I don’t give a job. Am I being antisocial?

Ungurii loveşte din nou se întoarce! partea a II a  din „This is why I don’t give you a job„

I must apologize. Yesterday I posted „This is why I don’t give you a job„. I was being very rude. It was an outrageously impolite thing to say. If that wasn’t enough, I also ranted that „I wouldn’t hire a woman”. I should have watched my language. I am truly sorry. Sometimes I can be really antisocial. Please give me this chance to explain myself. My antisocial behaviors stem from a huge early childhood trauma that haunted me throughout my adolescence and it can still effect my tempers. But I want to change. In fact I have already changed my mind. I will give you jobs. This is a business proposal, I have even prepared a contract. Don’t worry, it is very polite, even politically correct. I am truly yours.

In my previous, inflammatory post I shared my personal, self-centered opinion about why I don’t want to sell my apartment, start a new company and give well paying jobs (well, by Hungarian standards) to a dozen people. I was trying to be socially responsible, but as it turns out, I wasn’t trying hard enough.

When I originally posted this in Hungary, it struck me how many others were interested in my personal problem. I thought, why all this outrage? I mean there are so many other job offers. Why are they so angry at me for not giving jobs? Now that I have translated it to English, an even more astonishing fact is clear. If I give a job or not matters not only to millions of Hungarians, but people from around planet Earth. It has became a #1 issue on Hacker News for God’s sakes.

It provoked a lot of thought in the United States, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Australia, India, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Moldova, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, Japan, Brazil, Lithuania, Ireland, Bosnia, Israel, Russia, Denmark, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, China, Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Argentina, South Korea, Mexico and more than 50 other countries. Within a day.

Out of my first 50 000 readers 48 000 did NOT like what I had to say.

I’d better get very social. It’s a terrible karma to upset so many people all over the place. First please let me express, how truly sorry I am. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, especially women. I didn’t mean to be sexist, I am ultimately fond of females. I do not discriminate against men either, but please don’t take this the wrong way. I love all of you guys, including the elderly. You people have changed my mind, I am now a better person, willing to give a dozen jobs. I have already prepared the following simple contract.

Hungary, still known as „Europe” agrees to enter into this contract with Jakab, also known as „Andor” on the 8th of January, 2012. This agreement is based on the following provisions:

1. The contract establishes a partnership between Europe and Andor.
2. The partnership will be named „WWW Partnership” for the purpose of Andor employing at least but not limited to 13 – thirteen – people in Europe, that is a WIN for the employee, a WIN for Andor and also a WIN for Europe. The WWW Partnership is beneficial for all parties.

Furthermore, Andor agrees:

1. Does stay in Hungary and starts a new business.
2. Employs 13 people 100% legally.
3. Monthly salary is minimum €760 NET. (Actual amount handed over to the employee)
4. Pays the €1086 total cost of employment every month without any whining.

Furthermore Europe agrees:

1. Charges not more than 30% on the salaries.
2. Charges not more than 10% corporate tax.
3. Charges not more than 15% VAT.
4. Punishes corruption instead of Andor.

Invalidity or unenforceability of one or more provisions of this agreement shall not affect any other provision of this agreement. This agreement is subject to the laws and regulations of the healthy state of mind.

 Dear Europe,

This is a good old-fashioned business proposal. Please consider my calculations. Now that I’m not in business, I only bring about €300 to your kitchen. Peanuts. This is not good for you, not enough. As you can see, it’s not good for millions of people either, who don’t have a job and they are very angry at you, and me too, because I’m not giving them any. If you please to sign the above contract, I will decrease the number of your unhappy voters by 13. And here comes the best part. I will bring €7840 to your kitchen every single month without ever whining. I have sent this polite proposal to the Hungarian State on the 6th of August, 2011, but unfortunately I haven’t yet received an answer. That original proposal also includes detailed calculations. So please decide if you want me to stay out of business and pay you a shamefully low €300, or you would rather pick the€7840 monthly. Please choose more, instead of less. The larger sum is real money, you could pay a lot of social aids from that, and you know, whatever you usually like doing with your income. I will not ask. I truly think this agreement would be a win, win, win scenario for all of us. I’m looking forwards to hear from you. You can always find me on my Facebook page, or drop me an email to andorjakab@gmail.com.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I know we are not yet even. I have hurt your feelings. You can see that I’m trying hard to compensate you for all the pain I caused with my blogpost. But I think we are all people, money is not the most important issue between us.  Please allow me to explain why I was so rude in my previous post. The childhood trauma that I mentioned earlier is that I was born into a communist country, by a woman. I know, communism doesn’t sound all that bad to you when it comes to nationalize Hollywood movies using torrent. I know, it’s even very cool to be a pirate, claiming property is theft, everything wants to be free, money is evil, corporations enslave people. Yeah, these are hip things to say nowadays, but please believe me, living in a country where communism is actual reality sucks ass.

I know, social can be very cool too. Hey, I use Facebook too. But living in full-blown socialism is very frustrating. It makes you very antisocial. I can tell, because I have spent my entire teenage years in hardcore socialism. If you did, you would really, really hate to hear the word, social.

It all started by people saying, that they should be equal. The rich should not have more money than the poor. The poor needed more. The idea of equality, that everybody deserves a better life, was a very popular one. Long story short, they moved my grandparents out of their villa, and they moved a lot of poor people in. They thought my grandparents didn’t need their land and their car either, it was unfair for them to have that lot, when others have so few. They thought it’s unfair that the greedy capitalists enslave the poor, especially, because many of those poor people didn’t even have a job, and they were hungry, while others lived in their pompous villas, ate very well and even had jewelry. It really irked a lot of people. Without jobs, people are starving, and it makes them very, very, very angry at those who have more than enough to eat.

New voices became extremely trendy in politics. Long story short, there was WWII, and later I found myself born in Hungary, a very socialist country. Indeed, everybody had jobs! In fact it was a crime not to have a job. Jobless people were called „közveszélyes munkakerülő”, meaning dangerous vagrant.  But it was extremely rare, a few poets, some intellectuals, most people did really have some job. It was obligatory to be very, very, very social. Everybody had to be your friend, you had to say „elvtárs” to the other, meaning comrade. Being antisocial back than was much less tolerated than now.  I mean many people are irritated if I’m so socially irresponsible that I don’t give jobs to people I don’t want to.  But it was outright illegal here twenty years ago to be antisocial. So illegal, that there was only one party, the socialist. The MSZMP. The Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. A huge party, and everybody had work. They didn’t need to beg for a job.

Socialism protected the workers. I didn’t have the dilemma of starting a new business or not. Starting your own company and make as much profit as you dare wasn’t an option. It was illegal. The MSZMP imprisoned scumbags who wanted to harm the working class by trying to make a profit for themselves. Everybody was equal. Equal in the sense, that everybody had some food. Basically bread, butter and milk. Eggs. These were cheap and available. Pork on Sundays with potatoes. We even had a TV channel, called Hungarian Television. There was television program on it, except on Mondays, when there was no TV. But on other days the TV teached us how good socialism is, and one day will reach communism, when money is not going to be necessary at all, because everybody can have anything he or she needs free of any charge.

Before Christmas MSZMP usually imported bananas and oranges from capitalist countries to make us even happier. Unfortunately we haven’t yet reached communism in 40 years, so they couldn’t import enough bananas to fulfill every Hungarian’s needs.  No, there wasn’t enough bananas, so in the shops they hid it below the counters. But if you knew a very important person, such as a party official, who was important because of protecting the workers and socialism from capitalist threats, you could ask for some bananas. And then they told the shop assistant to reserve one kilogram of bananas for you. But you had to buy it discreetly, because others could get very angry at you. Why they didn’t get any bananas when you got a kilogram? There were rumors, I don’t know if it’s true or not, that in the socialism, leaders of the socialist party could buy as many bananas as they wanted.

In the high school twenty some years ago I was taught that capitalism is very bad, socialism is very good. They said capitalism is very bad, because greedy capitalist corporations, such as Coca-Cola enslave the working class, and they even put some kind of drugs, cocaine or something into that fishy drink that is black for God’s sake.  And that those poor young people listen to some horrible music and roll on the floor in their blind addiction to that capitalist filth. They taught me, that in socialism I can have everything I need, there are no jobless, and socialism protects the workers from greedy capitalists who would love to enslave them. And indeed, if you needed, for example a telephone, you could tell the state that you would like a telephone, and then they wrote your name on the waiting list. After 10-15 years, if they agreed that that you need one, a telephone was brought to your home, and it was very cheap unless of course you wanted to telephone outside Hungary, that was impossible.

What else can I say.  Bread was really, really cheap. It was so cheap, many Hungarians who are now hungry, have tears in their eyes if they think back, that in socialism how cheap bread was. They could eat one or two kilograms without a problem. Meat was more expensive and sometimes green, but not very often. So socialism did have its good parts too. But on the whole, I was really, really depressed about it, I badly envied western people for their capitalist way of life.

Once I was allowed to go to Vienna, Austria. You see we had Forints, that was not convertible to western currencies. But the socialist party was good and gave us some western money every year if we needed. So I was allowed to buy some Schillings, maybe 20-30 Euros worth, and I even got a passport and they let me sit on a bus to see that corrupt western world with my own eyes. I was literally crying. When I came back I was very, very, very depressed. Especially, because in the high school I had to keep saying to the teacher the lesson as they taught it. Otherwise not only they would have thrown me out of school, but they would have never let me enter a university, or even worse, they could have imprisoned me or harm my family. But again, bread was cheap up until that couldn’t be cheap anymore, and the Soviet Union collapsed and we became a part of the European Union.

Socialism evolves by the survival of the most corrupt, instead of the fittest.

Based on the ideology of protection. It protects the weak in a very similar fashion that the mafia „protects” the weak. Socialists create a huge mess, especially when they are national socialists. Like those muscular guys in the gangster movies, usually bald, thick neck and rather rude. They make you feel uncomfortable, needy for protection. And then – for a „fair” share of your money – they offer their protection service. They guarentee your good health. Of course, refusing is not an option. They protect you anyway, it’s obligatory. Socialism makes more and more people subject to the need of protection. It’s a downward spiral. More and more people need to be protected more and more, so more and more taxes must be enforced, otherwise socialism obviously couldn’t fulfill its promise to protect all those in need.

I prefer capitalism.

Please excuse me, but I still do. I think it makes more sense, and I think this „protection” scheme is a scam. A bunko, grift, swindle, flimflam, gaffle, bamboozle. A confidence trick. In fact, there’s no need at all to have all these high taxes. Nobody needs them! Not the employer, nor the employee. It’s a scam that you should love as much tax as possible, especially when others are taxed, such as banks, multinational companies or whoever else but you. Nobody in fact need to be protected by these socialist extremists. I know I sound harsh again, but I believe this to be true. A lot less taxes would be perfectly enough without the scams that actually harm those, whom they promise to protect. Socialist extremist are like the elephant in the porcelain store. We employers could get along perfectly well with our employee friends unless these trolls didn’t turn us into enemies. We could get along very well, if they didn’t protect anybody.

But how would needy people be better off without more taxes on the rich?

Very simply. We could agree on that pregnant women, women coming back from maternity leave, or women in general, young people, sick people, the elderly, people with disabilities – whoever needs help – is duty-free to employ.

Let’s say I want to hire somebody for €760 NET. In this hypothetical scenario a lot of people would show up, ready to work. If I was lucky,some of them would be duty-free. I would have to make a rather simple business decision. I either pay €1080 or if I could find one of the duty-free persons suitable for the job, I could significantly cut my costs, making my business more competetive slash profitable. Of course, all my employees would receive the same €760, regardless of their status, so they would be treated equally at the workplace. This way the state would help these duty-free people to get jobs without forcing me to pay anything extra. On the contrary, by making me pay less, instead of more. Helping my business too, instead of putting me out of business with absurdly insane regulations. And of course, the state would still get huge amounts of tax money on non-duty-free people, the VAT, the taxes on legal drugs such as alcohol and more. That money they could spend on people who can’t work at all. Trust me, such ideas are far more socially responsible, than socialism.

Especially national socialism. More on that later.

Jakab Andor, 2012.01.08.