more yet less
Dec. 2nd, 2006 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI have the flu so I've been on my back reading because every time I sit up my stupid nose starts dripping again (like now dammit -- pause to blow nose).
I just had to write this down. (Sorry about the downer.)
I've reading a story set in the near future where automation gives everybody a lot of leisure time. It is a topic that I read about often when I was a kid in the '60s. People worried about what we would do with all our spare time in the coming age of leisure.
But it hasn't worked out that way at all. People work harder now than ever before, with less spare time. Clubs and associations struggle to get enough members to survive. Those individuals who do keep the clubs going tend to experience a high rate of burnout. Yet we have an incredible degree of automation. It was supposed to free us, not enslave us.
How did it all go so wrong?
Much of the money from the efficiencies of automation gets funnelled into fewer hands instead of being spread around. There is greater wealth, but it is ever more greatly concentrated. The poor are growing in number and the middle classes are shrinking.
There is great emphasis on puritanical work-ethics that define you by your occupation, while it is harder than ever to gain an occupation. For instance I have a friend who has been a cleaner for about 20 years who was told recently he had to be qualified as a cleaner in order to do what he'd been doing for decades. It is becoming more difficult to become well off as costs always rise. We have more than enough resources to make life luxurious for every man woman and child on the planet, yet 16 million people a year die of starvation, unable to get enough to simply survive. The war machine consumes vast resources on better ways to kill and maim, but if its resources were diverted for less than one hour out of the entire year we could feed, clothe, house, and educate the 16 million dying of starvation. Think how that would help eliminate terrorism. But we don't do that. We pay obscene amounts to politicians who lie to our faces and to corrupt executives who steal from our pockets. Why?
We have become so used to built-in obsolescence that it no longer surprises us when things need to be wastefully replaced every few years. We can quite easily build things that last for hundreds of years.
Commonwealth, it seems, no longer exists. Everything must be privatised so that instead of the people owning something as their heritage, they now have to pay corporations for it forever after. We are almost at the point where we are owned by companies and governments and we rent our lives from them.
While we let it continue we will work harder for less and live in slavery while kidding ourselves that we are free.
I just had to write this down. (Sorry about the downer.)
I've reading a story set in the near future where automation gives everybody a lot of leisure time. It is a topic that I read about often when I was a kid in the '60s. People worried about what we would do with all our spare time in the coming age of leisure.
But it hasn't worked out that way at all. People work harder now than ever before, with less spare time. Clubs and associations struggle to get enough members to survive. Those individuals who do keep the clubs going tend to experience a high rate of burnout. Yet we have an incredible degree of automation. It was supposed to free us, not enslave us.
How did it all go so wrong?
Much of the money from the efficiencies of automation gets funnelled into fewer hands instead of being spread around. There is greater wealth, but it is ever more greatly concentrated. The poor are growing in number and the middle classes are shrinking.
There is great emphasis on puritanical work-ethics that define you by your occupation, while it is harder than ever to gain an occupation. For instance I have a friend who has been a cleaner for about 20 years who was told recently he had to be qualified as a cleaner in order to do what he'd been doing for decades. It is becoming more difficult to become well off as costs always rise. We have more than enough resources to make life luxurious for every man woman and child on the planet, yet 16 million people a year die of starvation, unable to get enough to simply survive. The war machine consumes vast resources on better ways to kill and maim, but if its resources were diverted for less than one hour out of the entire year we could feed, clothe, house, and educate the 16 million dying of starvation. Think how that would help eliminate terrorism. But we don't do that. We pay obscene amounts to politicians who lie to our faces and to corrupt executives who steal from our pockets. Why?
We have become so used to built-in obsolescence that it no longer surprises us when things need to be wastefully replaced every few years. We can quite easily build things that last for hundreds of years.
Commonwealth, it seems, no longer exists. Everything must be privatised so that instead of the people owning something as their heritage, they now have to pay corporations for it forever after. We are almost at the point where we are owned by companies and governments and we rent our lives from them.
While we let it continue we will work harder for less and live in slavery while kidding ourselves that we are free.
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Re: more yet less
Date: 2006-12-02 08:44 am (UTC)I'll have to read the other later. My nose is driving me nuts.