Every so often, somebody tells the story of Henry Ford, friend of the working man.  You see, he paid his workers a higher wage, helping to transform a population of Detroit immigrants into part of a mass affluent American middle class that supported America's economic growth for the better part of the 20th century. It's a nice story that appeals to common sense.  Ford built not only cars, but a customer base for its product.  It's the perfect counterpoint to globalization's "race to the bottom" for wages.

This is a fairy tale I've fallen for in the past as well.  We're all looking for a good argument in favor of raising wages for average workers in an era where the spoils of productivity have gone to upper management and equity holders.

But, as you might expect, there's more to the Henry Ford story.  Ford was a capitalist tycoon of his time and considered himself something of a statesman and community organizer.  It's a popular worry these days, that the financial elite has divorced itself from the concerns of average Americans.  The op-ed pages of The New York Times have quite commonly hosted calls for society's wealthy savior.  This has come from both the voices on the left and the right.  Sometimes its Michael Bloomberg.  Sometimes it's "America Elects," described by Thomas Friedman has backed by "serious hedge fund money."  Most recently, it's been Mitt Romney cast as our patrician leader.

It wasn't until I read the manuscript to my best friend's novel (about which, much more to come before the end of the year) that I learned the rest of the Ford story and why this yearning for a tycoon leader is so dangerous.  Ford didn't just pay his workers $5 a day.  He worried that his laborers would spend it on drink, whores and games of chance.  He had definite ideas about what a household should look like and how it should be run.

To that end, he created a Department of Sociology within his company, staffed with inspectors who pried into the loves of Ford's workers.  The $5 a day wage, which was more of a profit sharing plan, was extended only to those laborers who met Ford's standards of decency and temperance.  Would it surprise you if I said that these standards did not apply equally to all workers and that it was the lower wage immigrants who had their lives micromanaged?

Times have surely changed, but we still allow employers to fire employees for their political beliefs, or for failing a drug test, or for writing something offensive on a blog.  In our system, employers wield tremendous coercive power.  Some part of human nature is also vulnerable to the idea that if you provide somebody with money, even in exchange for labor, that you have some right to tell them how to spend it.

Ford's defenders might well argue that his sociologists did a lot of good.  No doubt people curbed gambling and substance addictions in pursuit of higher wages.  The problem is that being a successful auto company executive does not justify excessive influence over the lifestyle decisions of other people.

This is at the heart of people's frustration with Chick-Fil-A.  Its executives and owners are certainly entitled to their opinions.  But it's at best frustrating to see that they get an outsized voice just because they sell a lot of chicken pucks on biscuits.

When people tell the Henery Ford story, they should tell the whole story.  He had bigger ambitions than building a middle class.  He was out to influence individual lives and, ultimately, the culture.  He wasn't accountable to many people along the way.  Some people don't have a problem with this.  They seem okay with a democracy where the wealthiest voices are the loudest.  I find this impulse at best disturbing.