Re: The Right to Work for Nobody

[Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>]

At 11:08 AM 10/6/97 -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>founders. While the socialist is pissing his life away on the road to
>medocracy the founders of such companies, and 1000's like them, are
>working 80+ hours a week building their company sometimes at the expence
>of health, home and family.
>
>After years of hard work, when the founders are finaly able to reap the
>fruits of their toil, the socialist will step up and say: "I want what you
>have, you can't have that because I don't" even though the socialist has
>done nothing to earn it. 

I understand your argument here, but I have to disagree with some of your base assumptions.  There are people who are in situations beyond their control, working their asses off.  Born to the wrong parents, with the wrong skin color in the wrong neighborhood, or got a girl pregnant at age 15 and instead of leaving her on welfare and running off to finish law school (unlike a few senators) he did the "right" thing and married her; and then this poor schlep takes two 40-hour/week jobs at McDonalds to try to make the rent payment on some rat-infested converted warehouse.

What's the difference between his 80+ hours per week and the C.E.O. of 
K-Mart's 80+ hours per week?

I'm not saying that society owes him anything more than the chance he already had (and blew); rather, I'm just pointing out that there are more people lined up at the dole than just socialists crying, "there ought to be a law."  Some of them are truly hard workers that either had shit-for-luck when they needed it, or no scruples when they should have used them.

Which would you choose in the above situation?  Abandon the girl & child to welfare and go on to run for president, or marry her and lead a hard life of squalor, working 80+ hours per week trying your damndest to stay out of the welfare office?  Get a better job, in this factory town that just closed down and has 25% unemployment?  You're glad for the two jobs you've got.

Or how about a worse case:  your car is hit by a poor, lazy drunk driver with no insurance, leaving you paraplegic and blind?  Your occupation used to be carpenter, and you worked 80+ hour weeks including night jobs for friends, but you never could afford long-term medical insurance.  Your insurance company claims you recorded your car's VIN number incorrectly, so they're not liable for covering you.  What do you do?

Your company makes some chemoglarb for use in rat poison.  You've worked 80+ hour weeks trying to get a job as the safety coordinator because the company needs one desparately.  They have a toxic leak before you get the job, and are bankrupt before the affected workers see their last paycheck.  You're laid off, and now you can't even sit up in bed because of the damage to your lungs.  What do you do?

Or you're black, working 80+ hour weeks at a job trying to get ahead.  Your white coworkers start talking about lynching you for being uppity.  What do you do?

Before condemning all of humanity asking for handouts as lazy scum who don't deserve them, consider all these people in situations that didn't deserve to be there any more than you deserve to be rich.  You have many advantages:  brains, education, situation, location.  They have more than equal (or even overwhelming) disadvantages:  injuries, responsibilities, situations, locations.  There are some people in truly shitty situations.  

So, what do we OWE them?  That's easy -- *nothing*.  They were not offered a signed contract when they were born saying that life would be fair to them.

Should we help them?  That's a different question.  A friend of mine has a T-shirt that says "Detroit -- where the weak are killed and eaten."  That's a common enough response in the animal kingdom, but are we higher than that?  Sure, people like you will ignore them on the streets because they're "Somebody Else's Problem."  Does that make it more or less fair for the people who actually give a shit about others and do something to help them?  Or, maybe we're just stupid for trying to drag the injured gazelles along with the rest of the herd.  Maybe we should just let them fall to the lions.

Here's a toast to your long good health and continued prosperity, so I don't have to sweat hauling your sorry ass up from the lions some day in the future.