“I’m a small business owner,” someone identified as “Andy” writes to syndicated advice columnists J.T. and Dale, “and I can’t believe how many people just don’t want to work anymore. … my business is suffering, because I can’t get employees.”

My social media feeds are full of photographs — who knows if they’re real or not? I haven’t seen any in my town, but friends say they’ve seen them elsewhere — of signs at businesses apologizing for being “short-staffed,” with “people just don’t want to work” complaints appended.

The country seems adrift in a sea of whiny employers. What’s really going on here?

The standard explanation for a little while was that  “enhanced” unemployment benefits that continued even after pandemic-related (but politically created) economic shutdowns ended made it more lucrative to sit at home and play video games than, say, flip burgers. And who could be blamed for taking that deal?

That explanation’s not making much sense anymore as extra unemployment benefits, “stimulus” checks, and eviction moratoria fade into memory.

US unemployment is low  (5.2% in August; economists consider 5% or lower to effectively constitute “full employment”). Those who “want to work” are working. Why do so many seemingly not “want” to?

Put simply, they’re not being offered as much for their time and effort as they consider it to be worth.

The pandemic shutdowns and benefits affected that in two big ways.

First, some people who were able to retire decided to do so, when otherwise they might have stuck out a few more years in the work force. The available supply of labor was thus reduced.

Second, some people learned to be thriftier and make do on less over the last 18 months. You’ll bust your hump, whatever it takes, to keep a roof overhead and ramen in the pantry. Once that’s covered, though, you’re in a position to ask yourself how many hours a week you’re willing to trade for Netflix, craft beer, and expensive sneakers. The answer, right now, would appear to be “fewer.”

Labor is a commodity. It’s something the worker sells for money. And as with any other commodity, supply versus demand tells the story.

When there’s plenty of supply versus demand  — that is, high unemployment — employers can drive a hard bargain. “Don’t want to clean toilets for $7.50 an hour? No problem. There are ten other people who will.”

But when demand exceeds supply, as now, the shoe is suddenly on the other foot. “Don’t want to pay $20 an hour to get your toilets cleaned? No problem. There are ten other employers who will.”

Yes, workers and employers complain whenever they find themselves on the less profitable side of that equation. But in the end, money talks and complaints walk.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat could use a refresher on Freudo-Marxist psychiatrists.

Douthat chides libertarians — or at least “the kind of libertarian who identifies forever with his 13-year-old self” — for taking a laissez-faire attitude to “a novel, obviously addictive technology that might well be associated with depression and self-harm” (“Instagram Is Adult Entertainment,” September 30). Douthat refers to social media websites, but he should take a closer look at “the people who panicked over the moral effects of comic books” before dismissing a parallel.

Seduction of the Innocent author Fredric Wertham was sure that the shift of comics from the funny pages to funnybooks was causing psychological harm to young readers, a diagnosis drawn not from old-fashioned prudery but the Frankfurt School’s suspicion of commercial culture. Wertham cited the Progressive Era’s forays against reckless robber barons in his efforts to clean up crime comics. Ironically, such regulation allowed cartelized industries to get away with lower safety standards (and higher profits) than possible under the pressure of market competition.

By the 1960s, Mad magazine was spreading as a primer for rebellious adolescents after the Comics Code Authority forced its publisher to discontinue horror comics like Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. Meanwhile, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm introduced American audiences to a British import that became an icon of the youth counterculture. While the Beatles were proving that rock and roll would outlast Elvis Presley leaving for the Army, Fromm highlighted how “the idea of education without force” was being put into practice at the alternative school Summerhill.

Fromm insisted to those who saw an excess of permissiveness in pedagogy that, just as in the realm of politics, “it is not that authority has disappeared, nor even that it has lost in strength, but that it has been transformed from the overt authority of force to the anonymous authority of persuasion and suggestion.” Freedom did not fail when it was genuine.

Douthat’s inistence that the state save social life from social media likewise ignores Fromm’s insight, drawn from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that social organization can only be a social benefit if its “associations are free and spontaneous, and not state imposed.” What Fromm called Proudhon’s “drastic condemnation of the principle of authority and hierarchy” as “the prime cause of all disorders and ills of society” should serve as a warning to those who see it as the cure.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “Libertarianism – No Infantile Disorder” by Joel Schlosberg, The Glasgow, Montana Courier, October 6, 2021
2. “Libertarianism: No Infantile Disorder” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, October 6, 2021

On August 25, two days after the US Food and Drug Administration fully approved  the Pfizer-Biontech COVID-19 vaccine, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered “full vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces.”

Cue outrage and objection. Some officers have resigned their commissions; some enlisted personnel seem willing to risk court-martial and dishonorable discharge rather than get vaccinated. Some claim the mandate violates their rights or lacks a legal basis.

In the quarter century since my honorable discharge from the US Marine Corps, I’ve occasionally been asked by friends to have “the talk” with their teenagers who are considering military careers.

In my view, “the talk” shouldn’t be about whether joining the armed forces is a good idea. That’s a personal decision. “The talk” should be an unvarnished description of what to expect.

Here’s a short version of “the talk,” for those considering enlisting and those who have, in the age of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate:

For the entirety of your military career, you will spend most of your waking hours (and you will be roused from sleep many, many times) doing what you’re told to do. Period.

You’ll go where you’re told to go. You’ll wear what you’re told to wear. You’ll eat what you’re given, when it’s given to you, and you’ll have your hair cut as directed.

You’ll be ordered to do unpleasant things, and do them, possibly including killing other people, being killed yourself, or watching your friends die.

Yes, there’s a contract — a contract more for the government’s protection than yours,  which can be unilaterally changed at the government’s convenience.  Here’s section 9b of that contract:

“Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document.” [Emphasis in original]

If they do things now as they did in 1984, you’ll be taken through that contract line by line, twice, initialing each section to attest that you understand what it means so you can’t claim otherwise later, before you’re allowed to sign it, take the oath of enlistment, and ship out for boot camp.

The government’s end of the contract involves providing you with three hots, a cot, a paycheck, healthcare, college benefits, etc.

Your end of the contract says that when you’re ordered by your platoon commander to assault an enemy position, or by the Secretary of Defense to get vaccinated, you’ll assault that position or get that injection.

If you can’t stomach that, don’t sign the contract. If you do sign the contract, don’t whine about it or renege on it later when it requires you to do something you don’t want to do.

Thus endeth “the talk.”

Do I like vaccine mandates? No.

Do I believe vaccine mandates are constitutional or morally acceptable where private citizens, un-obligated by contract, are concerned? No.

But as for members of the armed forces: Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY