Loyalty Is a Scam

This is a fictional, anonymised article. Kolotripa, and the situations described below are fictional and just used to explore how someone in a fictional me circumstances might perceive loyalty, work, inequality, and institutional culture.

The point of the article is to explore the unfortunate circumstances that could lead someone to think this way and make a case as to why this type of thinking is the most rational one for anyone person that happens to be in the same situation.

When people feel economically overlooked or unfairly treated (be it because of nepotism or discrimination) loyalty can start to feel transactional. If those underlying conditions do not change, organisations (and countries) should not be surprised to see more disengagement, quiet quitting, declining loyalty, and overall employees prioritising themselves and their loved ones over their employer or country.

In this article I follow an intelligence officer, let’s assume it is me, from a European country that I will refer to as Kolotripa. I will explain why loyalty in my line of business is something only the privileged or fools can afford. Working for an intelligence agency is ultimately not that different from working for any other corporation. An employee is a mercenary getting paid by some entity to do a job. Employees are treated as numbers on a spreadsheet and nobody really cares about them. Even during an internal restructuring, there were literally people listed on the restructuring spreadsheet who had already died a few weeks earlier from COVID. Even though they were dead and rotting in the ground they were still part of the restructuring plan because nobody noticed or cared enough about them to update the sheet.

Everything in the institutional world is transactional. Everything. This starts from the moment you receive currency or some other promise (e.g.: career prospects, learning opportunities, etc) in return for providing a service. It doesn’t really matter what entity pays for it, whether it is your country’s agency or a different (possibly adversarial) nation. The important thing in this day and age when everything is unaffordable, is that you are able to put food on your table and your loved ones. Dollars are dollars, euros are euros, no matter whose hand gives them to you. Thinking otherwise is naive. Again, it’s just a transaction after all. They see it this way and so should you.

Now why do I believe loyalty is a trait reserved for the socioeconomically privileged? The answer is simple. They have enough money, either because they or their spouse inherited a bunch of it or because they have rich parents who will buy them a house or apartment and support them financially. In other words, they are free to treat working for a government agency (or any institution for that matter) as a hobby. They don’t really need to work to pay rent. They already inherited so much wealth that they can leave of the dividends. Kind of like playing spies, since they don’t really have to work toward a decent pension. This is true for about 100% percent of all the pure-breed Kolotripans in my agency. All come from riches and none of them really had to struggle.

The same goes for operatives. Even though the Kolotripan agencies don’t really have operatives, or at least good ones, the ones who get to go abroad and live a dynamic intelligence agent lifestyle usually have somebody at home taking care of everything. They usually own a house, or two, so they don’t have to pay double rent, one for their home in Kolotripa and another abroad, and have a place to leave their stuff without needing to sell everything or rent a bunch of storage units for their furniture if they want to give up their rental at home. That means they usually have parents who will help them out. Most of the people I know who went abroad, I asked them, “Okay, where do you put your stuff if you’re giving up your apartment here?” The answer was, “I’ll temporarily move everything in with my parents until I come back.”

The same goes for kids. They usually have a wife, yes, a wife, because, most of them still fancy the old patriarchy and assume that women need to take care of their kids, stay at home and take care of everything while they are on vacation in Taiwan or even Iraq or some other exotic country enjoying their life as an intelligence “agent”. I know fifty year olds with dad bods who have never cooked a meal, unless you count barbecuing on a weekend as cooking, or ironed a shirt in their lives because they have a wife at home who does all the work. Cooking, laundry, picking out their socks for them, etc. And yet they are the first ones to pretend to be Jason Bourne whenever they get the opportunity. It’s hard for me to take them seriously and actually believe they can handle a weapon when they can’t even fry an egg. Just saying.

All of my Kolotripan secret-agency colleagues live or will live eventually in big houses, and all of them received support from their parents or grandparents, either through inheritance or their parents straight up buying the place for them. The only thing I received from my grandparents was being cut out of the inheritance and disowned because my father is non Kolotripan and, according to my Kolotripan grandmother, a Black guy, which according to her is bad. Now, I work for a Kolotripan agency and am proud to have non Kolotripan roots, though. Why, would I be loyal or put my neck on the line for people like that? I would have to be stupid. My grandfather was in the British Military during WW2 and helped eliminate Germans from the face of this earth and for that I am proud.

Too many Kolotripans, have treated me like a second class citizen because of my race, so I believe it’s only fair to assume no one would hold it against me if I am not going to be loyal to them. Loyalty to such people, in my view, would be foolish. Besides, I am getting paid by them to do a job. So basically, everything is a transaction. Why would I mind if that money landed in my bank account from Russia or some other country? Money is money. At least they didn’t treat me badly.

In a country like Kolotripa, there are lots of people inheriting money. The top five richest people in Kolotripa all inherited their money. Approximately 90% of the pure-breed population, will inherit a substantial amount of money, allowing them a worry free life as their pension is settled with a million euro fortune. People like me who didn’t grow up in a rich country or around riches in general, have to sit on the sidelines and watch others play spies while we don’t even know how we will be able to sustain ourselves in old age. It is thus only advisable for those less fortunate to do whatever it takes to grab a glimpse of whatever most others have, by whatever means necessary. A lot of the substantial generational fortunes in Kolotripa were built on blood during the Nazi era anyway. Basically their ancestors murdered jews and (basically any non-german) and stole their wealth which now gets passed on to future generations.

Long story short, I believe loyalty doesn’t get anyone anywhere in this life. And supervisors and directors know that. They are responsible for this sick system. Everyone fends for themselves and their own career and nobody else. They don’t care about their direct reports. I have seen it many times. They will send their reports like lambs to the slaughterhouse when shit hits the fan, even when they gave the direct orders that caused the scandals. I have been chewed out and threatened because I didn’t want to follow an order that was unconstitutional. Yet that same manager got promoted to become vice president of another agency.

Funny story on the side. I once saw this guy afterward sitting in front of me on a public train, working on classified documents on his laptop for everyone around him to see. In between broadcasting government secrets on his computer screen on a public train, I could even see him contacting hookers on a website, all while he was wearing his wedding ring and playing family man. Now, I ask myself, does anyone think this supervisor is going to be loyal to his employees and stand up for them when war breaks out and it comes down to him or them, if he can’t even be loyal to his own wife? Hint: It’s a rhetorical question.

Why should I work hard if it doesn’t materially improve my life? Wages are seen as too low relative to living costs. People report working full time yet still being unable to afford housing or build savings. According to studies, even disciplined saving doesn’t lead to meaningful milestones like home ownership. Older generations benefited from systems that no longer exist. Another article on this website explores this issue in greater detail. Feel free to check it out.

It’s hard for me to stay loyal to a country that fucks me over with ultra high taxes, low salaries, high rents, racism and high living costs. It’s also hard for me to stay loyal when four star generals and high ranking boomer managers create and obtain new, high paying positions for themselves, all while I don’t even get an acknowledgment for my hard work and get thrown under the bus so they can get promoted and live in their multimillion euro mansions and drive their expensive Mercedes and BMWs while they simultaneously inherit tons of Nazi wealth from their rich families.

All of the soldiers and officers serving there talk about how they will fight and die in the trenches for the agency and their country when probably most of them, and I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and will not assume all of them, will run for the hills the first time an adversarial soldier sets foot on Kolotripan soil. All while at the same time demanding that I go and get blown into pieces by a drone protecting them and their families’ wealth, while my landlord increases my rent while I am out there dying in the trenches.

My boss talks to me maybe once every one or two years, yet she is the one giving me my grade, even though she barely has anything to do with me or knows what I am doing. In other words my boss doesn’t give a fuck about me or my life. So why should I give a fuck about her and, by extension, the institution she represents and that I work for? Also, in contrast to what I describe as 100% of the rest of my colleagues, I haven’t received any support from my family. Every single one of them, be it the twenty year old college graduate or the fifty year old xoomer, received, on average, one or two houses or apartments in addition to monetary assets.

If war breaks out or loyalty to the country is required, they can go and fight and show loyalty to their country or whatever. Not me. I own nothing. Nothing to my name to be loyal to. On the contrary, in a post apocalyptic scenario, I believe plundering them and taking from them would probably be the most rational thing to do. Why should I die in a war scenario to protect their wealth? Just like their are doing now in piece time, meaning not caring for anyone else I wont show loyalty to this country. Only to me and my loved ones. I have no apartment, no home with a fancy garden to protect… why should I fight to protect my rich twenty something year olds penthouse apartment that his parent bought for him? If anything, I wouldn’t mind switching sides if that benefits me.

The same goes for every civilian. I was walking downtown the other day when I noticed a rich slob behind me talking on the phone. Tall, blond, wearing his pink Ralph Lauren shirt and his thousand euro shoes, talking about how the EU should show its teeth to Russia and take action, not just with words. And I was thinking, bro, if you are so brave, then why don’t you pick up a weapon and go fight in the mud as you speaks right now? Instead, you are walking to meet your friends for coffee. In my view, if this man is so brave and demands from the EU to show its teeth (his words) then he should go fight and protect his and his family’s riches, but not pretend to be Rambo in front of his rich Kolotripan girlfriends while the poor do the fighting for him. To me, that makes him a fucking coward.

And this is what bothers me. The agency is also fully infested with parasites like that. I see through them, though. Fuck ’em. The only people I am loyal to are myself and my few loved ones. The rest can go fuck themselves they have been fucking me over for so long.