The Big Question
A Jack Power Commentary
Here is a simple question. A question that has been in the white noise of people's thoughts for some time. A question that is just now starting to come into the forefront. It's a question that carries with it palpable feelings of resentment and anger. It's the question no one is asking directly, but everyone should:Why the blue fuck should anyone have to work to live?
Technology - both mechanical and informational - have increased production to the point that very few people need to work to make things "run" efficiently. These advancements carried with the stated and/or implied promise that work would require less actual effort, and be more efficient. Life would be easier.
That promise has died, killed in its sleep by the spectre of economy and its insatiable hunger for more.
Rather than reduce or even eliminate the need to work, work was instead invented out of thin air to keep people employed. That whole "get as many asses into those seats as possible" mentality again. Terms like "dignity of work" and "earning a living" became ingrained into the national consciousness. Most people can't fathom of an existence without being employed or trading currency for items... except on Star Trek.
This whole "cutting things in half to double them" plan is borne from this mindset. "You don't want to be seen as lazy, do you? You lollygagger sitting at home because the 100 places you filled applications out at aren't hiring right now. So we're going to make everyone work half as long so that twice as many people are working! Economic expansion? Who cares? We're eliminating unemployment here! That's your job! Spend, goddammit, spend!"
But let's cut to the bone here. Let's call this mindset out for what it is. Employment is nothing more than a nationwide - indeed, worldwide - mercenary service. The employee puts out his desire to rent his time, effort, unique skill set, and energy in exchange for compensation so that he may continue to exist. Even under the current "rules", they'd still be compensated far less than what that time, skill, and energy is actually worth, because job creators and profits or something.
Here's the deal: nobody - not one single, solitary person - on this Earth asked to be here. We were all popped out of someone's vagina, or were from the womb untimely ripped, or however we came to be. So now, against our will - or, more accurately, irrelevant to our will - here we are. Human beings on the planet Earth. Now since we, as human beings, require nourishment and water to maintain existence, and since we live on Earth, we require shelter from the long, cold winters, long, hot summers, and the few seconds of spring and fall we get if we're lucky.
And those things, because someone somewhere in our history decided that things should cost money, cost money.
The fact of the matter is, we all are born into debt. A debt we didn't accrue intentionally, but rather as a function of our existence. A debt that more and more of us have had to submit to servitude, selling our minds, our effort, and, ultimately, our actual flesh and blood (thank you plasma donation centers!).
So how do we solve this? Even increasing the minimum wage doesn't address the underlying issues. Sure, under the rules that have been laid out, giving people a living wage will help them live, but it operates under the assumption that those rules are beneficial and shouldn't be challenged. It doesn't question the need to work in the first place to earn that "living wage".
#abolisheconomy
Those who follow my Tumblr feed recognize the tag above. I wholeheartedly question the underlying assumptions and theories that maintain the Idea of Economy. The Idea that everyone and everything has a price, and its only value is what someone else can get for it. Everything is negotiable, up to and including the necessities of life. Up to and including the things that make life better and more livable. Up to and including the people, places, and things that sustain and restore health should the unthinkable happen.
Up to and including the very Ideas of Life and Death.
The chants of "Let them die" at a Republican debate a few years ago still ring, chanted by people who most likely would themselves be one major injury or illness away from bankruptcy, insurance or no. The very idea that things like food, healthcare, medicine, and even water are only available to those who can pony up the funds for it by its nature that those without are excluded from having it. That they are not human enough to have the things that human beings need to survive.
I've long maintained that money is the closest thing to the physical manifestation of the Idea of Power that there is. But you don't need me telling you that, you see it every day. People with money spend that money to get more money. They leverage that money to gain power by funding candidates that are receptive to their Ideas to get more money, and then enact those Ideas into law, so that they can get more money. Thus, more power.
But the thing about money, economy, employment, and all that is that they are based on Ideas, which are given credence by fiat and unquestioned acceptance. It's a figurative house of cards, only the cards are entirely imaginary. If people suddenly stop believing in the cards, it all crumbles down.
But that's untenable. People aren't going to discard things hard-wired into their brain since birth, seeing their parents buy into it, who saw their parents buy into it, and so on. It isn't "human nature", as some have claimed it to be, but a learned behavior. Human habit. But in the immortal words of Chicago, it's a hard habit to break.
So how do we break it? Once we see the cards for what they are, how do we keep the whole thing from crumbling down all at once?
Well, the Swiss have an idea. A guaranteed income for each adult of $33,600 per year. Imagine not having to work to live. Imagine what we could do if we all did what we wanted to do - where our passion lies - instead of taking work we have to do in order to not die.
Some will, of course, say that giving people money without them earning it will breed laziness. That if they don't have to work, they won't. I would ascribe this to mere projection, but let's assume that some people do stop working.
As someone who spent an entire summer between classes without a job because I didn't have to work, I can say that it was horrible. My sleep schedule was messed up, my head was a mess, I holed up in my apartment for days, if not weeks at a time, because I couldn't deal with people.
I had no structure, and it was a nightmare. Looking back on it now, after the fact, I can safely say that even though I hated the job I left to attend school, I can retrospectively appreciate the structure it gave me.
Human beings are not by nature hedonists. They do want to do things, and if they no longer have to do things, that doesn't mean they won't do things. They will. Their internal sense of exploration, accomplishment, and desire will take over. Unfettered by selling 40+ hours a week, they'll do what they want, to better themselves and others.
But given the fact that they DID have to sell off 1/4 of their life to someone else just to be able to exist for the other 3/4 of it, having no say and no choice in the matter, even if they did spend the rest of their life doing absolutely nothing? That isn't laziness. That's resentment.
And, really, can you blame them?
