Going by the rules

 

                                              June 23, 1980

 

 Some people just can't be convinced. They live and die by the rules of the system, and are not particularly interested in its abuses. My uncle is that way, a small business man from Toms River who defends business on every level, refusing to concede their excesses. Big companies fire employees who give two week notice. He says small companies should do the same "Can't let the business go into the red over a few petty details," he says. Like fairness? Like a guaranteed means to make a living?

 Business doesn't seem to care that people need to live their lives with some measure of security, not bounding up and down with the economic free-wheeling insanity of an open market, 5 to 7 percent unemployment acceptable in a system such as ours.

 Acceptable to whom?

 My uncle has no answer to such questions. He's never been unemployed, inheriting his father's business back in the sixties and riding its fortunes unimpaired. Some people would kill for a quarter more an hour, while efficiency consultants pull in fat salaries to recommend lay offs and firings.

 My own manager says it's a free country. If you don't like one employer, you vote with your feet and move on. But how long can you do that before it starts looking bad on your application? How long before you come to realize each place is the same, a tiny bit of tyranny housed in a democratic container. Each boss a new Mussolini making the trains run on time.

 Real freedom is for those who can afford it, the ones who have enough already and use it to make themselves more, riding the back of those who work hard, whispering lies about hard work getting people ahead in this world.

 The poor are poor, and the rich are rich. The difference is the rich like keeping things the way they are, with business devouring poor people, then spitting them out.