📡 The Invisible System
Americans like to pretend we have one economic system. Here in the real world, there’s a different kind of system—a system that doesn’t make headlines or trend on social media. It doesn’t need to. It operates quietly, efficiently, and with chilling consistency. It’s invisible to those it benefits, and unavoidable to those it exploits.
👷 The Man They Sent
In 2006, I hired a day laborer through a service. The dispatcher dropped him off at my house with all the reverence one might use when delivering a broken lawnmower. The man was middle-aged, Mexican, quiet. The dispatcher, maybe mid-20s, barked instructions at him like a child caught misbehaving in class.
🍽️ The First Meal
He worked hard. Quietly. Unfailingly polite. He complimented me on working alongside him, commenting that few people who hire him work alongside him. I invited him inside for lunch. We sat down and ate together. He told me that in five years of doing this work, no one had ever done that. Not once. That hit like a punch to the gut.
📦 The Corporate Workaround
Then he told me how many major big-box retailers explain to him and others how they can work there. Not officially, of course. But unofficially, the system is clear: follow the script, stay quiet, don’t cause trouble. He told me about unloading a full tractor trailer of produce the day before. They handed him a W-9 with the same seriousness as a napkin. He threw it in the trash, exactly as expected.
🧾 The Paper Lie Let’s be honest: the W-9 wasn’t for him. It was for the system—to say, legally, “We gave him the form.” Everyone knows what happens next. He’s paid in cash. No paper trail. No protections. No retirement. No safety net. He can be replaced by sundown.
🧠 The Real Alignment Problem
This is the real alignment system. A human one. A national one.
🚨 Enforcement by Fear
It works because it’s ambiguously legal but brutally clear. Speak up? ICE. Report wage theft? ICE. Get injured and complain? There’s a clipboard with your name on it, and a one-way ticket back across a line someone else drew.
📺 Public Apathy
And the American public? Mostly oblivious. Or worse, willfully ignorant.
🔒 The Most Obedient Workforce
The average voter thinks undocumented workers are “getting away with something.” In reality, they are the most structurally obedient labor force in the country. They don’t need supervisors—they have fear. And fear scales well.
🔇 Voices Unheard
Millions of voices like his go unheard. Because the system doesn’t just tolerate exploitation—it requires it.
⚡ Welcome to the Third Rail