Solution Pollution

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence
of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) 

Hourly wages are obsolete.

Stupefied blank stares are the immediate result when I blurt out this seemingly preposterous idea. People's eyes glaze over and they start yawning feverishly as if their lives depended on it. Others attack me like cornered rats before I can finish another sentence. 

That's all? It's either apathy or the absurd defense of a wretched status quo?

Traditionally, employees hate their jobs--if they didn't, one would have to question their sanity or the maturity of their personal development--but they hate it even more when the proclaimed cause of their hatred gets outsourced and other, poorer, people abroad gain the privilege of hating the same jobs for less. Like a little girl who hates the dark chocolate uncle John gave her but can't bring herself to give this nasty stuff away to her siblings, the average employee craves authoritarian insults and judges everybody as selfish who threatens to deprive him of his daily dosage of self-loathing.

Apparently, American tinkerers and freedom fighters of yore have become tired of freedom, too bored and annoyed to care for their own curiosity and creativity, or they act outright frightened of themselves when freedom is evoked as a practical application and not just as a noncommittal philosophical thought.

According to the Cato Institute, the Canadian Fraser Institute, and more than 70 think tanks around the world--measuring economic freedom--America's position fell from No. 2 in 2000 to No. 19 in 2011, behind the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, and Bahrain. Good ol' France is worse still (No. 40) and so is Mother Russia (No. 101), if that soothes your pain somewhat but if you think none of this has any influence on your life, think again:

"Interestingly, the average income of the poorest 10% in the most economically free nations is more than twice the overall income in the least free nations. Life expectancy is 79.5 years in the top quartile compared to 61.6 years in the bottom quartile, and political and civil liberties are considerably higher in economically free nations than in unfree nations." (source: http://www.cato.org/economic-freedom-world)

In case you don't care about society's economic freedom, it means that the fate of the poor is not much of an issue for you either, or life itself. People's lives in unfree countries are on average nearly 18 years shorter, over 22%, than in places that consider economic freedom a value worth pursuing. 

Unless they can live and thrive in freedom, people rather die.

Political representatives and the media, neutered and spayed as they present themselves, have distracted us with artificial excitement about the minimum wage debate ad nauseam. People enjoy being agitated over the potential difference of a dollar or two, even though it affects only half a percent of the population. Half the U.S. workforce depends directly on time-based pay. More or less indirectly, society as a whole has to live with the consequences. But that's worth a mere yawn.

Hourly wages are equally pesky for employers and employees. Methods of time-based pay haven't been seriously questioned in the last 100 years. Ben Franklin's famous quote "Time is Money" has survived over 200 years now. Are these ideas still true? Are we stuck in false reverence toward worn-out cliches that prove inadequate for our times? If you desire a prosperous economy, should you waste your life waiting until the last politician, not capable of unearthing a single original thought, evolves past the parroting of "jobs, jobs, jobs?"

Wage jobs are the dumbest possible answer for questions people are too lethargic to ask: 

What's the easiest way for society to thrive, economically and otherwise? How could the greatest number of people raise their quality of life? Can we discover methods that foster productivity and increase incomes/profits for both employees and employers? Last but not least, what would it take to make a flourishing economy more enjoyable--dare I say 'fun'?--for all its living parts? 

Do you personally believe it is high time to grow out of this senile, dimly ailing vegetable of a dreckonomy with joy and enthusiasm?

"What is your business in this?" you ask me? What am I peddling? What are my answers that I'd part with for a small LARGE fee? I categorically refuse to give you any answers. I hardly know what's good for me. Who am I to tell you what's best for you?

I am initiating a hopefully growing debate between you and the people you talk with. I am here to instigate a revolution that spreads the taste of entrepreneurial freedom throughout society. You see, employees spend their money in a so-called capitalist environment. But they earn their money in authoritarian environments. What if we could "corrupt" all employees into becoming capitalists too? Would half the country still despise the idea of profits as much as they pretend to do now? Could anybody afford to hate the rich while aspiring to become one of them?

I know, the term 'capitalism' is utterly outmoded and the generation of millennials and Bitcoin miners is bypassing crotchety old capitalists in the fast lane. Perhaps it is appropriate to toss the entire lot of these musty cold war terms into the dusty coffers of history. It doesn't take capital per se to succeed in non-linear monetary environments. A 17-year old kid can write code for a new smartphone app and strike it rich overnight. Getting paid for time? Good Lord! That idea is so 20th century and truly belongs in Grandma's attic! 

If I had perfect answers I would ask you to pay me royally, so I don't reveal them to you. 

I am serious. One of the problems we are facing is that the best looking answers turn out to be the worst foundations for the development of individual creativity. Solution Pollution is how I call that. The addiction to other people's answers suppresses what society is most deprived of: decentralized, individual answers. Jobs are coffins of individuality. The mind numbing drudgery of hated, poorly paid jobs prevents roughly 150 - 200 million people from inventing their own individual, productive, and profitable answers every day anew.

The greatest enemy of freedom is a perfect world. Your freedom of expressing yourself beats any seemingly perfect solution out there. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? How could anybody besides you come up with remotely tolerable answers?!

It's a paradox: there are too many answers out there, and yet not nearly enough as long as yours are missing. In upcoming newsletter issues I shall continue to ask questions, preferably uncomfortable ones of course.

Time-based pay compensates people for increments of elapsed time. Unless an employee is immortal, she receives dollars as indemnification for inching an hour closer to her death. Does the amount matter? What's the last hour preceding a heart attack worth: $8.25, $10.10, $19.50, minimum wage?

Relate money to life time and all numbers are grave insults.

My idea of abolishing hourly wage jobs is weird? No other human being in the history of the world before you or in the future can possibly have the same thumb prints as you but when it comes to sophisticated matters as a person's life, any cookie cutter solution is good enough to rid ourselves of the least desirable group of people: the unemployed. What moron would believe that jobs are ideal, healthy, and productive environments for tens of millions of individuals? The idea that intelligent people will be satisfied if you give them money in exchange for the most precious commodity they have, time, is idiotic.

Time-based pay requires authoritarian regimes. Hourly employees are monitored by their employers. They are told what to do, what to say, what to wear, how to groom themselves, and what not to say or do. Somebody looks over their shoulders, supervises their computer use, and controls the clock. Naturally, updating your Facebook page is frowned upon during paid work hours. That is considered time theft.

25 years ago, the same employers cheered when authoritarian regimes around the late Soviet Union crumbled. Can capitalism (or what's left of it) and free markets (I'm afraid we'll never see them) live and unfold freely without authoritarian rule and suppression? Do you not think it is odd and absurd that we seem to base freedom and economic success on authoritarian practices?

Supervising--or should I say 'policing'?--employees is costly for employers, and the supervisors need supervision as well. Authoritarianism is a vicious cycle, a dear old circulus vitiosos, an expensive escalation of undesirable causes and effects. Freedom? Not a trace.

If a 10-year old girl can open a lemonade stand in her parents' driveway and make money 10 minutes later, what would stop adult employees from having one or more income sources supplementing their jobs? I assure you it would make society more playful and interesting. Nevertheless, let's assume not a single employee is willing or able to engage in such an endeavor.

What would happen if employers paid their workers for the wholesale market value of their productive output? Why would they care what their employees do on their computers? Would there really be a problem if your employee talked to her boyfriend on the phone for two hours each day, yet her sufficiency surpasses anybody's who mopes around for eight hours? Why would employers care if employees even show up? As long as employees are productive, as long as they deliver agreed upon quantity and quality, why waste time and money on a corporate police state? And if your employee goofs off for a day but no deadline needs to be met, what business of yours would that be as an employer?

When I first introduce the idea of abolishing wages, employers are usually afraid I may be an evil Marxist promoting new bloodletting of the poor rich. Employees are jealously defending their misery, as if I planned to deprive them of their most sacred possession, a life spent in pain and despondency. Well, I do but employees will retain their freedom of choice. They will always be free to be as unfree as they desire. It's crazy, the more dysfunctional things are, the more people flock to them. Like family.

Professional work might morph into something terribly relaxing. People may actually enjoy themselves, each other, and God forbid, lose interest in biting the hands that feed them.

Not all answers will be found immediately and easily. So what? Trial, error, and mistakes are wonderful gifts as we have discovered meanwhile. Perhaps it will be more rewarding not to know every pertinent detail at once. "When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers," said Oscar Wilde.

Please join me for this adventure.

In future issues, we'll dig deeper into the roots of the status quo: why do people choose employment, a career, while others would not never consider working for somebody else? What determines an individual's choices and when? Why freedom can never be liked or trusted. What corporate cannibalism is all about, or the arrogance of meaning, and ritual murder of the individual. Why is our love of freedom marred? What could be greater than the Greater Good? If it is possible to end exchange and the causal model...

The string of questions that evolves from here is sheer endless and so is the fun that can be had for you and me while introducing this admittedly dicey subject to the public.

A grand day to you,

Egbert

P.S.: Meanwhile, check out EndWages.com and on Amazon.com you'll find Paperback and Kindle editions of my book How to Better Hate Your Job. Of course it's also available for the Nook and on iTunes.

The next book title on the workbench, Paid to Die: The Linear Cynicism of Time-Based Pay will be available in a couple of months, hopefully. You can pre-order your copy on EndWages.com.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization.
It was greatest before there was any civilization.

Sigmund Freud

I am aware that Dr. Freud was most likely Mr. Fraud to a considerable degree. His questionable character traits and practices, however, do not render all of his thoughts and ideas worthless. As a German proverb says, "Even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while." Austrian psychiatrists aren't exempt from eternal truths.