I think that, from our current relatively enlightened viewpoint, we can all admit that slavery is wrong. Heck, I’m even polite to the Google Lady on my phone (who’s technically just a tech-slave), just in case the computers take over.
That said, I have to admit that I have enjoyed being able to get some of the stuff I have from China, Taiwan, and other Asian countries. This means I have supported slave labor. If you’ve bought anything from Temu, or any Chineseum knock offs from Amazon, you’ve supported slave labor. Hell, if you’ve bought peeled garlic, you’ve supported slave labor. I would hazard to guess that most people in America (or any of the first world countries) have supported slave labor at some point in their lives. We’re consumer creatures, and that means we buy cheap whenever we think it’s worth it. Cheap pretty much means slave labor. If you think you’re outside that broadly painted stroke, you’re probably wrong (unless you live off grid in the middle of nowhere and are mostly self sufficient, in which case I apologize for lumping you in).
Every person who’s supported gun control has chosen slavery. Every person who’s supported taxing the rich to give to the poor has chosen slavery. Every poor person who votes for more bread and circuses has chosen slavery. Freedom isn’t comfortable, and slavery often is. After all, as a slave, you don’t have to think or be responsible for things. It’s just easier. As a slave, you can be ignorant. After all, you’re “only” a slave. And you’re protected from the consequences of your actions. Slaves, after all, are owned by the ruling class. Therefore, any errors on the slave’s part are actually errors of the ruling class, not the slave.
Chris talked about a form of slavery earlier in the week. He mentioned (and Miguel mentioned) the women on the Left who’ve been dressing up as Handmaidens from the Handmaid’s Tale tv show. As I mentioned in Tuesday’s Tunes, no one can make you a slave; only you can do that. And that’s just what I’m seeing in so many places. People are choosing slavery. In particular, many women are choosing slavery, and it bothers me.
I say this because I’ve met so many women who have “bought into” the lies that women earn pennies on men’s dollars at work. There’s a level of truth to it, in that a ridiculous number of women don’t earn as much as their male counterparts. The problem is, women don’t do what men do in order to get paid more, such as asking for a raise. As near as I can tell, most white collar workers and some blue collar workers who are male have asked for a raise at least once in their life. They did so knowing they might get turned down, but they asked anyhow. The women, on the other hand, don’t ask. They don’t ask at any level of employment. They seem to expect that HR will just up their salary on their own. Except it doesn’t work that way.
Chris tells stories about when he was the boss and women were applying for tech jobs. It wasn’t necessarily that they weren’t any good at the job. The problem was that they didn’t ask enough for their salary. As a woman, I’d guess the women had a poor opinion of their own worth, and that they felt if they asked for too much money, they’d never get the job. Instead, they offered to take salaries so low that Chris had to turn them down because he had a minimum he was expected to pay.
Here’s the deal… it isn’t the job of the company or its people to tell you what you’re worth. That’s YOUR job to figure out. It’s a balancing act. You have to know what you’re capable of, what your stretch goals are, and what people in your position are generally paid. Most women don’t bother to see what their peers are getting paid.
When I offer editing services, I charge by the word. I charge the industry standard, which currently sits between $0.01 and $0.14 per word, depending upon the type and length of editing I’m doing. I usually charge on the higher end of the scale, because I’m good at what I do. I know my worth. I know the quality of the finished product I return to my customers. There’s a reason people ask me to edit their work, and rarely blink at the cost.
Industry standards are available on the web, and are very easy to find. It takes seconds to Google an answer. I can’t tell you why women just won’t do it. I do know it frustrates the hell out of me. It’s right up there with, “Have you read the bill?” and “Did you watch the whole interview or just the 2 second clip on TikTok?”
So what does all this have to do with slavery? Well, there’s wage slavery, too. At one time, it was expected that if you worked at a job, you would do your absolute best at that job, whether it was janitorial work at a school or arguing cases in front of the SCOTUS. These days, some employers treat their employees so poorly that the employees simply don’t care about the job they’re working. Why should they apply themselves if their bosses are going to berate them regardless? On the other hand, some employees (especially ones just entering the workforce right now) are so demanding that it’s impossible to work with them. I’m always aghast when I see some young person who’s barely old enough to drive and vote stand up and explain how they got fired from their job because their boss refused to comply with their therapist’s demands to give accommodations for “time blindness” or whatever the mental disease du jour is.
If you’re working hard, doing all the right things, and putting in decent hours, I believe you should at least be able to afford a roof over your head and food on the table. That’s no longer necessarily the case (though it’s not nearly as bad as the Left would have you believe). The system is broken, and there is no easy fix for it.
What I can absolutely tell you, though, is that I am glad that the Left is losing their slaves. I don’t think slavery is right, and most of the humans on this planet agree with me, therefore making my opinion the norm. Every time I hear a Leftist (California’s Bass comes to mind) talk about how horrible it is that food is rotting in the fields or that there’s no one left to watch their children after school or clean their homes, I just want to cry. It may sound like a cliche, because it is, but that just echoes the cry from the Left in the 1800s about who would pick their cotton if the slaves were all freed? It’s just ridiculous.
Comments
6 responses to “FBEL – Slavery”
its called “self imposed slavery “
many have been taught its not your fault”….
yes it is.. it used to be up to the individual to get what they want.
now because of rampant political war many believe everything that happened to em is someone else’s fault (“see that rich guy? he took YOUR money”)… remember that quote??
work for what YOU want not what others say you should have
Re “it’s not your fault”
Then who else’s fault is it? I can understand a few (VERY few) exceptions, such as those who’ve been held captive, people in war zones, people who’ve been impacted by unforseen natural disasters (floods in areas where floods don’t happen, for instance, such as we saw earlier this year). Those are definitely not the fault of the people involved. But they are very much the exceptions.
The one that always gets me is the person who has enough metal in their face, facial tattoos, and dresses like a street walker, complaining that they haven’t got jobs even though they’ve applied for them. Yes, it’s your fault. Maybe in a hundred years that’ll be okay in a business setting, but it isn’t today. Whether it “should” or not doesn’t come into play; it isn’t right now.
I think there’s also an instilled guilt. If you have enough, then you’re one of THEM and you ought to be giving away all your money. I think sometimes that’s why the younger crowd who are whinging right now are suffering. They believe they *should* suffer, because they’re white, or female, or from a middle class family, or are American, or whatever. Since the world set them up cozy, they aren’t going to get “natural suffering” so they have to manufacture it. And no, I don’t think that’s a thought process… I believe it’s something working in the mental gestalt under their consciousness.
The reason I say this is because those self-same people would die in a barter system. They have absolutely no useful skills. They can’t farm, make a fire, sew clothing, cook a meal from scratch… Those are things the government is supposed to provide for them, so they have no concept of it. In a barter system, I’d be about where I am right now. Comfortable, but wishing I had a bit more. I might even be better off, as I have more salable skills for 100 years ago. 😉
i was referring to those who “believe they should suffer”.. not real slaves..
RE: “gender wage gap” — Which gender is bold enough to ask for a raise is part of it. There are also another factors in where that “gap” comes from.
One is how “similar professions” are lumped together. Education, for example. There are male and female teachers, for sure, but men are more likely to pull dual-duty (teaching and coaching sports, for example), go into administration (think: principal and vice-principal), or teach at the college/university level, while women tend to stick to teaching. Administrators, teacher/coaches, and college professors typically get paid more, but they’re all equally weighted as “educators” when they run the statistics.
Or in medicine, comparing male and female doctors’ salaries: men are far more likely to become specialists (oncologists, cardiologists, neurologists, surgeons, etc.) and women are more likely to be general/family practitioners. Needless to say, specialists tend to get paid more, but for statistical purposes they’re all “doctors”.
(And then there’s the “dangerous professions” — commercial fishermen, mine workers, oil workers, etc. — which pay very well on account of the hazards, and for which workers are overwhelmingly male.)
It’s not that the “gender wage gap” doesn’t exist, it does. But there are real, reasonable explanations for it that have nothing to do with misogyny and sexism. It doesn’t necessarily need to be “fixed”, and if it did, setting the high school principal’s salary (backed by a PhD in education and 20 years of experience) to match the second-year kindergarten TA’s salary, or vice versa — simply because the latter is female — wouldn’t be the answer.
Besides which, if you tried that in medicine, be prepared to have VERY FEW specialists in a few years’ time. Unless someone shows a particularly intense passion for it, there’s no point in going through the extra education and residency if there won’t be a bump in compensation.
I only compare apples and apples, Archer. A principal and a regular teacher (or kindergarten teacher’s TA) are not the same. On the other hand, my sister currently has considerably MORE education than the principal and maybe as much as the superintendent… but she doesn’t get paid that because she’s working as a teacher, not admin. Again, fair.
A specialist is not a GP, and a GP is not a physician’s assistant. If you want to lump together a specialist and a first year PA, then you’re not comparing apples and apples, and your entire argument is disingenuous.
Bottom line? If I ask for $50 an hour, and I’m paid it, then I must be worth it by the current need in my community. If I don’t get hired, I can lower my fees, or I can go hungry, or I can move somewhere that can afford me. That’s it. If people are dropping me $50/hr without blinking, I probably ought to be charging more!
Regarding the gender pay gap.
If I owned a business, and I could employ a woman to perform the same work as a man, but only pay her 72% of what I would pay a man…why would I ever employ a man?
On a more serious note, I have seen plenty of articles that destroy the myth that women get paid less for the same work. And, I have seen plenty of articles that support it. The difference between the two is the ones claiming the wage gap exists tend to rely on broader/wider statistics without discussing specific jobs, and specific education/experience/skills required. The ones destroying the myth tend to focus on specific job fields, and take into account experience, education, etc…
Which is correct? Both. Neither. It depends.
One thing I am sure of is no one owes you a living wage. You have to earn it.
You are in business. What you are selling is your time, skills, and experience. It is up to you to sell it to the highest bidder. It is also up to you to know what your skills are worth on the open market. There was a time when finding that info out was a matter of trial and error, usually involving job interviews. These days.. the internet is your friend, and any woman alive can price her labor at the going rate for someone with their skills and experience.