The Job Free Market (1/3)

So, you want a job in the Empire?

Of course you do. At least half of the people in the Associated Worlds have at least thought about it. Pay rates are infamously high, tax rates are infamously low, and it is generally agreed that there’s no finer place for the ambitious to get rich quick.

The easy part is that there are no artificial barriers to stop you. You don’t need a work permit, you don’t need a work visa, and you don’t need to bribe the Minister of Work. You don’t even need an entry permit; assuming you aren’t on their list of undesirables, you can simply go there and start working.

The hard part is that you don’t want a ”job” in the Empire. In fact, it’s best if you forget you even know the word ”job”. The sort of employment familiar in most polities – an exchange of money for time, in which you work under direction – offends the libertist Imperials in a deeply philosophical way; they don’t practice it, they assert that the closest thing they do have to it is indentured servitude, and they will not appreciate the suggestion that they might like to start doing so with you.

In any case, everyone who might consider you fancies that they are looking for someone with dynamism, wit, entrepreneurial spirit, and vaulting ambition, and if you sound to them like someone who wants to just sell his time and be told what to do, you won’t even get an interview.

So, you’re not looking for ”a job”, you’re looking ”to work”, and this distinction is a lot more important than it might sound.

How is work organized in the Empire, then? Contracts. (You will have to learn to read and understand contracts yourself; while it’s possible to obtain pocket-obligator software, people won’t wait for it to explain the simple and standard to you.)

In Imperial law, every person is also a business; everyone is automatically self-employed. These people/businesses are contracted to perform specific tasks for specific remuneration (on the basis of completion, productivity or time).

Unlike the employment model you’re familiar with, the contracting businesses take little interest in how the work is done, only that it is done. Tools, techniques, workplace, working hours, how many contracts you work on simultaneously, and so forth are all largely up to you – but you also hold all the responsibility for the job being done on time and to specification. The obligations of contractor to contractee, and vice versa, are strictly those found in the contract.

– Working in the Worlds, Kernuaz Alliés