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It has always struck me as odd that we despite industrialization and huge advances in information processing still have to meet at a what is now called the work-place.
One should think that with the increases automatization of production the demand for labor would decrease.
However, the large majority in the Western world still does menial work and recieve pay for the effort. But what kind of work is it that the so-called tertiary or service sector actually does. A disproportiante amount of people make a living out of providing services to other people - often those being served percieve themselves as having superior status. This work is not productive, it only serves to inflate those being served with self-importance. What is essentially being traded between worker and the person being served is time. Apparently some people percieve themselves to have a greater right to time than others. They pay for extra time by making a transfer of money - the value of which is questionable were it not for the willingness of both parties to invest trust in it. Whence this trust comes from is perhaps controversial, but ultimately it has to do with power. See the giver can refuse to offer a transfer, but the taker can hardly refuse - else he be fired. The taker of money has transfered sovereignty to the employer - or the owner of his worktime. The employee is subservient to the company and must hand over the whole of the money tranfer to the employer (exempting tips where that applies). In exchange the employer gives that person the right to recieve money from the custumer, but otherwise the employee has not significantly gained anything, but investing his own person in the legitimacy of the money transfering process. To add hurt to insult the employee now takes away part of the money transfer, precisely because he was the one who invested the employee with the right to recieve the transfer. To my mind this is an unequal deal and it is slavery.
Some might say - "yes, that is capitalism and it works."What I wish to know is what it works towards. The exchange in money for extra time has not given each individual more time - has it? To the contrary. All studies show that people are working for longer hours now - and more people are involved in providing work/time than ever before in the history of mankind - in relative terms even. So despite the fact that former generation's expenditure of time has provided adequately to the average household in all things material which are supposedly time saving, but are in reality not. Take the example of the dishwasher. In medieval times one person had one plate and when it was dirty he licked it clean. Now the mere indication of a spot of food on a plate will make any infrared-bespeckled housewife skyrocket through the air in neurotic terror. Mediaval Man wore the same shirt for three weeks on end and would never consider spending the amount of resources the western world spends on washing the color out of their clothes on a continual and habitual basis.
So, if the created capital by the forceful exchange of time through money transfers has not led and will never lead to truly free society, where each individual is capable of choosing for himself what he chooses to spend his time on - then capitalist society is merely a ploy in which people agree willingly to rob eachother of time.
Furthermore capitalist society twists this even further, by saying that the people who choose to invest time in creating capital - which in this day and age merely means surplus money supply - are allowed greater access to borrowing money because they are presumably more credit worthy. Credit worthy because they have agreed with the bank that the capital they have so conspiciosly accumulated can be laid down as security. This quite puts the banks in a fix since if the borrower is deemed not credit worthy despite his surplus money supply and his carefully husbanded capital - then clearly and logically the bank itself would not be considered credit worthy. But then again the bank is simply another service for the person who thinks his time is more valuable than the bank. The accumulation of time is then an expanding and dynamic process in that the more time you have the more you a capable of accumulating. From this follows that more and more people would logically have to transfer their time to the person who thinks his time is so valuable.
Thus the money economy is simply a ploy whereby the socalled capitalists are able to feed on the surplus money supply and hand it over in exchange for ekstra time, made possible by the overall legitimization of this process in the media and the possessed governments. The need for this system is to satisfy the human need for dominance over its fellow man. Strange system in my oppinion - and it is not sufficiently productive for the whole of humanity for it to make a living.
One should think that with the increases automatization of production the demand for labor would decrease.
However, the large majority in the Western world still does menial work and recieve pay for the effort. But what kind of work is it that the so-called tertiary or service sector actually does. A disproportiante amount of people make a living out of providing services to other people - often those being served percieve themselves as having superior status. This work is not productive, it only serves to inflate those being served with self-importance. What is essentially being traded between worker and the person being served is time. Apparently some people percieve themselves to have a greater right to time than others. They pay for extra time by making a transfer of money - the value of which is questionable were it not for the willingness of both parties to invest trust in it. Whence this trust comes from is perhaps controversial, but ultimately it has to do with power. See the giver can refuse to offer a transfer, but the taker can hardly refuse - else he be fired. The taker of money has transfered sovereignty to the employer - or the owner of his worktime. The employee is subservient to the company and must hand over the whole of the money tranfer to the employer (exempting tips where that applies). In exchange the employer gives that person the right to recieve money from the custumer, but otherwise the employee has not significantly gained anything, but investing his own person in the legitimacy of the money transfering process. To add hurt to insult the employee now takes away part of the money transfer, precisely because he was the one who invested the employee with the right to recieve the transfer. To my mind this is an unequal deal and it is slavery.
Some might say - "yes, that is capitalism and it works."What I wish to know is what it works towards. The exchange in money for extra time has not given each individual more time - has it? To the contrary. All studies show that people are working for longer hours now - and more people are involved in providing work/time than ever before in the history of mankind - in relative terms even. So despite the fact that former generation's expenditure of time has provided adequately to the average household in all things material which are supposedly time saving, but are in reality not. Take the example of the dishwasher. In medieval times one person had one plate and when it was dirty he licked it clean. Now the mere indication of a spot of food on a plate will make any infrared-bespeckled housewife skyrocket through the air in neurotic terror. Mediaval Man wore the same shirt for three weeks on end and would never consider spending the amount of resources the western world spends on washing the color out of their clothes on a continual and habitual basis.
So, if the created capital by the forceful exchange of time through money transfers has not led and will never lead to truly free society, where each individual is capable of choosing for himself what he chooses to spend his time on - then capitalist society is merely a ploy in which people agree willingly to rob eachother of time.
Furthermore capitalist society twists this even further, by saying that the people who choose to invest time in creating capital - which in this day and age merely means surplus money supply - are allowed greater access to borrowing money because they are presumably more credit worthy. Credit worthy because they have agreed with the bank that the capital they have so conspiciosly accumulated can be laid down as security. This quite puts the banks in a fix since if the borrower is deemed not credit worthy despite his surplus money supply and his carefully husbanded capital - then clearly and logically the bank itself would not be considered credit worthy. But then again the bank is simply another service for the person who thinks his time is more valuable than the bank. The accumulation of time is then an expanding and dynamic process in that the more time you have the more you a capable of accumulating. From this follows that more and more people would logically have to transfer their time to the person who thinks his time is so valuable.
Thus the money economy is simply a ploy whereby the socalled capitalists are able to feed on the surplus money supply and hand it over in exchange for ekstra time, made possible by the overall legitimization of this process in the media and the possessed governments. The need for this system is to satisfy the human need for dominance over its fellow man. Strange system in my oppinion - and it is not sufficiently productive for the whole of humanity for it to make a living.
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