People used to understand a very powerful but simple concept. It was this.
" You take care of the system and the system takes care of you. " This was the magic
of family owned businesses before they sold themselves to conglomerates that replaced
the long term "caring" for bonus pay. We allowed companies to buy and decimate our
local economies in the name of making $2.00 more on the hour. . We did this to ourselves.
People used to come together and build cooperatives to supply power, telephones, fuel, etc. It was a beautiful system that was owned by the local residence and ownership was handed off to successive generations. It worked, for a long time, until
entitled "brats" opted to cash out for a quick buck instead of working like those before
them did to keep a harmonious balance in the community.
No the system wasn't perfect, sometimes it was unnecessarily hard on those that looked " a little different" and down right "brutal" on those that looked "a lot different."
But at the end of the day, once these "others" proved their metal and showed up for
work to work, they became one of "us" with all that it entails.
This permitted us to vote on what our communities would pursue to expand our
"footprints" for growth. Yes, there were some ill-advised mo--ns that thought they should be entitled to higher pay than the other fellow "just because". We won't delve to far into that now, this will be a conversation for some other time.
Mill villages permitted "Mr." to know his employees by name and needs . . he sponsored get togethers, picnics, sports tournaments, schools and helped educate
workers with retirement plans that took care of the previous workers and the community.
That's all gone now because we bought the fairy tales that corporate America was peddling.