There‘s a video clip going around showing ageing Australian edgelord Tim Gurner — who built a property empire on nothing but grit, moxie, and capital borrowed from his grandfather — speaking the capitalist quiet part out loud, arguing that we need higher unemployment to keep employees from getting uppity.
This reminded me of a thought I‘d had about the peculiar moral judgements built into our language of employment. Whereas a worker is an active agent, an employee is passive, shifting the active role to the heroic employer, that benevolent figure who grants them the opportunity to work.
This role-reversal is even more stark in German: The one who sweats and strains building or cleaning or making — that one is the Arbeitnehmer, the work-taker. The one who owns the business, maybe because they started it, maybe because they inherited it, or purchased it with inherited capital, is the Arbeitgeber, the work-giver.
Common Infirmities 