Editorial #317 Virtues of Labor
On this Labor Day weekend, the advice of our parents: work hard, be honest and pray is sounding like a joke in today’s world. Labor Day is considered the end of summer and intended to honor that which makes self-sufficiency happen, economies grow, the world a better place. Without labor literally nothing gets done.
Honest labor in businesses is harder to find as many are forced to compete with businesses who cheat on their taxes, have permits waved, ignore labor laws, hires illegals and fakes insurance claims. The virtues of fairness, truth, self-reliance and integrity are becoming a handicap when the competition cheats with ‘guerilla type’ tactics where ‘not getting caught’ is their only objective. This handicap is exacerbated by bureaucrats who favor the businesses who use these tactics and fund their campaigns.
The dignity of honest labor is gradually being destroy by technology as automation squeezes out real laborers. Many job functions are now positions of observation trying to stop malfunctions in automated processes.
Robotics are replacing all the repetitive jobs in manufacturing. Even teaching has evolved into a standardized selling function of manufacturing duplicate citizens who are becoming robots of government bureaucracy. Only farming and construction are immune from automation as they both require good judgement and manual dexterity which never occur at the same time in a computer.
Clerical, secretarial and customer service functions are now automated with computerized response systems used to determine how much abused the customer will tolerate before the company starts to lose business and returns to using some form of ‘customer service’ in their business model.
Ultimate gratitude to labor is owed to our farmers who toil to grow and harvest our food, doing what is needed to make our country able feed itself in spite of the weather. In 1900 one farmer was able to feed only 10 people with 25% of all he raised used to feed the animal power needed to produce it.
Today, one farmer can feed 155 people. 154 of those people are doing nothing more than putting other businesses together to make sure we are able to buy food and then entertain ourselves between meals.
The keystone laborer in the celebration of ‘Labor Day’ is the farmer. Nothing happens until someone puts a seed in the ground and shepherds that plant into something we can eat.
Thank you farmers, on this Labor Day, for keeping our nation self-sufficient and independent. Now, all we need to do is pray for favorable weather and elect politicians who realize agriculture is the most important and complicated business in the world, and hope they don’t screw it up.
This is Keith Kube wishing you the best in making the world a better place.
Keith has a regular commentary on WJAG 780 radio at 7:40 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Check his website www.keithkube.com for past editorials.
