From: J@M   
      
   On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:55:47 -0300, Salvador Mirzo  wrote:   
   >I don't know to what group this should go.  Given the current low volume   
   >of this group and the USENET as a whole, perhaps this is not grave   
   >crime.  I also think a lot of people here would enjoy discussing the   
   >subject.   
   >                         The Mythology of Work   
   >                               2018-09-03   
   >   
   >What if nobody worked? Sweatshops would empty out and assembly lines   
   >would grind to a halt, at least the ones producing things no one would   
   >make voluntarily. Telemarketing would cease. Despicable individuals who   
   >only hold sway over others because of wealth and title would have to   
   >learn better social skills. Traffic jams would come to an end; so would   
   >oil spills. Paper money and job applications would be used as fire   
   >starter as people reverted to barter and sharing. Grass and flowers   
   >would grow from the cracks in the sidewalk, eventually making way for   
   >fruit trees.   
   >And we would all starve to death. But we're not exactly subsisting on   
   >paperwork and performance evaluations, are we? Most of the things we   
   >make and do for money are patently irrelevant to our survival--and to   
   >what gives life meaning, besides.   
   >This text is a selection from Work, our 376-page analysis of   
   >contemporary capitalism. It is also available as a pamphlet.   
   >That depends on what you mean by "work." Think about how many people   
   >enjoy gardening, fishing, carpentry, cooking, and even computer   
   >programming just for their own sake. What if that kind of activity could   
   >provide for all our needs?   
   >For hundreds of years, people have claimed that technological progress   
   >would soon liberate humanity from the need to work. Today we have   
   >capabilities our ancestors couldn't have imagined, but those predictions   
   >still haven't come true. In the US we actually work longer hours than we   
   >did a couple generations ago--the poor in order to survive, the rich in   
   >order to compete. Others desperately seek employment, hardly enjoying   
   >the comfortable leisure all this progress should provide. Despite the   
   >talk of recession and the need for austerity measures, corporations are   
   >reporting record earnings, the wealthiest are wealthier than ever, and   
   >tremendous quantities of goods are produced just to be thrown   
   >away. There's plenty of wealth, but it's not being used to liberate   
   >humanity.   
   >What kind of system simultaneously produces abundance and prevents us   
   >from making the most of it? The defenders of the free market argue that   
   >there's no other option--and so long as our society is organized this   
   >way, there isn't.   
   >Yet once upon a time, before time cards and power lunches, everything   
   >got done without work. The natural world that provided for our needs   
   >hadn't yet been carved up and privatized. Knowledge and skills weren't   
   >the exclusive domains of licensed experts, held hostage by expensive   
   >institutions; time wasn't divided into productive work and consumptive   
   >leisure. We know this because work was invented only a few thousand   
   >years ago, but human beings have been around for hundreds of thousands   
   >of years. We're told that life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and   
   >short" back then--but that narrative comes to us from the ones who   
   >stamped out that way of life, not the ones who practiced it.   
   >This isn't to say we should go back to the way things used to be, or   
   >that we could--only that things don't have to be the way they are right   
   >now. If our distant ancestors could see us today, they'd probably be   
   >excited about some of our inventions and horrified by others, but they'd   
   >surely be shocked by how we apply them. We built this world with our   
   >labor, and without certain obstacles we could surely build a better   
   >one. That wouldn't mean abandoning everything we've learned. It would   
   >just mean abandoning everything we've learned doesn't work.   
   >One can hardly deny that work is productive. Just a couple thousand   
   >years of it have dramatically transformed the surface of the earth.   
   >But what exactly does it produce? Disposable chopsticks by the billion;   
   >laptops and cell phones that are obsolete within a couple years. Miles   
   >of waste dumps and tons upon tons of chlorofluorocarbons. Factories that   
   >will rust as soon as labor is cheaper elsewhere. Dumpsters full of   
   >overstock, while a billion suffer malnutrition; medical treatments only   
   >the wealthy can afford; novels and philosophies and art movements most   
   >of us just don't have time for in a society that subordinates desires to   
   >profit motives and needs to property rights.   
   >And where do the resources for all this production come from? What   
   >happens to the ecosystems and communities that are pillaged and   
   >exploited? If work is productive, it's even more destructive.   
   >Work doesn't produce goods out of thin air; it's not a conjuring   
   >act. Rather, it takes raw materials from the biosphere--a common treasury   
   >shared by all living things--and transforms them into products animated   
   >by the logic of market. For those who see the world in terms of balance   
   >sheets, this is an improvement, but the rest of us shouldn't take their   
   >word for it.   
   >Capitalists and socialists have always taken it for granted that work   
   >produces value. Workers have to consider a different possibility--that   
   >working uses up value. That's why the forests and polar ice caps are   
   >being consumed alongside the hours of our lives: the aches in our bodies   
   >when we come home from work parallel the damage taking place on a global   
   >scale.   
   >What should we be producing, if not all this stuff? Well, how about   
   >happiness itself? Can we imagine a society in which the primary goal of   
   >our activity was to make the most of life, to explore its mysteries,   
   >rather than to amass wealth or outflank competition? We would still make   
   >material goods in such a society, of course, but not in order to compete   
   >for profit. Festivals, feasts, philosophy, romance, creative pursuits,   
   >child-rearing, friendship, adventure--can we picture these as the center   
   >of life, rather than packed into our spare time?   
   >Today things are the other way around--our conception of happiness is   
   >constructed as a means to stimulate production. Small wonder products   
   >are crowding us out of the world.   
   >Work doesn't simply create wealth where there was only poverty   
   >before. On the contrary, so long as it enriches some at others' expense,   
   >work creates poverty, too, in direct proportion to profit.   
   >Poverty is not an objective condition, but a relationship produced by   
   >unequal distribution of resources. There's no such thing as poverty in   
   >societies in which people share everything. There may be scarcity, but   
   >no one is subjected to the indignity of having to go without while   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)