Today is a national holiday celebrating the European, and very un-American, idea of the Balkanization of society into classes, and specifically celebrating the “labor class”.  I won’t bother trying to unpack all the layers upon layers, and the sub layers upon sub layers of false assumption behind it.  Instead I make the very American assertion that every one of us, regardless of circumstance, is an autonomous entrepreneur.

We aren’t born into classes or groups.  We are born, or immigrate, into the American Experiment.  We may decide to sell our “labor” (and in this case I use the word as a practical noun or a verb as opposed to a classification) to someone else as a part of our life plan, or we may decide to go more or less directly into our own businesses, but neither choice is one that is foisted on us by society.

Actually; whether you are selling your labor to someone else’s business, whether you’re selling products or services under your own personal business banner, or whether you serve on the board of directors for a large corporation, you are in fact your own business.  If your name is Billy Bob and you shovel manure for a dairy farmer, you should think of yourself as Billy Bob’s shoveling service.  You are your own boss (to the extent anyone is his own boss, which is small).  Anyone serving as his own boss needs customers (they’re the real bosses don’t you know – they control the money you’re looking to get) and in this case your customer is that farmer.  You serve your customer and in return you get paid.  That’s a business you’re in, whether you understand it or not.  You’re an entrepreneur.  Get your head straight and make the best of it.

“Labor” in the communist sense is something altogether different.  In that case, as a laborer you are in a group pitted against the other classes in a political struggle for resources and perks.  Your class or group is in direct competition with all others, for a piece of the confiscated booty.  It’s gang against gang.  Your gang is the only one that counts and all other gangs are your enemies.  The pinnacle of success for your gang is when you take over full control of the government.

In the American model on the other hand, you are an autonomous operator– a business consisting of one individual.  You compete for the favor of potential customers in a system of property rights protection.  Your only method of success then is to do a better job in serving your customers.  Lobbying, or the brute strength of gangs (or labor unions) then has little or no place, because there is no power in government to lend favor to your business at the expense of others.  Government has no rights to itself – only the responsibility to protect every individual’s property rights.  Cooperation in the form of combined resources (the corporation model) does have a place, because the economy of scale (usually but not always) allows a larger business to produce better goods or services at lower prices.  It is the height of a polite and just civilization.

Too bad the American system has been corrupted by the Progressive communist movement into something ugly.  They make it ugly by getting government’s coercive power involved in it, then use that ugliness to tell us that “capitalism” doesn’t work.  Lying scum.

I’ll call this Lying Scum Day then.  Have a happy one, suckers.