Problem of Meniality

It has taken a long while to get here, but realised this morning that much of my writing of late originates from something much more intuitive than I give credit for.

Almost 15 years ago a friend once threw some litter on a railway platform. I admonished him and he, looking around, gentured to the cleaner and said "oh its a job for him". That was the inception of my economic critique.

Certainly that is true and is the basis of the nonsense of the need for jobs in the economic system. But it hides a darker side which I have analysed as "status". The cleaner of course was African... you work the rest out.

It is a simple fact to me that we are prepared to provide the services that we use. If I produce faeces then I am prepared to work in the sewage industry. How is it possible to need a service, and yet not admit you need it. What occurs in the mind of someone who goes to the toilet but doesn't want to wipe his own arse? Are they unable to accept what they are? Or in the case of King Henry the VIII they are too fat to do it.

So we should all be prepared to work in all the industries that we use. If we don't like the work that this industry creates then we can't expect to have the products of that industry. This seems basic common sense to me.

Yet quite the opposite seems to be the prevalent view. Somehow (that I have failed to garner) there are many people who use a service that they would never dream of providing: jobs that are classified as "menial".

I always have this disagreement with my bosses. The reason for employing someone is to either gain extra expertise in a job, or to lend physical support to the industry. In both cases the industry benefits. You would for example employ a cleaner because (1) They are more experienced and better at cleaning than yourself, or (2) you simply don't have the time to clean anymore. If however you found someone in the market place who could do your job better than you, it makes economic sense to employ them in your place and you become the cleaner. That way the industry prospers and everyone is better off.

Yet this is inexplicably not what happens. A boss will deliberately not employ people who are better than them so that they can retain their position (their status). This lack of competition also means that a boss has no incentive to become better. They will also employ a cleaner not because the cleaner is good at their job, or even that they don't have the time to clean but because cleaning is not a suitable job for a manager. Office cleaning could easily be done by a rota of the office members - there is simply no reason not to do this. But cleaners are employed not for labour saving, nor economic saving but simply because of status. Status must cost our economy trillions in wages to people who fill gaps that only exist because of mental impressions of status.

Returning to the first paragraph: a boss would never become the cleaner however because of the way he treats the cleaner. The cleaner is on low pay, has little autonomy, has little respect, has little job security and job satisfaction and yet it is the cleaness of the foyer which has been remarked on before is the best indication of a companies quality. The same point is more obvious in retail, that the status we attribute to a company is the value we attribute to the sales staff. Thus the status of the Executive Officers is actually not in their salaries, or their names but in the staff they employ. As mentioned before this is the first thing to understand when becoming a king. To fail to understand this means you remain a lowly person.

Sadly people are fooled into thinking they have high status because of independent external symbols like salaries and titles and positions within a company. It is an illusion which they keep to themselves and which becomes manifest if they are ever separated from those external symbols. Recently we have the boss of RBS bank scratching around in the dirt to retain his pension - as if he needs it. His fight is simply to try and maintain the image of status, but in his desperate fight we see the insecurity that comes from holding onto an external symbol of wealth. He has no wealth we discover and must fight desperately for the external proof that he depends upon like a crutch. There is no real wealth, value or status in what he has achieved and what he fights for precisely because he has to fight for it!

His cleaner on the other hand who can live on their meagre wage, has the support of family and friends, maybe dreams of enormous wealth but never expects it nor suffers for it, when they lose their job and their salary it is of little effect just the practical annoyance of finding food to live.

As Jesus once said it is the meek who will inherit the Earth. It is the meek (not the pathetic) who have the real value. It is their value that allows them to be meek. The valueless ones have to fight for it and make a big display of their apparent wealth, the display of status. Like me writing here: it is because I have no wisdom that I need to write.

So how do we improve the society by incorporating the meek more? Well that is impossible because they probably wouldn't want to be "incorporated" (Meek Inc.) as that contradicts their meekenes.

One idea I had to balance society more was the replacement of National Service where people were simply trained to murder other people, with National Service where we actually serve the nation. Menial low paid unskilled jobs that we don't do for fun but never-the-less we all require could be done by a National Service which conscripts all people without exception. Thus school leavers get immediate experience of work. They get money immediately. They are incorporated into society immediately. They get a work ethic. They learn the value of actual work (not the fantasy of high salaries, positions) because they do this work for the community not for their own gain.

A down side is that people of lower mental ability will find their jobs taken away from them by people of higher mental ability. As argued firstly, if you use a service you must be prepared to supply that service - this means that menial tasks do not "belong" to the less able - paradigm shift there. The less-able then can concentrate on developing themselves - it will take longer and take more resources but will enable them to have a life which other people of higher ability take for granted.

On the other hand if the efficiency people come out and say that it is simply not economical to spend these resources on the less able and it is better to employ the more able immediately : then they also take the stand that employment and a better life is not the point of the economy just economic performance. In which case I return them to the argument of status being a vast wealth of income. Managers should do the cleaning. In which case large slices of the menial tasks dissappear anyway. And returning to my friend if it is just a job creation scheme for the less able whose lives will never be that good anyway, then spare them the patronage and free them from the labour market all together with a cleaning machine and a free handout from the goverenment like the disabled people they clearly must be.

Basically there is a Paradigm shift available for the human race when it is ready.