America Needs a Prime Directive

November 07, 2013

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America needs a Prime Directive.

If we were to capture the current, implied one, it’d be something like:

Great. We’re good at that, and it’s killing us. It’s time to stop.

We need something more sustainable, more respectable, more…well, American.

This directive is what every American business and official entity must check itself against in every board meeting, in every major strategy meeting, etc. It’s defined by the protection of the following standard of health for the American family:

  • American families can support themselves with one family member working a 30-hour week. The other stays home with the children full-time.

  • The working family member’s wage will pay for not just food and shelter, but for substantially long (but modest) vacations and plenty of sick time.

  • Education for the working family’s children is paid for. It’s considered an investment in America, which is why American companies pay for it.

  • All American workers are completely covered for any medical issue at all times, because they’re American, and American companies take care of the basic needs their employees as a national responsibility.

  • Companies will not pay their executives more than 10x what their cheapest employee makes. 10x is plenty to provide incentive, and more than that is unhealthy to the American ideal and a violation of the Prime Directive.

Pushback

We’ll be American. We’ll dominate through innovation and creativity and cooperation—like we used to back when CEOs didn’t make more in a week than their employees make in a year.

Who gives a fuck? That’s not a game we even want to win. A gentleman doesn’t worry about how to sleep with more girls than a rapist. We’re Americans—we do the right thing first, and ask questions later. The answer will come easily enough anyway: we’ll have the most educated, the most healthy, and the most motivated workers in the world—just like we used to.

And we’ll win.

But this can only happen if we refocus on our core principals, i.e. the prosperity of the American people, through a Prime Directive. Once again:

I look forward to comments on how to improve it.

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