Part 2.
So now you’re wondering about what I said about the potential for change. What’s the story Ted? Spit it out.
Okay – so one thing that’s traditionally happened has been that we DID look after one another at the local level because that’s all we had at the time. We grew a lot more of our needs locally, and those needs didn’t include an ICEV (Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle) and a plastic inflatable walker frame and the latest left handed food spiralizer that you’ll uise twice and then realise you HATE spiralized vegetables.
Another thing that’s traditionally happened (look this up, it’s true) is that well to do households didn’t just throw their extra food into the compost. They had a charity door at the kitchen and at a certain time they’d give that food away to less fortunate families.
Things that DIDN’T happen were things like considering gold to be one’s wealth. That’s a recent thing that is designed to take our focus off true wealth (a piece of land, food sovereignty, leisure and work balance) to the idea of a tokne. More recently the whole idea of money has even been taken off gold to some totally imaginary and unattainable economic formulae. This ensures that there’s always a whip hand.
Work at a car factory? Are you one of a hundred guys producing 1,000 cars a week? Cars that are sold for $50,000 apiece? Do you get paid one one hundredth of fifty million dollars a week? Of course not. You have to subtract the cost of raw materials. The office staff. Electricity costs. Amortisation of the machinery. In that same week, you can maybe take off a million dollars of that fifty mill. Let’s be generous and say that you can kiss ten mill a week godbye in such costs. Are you getting paid one one hundredth of forty million dollars for that week? $400,000? N o p e .
So where does the difference between your take home pay (say $1,000) and $400,000 go? Are you feeling ripped-off enough yet?
Another example: A dairy farmer produces 5,000 litres of milk a week. That milk is mixed and watered down so it’s the equivalent of about 7,500 litres by the time it hits store shelves. A litre of milk nets about $1.80 in store, so it earns around $13,500. The farmer meanwhile has earned about $2000 for that milk. Let’s say they supply a really good contract and get $3,500 for it. Where does an extra $10,000 go?
Look – I may have missed some costs along the way, but that just means that there are some unproductive costs in there.
The take-home for me is that we have a large population that could easily produce everything we need for a few cents to the dollar that it currently costs us. If there was a mechanism in place to arbitrate it. If I got paid $1000 a week to be a part of a factory making 1,000 cars in that time, and the ancilliary costs were ten million, then those cars should be selling for $10,100 apiece.
Bear in mind that if EVERY business was working to the same economic rules, the ancilliary costs would in fact only have been about two million so the price of cars could actually be closer to $2,100. EVERYTHING ELSE – the difference between a $50,000 car and the $2,100 car – is in parasitic elements.
If you’re skeptical about those figures, well yes, I pulled them out of thin air and current costs and prices. But the difference is 90%. For milk there’s a 65% discrepancy at least. Where is that coming from? Can my figures be so consistently wrong to such a large degree, no matter where I look? Of course bloody not. You’re seeing a wealth depletion system (= stealing) system in operation.
So let’s suppose that people working from home realise that there are other things that could be done, alternatives to the wealth siphon system. If there’s one thing the world today has taught us, it’s that if money was no object, things would be almost trivial to produce. If I can have the perfect custom harvester / seeder / cultivator for my farm, and have it for free, I can produce acres of amaranth and give them to the market. If I can have access to a perfect woodworking shop pretty much whenever I fee the need, I can produce custom cabinetry and give it away. And if I want to develop the perfect cure for COVID19 and can have access to a full on biochem lab for nothing – then we have the cure.
Seriously – we need to redesign our concepts of work, play, sharing, responsibility, morals, and ownership.