[continued from previous message]   
      
   >others have more than they know what to do with. As profit is   
   >accumulated and the minimum threshold of wealth necessary to exert   
   >influence in society rises higher and higher, poverty becomes more and   
   >more debilitating. It is a form of exile--the cruelest form of exile, for   
   >you stay within society while being excluded from it. You can neither   
   >participate nor go anywhere else.   
   >Work doesn't just create poverty alongside wealth--it concentrates wealth   
   >in the hands of a few while spreading poverty far and wide. For every   
   >Bill Gates, a million people must live below the poverty line; for every   
   >Shell Oil, there has to be a Nigeria. The more we work, the more profit   
   >is accumulated from our labor, and the poorer we are compared to our   
   >exploiters.   
   >So in addition to creating wealth, work makes people poor. This is clear   
   >even before we factor in all the other ways work makes us poor: poor in   
   >self-determination, poor in free time, poor in health, poor in sense of   
   >self beyond our careers and bank accounts, poor in spirit.   
   >"Cost of living" estimates are misleading--there's little living going on   
   >at all! "Cost of working" is more like it, and it's not cheap.   
   >Everyone knows what housecleaners and dishwashers pay for being the   
   >backbone of our economy. All the scourges of poverty--addiction, broken   
   >families, poor health--are par for the course; the ones who survive these   
   >and somehow go on showing up on time are working miracles. Think what   
   >they could accomplish if they were free to apply that power to something   
   >other than earning profits for their employers!   
   >What about their employers, fortunate to be higher on the pyramid? You   
   >would think earning a higher salary would mean having more money and   
   >thus more freedom, but it's not that simple. Every job entails hidden   
   >costs: just as a dishwasher has to pay bus fare to and from work every   
   >day, a corporate lawyer has to be able to fly anywhere at a moment's   
   >notice, to maintain a country club membership for informal business   
   >meetings, to own a small mansion in which to entertain dinner guests   
   >that double as clients. This is why it's so difficult for middle-class   
   >workers to save up enough money to quit while they're ahead and get out   
   >of the rat race: trying to get ahead in the economy basically means   
   >running in place. At best, you might advance to a fancier treadmill, but   
   >you'll have to run faster to stay on it.   
   >And these merely financial costs of working are the least expensive. In   
   >one survey, people of all walks of life were asked how much money they   
   >would need to live the life they wanted; from pauper to patrician, they   
   >all answered approximately double whatever their current income was. So   
   >not only is money costly to obtain, but, like any addictive drug, it's   
   >less and less fulfilling! And the further up you get in the hierarchy,   
   >the more you have to fight to hold your place. The wealthy executive   
   >must abandon his unruly passions and his conscience, must convince   
   >himself that he deserves more than the unfortunates whose labor provides   
   >for his comfort, must smother his every impulse to question, to share,   
   >to imagine himself in others' shoes; if he doesn't, sooner or later some   
   >more ruthless contender replaces him. Both blue-collar and white-collar   
   >workers have to kill themselves to keep the jobs that keep them alive;   
   >it's just a question of physical or spiritual destruction.   
   >Those are the costs we pay individually, but there's also a global price   
   >to pay for all this working. Alongside the environmental costs, there   
   >are work-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths: every year we kill   
   >people by the thousand to sell hamburgers and health club memberships to   
   >the survivors. The US Department of Labor reported that twice as many   
   >people suffered fatal work injuries in 2001 as died in the September 11   
   >attacks, and that doesn't begin to take into account work-related   
   >illnesses. Above all, more exorbitant than any other price, there is the   
   >cost of never learning how to direct our own lives, never getting the   
   >chance to answer or even ask the question of what we would do with our   
   >time on this planet if it was up to us. We can never know how much we   
   >are giving up by settling for a world in which people are too busy, too   
   >poor, or too beaten down to do so.   
   >Why work, if it's so expensive? Everyone knows the answer--there's no   
   >other way to acquire the resources we need to survive, or for that   
   >matter to participate in society at all. All the earlier social forms   
   >that made other ways of life possible have been eradicated--they were   
   >stamped out by conquistadors, slave traders, and corporations that left   
   >neither tribe nor tradition nor ecosystem intact. Contrary to capitalist   
   >propaganda, free human beings don't crowd into factories for a pittance   
   >if they have other options, not even in return for name brand shoes and   
   >software. In working and shopping and paying bills, each of us helps   
   >perpetuate the conditions that necessitate these activities. Capitalism   
   >exists because we invest everything in it: all our energy and ingenuity   
   >in the marketplace, all our resources at the supermarket and in the   
   >stock market, all our attention in the media. To be more precise,   
   >capitalism exists because our daily activities are it. But would we   
   >continue to reproduce it if we felt we had another choice?   
   >On the contrary, instead of enabling people to achieve happiness, work   
   >fosters the worst kind of self-denial.   
   >Obeying teachers, bosses, the demands of the market--not to mention laws,   
   >parents' expectations, religious scriptures, social norms--we're   
   >conditioned from infancy to put our desires on hold. Following orders   
   >becomes an unconscious reflex, whether or not they are in our best   
   >interest; deferring to experts becomes second nature.   
   >Selling our time rather than doing things for their own sake, we come to   
   >evaluate our lives on the basis of how much we can get in exchange for   
   >them, not what we get out of them. As freelance slaves hawking our lives   
   >hour by hour, we think of ourselves as each having a price; the amount   
   >of the price becomes our measure of value. In that sense, we become   
   >commodities, just like toothpaste and toilet paper. What once was a   
   >human being is now an employee, in the same way that what once was a pig   
   >is now a pork chop. Our lives disappear, spent like the money for which   
   >we trade them.   
   >Most of us have become so used to giving up things that are precious to   
   >us that sacrifice has become our only way of expressing that we care   
   >about something. We martyr ourselves for ideas, causes, love of one   
   >another, even when these are supposed to help us find happiness.   
   >There are families, for example, in which people show affection by   
   >competing to be the one who gives up the most for the   
   >others. Gratification isn't just delayed, it's passed on from one   
   >generation to the next. The responsibility of finally enjoying all the   
   >happiness presumably saved up over years of thankless toil is deferred   
   >to the children; yet when they come of age, if they are to be seen as   
   >responsible adults, they too must begin working their fingers to the   
   >bone.   
   >But the buck has to stop somewhere.   
   >People work hard nowadays, that's for sure. Tying access to resources to   
   >market performance has caused unprecedented production and technological   
   >progress. Indeed, the market has monopolized access to our own creative   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)