional merchant.
Being your own boss sometimes works. Sometimes you're able to make your enterprise work (at least for a time) and you're able to use your creativity to produce a product/service/artwork that others truly enjoy. But it's a crap shoot in this capitalist system. Everyone is out to get everyone. Most think you have to destroy all competition in order to "win" customers/buyers over. Few seem to think it's better to build a better widget than act like a vicious psycho and destroy others' enterprises.
I have an idea of starting a publisher's co-op to publish those of us who don't quite write mainstream dreck and who espouse non-capitalist viewpoints. But I don't have the technical/computer know-how and large sums of money to get it going. I guess that's why us peons are always buying lottery tickets--we're always hoping to become our own bosses, or at least have enough money not to have another (idiot) boss ever again.
You'd lose your ass in the publishing industry. It's not a smart busniness model today, and hasn't been for decades now. People aren't reading, for one thing, like they did. Even the big publishers must look for the sure things today to stay alive - books by long established star authors and celebrities. They lose money on almost everything else they take a chance on. Look here at substack, who is making money? People dedicated to instructing you how to make money on here, for one thing. That's awful close to a Ponzi scheme, it seems to me. Maybe some of the celebs on here, too. It's just the way it goes. Wanna make money? Don't go into publishing. Maybe try farming. Okay, just kidding. Same result, likely.
Yeah, I know how awful the publishing industry is first hand. My fiction publisher of the last 20 years is no longer accepting any new manuscripts and they're only selling our titles via Amazon, etc., instead of selling them through their own web site (where we made better royalties). You can't get anyone to look at your stuff anymore unless you're a politician, star, influencer, etc. They don't care about your skill--they just want built in sales from your millions of followers. I don't think I'd go into publishing for the money (since you're right about readers) but to keep good ideas out there for those who do read and for the future. And I've tried farming (at least community gardening) and you do get veggies--which are worth more than money. (Now to look into raising chickens...)
As a former full-time employee for a non-profit, almost all of my supervisors had no clue what they were doing and almost always made poor decisions. In my new role as a contractor for another non-profit, there is 0 communication with me. They have no clue what I'm doing. But they want to expand the program because the attendance sheet is full. It makes me think of Mark Fishers "symbols" from Capitalist Realism. As long as something looks good/functional, it doesn't actually have to be good/functional.
If someday society is built upon different values, we might have horizontal working relationship based on cooperation. We lack a common goal. The goal of making rich people richer will always reproduce the patterns that made them rich in the first place.
US is an oligarchy not a democracy. Also have you watch severance? Think you will find it hmmm somewhat interesting.
As recounted by Robert Graves in his historical Byzantine novel Count Belisarius (1938), there was a touching letter written by one of Belisarius’s military subordinates, Pharas, who was tasked with coaxing into surrender Gelimer, the last ruler of the North African Kingdom of the Vandals who was camped out in a desolate but protected area. Pharas explained that the loss of status for a king to surrender should not be considered a great thing in the grand scheme of things:
“Dear Sir and King, I greet you. I am a mere barbarian and totally uneducated. But I am speaking this to a scribe who will record what I have to tell you faithfully, I trust. (If not, I will whip him well.) What in the world, my dear Gelimer, has come upon you that you and your kinsmen stay perched up on that desolate crag with a pack of naked, verminous Moors? Is it perhaps that you wish to avoid becoming a slave? What is slavery? A foolish word. What living man is not a slave? None. My men are slaves to me in all but name; and I to my anda, Belisarius; and he to the Emperor Justinian; and Justinian, they say, to his wife, the beautiful Theodora; and she to someone else, I know not whom, but perhaps it is her God or some bishop or other. Come down, monarch of Mount Pappua, and become a fellow-slave with the great Belisarius, my master and anda, to the Emperor Justinian, the slave of a slave. Belisarius is willing, I know, to spare your life and send you to Kesarorda [Constantinople] where you shall be made a patrician and given rich estates and pass the rest of your life in every comfort, among hoses and fruit-trees and full-bosomed women with charmingly small noses. He will pledge you his word, I am confident, and once you have that assurance you have everything.
Signed: x the mark of Pharas, the Herulian your well-wisher”
Gelimer, touched and crying, came down and surrendered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Belisarius
Meh.
Meh!
https://www.riffusion.com/riff/036c5a6e-565d-4022-8b61-6bccf42a2a41
https://www.riffusion.com/riff/07eefc8e-734e-4331-badb-39f18ae66972
The true alphas cannot be found in these mainstream environments, they don't last. They are out there on the fringes, and many of them are in jail. Some get lucky and manage to make a living in the free market somewhere as contractors. As a contractor, they may try to make you their bitch, but it's up to you whether you put up with it. You have no security, but a free person never did, that's just the way it works. Freedom is indeed what you trade for security and the cost is being someone's bitch, indeed. Don't like it? Man-up. Stand up. Tell those pricks you're gonna to tear their livers out with your teeth if they address you like that again, and be prepared to back yourself up. See what happens. Maybe you starve. But maybe your days leading-up are better than a full lifetime as someones' bitch. People today want freedom and security. Impossible.
maybe go work on a farm? Even better, buy land and make it your OWN farm?
Agreed. And being able to say no is a healthy part of social equilibrium in any social group.
So when some asshole comes up to you and says hey do you want to go down into a dangerous mine and dig out some rocks so I can make a really big bomb? Then people can appropriately say fuck off.
This is why money is ultimately unworkable. If the lack of money alone can make someone desperate then they can be coerced by money to do just about anything, as we've clearly seen happen repeatedly.
Antonio, this resonates so much. The disconnect between the idea of democracy and the reality of our work lives is stark, and you've articulated it brilliantly. The "freedom" we supposedly have feels pretty hollow when we spend the majority of our time in these hierarchical, often arbitrary, systems. The point about even "alpha" types still playing the game within the corporate structure is spot on. It's not about strength or independence, it's about navigating the power dynamics, regardless of the facade.
Your frustration with the escape routes is also something many feel. Changing jobs often just means trading one overlord for another. Entrepreneurship is romanticized, but the reality is incredibly challenging, and as you said, it can just mean becoming the oppressor yourself. And the lottery? Well, we all dream, right?
Many of us feel this way. It's a systemic issue, and it's not an easy one to solve. Thanks for putting these thoughts into words. It's cathartic to read and know others feel the same.
“Running your own business” is overrated, mostly because it’s one FUCK of a lot of work, and props to anyone who makes it happen for themselves. Me? I’d rather put in my eight hours of being some asshole’s gofer doing the things I’m good at (usually WAY better than the asshole) and let the other people on the team do the things I’m not so good at. The dirty little secret of “your own business” is all those jobs it takes to make a business work? You either do them yourself or pay someone to do them for you. I much prefer having just one job and leaving it at work when I leave for the day.