The Untouchables of the 21st Century
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Dalit or Untouchable Woman of Bombay according to Indian Caste System – 1942 – Wikimedia Commons Throughout history and throughout the world, there ha
[See the full post at: The Untouchables of the 21st Century]Can’t you see, it makes perfect sense, expressed in Euros and cents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VH5xJpjnxcActually it doesn’t make any sense in any currency, but who cares about that anymore?
“Our definition of work has slowly slid from doing something that is useful to yourself, your family and the society you live in, to doing something, a job, that will allow you to buy as big a car and home as possible, and consume as many products as you can whether you need them or not, in order to keep the economy growing. This change in definition has gone largely unnoticed until now, but in light of the levels of – youth – unemployment we see in ever more places, maybe we should take another look at what it means.”
Great reminder of where we’re at / where we are going. The above paragraph really struck a chord for me. As someone who has drifted in and out of “normal employment” my entire professional life, I most recently put my toe back in (an office job) and was aghast by how far removed “work” has become from “doing something useful for yourself or your family. It’s now just such bizarrely non-productive make-work type labour with no other purpose than to warm a seat, usually to “produce” nothing at all and certainly nothing we “need”. So the job really is just a placeholder that is supposed to allow me to keep buying more junk.
The solution truly must be, as you suggest, that we return to labour that benefits us directly, rather than labour that benefits some unseen, unknown, unquantifiable Borg collective.
Charles Hugh Smith just wrote an interesting essay on the state of work for the young (though it applies to all ages, in fact). Also worth a read.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay13/different-economy5-13.html
Thanks as always for the insights, Ilargi.
“And so 60,000 young and educated Portuguese emigrate every year. I don’t know about you, but to me it’s starting to feel like a scorched earth policy.”
Agreed. Also, a flat or declining population is deflationary, as is an aging one.
The euro = gasoline.
” … if leaving half your children with the prospects of being condemned into meaningless lives, of being ostracized as modern day untouchables, is not enough to wake you up and say No Mas, you really need to wonder what is.”
Ordinary folks are throwing their children into the fire so that they might continue to drive cars.
The euro is strongly supported from the bottom up for this reason. Love of the car = love of heroin.
Hi Illarghi,
We have a name for them in the UK – NEETS Not in Employment, Education or Training. (hence all the ‘make-work’ training schemes in how to tie your own shoelaces etc to ‘[strike]massage[/strike] recovery message the figures)
This is also typical of a Systemantics type response; we have a problem with unemployment, lets make more people unemployed.
There is also a structural problem no one is addressing, not only are there are no jobs, but there is no work to be done – not under the current system. Granted if society radically changed there might be something to do that one could maybe call work to keep oneself occupied, but even then this would be in short supply simply due to the numbers of people. We do not have a desperate need to make more stuff, or rebuild say a whole country as was often the case after the second world war, and which was achieved with a much smaller population. What is more worrying is how difficult it is to make a living of any sort, having a livelihood these days is fraught with low returns and high costs; low returns from competing with everyone else who is trying to do the same thing, and fraught with costs of ridiculous small business legislation and bureaucracy. Unless they are all tending their own cattle and crops, what exactly is there to do for all these people? Build more ‘stuff’? That’s all the feudal corporatocracy does, and you have to be a certified serf with proven loyalty to your masters, not some unemployed Ronin whose only other choice apart from banditry is sepeku (ritualistic suicide). Even if energy supplies stopped tomorrow, (which they won’t, as they will be rationed for use by the corporate military under marshal law) what are the bulk of people going to do? Project manage their garden veg plot? (if they even have a garden) co-ordinate personnel in the line for the soup kitchen? Most of the so called ‘work’ currently done as pointed out is just ‘make-work’ with made up pseudo skills to go with it. If anything ‘big’ did go down to radically change the situation, it would definitely puncture the current evolutionary equilibrium. :dry:
L,
Sid.It occurs to me that instead of lambasting people for wanting to stay inside the eurozone, we might want to figure out why they want to stay there.
Is it the freedom to travel within the zone?
The ability to escape your current (lame) economy?
The ability to move your money to someplace safe? (ex Cyprus)
Having the Germans manage your Central Bank, ensuring your savings doesn’t vanish in a flurry of printing?
The protection of being under the protection of such a big state, in a region that’s had a long history of war?
US size-envy?What is it about the eurozone that keeps people from just chucking it all out?
I’m not advocating a position, I’m really curious – and since I don’t live there, my speculations are even less informed than they usually are.
Hi Gurusid
No more work to do! That is what I have been thinking recently as well. Isn’t it wonderful that we have got to the stage of industrial civilisation where we don’t need to work all the time in order to live a reasonable lifestyle. So from here, we could encourage a two or three day week and have more people in work. Lots more leisure along with a gently declining economy to suit our resource problems. We could couple that with family planning so that we are well below replacement rate and then we’re set to not destroy the world. This is a total anathema to those in power. There’s no profit in it and their corporate powerbase would wither. So, here in the UK, if you are not in work, you are the scapegoat for society, even when there is, as Sid points out, no more work to do. Additionally, if you are poor, you are not, by definition, metabolising much resources, and you are not allocating those precious resources as new Land Rovers and personal swimming pools. It is the very wealthy who mis-allocate our resources, and that should be made clear. I am in direct opposition to our current UK government in my thinking.
I don’t think we should:
-chase growth, it’s raising the stakes for collapse.
-subjugate the poor, they don’t need it.
-support big business over small, they don’t need it.
-support the uber wealthy, they don’t need it either.
-destabilise other countries for your own ends.
-obfuscate the problems we face.I think those people who say we need the current wealth gap, the current banking system and growth in order to run our society just do not have any imagination.
There’s the easy, elective way to change now, or the hard way later.
If only I were king!
Although with my policies, it would be a dangerous occupation!James
Hi Dave,
I naturally wanted be close to the eurozone and join the Euro, it seemed obvious to me.
I thought people who didn’t want to get close to Europe were isolationist or xenophobic, both of which I didn’t want to identify with. I also thought that the single currency would be good for trade and finally, I thought that being within Europe might average out the left / right policy divide and provide more consensus and fewer expensive u turns. It might also undermine nationalism.
I think, on reflection, I was wrong on most counts, which shows that you cannot rely on your instincts.
I think people are still relying on their instincts and their received knowledge from politicians and pundits who predict doom on European split-up. They are not yet using their critical faculties.
But then I do think most people have a lot in their lives to think about so it’s a lot to expect them to think critically and from first principles.
That’s why people don’t chuck out the Euro in my opinion.
James
Dave,
None of the above.
I think more than anything Europeans want the Euro(zone) because there hasn’t been anything they’ve read or heard about it that wasn’t single-mindedly in favor. In that sense, euro euro euro equals grow grow grow: it’s a religion. Or a brainwash if you will.
It’s all been the same one dimension all the time. And they had no reason to doubt it, until now, or rather a few years ago. To this day, ALL governments in EU nations are pro-Euro, no questions asked. Nigel Farage’s election win last week in the UK is a good sign, in that at least there’s a discussion available. So was Beppe Grillo’s in Italy of course, but the europhiles (who hate each other in any other respect) have closed ranks there for now.
There’s never been any dialogue on the merits of the euro. It was introduced and declared sacred. We’re 13 years ahead, and only now are there questions, but they’re still not truly tolerated. Both Farage and Grillo are ostracized and labeled dangerous excentrics. To wit: there are no clauses in Euro legislation that allow for any one member nation to get out. That’s no coincidence.
My worry is that this particular scheme makes another inter-European war inevitable. Various interests are simply too different.
Why, oh, why?
Because it`s a bubble, just like housing. :whistle:Euros buy (!steal!) stuff, burn gasoline (see SfV’s comment), make people delusional into thinking they are a new&improved species, unlike anything ever before; they don’t steal from others & their children and their own children, they spread democracy and build a better world; debt is just the way this “scorched earth on credit” enlightenment works; I’ll bet even G-d wants Euro, not liras (pesetas, etc), that`s small potatoes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3DpbQlZMos
This species has amused itself to death.
–Roger WatersDave
Great question. My guess is based in part on living in Europe in my early 20s and also my current experience in New Zealand. I believe there is a strong collective memory in countries like NZ or Spain of being “poor”. North Americans have trouble relating to this mind set because even while we may have been poor as individuals/families, we lived in a world of “modern progress” and affluence. Not so for a traditionally sidelined country who sold barrels of oranges or mutton to richer countries. The eurozone gave everyone credit. Which they could use to buy range rovers and pretend they were not farmers but rather a new and respectable knowledge economy. Going back to being sheep farmers terrifies them. So credit is what they want no matter what.
Dave,
In the 1960’s I spent many summers at an apartment on the roof of a building in downtown Sitges (a little outside Barcelona) which my parents rented from the owners of the 5-storied building. These people were extremely thrifty and hard-working. The ground-floor was a chicken shop of theirs – where they sold chickens from their farm which was only a few kilometres away. The husband looked after the chicken farm and his wife slaughtered the chickens, skinned and gutted them, wrapped them and sold them from the shop. Their son and daughter helped out on evenings and weekends as they went to school during the week. Their kids were around my age and I am sure they never saw the beach during the high-season. I spent every moment either at the beach or going out with a gang of 10+ French/Catalan kids aged between 16 and 20.
Judging by current property prices in that area of Spain, I am sure that this Spanish family should have ended up as multimillionaires – without expanding their business into property and so on, but simply based on the assets they had in the 1960’s and how that area developed. I suspect the kids of this couple now have grownup kids and I doubt very much if they want their own progeny to go through what they went through themselves. It must be their worst nightmare. I am sure there are a great many Spaniards in a similar situation.
Thanks for all the replies. I guess we are one hundred blind men all trying to describe the elephant by touch – but what other way can we find wisdom in this world except through sharing personal experience?
Today I was reminded of this in my class. After a long discussion (where I got to learn new words like “unemployed” and “fired”) my teacher finally asked me, “if there are so many people not working in America, why does everyone want to go there?”
On the one hand, statistics. Perhaps 15% actual unemployed/underemployed in the US versus 0.5% unemployed in my current country of residence. On the other hand, my friend, who landed at JFK with about $500 a year ago, found a job working under the table at a restaurant in about two weeks. For quite some time, he lived in an “apartment” (about 100 sq ft) for perhaps $250/month. Did you know you could find such a place in Queens for $250/month? I certainly didn’t. Now he’s about to enroll at a junior college. This is not an unusual story – its actually a common one. My teacher knowing this asked me, “is everyone in America lazy?”
An interesting question, especially coming from Asia where the unemployment rate might be 0.5%, but the hours are long and – to put it bluntly, if you don’t work (and your family isn’t there to rescue your ass), you don’t eat. What could I tell her? Americans are habituated to serving the machine? Debt sucks up any excess wealth?
How do you explain such a situation to someone who would, most likely, do well in such an environment if parachuted in by some accident of fate?
Unfortunately, my vocabulary failed me. I could not explain. Then again, I’m not even sure if it were all in English I could have explained.
What does this have to do with the Euro? I’m not sure. I get the sense that the Europeans don’t particularly want to go back to status quo ante – cold war, nationalism, wars of 1914, 1939, and the poverty of the periphery that somehow got magically fixed by credit and the harmonization of the continent that somehow made it more acceptable for a guy in Germany to buy a beach house in Spain whereby both sides felt they gained.
There’s something in the eurozone that we shouldn’t lose, I feel. How can we keep the good stuff and toss out the stuff that clearly doesn’t work? Is it even possible?
skip said, “Going back to being sheep farmers terrifies them. So credit is what they want no matter what.”
That’s gotta be a large part of it. I’ve worked a mix of white and blue collar jobs over the last several decades. For 10 years I’ve been trying to get a small farming operation going on a small Appalachian property I own. It is brutally hard work to farm that kind of hilly ground. I like to get my hands dirty, but this isn’t for most folks.
Regarding the comments on ‘no work to do’, I doubt that. If there’s an abundance of everything, the cost of living should be going through the floorboards, not through the roof (the actual case). It is possible we’ve reached the stage where far more entrepreneurial spirit and talent is required, but it shouldn’t be that hard to rekindle, once the present welfare edifice fails.
pipefit post=7253 wrote: Regarding the comments on ‘no work to do’, I doubt that. If there’s an abundance of everything, the cost of living should be going through the floorboards, not through the roof (the actual case). It is possible we’ve reached the stage where far more entrepreneurial spirit and talent is required, but it shouldn’t be that hard to rekindle, once the present welfare edifice fails.
I am also in total, diametric, polar opposition to the argument that we no longer have work to do. On the contrary, we have avoided real productive work so long now that there is more work (as in true sweat-on-the-brow labour) than we will ever be able to accomplish in our lifetime. And as long as we just exhaust ourselves pushing needless paper around, that real work will remain un-finished (let alone started).
We will begin the work when we’re really good and hungry. But obviously the best time to do the work is when you’re well fed, not when you’re sick and starving. There is so much to do we won’t be able to do it in time. Credit has borrowed against the future of this labour. We have squandered hundreds of years of future wealth in order to play Xbox. I thought I enjoyed it. I finished all fifteen levels of Halo 2 one summer.
Now, in both body and spirit, I long for the physical, mental and communal satisfaction of the real work we abandoned a long time ago. I know I’d be happier building a barn AND being able to eat. Question is, going forward, how many of us will be able to do both, once the real work starts.
Skip,
Reading your post brought an image of saving during the years of plenty and spending during the years of scarcity.
Dammmm!
Somebody stole all the surplus grain from the granaries.Let me clarify what I meant when I agreed that there was not enough work to do. What I mean is that within the current system, there is not enough work to do which is necessary to the functioning of society, that is why there are unemployed people. This creates a market where labour can be mistreated and played off against each other. Stigmatising un- and under-employment is a part of this.
I would argue that any movement of money within the current system causes it to flow towards the bankers. The system is designed this way. In my opinion and within the current system, one should only work as much as one needs to for your economic safety and a good standard of living. Anything more is destructive. The politicians tell you to “strive” and “get on”. I thnk you’ll perpetuate a broken system by participating.
Now, if you are thinking of transforming society to be more fit for the future, with economic sustainability (no macro growth) and rescource sustainability (if possible). Then there is flippin’ unlimited work to do. But if you do it within the current system – e.g. carbon trading, “sustainable growth” etc, you’ll be doing more harm than good, these schemes are rooted in the current growth paradigm.
I agree, it’s always possible to be entrepreneurial and create work within the current paradigm, I just am not sure that that would be a good thing to do.
It’s the “higher you get – further you fall” argument.
That should polarise you!
James
I see what you’re saying James. I guess I was distinguishing “work that needs to be done” from “employment”. In respect of employment, you’re right. Employment, as we’ve come to understand it in our lifetime, is contracting. There is not enough of the current kind of employment to go around. So I agree with you on that. I just have trouble calling most of it “real work”–not over the past 25 years. Rather it was just credit-conjured make-believe jobs. Maybe it’s arguable that the only reason there’s less “employment” now is because there’s simply less credit to go around now (i.e., deflation).
Hi Skip & others,
I am also in total, diametric, polar opposition to the argument that we no longer have work to do. On the contrary, we have avoided real productive work so long now that there is more work (as in true sweat-on-the-brow labour) than we will ever be able to accomplish in our lifetime. And as long as we just exhaust ourselves pushing needless paper around, that real work will remain un-finished (let alone started).
Under the ‘current’ system where one does not have access to the ‘resources’ to make ones own livelihood but has to work effectively as a wage slave in every sense of that phrase. You might want to meet Peter the Carpenter – listen out for his ‘ally cat’ analogy.
Now, in both body and spirit, I long for the physical, mental and communal satisfaction of the real work we abandoned a long time ago. I know I’d be happier building a barn AND being able to eat. Question is, going forward, how many of us will be able to do both, once the real work starts.
So what’s stopping you? Got a garden? Go grow some veg. No land/not enough land? Go beg borrow or steal – as in guerrillagardening. I’m sure you will find plenty of real work fighting off nature and inquisitive humans…
As for the cost of living (a.k.a. energy)/prices going through the roof, well actually some are still going through the floor such as laptops, while prices for actual essentials such as food are being or are about to be restored to their historical norms:
Good luck farming your 0.2 hectares:
:whistle:
L,
Sid.A big part of the puzzle, IMO, is that the paradigm in question isn’t a growth paradigm, but rather an exchange-(and, therefore, money)-is-necessary paradigm.
The belief about the necessity of growth is an outgrowth (sorry) of that underlying belief. We just don’t see it that way because we view money as being as much a given for our lives as air or water.
No other species uses exchange/money (transfer, yes, but not exchange in the sense of ‘if I give you so much, you need to give me so much in return’). They don’t have beliefs; they just live (and die—maybe that’s the other paradigm in play: death is bad).
gurusid post=7261 wrote:
Now, in both body and spirit, I long for the physical, mental and communal satisfaction of the real work we abandoned a long time ago. I know I’d be happier building a barn AND being able to eat. Question is, going forward, how many of us will be able to do both, once the real work starts.
So what’s stopping you? Got a garden? Go grow some veg. No land/not enough land? Go beg borrow or steal…
L,
Sid.Hi Sid,
Many things are stopping me, and the rest of us, from starting the real work. There aren’t many barn raisings these days unless you’re a Mennonite. As you suggest above, wage slavery is the dominant force in industrialized societies. The “real work” will have to be systemic, I reckon–as in all of our societies have to re-conceive of roads, power delivery, food growing. Not just me as an individual worker.
But your point is well taken–we as individuals have to begin to form communities and make changes despite the resistance at the systemic/societal/governmental level. And to that end, I am doing some of that “real work”. Moving to a country with a better growing climate, better access to fishing and fresh water, moving to a more rural community, connecting with other and sharing ideas and inspiration, raising chickens, making do with less, training up with new skills, gardening. I’m doing all these things now as part of real work. Haven’t built a barn yet. I’m terrible with a saw and hammer. I have been entirely shaped by my knowledge economy training. Fortunately people around me are excellent builders and they’re patient too! I have a lot of “work” to do, aye.
Hi Skip,
Barnstormin! Which country did you move to? Also for those interested, here is an example of what you can do in your own back yard (if you have one)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx5lxN1pdGX3UTdwNktwNVY0RW8/edit?usp=sharing
L,
Sid.Hello,
In response to Skip who wrote, “Going back to being sheep farmers terrifies them. So credit is what they want no matter what.”
I agree that people are afraid of “going back”, but I do not think they are consciously thinking about credit.
This is simply speculation by me sitting here in France and talking to neighbours, reading the press, etc., but my impression is that people from recently poorer countries in the EU are convinced that they must “modernise” and that such a process is possible only by joining, associating with, perhaps even “merging” with the richer EU countries. Exiting the euro is seen as throwing away any chance of making “progress”.
People are not thinking in economic terms, they are thinking politically and even culturally. The Union is seen as the only way forward.
To my mind, that is why we have seen, over the past six years, so little inclination to re-evaluate the situation. The EU is still seen as the only way forward.
It will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
Ciao,
XYZXYZ post=7268 wrote: Hello,
In response to Skip who wrote, “Going back to being sheep farmers terrifies them. So credit is what they want no matter what.”
I agree that people are afraid of “going back”, but I do not think they are consciously thinking about credit.
This is simply speculation by me sitting here in France and talking to neighbours, reading the press, etc., but my impression is that people from recently poorer countries in the EU are convinced that they must “modernise” and that such a process is possible only by joining, associating with, perhaps even “merging” with the richer EU countries. Exiting the euro is seen as throwing away any chance of making “progress”.
You’re right XYZ–they’re not consciously thinking about credit. But they recognize that the Euro allowed them to buy more stuff and join the globalization cult of consumerist progress. Which is all because of “credit” even if they haven’t made this implicit connection.
Your question about “how long can this last” is really, really pressing. Credit is so seductive. How long does it take a heroin addict to quit the junk after hitting rock bottom? Sometimes they never quit. They just die. So who knows how long Europe will continue jonesing for a fix. Until the bitter end is a real possibility, I reckon.
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