In Defense of the Corporation, What is Real, Manufacturing Pseudo Reality

“Today, we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly, we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
— Philip K. Dick

Monday, the 18th of October, 2021, how are you, my fair lads and ladies?  How did you sleep?  We sleep great, hitting the bed early, getting a great night’s sleep is part of our Sober October plan.  We’ve now been without a drink for 18 days straight, to some who cares to others; wow, that’s impressive. But, of course, it’s an annual tradition; we try and remind ourselves of a life without alcohol; it’s an excellent way to live, but boy, do we enjoy our spirits those other 11 months.

I want to take some time and clean up a current narrative.  The news is pushing for workers’ rights, framing the issue as multinational corporations abuse and overtax their workforce paying them pennies compared to the CEO in the ivory tower.  I’m not discounting the rare case where the CEO makes 131 times that of an average worker, but there are millions of situations like ours that tell a different story for every one of those situations.

The media narrative today is that it is the workers vs. management. So quit your job, ask for more money; you have the upper hand.  As a small business owner, well the owner of a CORPORATION, let me give you my perspective.  I started my company with four people; I bought my company from my father in 1996, and we have grown to an excellent small profitable business.  I’m proud that my team, wife, and I have put together a machine that works well in the current environment.  It provides income that helps support 22 families in multiple states.

I do not make 131 times our front-line workers; I make a decent income, and my wife justifies our risk of business ownership.  Try owning a business if you want to put your balls on the line and risk it all.  That was our choice, and we have been rewarded; owning a successful business is not easy; it’s a daily grind rife with speedbumps and pitfalls.

As a business owner, you not only have to take care of your staff, but you have to make sure you are following the government’s newest regulations.  I was happy to see the Delta CEO kick back on the mandatory vaccinations; it is not the role of a company’s leadership to tell people they must take a medical procedure.  I would never mandate any of my people to do something so personal in nature.

But the push is on to unionize, collective bargain, and get your weight together against these evil large businesses.  I work with small business owners, corporations that do between a million and 50 million in revenue.  I’m not working with the Fortune 500 companies, and from my experience, all my business owners deeply care about their staff.  They allow them time to see their kid’s games, run their kids to the doctor, and take time off when a family member is sick or passes away.  I don’t work with any evil CEOs, and I would quickly fire them as clients if I did.

I think the question of loyalty should be mentioned here. For example, we had an employee that was looking to buy a home, she and her husband did not have enough down payment; we offered to loan her a small amount to help them get to the 20% down, the number for the transaction, she ended up cashing in her 401 K. Still, we intended to help her make her dreams come true.  That’s what CEOs do; they listen to their team and try to help them achieve their life goals.

The loudest voices against “the system” seem to be those that have failed.  I have a friend who started a business in East Central Indiana; the company failed and now uses social media to preach about unfair things. We need a total overhaul of our current capitalistic system.  Losers are the loudest critics.

For every Fortune 500 behemoth, small Mom and Pop owned businesses that keep the economy moving for thousands of companies like ours. Yet, we seem forgotten in the narrative; in the media’s vision, there are the workers, and then there are the massive corporations that help keep them down; well, there is another story, and that is the intent of these words.

So when you hear about the plight of the workers, workers’ rights, low pay, know that this is a segment of society.  But many of the jobs that they claim are low wage were never created to help support a family of 3, 4, or five.  Take fast-food work, for example; as a kid, my friends and I would gladly take those jobs to get some extra spending money to buy gas and music and enjoy a little extra spending money. Yet, the media would have you believe that the primary breadwinner in a family is flipping burgers at Mcdonald’s.  If this is the case, the man needs to get some grit and find a job that can help sustain his family; minimum wage is not for the sustenance of a family; it’s to help the survival of the youth.

So the next time you hear about workers’ rights, know that most of the owners of the companies they are pointing to are like ours, small, doing the best with what we have.  We pay a fair wage; we take care of our people like family inviting them over to our homes at holidays and other gatherings, we treat our team like we would like to be treated.

We need to figure out where we go from here collectively.  There is a lot of angst and anger perpetrated by a media that seems to love division and strife over manufactured division.  Masks, Union vs. NonUnion, Corporations vs. Workers is a good story, but dig a little deeper to find the absolute truth.

“Today, we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly, we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
— Philip K. Dick