Friday, April 1, 2016

No Right to a Specific Job

Generally, there is not any legal, ethical, or moral right that a person has to a specific job, whether it’s a job as a type writer maker, an elephant hunter, a steel worker, an old forest logger, a personal injury attorney, an insurance defense medical physician evaluator or an orthodontist, etc.

On the other hand, a person who can work and who honestly and diligently seeks work, should live within a society that, in every way possible and practicable, facilitates that person’s attainment of employment sufficient to meet his or her needs. This is much different than guaranteeing a specific job doing a specific thing or in a specific industry. Necessarily within this general principle, I further believe that such a society must provide a safety net (and not a hammock as conservatives metaphorically state) when economic, physical, and other hazards cause adjustments in our job markets.

Regardless of the availability of specific types of jobs or a society’s determination that certain types of jobs no longer provide a sufficient benefit for that society, either through market pressures or legislation, the most enterprising, healthy, resourceful, educated, and intelligent of a society will usually attain a higher level of economic success than others. Again, this is regardless of the market forces and legislative effects upon the existence of specific jobs.

Yet, because power, influence and resources tend to be unfairly amassed and allocated to an ever increasing fewer number of persons with in a society or nation, societies must organize and legislate so that it is truly the most enterprising, resourceful, and intelligent that rise based upon merit and not upon privilege. Any time privilege is championed within a society at the expense of merit either through force or acquiescence, that society will suffer economically and will stagnate.

Still yet further, a society or nation that does not ensure that it can independently provide all necessary resources to sustain its basic needs of food, clothing, shelter and military security, will be at risk to the whims of other societies or nation states either by force or cultural or economic annexation.

So a balance must be reached. This balance cannot be achieved either through a purely capitalist system or a purely socialist system of government. It is only through the balancing of the principles of both systems that healthiest societies or nations are created. Moreover, it is simply a misconception that aspects of socialism cannot be implemented without depriving individuals of agency or of relieving individuals of personal responsibility. It is likewise simply an exaggeration that principles of capitalism cannot be employed without impoverishing the masses or depleting a society or nations’ resources. It is only in their extremes that such things occur.

And why did I go down this road? I want to talk about a few specific jobs in my next post.

Loren M. Lambert, March 27, 2016 ©

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