The purpose of an economy is to efficiently create value. Value that backs our currencies. Not to maximize employment and busyness.
Our "economy" does the opposite. It employs billions of people to fight over money. Wasting most of our resources, energy, fossil fuels and computational power in the process.
Billions of economically unnecessary #bullshitjobs are wasting most of the wealth the relevant part of our "economy" produces.
Driving global warming and inflation. Impoverishing and baking the whole world.
While also allowing pathogens, like COVID-19, to spread unnecessarily.
GDP goes up as the financial warfare "economy" wastes more resources, energy, fossil fuels and computational power than ever. We call that economic "growth".
...
We can not continue to employ billions of people to fight over money.
We can not continue to waste most of our resources and energy via financial warfare, silly money games and crypto mining.
We need to distribute money and to ditch large parts of our silly "economy".
Urgently.
All of this has been anticipated by philosopher Alan Watts back in 1960 already. Referring to it as "nonsense employment" in his talks: Alan Watts | Socially Responsible Automation & UBI.
In 2012, the brilliant anthropologist David Graeber coined the #bullshitjobs meme in his legendary article: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant (Original article: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant).
In late 2020, soon before David passed away too early, he published another brilliant article on the environmental implications of #bullshitjobs: To save the world, we're going to have to stop working.
I have been communicating all of this independently ever since 1999. Feel free to follow me on Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube or TikTok.
Genuine economy: |
Our "economy": | |
---|---|---|
Monetary system: |
Governments in charge of our money supply.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, [...] the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless [...]. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1809
Money, behaviour and society: the invisible link | Stef Kuypers | TEDxAntwerp
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Weird 3-letter organization in charge of our money supply.
"If I were to take to heart the collective suffering that the money system inflicts upon the world, I believe I would drop dead on the spot because it is that horrific." -- Margrit Kennedy
Debt: the first 5000 years - David Graeber
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Economic ideology: |
Cooperation, distribution of wealth generated by the diminishing relevant work, maximizing efficiency.
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Poverty, competition and maximizing inefficiency and redundancies to extract numbers and to redirect cash-flows via a giant abstraction layer of #bullshitjobs.
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Purpose of governments: |
Manage the economy to benefit society. |
Assure the population that "bogus debt, widespread poverty and maximizing employment via #bullshitjobs" represents an economy. |
Tax accounting: |
Tax accounting does not exist as governments are in charge of our money supply and not "lacking" numbers. A truly grotesque notion. |
:-( |
Marketing: |
Economy cooperatively produces generic high-volume products without the need to market microwave ovens to ourselves.
|
:-( |
Insurances: |
Direct allocation of purchasing power and/or replacing stuff that breaks is magnitudes more resource and energy efficient than maintaining millions of insurance skyscrapers and offices. |
:-( |
Education: |
:-) |
A lot of education in the context of systemic nonsense. Like marketing, tax laws, "economics", etc. ... "Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained." -- Chris Hedges |
Construction: |
:-) |
Construction of systemic and/or redundant infrastructure, such as marketing offices, insurance skyscrapers or 200-fold redundant companies and data centers, etc., etc., ... |
Transportation: |
:-) |
Most traffic stemming from systemic and/or redundant #bullshitjobs. A lot of transportation in the context of constructing, maintaining and re-supplying systemic and/or redundant infrastructure. |
Medical sector: |
:-) |
Treatment of a million systemic issues and symptoms. From depression and obesity to substance abuse, poverty induced violence, systemic traffic accidents and pathogens spreading via #bullshitjobs. Like #covid19. Etc., etc., etc., ... |
IT: |
:-) |
Most IT jobs exist within a systemic and/or redundant context. Working for hosting provider #307 of 5000. Taking care of the data center of systemic and/or redundant companies and institutions. Developing SEO tools, tax accounting software or "Clash of Micropayments"-clone #205. Or consulting for companies that should not exist. |
Charity: |
:-) |
People are not supposed to suffer from financial insecurity nor to lack the bare necessities of life. Nor to be homeless. Hundreds of millions of jobs are dealing with symptoms of our negative-sum monetary system and negative-sum economy. Another good example of how artificial scarcity and systemic poverty cause enormous economic efficiencies. Besides the unnecessary and unfathomable suffering. Which can also be seen in terms of economic inefficiency. |
Daycare: |
:-) |
An insane amount of children require daycare as their parents are stuck in #bullshitjobs. When parents are only supposed to work for 1-2 days a week. |
The work-for-income paradigm has been obsolete for ~20 years. You should only be working for like 5 hours a week, doing meaningful things. Unfortunately, your governments forced you to destroy your planet via 3-4 billion nonsensical #bullshitjobs instead.https://t.co/Reaf2Dys1I
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) December 4, 2020
Every year, we perform 9.6 trillion hours of labour for the world economy. But the vast majority of this is controlled by capital and deployed to produce whatever is most profitable to capital. As a result we languish in conditions of mass deprivation and ecological breakdown.â¦
— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) November 2, 2024
âThe human brain is now mostly preoccupied with complex, mundane issues in #bullshitjobs, all the while ignoring the one, simple existential issue which threatens to put an end to all the bullshit in the first placeâ#necrocapitalism #amwriting #ClimateCatastrophe pic.twitter.com/VyQqblTzpV
— George Tsakraklides (@99blackbaloons) July 20, 2023
"Poverty and billions of #bullshitjobs" is no economy.https://t.co/CvVEE1yMqu
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) January 6, 2022