Job! Jobs! Jobs! Cheering on our own slavery. Employment bubble popped. Fight against work.

Yeah we need jobs. As much as we need a prison sentence. I hate jobs. Not just my job - its actually pretty sweet. But the effect of the job itself is what makes jobs such an awful nuisance to modern man.

So here's where we find ourselves in this Great Repression or whatever the media is calling it. People are out of work. But the jobs they're applying for are precisely the problem. People talk about the housing bubble. What we have is an employment bubble. Its popped. We have no more room for useless jobs. But we have people who need that job in order to secure food and shelter. So what, precisely, is the problem? That we have people out of work or that these people need work to get food and shelter?

Is unemployment even a problem if work wasnt intimately tied to food and shelter? Can we change the world for EVERY single worker in the world if we break the bond between work and food, between slaves and masters?



Why am I upset at jobs? Because we don't need them anymore. If we think of how jobs came to be we realize that the work of our very survival needed to be distributed because, lets face it, life was hard when a horse and plow are your greatest technological innovations. If we all shared the work of survival it'd make a better life for everyone. Makes sense. I dig it. But now less than 1% of the US population grows food for the other 99% PLUS many other countries. I"d say the days of horse and plow are over.

All recently created jobs are fulfilling artificial needs. The fastest growing industry in the past decade was the financial industry. Completely false and outside our realm of human needs. All jobs created since the 80s are like smoke. They're here for a little while, hanging in the air, but soon they dissipate. They're not sustainable because they're based on artificial, socially created "needs" like an HDTV, 401K, computers or fashionable clothing. The employment bubble burst long, long ago. We've created an entire economy on articifially created needs and ghost jobs, military spending and financial mathematic acrobatics. Now we're wondering why we're unemployed, hungry and angry?

We're in this situation, not because of lack of jobs, but because there are TOO many jobs. We're OVER employed. We have more jobs than we have needs. The illusion prevailed until oil prices and a weakening dollar cause us to reevaluate our purchases. Maybe we didnt need a new truck this year. Maybe we dont need to go to Disneyland. And now the economy is scaling back because the poor dont have enough money to maintain the illusion.

We're in this problem because we never really faced the problem: that our jobs simply provide us with money to buy food and shelter. At the end of the day, thats all that matters. Our survival, which is wrongly tied up with our jobs.

So for a long time we've been creating jobs that are basically useless to us, survival wise. We're creating people with useless skill sets. I proofread financial statements - useless, utterly useless outside the rules of my particular society (American in 2011). The idea that jobs have some important social function is simply NOT a reality for most people. And the world only needs so many doctors, police and firefighters. So what are the rest of us to do in our useless, pointless jobs that merely exist to make some rich guy more money? How do we free ourselves?

Well we could start by realizing that jobs turn our bodies into a debt that we must work to repay. Our hunger, our biological need for a warm place to sleep is used against us.. Our own bodies, our very own biological processes, are used as leverage to FORCE us to work. This is the truly sinister purpose of jobs. Slavery, dependece on the system. Its all about food. Ok lets start from the beginning. We used to work like this:

work ---> food and shelter. This is commonly called slavery. Probably came about with the first farmer. Why farm it all himself when he can just pay other people a small amount of his crop, do nothing and still make it through the winter?

Now we work like this:

work ---> money ----> food and shelter. This is commonly called a job. We all know how these work.

Now what has happened since the abolition of slavery? We've inserted a middle man (money) between us and our access to basic life necessities like food and shelter. So really, we just have slavery once removed. We're only ONE simple step from true slavery, the smallest step possible by the way. Not only that but our lives are even more controlled by the tyrrany of currency. By eradicating slavery we've actually made ourselves EASIER to control through work and jobs because if one controls the money one controls the labor power of the entire society. But we KNOW that. So why do we continue this charade? The illusion of choice.

We also have the illusion of choice at our jobs. We think we're free because we get to pick our favorite flavor of slavery. But that doesnt change the fact that we all NEED jobs to live, to access basic life necessities. If you gave me three bowls of dog sh*t and told me I had to eat one to get food and shelter then yeah, I'm gonna eat the least sh*tty pile of sh*t. But that doesnt mean we're enjoying it or that we even had a choice. This is the sinister conspiracy to turn your hunger, your need for a warm home, into a debt that we MUST work to repay all the while convincing us that working at our sh*tty jobs was our choice. They want to make it seem like theres some greener pasture at some other company. They want us to believe the problem isnt with work in general but your workplace specifically. That its only YOU who dont like your job and YOU picked the wrong job.

One last point and then I"m out. Prisoners. These people BREAK the law, are a danger to society, yet they get free food and shelter day in day out and dont work a single day. Now, if we can provide three meals a day, air conditioning and cable TV for PRISONERS, the murderers and rapists, why can't we provide it for all of us. We have plenty of food, remember 1% of the US farms for 99% of the rest. We have plenty of homes. Look down the street, how many are empty, for sale? How many people own TWO, THREE homes? We can provide food and shelter for all. Its there. We've simply been convinced we don't deserve it.

Most people will read this and think I"m anti-labor or some sort of anarchist. Actually its quite the opposite. I"m so pro labor that I don't even think workers should be working. Shorter hours, benefits? Cmon, lets put our energy into something transfomative. If AFL-CIO is gonna fight a fight why not fight to reduce people's dependence on jobs instead of INCREASING people's dependence on jobs. Being pro-labor and fighting to get people "good jobs" and all that crap is like teaching a man to fish and giving him fish. Getting ONE person ONE job doesnt free ALL of society from jobs. It actually reinforces the exact system the AFL-CIO and pro-labor activists claim to fight.

So over the next year when you hear campaign speech after campaign speech touting "JOB CREATION!!!" and "We're gonna put American back to work!" dont cheer like the mindless slave. Realize that to cheer on "job creation" is to cheer on our own slavery. We need a basic standard of living for all Americans regardless of their employability. Regardless of the useless skills they can offer a corrupt economy.

Got to keep the slaves occupied or they might just get ideas.

reply to post by doctornamtab


I think I know what you are talking about. I love these videos from RSA Animate, and I think it follows along some of your thoughts.

www.youtube.com...

Awesome post and I agree 100%.
Matter of fact, I think the same exact sentiments on a daily basis.

And I have a decent job.

But the question remains.

Does anyone realize that we are forced to work for basic necessities.
When prisoners get them for free?
Plus a library, a gym, and recreation.

Hmm...somethings wrong with that picture.

We work to live now because our society is setup to pay for life.
Americans have always thought that is the dream.
I don't buy into it.
But, generations passed that handed down the "Dream".
That "Dream" is an illusion.
Of grandeur.

It's time to start seeing it for what it is.

A lie.


Well thought out and presented.
Thanks.

I dont think you are very off base, only because I have thought somewhat of this subject- well part of it anyways.

The part that I really agree with you on, is the fact that its not impossible to feed and house every man woman and child that are citizens of this country. You take care of the two most important woes in life, then the rest will happen on its own accord. People can then worry about creating needed and useful buisnesses that would propel our country forward, and be a becon of what America SHOULD be about.

THAT- would be a campaign promise I could get behind.



Great thread.

reply to post by doctornamtab


I have been feeling like this for a long time, most because I dont have a job, never worked because of my un-employability. Always stopped at the interview and never heard from them again. Got diagnosed for highfunc aspergers later on and I came to the conclusion that I might never be able to work. Where I live one of the most important workskills to have is to be social after all. Not really a key area for me.

So during these years after that I have thought and pondered and come up with basically the same conclusion that you have. Our monetary system is a relic from a long time ago where it was needed. Now it isn't anymore.
The more technology is developed the more jobs are being obsolete. It all began with that sewing machine and now we are on the cusp on sentient robots.

The logical thing for me is to do a transition to a form of society that push people to become what they want to be. We are not meant to work, we are creators, movers and shapers. With just the will we could do so many things.

reply to post by doctornamtab


THANK YOU!!!! I've spent a lot of time thinking about this whole "Job"-construct and what it's done to humanity. All of our problems today seem like "Virtual problems". Like if we woke up in the morning and all the power was out...they'd all go away! For the last 7yrs, all the money in my bank account = digital numbers on a screen. I can turn them into paper if I want...but with online bill pay, checks, and debit cards...I haven't need CASH/CURRENCY in years.
And this "job" I have...feels like nothing more than an anchor, a waste of time. All it does is give me a paper check, which I turn into more digital numbers. I pay for food and shelter with those digital numbers. And because nowhere else in my town can offer bigger digital numbers...I now feel stuck. It's not right...it doesn't feel natural.

reply to post by doctornamtab


Agreed. Not only does the system keep us enslaved, it also forces us to push the real cost of our goods onto the poorest 80% of the global population. That Iphone you just bought is fueling a resource war in the Congo and that chocolate bar was picked by a 12 year old African slave boy. Not too mention hundreds of thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. People on here love to talk about the global elite controlling everything, and that may be true, but if you are making more than $10 a day you ARE the global elite. Your way of life poisons and destroys and consumes.

So what to do? How can I feed my family and fight the system? Stop buying products from corporations. That's it it's that simple. Stop buying Chocolate that isn't fair trade organic. Stop buying bottled water. Stop buying factory farmed meat. Stop buying anything from McDonalds, or Walmart or anywhere else that doesn't care how or where their products are made.

Why would this work? Lets face it boys and girls people in North America aren't going to start a violent uprising. Our revolution will be a financial one. We can bring the system to a grinding halt, we can crash the stock market, we can tell the perpetrators of the system that we've had enough. Sadly democracy isn't practiced with votes anymore, it's practiced with dollars. Every dollar you take away from the corporate interests and super rich is a vote for freedom.

So if you you're fed up with the Status Quo like I am, but you've struggled to find something you can do that will have real, tangible results here it is.

Sorry for the thread Hijack but I was going to make a post on this and this post segued into what I was talking about anyways.

Namaste

You have articulated very well exactly what I believe to be true.

It's not a popular belief, people generally assume that if you hold this view then you are lazy and avoiding your responsibility. This system we live under is so ingrained into the social psyche that to enable people to realise the truth in your statement is ridiculously difficult.

Any suggestions about what we can actually do to combat it?

S+F.

I subscribe to the idea of boycotting big business also, I just wish I could talk hubby into bankruptcy.
Convenience is the problem, we exhaust ourselves doing unnecessary activities then look for the easiest ways to do everything else so that we have more time to live because most of our precious time is stolen from us.

can we start by paying Congress with IOUs ???
2nd line

i agree whole-heartedly with you, but what people need to know is what to do about it.
the only suggestion i can think of is for the people(the "proles" i mean)to stage a massive boycott of the whole entire system, i mean after all, we buy their products, we give them the power they have, they've got us by the balls because we let them.
the problem is is that the masses are so thoroughly controlled and have no leaders to trust. the poor people of the earth despise each other making it seem almost hopeless, but i guess there's always hope, there's always a chance at winning roulette as well, but the wheel that we spin has an infinite amount of possibilities.
great thread man, but i hope you don't get "abducted" one of these days and just disappear, we need more people in the world with their eyes open.

reply to post by doctornamtab



the good dr.,

i totally understand what you are saying brother. you laid it out very nicely. but i would also add to the mix the fact that our survival is solely based on food, water and shelter. that is it. everything else is as you said "artificial" or just a social invention (which aren't bad thing necessarily i'm just saying in order to survive they aren't required), but our technology is reaching a critical mass where it can and probably will take over the mundane necessary jobs.

-Example: farming towers that are completely automated. also think about how in a few years or decades vehicles will probably be self automated as well, so even shipping will be computer controlled.

i think we are reaching a point in our race where we actually can evolve to a type 1 society. our entire "economy" is based on output of work. well in reality we don't really need 90% of all jobs.

now im not advocating to be lazy. i believe we all have a duty to our society and should all accept responsibility. but that responsibility can actually fall into a category that you enjoy. our survival needs can become taken care of by our tech. and we can be left to evolve/grow/progress on ourselves and shift our consciousness to the development of us and our future.

we can do it, it is possible. we are actually becoming an advanced civilization just like what most of us believe alien culture is like. the only thing stopping us is ourselves (mostly the wealthy) but they will refuse to give up there power. which is the situation we have today.


but, yes we can release ourselves from these "jobs" and focus on ourselves. i mean after all, life is just an experience and shouldn't be something that only the wealthy can truly enjoy.


great conversation, keep it up!

Originally posted by Threegirls
You have articulated very well exactly what I believe to be true.

It's not a popular belief, people generally assume that if you hold this view then you are lazy and avoiding your responsibility. This system we live under is so ingrained into the social psyche that to enable people to realise the truth in your statement is ridiculously difficult.

Any suggestions about what we can actually do to combat it?

S+F.

Demand economic democracy. We should all vote on issues in our jobs the same way we vote for issues in the political sphere. Democracy is a concept that is not applied to economics. Why? Why does economics remain a tyrrany? Why is that ok? If we want equality we must demand voting power in BOTH economic and political realms. Political democracy is useless (and VERY easily corruptable) without economic democracy.

Demand a TRUE standard of living. Not one based on threats to our body and the useless skills we have to offer a corrupt economic system. Free food and shelter is not a pipe dream, its not entitlement, its our human heritage. Ancient people's worked about 15 hours a week. This isnt tribal people, who work even less, this was civilized city people without computers, without electricity, without diesel power. So now we have more technology but also more required work to access food and shelter? Cmon. We have to break the link between work and food.

Demand a share of profits. WE work for the profits. Not some guy in a suit. Why does a small board of directors get full rights to the profits made by the workers? They receive ALL the benfits of our blood, tears and sleeplessness? This ties along with the economic democracy thing but its really about changing the flow of money. Instead of money flowing up, through a pyramid like we have now, our economy should be more like a donut. Where money comes into a company, gets converted into products through labor and the fruits of that labor come back DOWN to the people who made them. Now, it doesnt have to be equal- meaning CEOS shouldnt make as little as janitors. But a scale can be put in place. Like, the CEO cannot make more than 10 times the lowest paid employee. By circulating profits back THROUGH the economy it ensures that money actually moves around, instead of being hoarded by the few (this is a very important problem in our economy that NO ONE TALKS ABOUT). It also makes the economy more stabilizing, like a gyroscope. The economy wouldnt be as out of control since we'd ALL have a little more control. We'd ALL be responsible since we're ALL getting a part of the profits.

Lastly, just learn and spread these ideas, especially the idea of the popped employment bubble. Like other posters have already said, these ideas are so simple, yet so revolutionary that people can't believe them. They think it can't be that simple. That the economy is some complex algorithm because they see all those graphs and charts and acronyms and percentages on Mad Money. This is on purpose, its a trick. The economy is SIMPLE, its just shrouded in jargon to make us feel like we have no control or understanding of it. So, spread the ideas, pay attention and dont believe the "experts" who tell you the economy is too complicated for your tiny, non-expert intellect. Its only complicated because they're busy creating little fissures for them to game and exploit the economy. Then they wonder why these fissures cause huge economic earthquakes.

Food is the number one necessity, with only water being equal or close, clothing and shelter come second. With that in mind, how can you view any "job" as more important than growing food so you can survive? But it's even worse than that, people don't even know how to cook, so they go out to eat and pay 2 to 3 times the market price just because someone prepares their food for them, and someone else brings it to them on a plate. You could save hundreds of dollars every week if you cooked your own food, and you could save even more and have healthier food if you grew your own.

Originally posted by dingleberrysalad
i agree whole-heartedly with you, but what people need to know is what to do about it.
the only suggestion i can think of is for the people(the "proles" i mean)to stage a massive boycott of the whole entire system, i mean after all, we buy their products, we give them the power they have, they've got us by the balls because we let them.
the problem is is that the masses are so thoroughly controlled and have no leaders to trust. the poor people of the earth despise each other making it seem almost hopeless, but i guess there's always hope, there's always a chance at winning roulette as well, but the wheel that we spin has an infinite amount of possibilities.
great thread man, but i hope you don't get "abducted" one of these days and just disappear, we need more people in the world with their eyes open.

There are more and more of us everyday. If we use facebook and social media to organize a massive boycott it could be our Arab spring. The Tunisians through off the yoke of a dictator, we have to throw off the yoke of consumerism. The time is now

The OP is completely misguided.

Until the 90s, the US was a manufacturing powerhouse. We were exporting goods like refrigerators and musical instruments to many countries in the world. It's a travesty to say that the need for these items is "artificial".

Well, then these jobs were simply moved overseas. If you will, the country was strip-mined of potential by laissez faire attitude of the government.

reply to post by doctornamtab


Fabulous post - S&F

I was fired from my job in January because my car broke down, and I needed a car to actually do the job, I was a delivery driver. I am 53 and no matter what job I applied for I never even got any response from any of them. My home was repo'd last month, I had no savings, but I did have an occupational pension of £360 per month which I became entitled to when my late husband died over 20 years ago.

Surely, I thought, one cannot live on £360 per month, can they? I had to try.

I contacted my local authority to ask for social housing and related my predicament, only to be told I wasn't priority (immigrants and single mums are priority) and I would have to rent privately. I approached my MP who wrote a letter to the local housing authority to support me, and I also contacted the local press, all this placed pressure on the housing authority to help me. After 6 weeks of my badgering them through one way or another I was at last offered a home.

I pay minimal rent, minimal council tax, I buy cheaper brand food and never buy more than I need, I am careful with how I use gas and electricity, I don't ever go out socialising, but guess what? I am living on £360 per month! Ok I don't have luxuries, but I have found I can live without them. I don't need a car - I have legs that work just fine. I don't need a new TV - the old one shows the same TV prog's as a new one would. I don't need luxury, fancy food to survive - I don't starve without these things. That is all they are, just THINGS. I walk my dog more often than I used to in order to get out of the house - my dog and I are much healthier getting out in the fresh air several times a day.

All this I benefit from since I lost my job, and instead of wallowing in self-pity and feeling like life isn't worth living just because I cannot buy things, I have found my life is much more relaxed and slower, and I have begun to appreciate the things in life that money cannot buy - life, love and nature.

There IS a life without the things you don't need.

I am happy living a simple life - and it feels great to be off the treadmill.

Let me see if I am grasping what you are saying.

Since we don't like or want to work for someone else, we should quit and work only for our own survival.

This sounds good "until" your shoes wear out. Or the roof on your house leaks.

Will you have the time and expertise to mend your shoes or roof and still have time to plow your fields; hunt, kill and prepare game for eating. And what happens when a few million people are hunting only several thousand game animals. And what do we eat when they are gone. How much food can you grow year round?

Will you be able to make the tools and weapons needed to carry out this life still over the long run, 30 to 40 years atleast.

I have always thought our diversified work force came about because some people were better at making bows and arrows than were others. Some could prepare skins for clothing and shelter better than others. By trading the labor of these and other skills as barter for work-in-kind the members of a tribe began to realize a better lifestile than a single person or even a family living alone.

Of course over the many years which has passed since man was a simple hunter-gatherer other forms of payment evolved.

If you are truely tired of working for others, by all means quit. You can then become a truely independent and self made man.

I wish you all the luck in the world.

Originally posted by Buddha1098
reply to post by doctornamtab

 

Agreed. Not only does the system keep us enslaved, it also forces us to push the real cost of our goods onto the poorest 80% of the global population. That Iphone you just bought is fueling a resource war in the Congo and that chocolate bar was picked by a 12 year old African slave boy. Not too mention hundreds of thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. People on here love to talk about the global elite controlling everything, and that may be true, but if you are making more than $10 a day you ARE the global elite. Your way of life poisons and destroys and consumes.

So what to do? How can I feed my family and fight the system? Stop buying products from corporations. That's it it's that simple. Stop buying Chocolate that isn't fair trade organic. Stop buying bottled water. Stop buying factory farmed meat. Stop buying anything from McDonalds, or Walmart or anywhere else that doesn't care how or where their products are made.

Why would this work? Lets face it boys and girls people in North America aren't going to start a violent uprising. Our revolution will be a financial one. We can bring the system to a grinding halt, we can crash the stock market, we can tell the perpetrators of the system that we've had enough. Sadly democracy isn't practiced with votes anymore, it's practiced with dollars. Every dollar you take away from the corporate interests and super rich is a vote for freedom.

So if you you're fed up with the Status Quo like I am, but you've struggled to find something you can do that will have real, tangible results here it is.

Sorry for the thread Hijack but I was going to make a post on this and this post segued into what I was talking about anyways.

Namaste

Buddha,

Yes. This would be one way. For ALL the worlds workers to unite. From the office buildings in New York to the farms in South American to diamond mines in Africa to the sweat shops in Thailand. Itd only take one day, one day of stopping the flow of profits to the rich, for them to take us seriously. One day of zero profits. Thats all it would take.

Originally posted by doobydoll
I am happy living a simple life - and it feels great to be off the treadmill.

Someone is on that treadmill and working their arses off to subsidize your housing, dear