Imagine a triangle pointed down over
another triangle pointed up resting on the ground so that the two form a sort of
hour glass. On the top is money in the
hands of a few people and on the bottom is the rest of humanity with a
commensurately small amount of money.
Now some may venture into socialist ideologies or misconceptions that
the global economy would be better off flat, but they would be wrong. Capitalism is not evil or horrid or even the
entirely wrong premise for progress.
However the unfettered version of global economic capitalism we have
chosen to lead us into 2013 has left us with such a disparity with so much of
the Globe’s wealth in such a microcosm of people.
Times of such disparity are not novel,
but the manner in which we have arrived at such times ripe for Robin Hood
are. The expansion of technology to
replace the average and below average minds of our working community capable of
the primary manual endeavors of the past has left a preponderance of the
working class feckless to the processing of microchips. We find our economies more “productive” with
a growing human populace externalizing the base needs of the vast majority of
people into a state of unsustainable self-sufficiency.
We are drawn into pondering the very
definition of what is an economy. In an economy, the exchange of goods and
services flows like blood allowing the individual members of our super-organism
to elect to and to participate in gainful endeavors which benefit society at
large through labor. Everyday an
individual sits idle the whole suffers.
We bear a sunk cost for the sustenance provided for an individual who
could have aided our collective in even the tiniest of financial or
non-financial pursuits, yet was either ostracized by a lack of opportunity or
by volition.
The majority of humans seek to be
needed, to be seen, to be heard, emotionally and though tactile interchange of
toil from the muscles in our arms or the cognitive activity of our brain. The iterations of potential contributions in
any single hour of the planet of the current members is unique and irreplaceable. To disenfranchise that potential based on an
improvement in technology is dangerous.
If we misunderstand the cost benefit analysis of what it means to
provide a competitive advantage to participants in a marketplace, who are not
beholden to internalize the true expense to our super-organism a short-cut
provides, the collective bears the burden while the market participants
generally horde the rewards.
We see this in the all-time high of our
stock-market equities during a grand-recession.
We see homelessness, cut utility bills, food-stamp debit cards,
foreclosures and states suing themselves to reward citizens with federal
disability to remove them from ballooning welfare rolls all within the cult of
economics. The disparity is frothing
with blame, as if that same man’s father was able to work in a plant to earn
his living was respected, and that same man has no economic-home as his
paradigm has been replaced by a machine and a profit-sharing bonus to an
executive. Dividends to stock-holders
are up. We do not ask how they are
created as long as the percentage increases.
The living standards of health
technology should lead to a healthier society, yet a quarter-pounder with
cheese costs less than a head of lettuce or a bushel of apples. We subsidize mono-crops and CAFO lots and
ignore biology or simple gifts of slowing the disparity of the our global
economic state into that hourglass. We
never pause in a moment of re-correction, to assert laws of labor,
environmental preservation, or maximum-wage through taxation.
We do not possess a communal
understanding that health is not a free market good, just as fire protection is
not a free market good. It simply is not
of that nature. The results of the
American medical system are as predictable as the extortionist firemen of early
Rome. The town burned.
The divide of commensurate disparity
between the number of humans and the number of dollars is escalating faster and
faster. At what end do we acknowledge
the debts of the Earth’s governments are interlinked with this obsession? At what end do we wrestle with our self-induced
extinction over a lottery mentality to wealth?
We could one day be well-off as well.
For this ideology we exchange our grandmothers off to commodity pick-up lines retired from decades of labor and now jointed by
their grandchildren from years of useless over-educated degrees and stockpiles
of college-debt.
We grow further distant from the tactile
nature of being human. We set ourselves
behind digital phones and screens so that we can speak, but not speak. We can befriend, but not embrace that which we
are shoving under the rugs of our global economic ties. The fifty cent an hour wage to exchange
goods across borders is akin to that as Einstein pondered the best design of what
would become the United Nations in the advent of nuclear weapons capable of
eradicating massive sections of humanity in a blink. We now face a similar far more systemic and
malignant threat to our globe on an economic level. We face the idea that we do not need each
other.
We imbibe the drink that one store can
serve all our needs and that last year’s model should perform better and be
less expensive. So we receive last year’s
model to perform better and be less expensive in the price tag, but at such a
shadowed cost. The stores of retirement,
health care and time for families are dissolved, raped and shattered in the
store fronts of every establishment of the middle class peering down in that triangle from the ticker symbol grins of publicly traded companies.
Minimum wage means three jobs and the
rent still doesn’t quite make it.
Minimum wage means that quarter pounder costs less. Untaxed undocumented worker labor means Texas
has cheap roofs and framed houses and thousands of look-alike plastic
neighborhoods the men who built them will never live in. Minimum wage means you get a multiple of
thousand percent less than the guy who owns the place and the world puts a name
tag of creator on him and gives a tax deduction at his house of worship so he
can be all right with that.
At what point does the world go on
strike? At what point does the world
shift off fossil fuels and sees the Middle East in even greater division? At what point does China lack the food from
its agricultural middle flocking to cities find itself starving and ever
militant? At what point does America see
its Boomers bursting bed pans and hip replacements and see Single-Payer as no
longer negotiable? At what point is a
$50 Aspirin at the hospital no longer fucking hilarious?
At what point is a teacher no longer the
enemy as if knowledge were no longer a threat.
For any of us to decide I have something better to do with my time than
work to store grain for the winter for the grasshoppers of the globe. At what point do we realize the riot is not
with our guns or our blades but with our purchase decisions and so in the vile
daggers of the triangle above.
The apparent cheapest option for our
emaciated bank accounts is the very option that leaves us starving. So the world is set to wither to bone if not
for those left with choice to choose where we buy, who we buy from and cast our
lot with our local business owners whenever possible. For a few cents more we are really saving not
only money, but ourselves. There are
legal assurances we must continue to support and damming legislation we too
must fend our survival against, however there is no better defense than those
that can vote with our wallets.
For those who cannot I understand, for
those who can, choose.
Peace, love, we are all interconnected.
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