You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody
A Meandering Discourse on the Rufo Affair, Service, and the Future of America
You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a business man or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody—Bob Dylan
Once again Twitter has resulted in a bit of a kerfuffle between the various members of the online right, though it has not reached a critical meltdown level that the immigration dispute did. (In the aftermath Vivek has virtually disappeared from X, aside from perfunctory posts, and now some people think Trump is trying to push him out of DOGE to go and run for Vance’s soon to be vacant Ohio senate seat so he can lose and fade into irrelevancy).
In this case this was the Xeet that launched a thousand takes:
The above tweet was in the same chain as this post:
Together, they launched an enormous fight, that perhaps is just starting or might soon die down, who knows. But similarly to the previous immigration scrap, this battle seems to be less about things that are directly stated and more about what is left unsaid and implied about the worldviews.
What follows was originally meant to be a short post, but it turned into a rather long stream-of-consciousness reflection on a number of things where I throw in everything and the kitchen sink to help work out some of my many swirling thoughts.
If I could sum things up, the relevant dispute seems to be between the “things suck for the youth right now” and “things have never been better! These damn lazy kids!”
On the surface, one might think that the economy should be booming and jobs are falling from the heavens like manna. The CoC reports that in December there were 8 million job openings and only 6.8 million unemployed workers to fill them.
However, Rufo’s assertion of “full employment” looks less true when one looks under the hood and factors in that many millions of prime age working men have dropped out of the workforce. The labor participation rate has not recovered to pre-Covid levels.
Had the labor participation rate remained the same, there would be an additional 2 million workers.
And aside from Covid, there was already a pre-existing population of millions of prime-age (25-54) working men NEETs (not employed, educating, training) and that figure now stands at 6.8 million men.
The idea we are at “full employment” is questionable to say the least when examined in the broader context. Why are millions of men just not giving a damn? They have essentially given up. Rufo et al’s “everything is great, go get a job, bum!” is actively alienating this already alienated crowd of men (and therefore turns them off from the very sensible and necessary suggestion to get a job, any job).
I have been freelancing since 2019, so I seldom apply for jobs unless they seem like they would be a pretty good opportunity. But from what I hear, the job market is generally brutal right now, and not exactly what one would expect from having a supposed shortage of over a million workers.
It is not uncommon to hear people say that they had to submit 100-200 applications before they got a job. Numerous employers simply ghost on applicants.
And lo and behold:
It has now become common place for companies to post jobs they have no intention of hiring for. The above link is a story dating to this week, but I was reading about this occurring last summer as well.
Or see stories like this:
With things like this going on, who really knows what the actual number of open positions is?
Out of curiosity, I looked at the open Panda Express management positions in my area. Both assistant manager and manger postings have been up since September 26 of 2024. That is almost 4 months. Do they have enormous turn-over? Are they just collecting resumes? Are they posting jobs for one location but really sending you somewhere else? I do not know, but it seems odd that a job where the only requirements are literally a high school diploma and the ability to work a flexible schedule would remain open for so long.
Related to all this, economists like Ryan McMacken, Peter St. Onge, and E.J Antoni have been looking under the hood of the supposedly great economy for several years and questioning just how great things are. Things do not at all seem to be as rosy as Rufo seems to think. (You can listen to Ryan, Tho Bishop, and myself discuss predictions for the economy this year here).
See some tweets of Antoni’s that paint quite a different picture:
This above data demonstrates that Rufo’s assertion that “the economy is strong, incomes have never been higher” is just delusional nonsense. Similarly, his point about not making $50,000 until he was 30 (10 years ago), needs to be updated to $66,252.91 to account for the over 30 percent inflation that has occurred in the intervening 10 years.
Additionally, see McMaken’s write up on December stats and the decrease in full-time jobs.
Inflation up, real wages down, job numbers for 2023 being reduced by the BoL by a third, half the jobs from 2024 tied to the government (which, one might recall, is rife with anti-white and anti-male DEI initiatives).
When right-wing pundits cite government stats claiming all is well, I question how in touch they are with the average person in the US.
Let’s set aside the state of the economy, which seems to be a major point of division between the two sides, and instead move to work ethic, which seems to be a major point of confusion.
People on Rufo’s side seem to think that other people are in a tizzy about his posts because they are snobs who think working fast food is beneath them. That is no doubt the case for some people. Rob Henderson, whose substack I highly recommend, has a good post on the importance of work:
I completely agree with the need for people to learn the value of hard work. I am fortunate that I come from a family of hard workers. My late grandfather was a millwright and on the side shingled roofs and put on siding. My dad and aunt were working with him (unpaid) when they were 12 years old. My family has heated our home with wood for decades, so you can imagine all the cutting down of trees, splitting the wood, stacking the wood, and hauling the wood inside in the middle of winter that that entails.
Right out of college (which I graduated a year early by overloading courses to save money) I had a job in DC. For a variety of reasons I left that job after about a year and a half and returned to Pittsburgh. I did not get hired at any jobs that required a college degree, in part because I was overqualified and the potential employers were explicitly worried I would not be around long. So the only job I could get was at the grocery store in the neighborhood I grew up in, which is to say, not a nice neighborhood.
I worked at the store at the customer service desk/cash office for just under a year, and it was a wild time that was important for helping me to experience the “real world” but I hated every single second of it. For one thing, my entire life was at the mercy of when I was scheduled to work, but the entire work culture was also dysfunctional beyond belief. The workers hated the management and the management loathed the workers and were themselves under pressure from corporate. And lets not forget dealing with the oh so many pleasant riff-raff customers. Shoplifting all the time (and this was way before the Covid shoplifting boom), but more than that, a shoplifter who was caught by a loss prevention officer threatened to shoot him on my shift. A gang-member once threatened to another employee that “Zack is going to get what is coming to him” because the money order he sent to prison did not go through and he couldn’t get a refund because he didn’t have ID. Why didn’t he have ID? Because he sent it with a fake name. A bank down the street experienced an armed robbery, which was a bit worrisome working in the cash office of a store that dealt with a lot of cash. Druggies would regularly shoot up in the bathroom and leave needles laying around. All for $8.50 an hour or something.
You get the idea. It was quite a far cry from when I was working in DC and getting to hob-knob with prominent academics and the Tunisian ambassador at fancy dinner to-dos.
I then picked up a second job working at a relatives lawn mower shop and on top of that I was also helping my dad run his rental business and renovating a house after it was completely trashed.
It was a hard time in my life and I was certainly not happy. Fortunately, I was able to keep up with writing some during this time as well. I am thankful that I was able to grind and keep my bills paid, but it was a lot of work.
All of this bragging is to say that I am well aware of the importance of hard work. I am well aware that when one needs to pay the bills then no job is beneath you.
But it seems that the great disconnect we are witnessing is taking place on several levels.
For one thing, there are the damaging effects of the cult of college. Way too many people are going to college (why are they going? because when they were children those in authority beat it into their heads that they needed to go) and racking up enormous amounts of debt. They were told that if they worked hard, got to college, and graduated with the mystical four year degree that their hard work would then pay off. Well, telling people to go work in the service industry after wracking up $50k in debt is naturally going to piss some people off.
And there is similarly a disconnect between some of Rufo’s other work ie, “white people, and especially men, are being discriminated against in corporate hiring! This is unjust and must stop!” and “the economy is great and doing better than ever! Good paying jobs are falling down from the sky!”
And just in case you have doubts:
For context, roughly 60% of the American population is white.
Finally, there is a third disconnect, and this is on the issue of status and independence.
Working at the grocery store or at Panda Express is considered low status. There is some degree of snobbery at work here, but at the same time no one hates service jobs more than service workers.
Why are service jobs universally agreed to be terrible and soul crushing?
No doubt dealing with rude customers is part of the issue. But I think that ultimately the issue is that service jobs come with a high degree of control by the bosses. And from what I have witnessed, I certainly would not envy service management because they themselves are having the screws tightened by corporate to maximize profit and efficiency.
One might argue that service jobs (though this is also true for white collar jobs as well) are the most vivid reminder of the evils of the debt economy we live in as a result of our fiat currency system.
The long version can be seen in this talk by economist Guido Hulsman, which I have watched numerous times and has influenced me a great deal, but I will summarize the point below. See also his relevant chapter in The Ethics of Money Production and his pamphlet How Inflation Destroys Civilization, both available free online.
Because we live in an inflationary environment, everyone is incentivized to do several things. One is to not save money, but to spend it, since purchasing power is perpetually dropping, hence consumerism is rampant. Similarly, we are incentivized to finance purchases with debt since saving to buy something would be pointless and foolish. If you started saving money in 2014 to buy a house in 2024 the money would have lost over 30 percent of its value. So instead you take out a mortgage. You take out a loan to buy your car. You take out student loans to finance your education.
In turn, the only way to “save” money is to gamble money on the stock market and in other financial instruments. This in turn leads to the financialization of the economy. More and more money is poured into the financial sector that produces little of value in the real world, but instead is just shuffling money around (or actively destroying functioning companies, like what happened to Toys ‘R Us and more recently Red Lobster). One will recall during Covid that the stock market, and other speculative investments like crypto currency and “meme stocks” were going through the roof, despite the government having thrown a whole set of wrenches into the economy and forcibly disemployed millions.
Look at the S&P 500. Despite a drop at the beginning of Covid, the index had exceeded the pre-pandemic levels by July, and basically increased in value by a fourth by April of the following year.
All while millions were out of work:
And production down:
The stock market is not connected in any real sense to the health of the actual real economy of making things and providing services. Rather it is highly connected to the Fed pumping new money out into the system, which in turn gets pumped into the stock market etc. This financialization, facilitated by the Fed, in turn facilitates the craze for mergers and consolidation, leading to the formation of giant corpos, many of which are dead players that are kept alive by inertia and the structure of crony regulations. (Recall Schumpeter’s criticism of share-holder corporations and his contrast with business that have an actual owner).
Anyway, returning to my previous point, this debt economy has many bad effects. Hulsman addresses many in his talk (also his recent PhD student Jeff Degner has a forthcoming book based on his dissertation dealing with the negative effects inflation has on the family, so keep an eager eye out for that, I have been fortunate to see an early version and it will be a great resource), but the relevant point here is that the debt economy makes servicing one’s debt every month an overriding priority in life.
Every month one must pay the student loans, the credit card bill, the mortgage, the car payment, etc. etc. These are large fixed costs to existing. And these costs in turn make one very dependent on one’s employment. Really, the debt economy is a great boon to employers, especially those who employ “house-rich but cash poor” people, but really everyone.
If you did not have to service this debt, and we were in a deflationary economy, you of course would still have fixed expenses, but not as high and saving cash would be much easier. This would mean that quitting a horrible job would not be as unthinkable as it is now. It would be possible to save money and live off of those savings while searching for a better job, which in turn would decrease the bargaining power of companies.
What we are seeing now is that people are skipping the “have savings” part and just forgoing the labor market altogether.
Why? To some degree, because corpo jobs, even well paying ones with high status (recall the jobs worked by the characters in Office Space and Fight Club), are generally ultimately degrading because every moment is a reminder that you are forced to serve this faceless bureaucratic behemoth whose middle managers, themselves on the ropes financially, would probably feed you and your family into the trash compactor if it would save money and they could get away with it.
While expressed in sometimes confused or absurd ways, I think that this aspect of serving a corporation that doesn’t care about you because you are forced to, is ultimately the frustration many of Rufo et al’s critics are expressing.
Work, any work, has inherent dignity. But serving others does not have inherent dignity. It sometimes does, and sometimes does not.
At the extreme end, the slave may have dignity from his work (see Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (PDF)) but his service to other masters is not dignified. Ivan is a model of how to live with dignity despite one’s undignified situation.
“Wage slaves” as the common parlance goes, are not true slaves (though one might contemplate the phrase “animals don’t breed in captivity” and its implications for falling birthrates), but they still face the indignity of knowing that they must kowtow to their jerk corpo boss and are utterly dependent on him or her. Shoe on Head’s commissioned video of the song “Wagie Cagie” more or less sums up the degrading nature of many jobs today, and the response many have to that degradation.
Anytime I consider applying for a job, I recall to mind one of the best scenes from Lawrence of Arabia:
In the above clip Auda, with one breathe, rejects the very idea that he is a servant and in the next says he is a river unto his people due to his unflagging service on their behalf. Why does he not view them as the same? Because this service to his tribe is done at his pleasure. Similarly he does not consider taking a bribe from the Turks to make him a servant, because it is done at his pleasure. Pleasure which he may withdraw at will, because his is not a servant, he is a free bedouin. An independent contractor, one might say.
In the words of Bob Dylan, “you're gonna have to serve somebody”. That is the nature of life. A man has many obligations of service, to his family, to his community, to his country. It is a natural part of life. But the nature of that service varies greatly from that of a corpo-rat in a mindless dead-player corporation.
This brings us to the concluding section of this long stream of consciousness. What are we to do in light of the above points?
Really, this brings up a debate as old as the founding of the country, pitting those, like Jefferson, who favored the development of a yeomanry class of independent farmers, and those, like Hamilton, who favored commercial development. This debate was not just about pecuniary interests, but the kind of economic society that is needed to maintain a free Republic. A similar debate happened in Roman Republic regarding farm consolidation.
I certainly would not argue that commercial society should end. But ultimately one must acknowledge that it comes with many trade-offs, one of them being the lack of independence it fosters. I would further add, this lack of independence is made many times worse by the inflationary system that we live under and the mega corporations that it fosters.
So what are we to do now?
Well, I can’t really say specifically what other people should do, other than that if you are unemployed you should acquire some way of making money post-haste, whether it is for a big corpo or not. I can attest from experience that hating your job is good motivation to improve your situation.
I can, however, offer my own experience and the world view that colors that experience.
I have been self-employed as a writer since 2019. I had not planned to do this, but circumstances demanded it when I dropped out of my PhD program and returned to take care of my cancer stricken grandfather 24/7 until he passed away a year later. While I did not have a mortgage, I had a car payment and I had student debt. (THE DEBT MUST BE SERVICED!) So I had to somehow make money in that situation. Fortunately, I had found an opportunity when I was in DC through a friend that was able to pay the bills. Things have worked out since then with more opportunities (rather miraculously imo) so that I am able to live and pay my bills even with some health issues I have had. I am certainly not making anything close to $70k a year, but I am also not working 40 hour weeks in the traditional sense of working. (In some ways it is difficult to figure out what counts as “working”. I am not sitting at the desk writing for 40 hours that is for sure, but when I am writing I am able to do so because of the many many many hours in the past and present that I have spent reading books, reports, and the news, not to mention the time just spent thinking about things).
I am thankful for my situation, I never would have planned for things to work out like this, and know that it happened because of intervention from the hand of Providence. I, of course, want to make more money (anyone need some ghost-writing?). And of course being a freelancer has many many trade offs of its own. Sometimes work dries up for awhile. Sometimes my health prevents me from working (though in the last few months it has improved a lot thanks to several different issues being addressed) and there are no paid sick days when you are self-employed.
But I feel these trade-offs are worth it so that I may continue to work at my pleasure, in the words of Auda Abu Tayi. I value this independence greatly, and am willing to forego some potential income in order to maintain it. I am also entirely willing to give up writing and take up some other skill or job if it meant I could remain self-employed.
But, as much as I value this independence, if I had to I would return to working for someone else. Because ultimately: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”
I am so thankful I was given the opportunity to pursue this independence. Hopefully I can maintain it, and ideally become even more independent as time goes on. Given that I largely stumbled into it, I can’t really advise anyone to follow my course. But I can recommend that you seek to structure your life in a way so that your need to serve at the pleasure of others, rather than your own, is greatly minimized.
Rufo et al. betray how ignorant they are of the situation many young Americans find themselves in with their ridiculous boomer-posting (being a boomer is a spiritual condition that can afflict people of any age) that detracts from their credibility and ability to lead young men to a better future.
Young men do not mind being told that they must work hard and improve themselves. The Andrew Tates of the world never cease to tell young men they suck and need to improve (much like a boot camp drill instructor) but where Tate (whose growing influence among young men is a disaster) differs from the boomer-posting think tank employees of the world is that he and others of his ilk fully acknowledge the struggles young men are going through and validates them. And then, once trust has been achieved, proceeds to tell them they suck, need to hit the gym, and improve themselves even in the face of the adversity.
Credibility is key. Unfortunately, Vivek and Rufo have blown theirs up in the last month and many others are doing so this very minute.
There are literally 7+ million unemployed prime age men in America. At any other time in history such a population would be setting off alarm bells because they would either rise up and overthrow the existing order, or would strike out raiding and pillaging their neighbors. That has not happened yet because these men are currently sedated by video games, Netflix, porn, and drugs.
American self-government grows more precarious by the year. The possibility that in the next few decades a strongman will arise and mobilize these disaffected young male masses, and with them sweep away the existing order, is not out of the question. (Given that Zoomer and Alpha children were basically tortured during Covid, how much affection do they have for the current system?)
If that happens no doubt this Rufo incident could serve as an illustrative footnote in a history of the era titled The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire.
Independence is not merely an issue of pride and vanity. As the remnants of constitutional government continue to decay in America it will increasingly determine who survives and who does not. Vivek, Rufo, and Musk are not coming to save us. No one is coming to save us. They can be counted on as far as their interests overlap with ours. They might help here and there, but the trajectory of the country is on a downward course with all the ills, chaos, and dangers that entails. In such a scenario it is foolish to place one’s trust in elites like them.
Hopefully I am wrong, but I am not too inclined to gamble on it at this point. Before the collapse of the Han Dynasty in China, the census of 156 AD indicated a population of around 56 million. By the time the collapse and the ensuing Three Kingdoms period of interminable warfare was over, the 280 AD census under the new unified Jin indicated a population of 16 million.
It has happened before and it can happen again. History has not ended.
Many libertarians say that the libertarian program is “leave me alone and don’t take my stuff.” Well we will not be left alone and people are trying to take our stuff and will be doing so more in the future. What now? How desperate should we be?
There is much more to say, but this post is already far too long. Hopefully Trump can manage to turn the economy around by reining in the out of control government and restoring balance to society. If he fails, well, dark times are likely ahead.
You think, I suppose, that it is now in order for me to cite some examples of great men. No, I shall cite rather the case of a boy. The story of the Spartan lad has been preserved: taken captive while still a stripling, he kept crying in his Doric dialect, "I will not be a slave!" and he made good his word; for the very first time he was ordered to perform a menial and degrading service, – and the command was to fetch a chamber-pot, – he dashed out his brains against the wall. So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave? Would you not rather have your own son die thus than reach old age by weakly yielding? Why therefore are you distressed, when even a boy can die so bravely? Suppose that you refuse to follow him; you will be led. Take into your own control that which is now under the control of another. Will you not borrow that boy's courage, and say: "I am no slave!"? Unhappy fellow, you are a slave to men, you are a slave to your business, you are a slave to life. For life, if courage to die be lacking, is slavery.—Seneca Moral Letters 77