Bjorn Bernales

Cap­i­tal­ism has made men depen­dent on other peo­ple, but more so on other people’s assets.

Why so?

When men think of prof­its, in most like­li­hood, the activ­i­ties of a cer­tain enter­prise are dri­ven towards the attain­ment of the objec­tive — to gain prof­its.  And when this is the case, busi­ness own­ers became reliant on cus­tomers. Cus­tomers and their pur­chas­ing power are the dri­vers of prof­its of private-owned enter­prises. This sce­nario puts cus­tomers in a posi­tion that makes them at par with regal nature. And where do busi­nesses fall into?

Mak­ing a career change may be dif­fi­cult to oth­ers and a  bit a breeze to some. In my case, the swift tran­si­tion of being a home-based online entre­pre­neur to an offline busi­ness man­ager and part-owner is some­what a dras­tic move. It is my deci­sion actu­ally after hav­ing thought of sup­ple­ment­ing per­sonal income and after a brief hia­tus on the writ­ing gig caused by a some­what freak acci­dent involv­ing the parts where I mostly depend my work–my hands.

Now, after tak­ing over a busi­ness cur­rently oper­at­ing with a plan  for improve­ment and change in busi­ness name, I have come to a point in which my role takes to another turn.

Dur­ing my free­lanc­ing period (which I will con­tinue once every­thing is set into place with the cur­rent busi­ness), I became a ser­vant to a job provider. There is the com­mon­al­ity of employer-employee rela­tion­ship in my free­lanc­ing gig. But with my per­spec­tive on free­lanc­ing, I’d rather take the sit­u­a­tion as business-service provider. I’ve always con­sid­ered myself a busi­ness­man rather than an employee when I am into free­lanc­ing. Ser­vice provider would be more appro­pri­ate a phrase defin­ing the position.

Talk­ing about ser­vice provider, in which I proudly con­sider myself as such, the con­cept of being a ser­vant is omnipresent or at least that is what I seem. Being in ser­vice means being a ser­vant and there is the under­ly­ing fac­tor in which the ser­vant has to fol­low what the mas­ter says. In the present eco­nomic sys­tem, the cus­tomer is the mas­ter and the busi­ness; servant.

To serve cus­tomers is the key to attain a busi­ness aim, that is, to sat­isfy customer’s wants. The role of a busi­ness owner may be a bit com­pli­cated,  but think­ing about it is  not really that all com­plex or, at least, that is what I consider.

The thing here is that, cap­i­tal­ism allows the shift­ing of roles. A ser­vant can be a mas­ter to another ser­vant. In the more tech­ni­cal case, a busi­ness can be a ser­vice provider to another busi­ness or to the end con­sumer but the same busi­ness can be a mas­ter to another busi­ness. How­ever, it could not be a mas­ter to the end con­sumer and that makes the end con­sumer all pow­er­ful in a cer­tain sense, business-wise and economic-wise.

Now, to the first ques­tion which takes up the head­line: Are busi­nesses ser­vants or slaves?

Con­spic­u­ously, slave has a deroga­tory con­no­ta­tion. It does not seem desir­able although the two terms–servant and slave– are syn­ony­mous. For one thing, no busi­ness own­ers con­sider them­selves slaves. Being a ser­vant, yes, most likely. But a slave, is some­what a no-no.

How­ever, is there a point in which a busi­ness can be a slave?

Admit­tedly, there is a busi­ness of slav­ery. How­ever, there are other kinds of busi­nesses in which they’ve become slaves. But for a good empha­sis, I would take the per­sons run­ning the busi­ness to have a slav­ery mind­set in the busi­ness realm. Why?

I would have to take my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. I am a ser­vice provider, to empha­size redun­dancy. I may be a ser­vant to a job provider or the cus­tomer to get what I want, to attain a busi­ness objec­tive. But to become a slave has never been incul­cated in my mind nor I would deem myself to be as such. How­ever,  if I com­mit enough effort in which the harm out­weighs the ben­e­fits expect­edly aim­ing for, then I would, though with denial, sub­mit myself to slav­ery. I may not be a slave to my cus­tomers, but I have become a slave to my own business.

With that rea­son­ing, the notion of busi­ness being a ser­vant is true. Being a slave is naught but there may be a case that makes it pos­si­ble. In the case of a busi­ness owner or the one run­ning the busi­ness, he is a ser­vant to dif­fer­ent mas­ters and, at one point, a slave to a busi­ness he owns or operates.