{"id":2623,"date":"2020-12-17T08:55:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T08:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=140341"},"modified":"2020-12-17T08:55:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T08:55:00","slug":"unemployment-skyrocketing-an-evolved-society-would-celebrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/17\/unemployment-skyrocketing-an-evolved-society-would-celebrate\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment Skyrocketing? An Evolved Society Would Celebrate."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leaf blowers are everything wrong with capitalism. . . . I\u2019ll explain that in a minute.<\/p>\n

We all know times are irredeemably grim, and they\u2019re only getting worse. The unemployment level in America seems to be setting the record books aflame, and for some bizarre <\/em>reason those numbers correlate nicely with the number of Americans under 40 living with their parents again. Understandably, the entire country is a little on edge<\/em>. If I spend more than 30 minutes around my parents, one eye starts twitching, a dull ringing settles into my inner ear canal, and I start to think Rachel Maddow (which they leave on 24\/7 as if she\u2019s Christmas music at Macy\u2019s) makes some logical sense. Point being, in terms of discomfort, I would imagine living with your parents in your late thirties ranks somewhere between erectile dysfunction and having a brain-eating parasite.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to unemployment. The Economic Policy Institute recently released new numbers showing<\/a>, \u201cUnemployment has especially skyrocketed for young workers in the COVID-19 labor market. . . . The overall unemployment rate for young workers ages 16\u201324 jumped from 8.4% to nearly 25% from spring 2019 to spring 2020 \u2026 Spring 2020 unemployment rates were even higher for young Black, Hispanic, and Asian American\/Pacific Islander workers \u2013 close to 30% for all three groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unemployment is raging. Out. Of. Control.<\/p>\n

Forgive me a quick aside about the inner workings of systemic racism. As those unemployment numbers make clear, not every problem in America involves racism, but every problem in America also <\/em>involves racism. Systemic racism deniers refuse to comprehend this. When shit is bad for young people \u2013 it\u2019s even worse for black young people. When life sucks for the elderly poor in the United States \u2013 it sucks even more for elderly poor Hispanics. If the police are using weapons of war to crack activist heads \u2013 they\u2019re cracking black activist heads twice as hard. If there\u2019s a clean water problem in America \u2013 the water in Indigenous communities isn\u2019t just <\/em>unclean, it has chunks of shit in it!<\/p>\n

(Usually chunks of something Dupont used to produce Teflon<\/a>\"\u2122\". I mean, what\u2019s a few thousand people with cancer in order to ensure the egg slides right off <\/em>the pan?)<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s break down this unemployment problem because much like a good one-night stand, you must get to the bottom. (I\u2019m only half sure I understand what that sentence meant.) So, the surface problem is obvious: a lot of young people are unemployed. They don\u2019t have money, they can\u2019t pay rent, they can\u2019t pay their student loans, they can\u2019t afford food or life, they can only buy a regular coffee at Starbucks instead of the Frappe Unicorn Caramel Almond Juice Latte\"\u2122\". So that\u2019s one reason employment is important.<\/p>\n

But if we excavate down to the second layer, we find a more important \u2013 and largely censored \u2013 quandary: Why should we all have to be slaves to the labor market to survive in the first place?<\/p>\n

Many people work their asses off grinding away at awful monotonous crap that shouldn\u2019t even have to get done at all<\/em>. Our economy overflows with useless work. Utterly meaningless jobs, profoundly redundant tasks, excessively bureaucratic nonsense, woefully vapid spectacle production, joylessly soulless drudgery. They proliferate everywhere one looks.<\/p>\n

For example, daily outside my apartment window, in a parking lot, no fewer than three Leaf Blower People (technical terminology) blow the fuck <\/em>outta thousands of leaves. The entire neighborhood sounds like the middle of a nonconsensual monster truck rally for three hours every single morning. And as if that\u2019s not inane enough, most days it\u2019s windy out. The leaves return to their original locations 15 seconds <\/em>after the guy blows them. So \u2013 much like a fluffer on a porn set \u2013 his work doesn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n

Not to mention, why do leaves have to inhabit a particular location anyway? At the risk of sounding like a radical, let the leaves be leaves! Let them do their thing. I\u2019m a strong supporter of leaf self-determination. It\u2019s not like they\u2019re scorpions and allowing them to run free near domiciles is a downright danger to society. No one has ever found a leaf in a parking lot, gasped with horror, then bellowed, \u201cThe children! Will no one think of the children?!\u201d Plus, we\u2019re talking about a damn parking lot. What car can\u2019t park on leaves<\/em>? (Other than a Kia.)<\/p>\n

And why the hell hasn\u2019t someone invented a leaf blower silencer yet? We have a silencer for shooting people\u2019s heads off, which one would hope happens far less often than leaf blowing. Where\u2019s the Dyson vacuum guy when you need him? Get to work, mate! Invent the silencer. You can\u2019t retire now \u2013 your legacy is not nearly secure. All you did so far was come up with a funny vacuum and a hand dryer that sprays fecal matter all over people<\/a> at public restrooms. (Yes, scientists found that public restroom hand dryers simply hose us all down in shit flurries.) Well done, Dyson. Invent the leaf blower silencer post haste or you\u2019ll be known as the \u201cfeces laminator\u201d forevermore.<\/p>\n

So, we can agree leaf blowing is a nonsensical job. Much of the machinery of our society is filled with work, that pays people, that is inconsequential, insubstantial, and hollow. Yet, many of us do these jobs because we are wage slaves. We must hold down bullshit jobs to survive. David Graeber wrote a great book<\/a> about inhuman empty jobs, and although I haven\u2019t read it, I\u2019m going to pretend I have to impress you. It\u2019s a tremendous book. Can\u2019t believe you haven\u2019t read it yet.<\/p>\n

So this is the part of the column when I hit you with a groundbreaking, snot-snorting solution that rocks your boat and soils your pants. Here it is . . . How about NO?<\/em><\/p>\n

How about no more wage slavery?<\/p>\n

Alot of the jobs in this country don\u2019t need to get done at all, a lot of them can be done by technology, and a lot of them could be thrown out if we just had a cultural awakening that scientifically analyzed our society to maximize efficiency, health, and sustainability instead of profit, profit, and profit.<\/p>\n

So at this point in the debate, people who suffer from Stockholm syndrome defend their wage masters by belching, \u201cWe can\u2019t get rid of all those jobs and give people houses and food and clothing without endless life-draining soul-bleeding work \u2013 because then <\/em>what will people do all day? People need to work at jobs they hate. It gives their lives meaning<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that person I respond \u2013 Wow, what a rousing defense of slavery. It\u2019s the same thing they said on the plantations. \u201cIf you free the slaves, then what will they do all day?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, if the people newly freed from their jobs have a passion, I assume they\u2019ll pursue that. But if they don\u2019t have anything they enjoy doing, then I actually don\u2019t know what people will do with themselves \u2014 maybe choose to count their farts \u2014 but that\u2019s fine because that\u2019s called freedom<\/em>. Many philosophers with far thicker gooey brain matter than I have said that we must create our own meaning for our lives. We must seek out and ascertain our own life purpose and folding shirts at Banana Republic is not <\/em>a good answer. If people had the time, freedom, understanding and education, they would happily pick their own significance and aspirations. No one spends 23 hours a day grooming high-end dogs \u2014 making sure the ass hair is perfectly coiffed \u2014 because that gives their life drive. They do it because they need the money. How many people keep trimming the labradoodle\u2019s \u201creardo\u201d or folding the shirts or blowing the leaves after they win the lottery?<\/p>\n

This reminds me of a TV news story I saw about a blue-collar worker who won the lottery \u2014 millions of dollars \u2014 and said he was going back to work at the factory on Monday. And the news report gushed over how tremendous this was. \u201cWhat a great guy! He\u2019s going back to the factory!\u201d But honestly, that shouldn\u2019t be celebrated. It\u2019s the result of a cultural brain disorder. It means he\u2019s been indoctrinated so thoroughly, he can\u2019t see life outside the factory. That\u2019s like a prisoner who can\u2019t leave the prison. It\u2019s not something to have a goddamn ticker-tape parade over.<\/p>\n

We should want all the unemployed people to have jobs \u2014 because currently, without the jobs, they can\u2019t afford their lives. But we should also discuss regularly how one day, preferably soon, we should not <\/em>want to have these jobs \u2014 at least not full-time, slaving away at mind-numbing labor the employee loathes. But that conversation can\u2019t be had on our mainstream media or even most alternative media. Everyone must partake in the wage slavery all the time because this is America \u2013 The freest country in the world! My boss told me so.<\/p>\n

Oh, and how will we pay for a leaf blower not <\/em>to blow leaves? How about using the trillions we pay for wars that are never won.<\/p>\n

This first appeared at ScheerPost<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaf blowers are everything wrong with capitalism. . . . I\u2019ll explain that in a minute. We all know times are irredeemably grim, and they\u2019re only getting worse.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2624,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}