Slaves And Prozac

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 659, 660

Every individual relies on thousands of individuals in society, and historically many more tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. In fact, it's been calculated that this technological inheritance is responsible for something like ninety percent of the wealth that's generated today. It's just an immense inheritance. So the question is, who does that inheritance belong to? Who should be the beneficiary of all that technological development from the past?
Linda McQuaig

 
 
 

We have become a Capitalocracy. Our country is ruled by money. The lack of paper money or digital money is no longer a limitation. I repeat, money is not a limitation. The lack of resources is the only limitation that we have. Technology allows us to preserve and extend the amount and use of our resources. This is where your real wealth is. Citing the lack of money, the deficit, the size of government or fiscal responsibility as an excuse for not taking care of the people and the people's business is complete nonsense coupled with incompetence. These problems should have been solved 90 years ago.
COMMON SENSE 3.1

Sources Of Crime and Sociopathic Leaders And Followers

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 657-658

With the exception of climate change, the most significant and most important change that I would pursue in Parliament is the change in the way that income support is delivered. Instead of the current inefficient hodge-podge of programmes that stigmatize users and can often discourage moves to independence, I would promote a guaranteed livable income which explicitly recognizes our commitment to deliver the basic necessities to every Canadian. From this base, all Canadians would have an incentive to work to their ability in order to build a better life for themselves and their families.
We are spending a lot of money to keep people in poverty. It is not only morally wrong, it is stupid too.
Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu,
Green Party Candidate
For Toronto-Danforth
XXX

If you understand the true value and magnitude of technology, then you should understand there is no need for poverty, recessions, depressions, homelessness, unemployment, underemployment, deficits and the lack of healthcare. There is no need for the payment of bank interest, there is no need for taxes of any kind and there is no need to saddle our children with our debt and on and on. That means we are doing everything wrong. I understand that’s hard for a great many of us to believe. We are use to letting our government and big business do our thinking for us, so I will keep it very simple. For the most part, our technology has changed our world from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. That means our old limitations don’t exist. We live in a totally different but opposite paradigm. If we persist in our old ways, we are dead.
COMMON SENSE 3.1

Young Turks and Joe Bageant

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 654-656

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?

Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork

And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils

With its sickening poison -

Just for paying a few bills!

That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-

They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes

With fires in a bucket,

Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-

they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,

Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like

Squats in me, too;

Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,

And cold as snow

from

Toad

Philip Larkin

VVV

The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.

                                                           William Blake

I was beside the master craftsman,

delighting him [sic] day after day,

ever at play in his presence,

at play everywhere on his earth,

delighting to be with the children of humanity.

And now, my children, listen to me

Happy are those who keep my ways.

Sophia (Wisdom),

Proverbs 8
(emphasis JS)

Automation Is Here

These are the final three in an eight-part series available on YouTube. The full version is also available there, for the leisurites among us. These are WOL videos (Wow Out Loud).
Jack

Anti Wage-Slave, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 650-653

Since modern man [sic] experiences himself both as the seller and as the commodity to be sold on the market, his [sic] self-esteem depends on conditions beyond his control. If he is "successful," he is valuable; if he is not, he is worthless. The degree of insecurity which results from this orientation can hardly be overestimated. If one feels that one's own value is not constituted primarily by the human qualities one possesses, but by one's success on a competitive market with ever-changing conditions, one's self-esteem is bound to be shaky and in constant need of confirmation by others. Hence one is driven to strive relentlessly for "success," and any setback is a severe threat to one's self-esteem; helplessness, insecurity, and inferiority feelings are the result. If the vicissitudes of the market are the judges of one's value, the sense of dignity and pride is destroyed.
Erich Fromm

According to Thompson an industrial work structure required a disciplined workforce. The fear of punishment or starvation was part of the processes of discipline, but for workers to be really effective they needed to feel committed to their work: this required the invention of the ideology of work, which originally had its roots in religion.

…the Protestant work ethic identified by the sociologist Max Weber enters the discussion. In the case of the weaving communities studied by Thompson the people were Methodists: it was Methodism, which stressed the value of discipline, hard work and frugality. Capitalists found it much more efficient to turn the labourer into his own slave-driver by inculcating in him an ideology of thankless, unrewarded toil in exchange for a place in heaven. `They weakened the poor from within, by adding to them the active ingredient of submission; and they fostered within the Methodist Church those elements most suited to make up the psychic component of the work-discipline of which the manufacturers stood most in need.’ (Thompson, 1963: 355).
Molly Scott Cato

Hard as it can be to land a job these days, getting one may not be nearly enough for basic economic security.
…
many of the jobs being added in retail, hospitality and home health care, to name a few categories, are unlikely to pay enough for workers to cover the cost of fundamentals like housing, utilities, food, health care, transportation and, in the case of working parents, child care.
Many Low-Wage Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet Basic Needs
By MOTOKO RICH
New York Times
Published: March 31, 2011

Should the nation’s wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.

                                                    Kurt Vonnegut