I have been an employer in the United States.

For many years, I believed—sincerely—that I was doing something good. I paid people. I created opportunities. I tried to be fair. I understood employment as a mutual exchange: labor for wages, time for money, dignity preserved on both sides.

I no longer believe that.

What I failed to fully grasp then—and what has since become impossible to ignore—is how completely survival in America has been tethered to employment. Healthcare, housing, legal stability, even family integrity are now tightly bound to having a job and keeping it continuously.

Losing work is no longer a setback.
It is no longer even a hardship.

It is a high-risk event.

It can trigger medical collapse, homelessness, custody loss, untreated illness, and death. Not hypothetically. Systemically.

When Consent Is Backed by Threat

Under these conditions, employment ceases to be a free contract.

Consent offered under the credible threat of bodily harm or social erasure is not consent in any ethical sense. When walking away from a job carries a real risk of catastrophic harm, the relationship is no longer between equals—no matter how kind, progressive, or well-intentioned the employer may be.

The power imbalance is structural.

And structure does not disappear because the individual inside it has good intentions.

The Illusion of Neutral Power

I did not set out to control anyone’s life.

But intent does not cancel structure.

As an employer, I occupied a position of power I did not earn and could not ethically neutralize. I sat upstream from consequences I could not fully mitigate. If the job ended—because of market shifts, illness, conflict, or simple bad luck—the floor could fall out from under someone else’s existence.

That reality alone compromises the role.

This is not about villainy.

It is about leverage.

The System Has Crossed a Line

What has changed is not only my awareness. The system itself has deteriorated.

The safety net has thinned.
The margins for error have vanished.
The penalties for interruption have intensified.

What might once have been defensible as ethical employment has crossed a line.

Today, in America, you cannot ethically employ someone when their ability to survive depends on your continued approval—or on economic conditions neither of you controls.

This Is Not Self-Flagellation

This is not a confession of personal evil.

It is a refusal to lie.

I was not a monster—but I was a participant in a system that now functions through coercion. I can acknowledge that without self-hatred, because moral clarity is not the same thing as moral collapse.

Naming the structure is not the same thing as condemning every person inside it.

It is simply telling the truth about how it works.

What Ethical Employment Would Require

If ethical employment is to exist again, it will require conditions we no longer meet:

• Guaranteed healthcare independent of work
• Real housing security
• A genuine right to refuse labor without risking death

Until those conditions exist, “employment” is a euphemism for compelled participation in a system that punishes vulnerability with annihilation.

I can’t unknow this.

And I won’t pretend otherwise.