Chris Carter

Modernity is a series of abstractions from the real world.

The things we depend upon for daily sustinence are merely the presentation layer of a complex network of supply chains, technologies, contracts, laws, and financial instruments. As moderns, don’t get our food from the ground, where it comes from, but from the grocery store, where it is pre-processed, packaged, and sold. We communicate virtually via computer networks more than we do face-to-face. We buy more things online from ecommerce giants like Amazon, and box stores like Home Depot, than we do from mom and pop brick and mortar stores. We are, as one of my friends put it, a “third person society”; our friendships are third person (podcasts), our politics are third person (whatever they’re doing on Washington), and even our sex is third person (pornography). We don’t even use our own money to buy things anymore; we take short term loans of other people’s money via an electronic network (a credit card) to pay for our own purchases.

Very few people in their daily life actually come into contact with the elements of their daily sustinence which are directly given to them by God. My father always comments about the decline of gardening and animal husbandry that he has experienced in his own lifetime, even in rural New England. “Everyone used to have a garden, or a goat, or some chickens”, he says. “Now, no one does.” This is the fruit of industrialization.

Among many things the industrial revolution changed about human life, the nature of work was the one that was chiefly felt by men and their households. The modern notion of being an employee is an abstraction like everything else; it operates in a presentation layer that is well-seperated from the real world, and historically largely foreign to the workforce. Historically, you got paid when you did something for someone else; you produced a product, or provided a service, and would be paid what it was worth. Employeeship abstracts away this critical aspect of trade from these kinds of historical arrangements. An employee does not trade with many; he only trades with one. His product is not the work he produces, nor even the time it took him to produce it, but a fixed amount of time to complete a set of niche tasks. He works 40 hours, and he gets paid for 40 hours. He does really great work this week, and only gets paid for 40 hours. He wants a raise, his boss goes and talks to HR and finance, and he still only gets paid for 40 hours.

Now, I understand that every employee role is a bit different, and not all of them fit this paradigm. Many sales roles are comission based, and so reward the employee according to the quality of their work. Hourly employees can increase their bottom line by working overtime (if their employer allows for it, of course). But by and large most Americans are employees, and most of them have jobs that do not contain these aspects of compensation. The only thing an employee can do to increase their bottom line is play the long game with the employer; you have to put in the time, show your value to the business, keep your nose clean, do your HR-mandated diversity, equity, and inclusion training, and hope for a raise at the end of the fiscal year that at least keeps up with inflation.

An employee is not like a skilled craftsman working in a guild. A guildsman has full control of the techniques, tools, processes, and systems he uses. He owns every aspect of the product he produces, and is personally responsible for any lack in quality and recieves all the credit for the good work that he does. He is a master of his craft. An employee, by contrast, is a contracted widget-maker, who is required to use the factory’s tools, processes, and standards. He is simply another line item in the cost of goods sold for a product that the abstract “company” then owns, sells, and takes responsibility for. His work is niched down to a very particular set of tasks at a usually very large firm. Where the guildsman may say “I make shoes”, the employee might say “I do user experience consulting for Microsoft Power BI in the healthcare industry”. Because the role of an employee is so niche, employeeship is a feedback loop that rewards engrainment and conformity within a particular firm. Employees constantly need to prove that the company “needs them”, and that they fit in with the “company culture”. If you want to be successful, make sure you have the right political views, and don’t grumble too much about your mandated DEI training, or you’ll get reported to HR. Also, don’t skip stupid meetings, since we need everyone to participate. And hey, see I’ll you at happy hour tonight, right?

Getting paid more as an employee is not stictly a function of doing quality work and treating customers well; more important than this is how well you can schmooze your way up the ladder. This is largely a political task, not an economic one, and it leads to certain behaviors and compromises that only employees engage in. I used to work as a data analyst for a very large company that handled the production of very complex and important things. One of my jobs was to automate certain data processing tasks that employees in the company were handling manually; TPS reports, and such. When we would offer to do this for them, the response was usually not “wow, it would be great to automate such a menial task, thanks!”. To the contrary, many people got defensive of their work; “I have always produced this TPS report spreadsheet every Tuesday, it’s what I do!”. This is the employee mindset; not thrift, creativity, or innovation, but engrainment, and conformity.

I need this job, man. I’ve got a mortgage and student loans.

An employee do not believe (often rightly) that he can produce work of value outside of the context of his job. This is because his work is very niche and abstract, and is therefore only valuable in an extremely limited number of contexts. The employee needs a company to work for, because that is the only place that he is valuable; in this way, he is actually more akin to a slave than anything else. A slave works only for his master, fulfilling the very niche role of being, well, that master’s slave. The guildsman, by contrast, is a free man. He can find work anywhere, because he serves the concrete needs of many people, which are divers and particular. He prizes innovation, thrift, and creativity; engrainment and conformity are his enemies. He can choose who he works for, unlike the employee, who still needs to complete his HR-mandated DEI training.

The guildsman understands that everyone is susceptible to market risks, which are a function of the real world. An employee is blind to market risks; they recieve a steady paycheck every two weeks regardless of market conditions. They are blinded by the perception that being an employee is a less risky venture than owning their own means of production, having traded the steady volatility of the market for the fat-tailed volatility of abstraction. Every employer knows that there are some months where you aren’t sure you’ll be able to pay your employees; in the same way that grocery stores are a great way to get consistent food until a major supply chain disruption, being an employee is a great way to make money until you get unexpectedly laid off.

Virtually everyone is an employee; true guildsmen, tradesmen, and freelancers are few nowadays. It wasn’t always this way, however. Prior to industrialization, there wasn’t a distinction between “work life” and “home life”. No one spoke of a “work/life balance”. There was just life, and it involved working; most people owned their own means of production, produced their own food, and fulfilled a more general role in the community. The household was the economic center of society; we get our word “economics” from the Greek word oikonomia (literally “house law”) with reference to the science of running a well ordered and productive household. Work was a family ordeal, and marriage was a joint venture in producing goods, services, education, and children. Xenophon’s Oikonomia, an ancient Socratic dialogue on household economics, is a window into this more ancient, richer, and more stable household economy. The advent of industrialization overturned this ancient pattern. Work was moved from the home to the factory, along with the means of production. Rural life was replaced with urban life. Husbands left the home for work, and their wives did not have the productive role they once did, and soon desired to enter the workforce as well. “Career” became the emphasis over vocation and homemaking for both men and women, and as a result food production, education, and childrearing became diminished as an essential function of the household. The house itself lost its function as a meaningful productive enterprise, and became a sink of recreation and consumption. Even our food atrophied in its nourishing value; but that’s for a different time.

Employeehood is only one aspect of this picture. Revitalizing the household is a project that requires going against the grain of the rest of the culture in many ways, and often choosing to live life on hard mode. Being an employee teaches you that work happens primarily outside the home, and that the home is a place of consumption. This is simply wrong, and requires a mindset shift in the purpose of work and home to overcome.

Many people work as employees, including me. And of course, if you’re just starting out, you’re probably going to be working for someone else for a while, and that’s ok. The question is how you view that phase of being an employee. Is your goal to clock in for 40 years, climb the corporate ladder, and build a niche career in a prestigious firm? Or do you see being an employee as a temporary and covenient measure to make money, build a network, and gain experience in a field? Are you happy to collect a paycheck for being an email farmer and spreadsheet pusher, or do you want to contribute to the more concrete needs of people? Do you want to work for someone else’s dream, or chase your own? Do you want to be safe, or do you want to be free?

My advice is to begin with the end in mind. Your goal, as a young man leaving his father and mother’s household, should be to seek independence, not a career. Make it your mindset that you can always leave and find other work at any time, and ensure that you are valuable enough to be able to do so. Work a job with the goal of being a freelancer or owning your own company someday. Or, save up to fund the acquisition of productive property, like real estate or livestock. Use your steady income at your job now to pay down your debts or build a safety net for more risk later on. Many men achieve independence by going into the trades, like plumbing or carpentry, since there is work readily available and blue collar tradesmen are in short supply. But if working with your hands is not your thing, there are other ways to gain independence. If you’re into computers, be a freelance programmer; there is a huge demand for that, and you’ll get paid based on how much you know. If you’re educated and like to teach, become a tutor; it’s an ancient trade, and pays very well. Maybe you’ve got a knack for writing, so start a blog, or write a book, and put your name out there. Or, learn to make your living off the land, like many of our ancestors did. Make it your goal to use your own unique gifts and talents to own your own means of production, so you are not dependent on the means of production of another; this is an ancient, masculine and distinctly American way.