One of those life lessons, I suppose.

Would you work for free? Suppose you're really, really good at something. Would you do it for free?

Now, suppose you've made millions or even billions of dollars doing that something. Now...would you do it someplace else for free? Someplace that desperately needs your help. Someplace that is owned by the United States government.

Hm. Honestly, I don't know how I would answer that question.

And so I think it's kind of flippant when people assert that Ed Whitacre, new CEO of General Motors, should be working for free, because the government (aka the taxpayers, aka you and I) has rescued the company from total catastrophe.

See, there's charity work, which is one thing. Bill Gates does a lot of charity work, but he still expects a healthy return from his interest in Microsoft. I honestly can't remember if he still holds any sort of position there, and I don't care enough to look it up. I think it's close enough to count that he was there and he built the place and yada yada yada.*

As for Mr. Whitacre, though, I'm not sure he should regard his task at GM as charity work, regardless of what the columnists at my hometown newspaper may think. (Or perhaps this is simply because of what the columnists at my hometown newspaper think; I have very little respect for the one in question and nearly always disagree with him on the simple principle that I think he's a complete nitwit.)

I honestly don't know. I'm not sure I'd work for free. If someone came to me and said, "Erin K. Rice, you are the greatest writer in the history of writing...." Nah. That's just silly. If someone came to me and said, "Erin K. Rice, you possess the skill to write in exactly the way that might lead us from the darkness into the light. We need you, Erin K. Rice...." (This happens all the time with freelance writers, by the way. It's a blessing...and a curse.)

Yeah. If someone said that to me, and then followed it up with, "By the way, we're bankrupt and the whole country hates us because the cars we've been making for the last 20 years are junk and they finally figured that out and decided to hold us accountable--when they could have done so at any time during those 20 previous years, mind you. So, um, would you work for free? Because, you know, you have gobs and gobs of money from all your other jobs for successful companies, and we reckon they should subsidize us just like the rest of the nation is subsidizing us...."

I don't know. I don't think that's cool. I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work. And, yeah, yeah. The alternative is that the taxpayers are paying his salary. I get it. But would we rather they found someone who was willing to work for free but wasn't as qualified to do the job? That doesn't sound so good, either.

Sometimes there just isn't a nice answer.

* I think Seinfeld references that didn't originate on Seinfeld but were canonized into pop culture by their inclusion in the show are extra-special.