That's right to work for less states.



Maybe we should use the maritime example (that has served so well for a
thousand years) to modernize employment.

If we were employed as commercial fishermen, whalers, privateers, or Vikings on
a longboat raid not a one of us would work for wages. Before an enterprise
began, there would be a contract assigning shares to various responsibilities.
Ship's owner 20%, ship's master 10%, officers
several percent each, all the way down to
shanghaied "landsmen" that might get a fraction of a percent apiece.

Some would say, "That smacks of Communism!" but it does not. Under a communist
system, every crew member would get an equal share regardless of contribution
or responsibility- and that's not likely to be sustainable because it is
inequitable.

Previously agreed expenses would be deductible, of course.

The system worked well because each person was equitably vested in the success
of the venture. No results or poor results meant financial ruin for all.
Cutting a fat hog meant that ordinary seamen earned far more than their
unfortunate, wage slaving fellows working ashore.

To keep the system functioning on the up and up, the crew would elect a
"quartermaster" to help control expenses
and keep a running inventory of booty, prizes, and cargo. Even umpteen hundred
years ago, there were "clever" folks who would otherwise exaggerate expenses or
conceal income to more adequately pad thier own pocket prior to settling up.
Unfortunately, the "trust me" system doesn't work very well.

Failing to follow the maritime model means that we have a system where labor
and management are adversaries, not partners.
Labor is an unfortunate expense, which any smart businessperson will take steps
to reduce to the lowest possible dollar amount. Management is seen as the
greedy capitalist group with little or no regard for anything beyond putting up
the best possible numbers on the quarterly report. Under those circumstances,
it's no wonder that labor and management are always at odds and squabbling over
the division of profits.

In the modern economy, you can find the maritime model routinely employed in
sales jobs. When I was a very young man, my family all tried to warn me against
"working on commission". They couldn't have been more wrong. Give a man (or
woman) a piece of the action, get the hell out of the way and let them do the
job,
*ACCOUNT HONESTLY*, and everybody gets rich.

We also find the maritime model employed by investors. In that system,
"shareholders" rather than working partners divide the profits based on a ratio
that reflects the contribution of capital (rather than skill, labor, time, or
expertise) to the enterprise. The workers (considered an expense rather than
partners in an endeavor) are often paid as little as the company can get away
with to minimize the impact on the most important reckoning....the return on
capital.

Best businessman I ever knew built an business with 75 -80 employees, all of
whom were either on a generous commission structure or paid higher per hour
than employees at similar businesses in the area. Didn't need a union- working
for union scale would have been a cut in pay. My employer used to take a lot of
flack from other people in the same industry. They would criticize him for his
payroll expense, and try to point out how he'd be more profitable if he'd cut
back to
the industry norm. Had he cut back to the prevailing pay scale, he would not
have been able to attract the type of talent that made his enterprise what it
was.

What most of the competitors failed to appreciate, was that this particular
bsuiness was (according to a national manufacturer who would be in a position
to know) among the top 5% in the nation for net profit among businesses of its
type. I eventually worked up to a (substantially jr) partnership in the firm
and know for a fact that my employer was personally drawing
over $7mm a year from the operation. That's not a lot of money by today's
standards, but it was a decent, executive level income 20 years ago- when major
league ballplayers were still willing to bat for just a few hundred thousand a
year. :-)

The common labor vs. capital model doesn't work well because both sides are
squabbling over how to divide the pie.

If we use the maritime model and put people on equitable shares, the emphasis
is no longer on fighting over the division of the corporate pie but rather
making the pie large enough that everybody can eat his or her fill.

Might be something to this. Notice that national economies, whether capitalist,
socialist, communist, or what not......seem to come and go with the passage of
centuries. While there aren't a lot of privateers these days and it's been a
while since the last longboat went raiding, commercial fishing and crabbing
still use a very old system for equitable division of income and the activities
have outlasted
scores of more sophisticated economies.

So..to hell with unions. Let's all go crabbing. :-)