Economics of Mind and Economics of Madness: How Not to Become Slaves of Big Money

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

There is an eminently noble and eminently utopian principle: "every work must be paid." This is an attempt by humanistic philosophy to invade the economy. It follows from this principle: if a person gave an hour to work, he received an hourly payment. Two hours - two hours, etc.

Listen carefully: "I gave it - I received it." It turns out that labor is bread that is always with you. If you want to eat - start working, and you will taste all the blessings … And what can prevent a person from starting to work? Never mind! There would be a desire! That is, all the poor are just idlers and idlers?

Of course not. The fact of the matter is that labor in itself is not a source of material wealth, does not give profit, does not produce a product. Very often, a starving person simply has nowhere to work.

This does not mean that his hands were cut off. This means that those natural and infrastructural resources were cut off from it, in addition to which labor produces benefits. Without a connection to the resource base, labor does not produce anything and means nothing.

Therefore, the principle “every work must be paid” is an absolute utopia. Sounds beautiful, but put it into practice!

A person sits down to grind water in a mortar: an hour pushes - and you already owe him a ruble; two crush - and you owe him two rubles already. The work is obvious: muscles are tense, sweat is pouring in. But society, which will pay every pusher of water in a mortar by the hour, will go bankrupt.

This, by the way, was largely related to the problems of the Soviet economy: the planned economy provided universal employment, but the general usefulness of this paid employment was not.

Hence the problems and imbalances in the economy. For its law is this: useless efforts are not paid for. Even if they were very time consuming and costly …

But here's the problem: labor is a fact, it can be objectively recorded. Take into account the exit to work, etc. What is the benefit?

Liberals, by virtue of their primitiveness, say that what is in effective demand is useful. But they will not answer your question - where does this effective demand come from? Who are the people who have been given the right to judge labor, punish it or pardon it with a ruble?

I will give you the simplest examples.

The schoolboy hates school. Unleash the schoolchildren - they would not go to classes together. And if they paid, they would be more willing to pay for absenteeism than for classes (which is what they are doing, in fact, in commercial educational institutions).

At the same time, the addict loves drugs. If you take a student who is a drug addict, then for him the teacher is an enemy, and the drug pusher is a friend.

Conclusion: not everything that is in demand is useful, not everything that is not in demand is unnecessary.

The way of civilization as a complex architecture of cultural continuity comes into sharp conflict with everyday consumer demand. Simply put - people tend to pay for a harmful society. At the same time, they are not inclined to pay for what society needs and is most useful (in the long term).

Whatever one may say, but the rule of hourly payment of all labor provides an adapter, a bridge between a person and consumer products. If you want to have food, work hard.

The principle of "usefulness" (it is unknown to anyone - but it is clear that not to himself, but to someone else) does not provide any bridge, no link between a person and products.

What do you need to do to have consumption? Work? Labor will be declared useless and not paid. Lucky to be in the right place at the right time? What if you don't get lucky?

At the dawn of infernal "reforms", in 1991, such a philosophy of "randomness of happiness and life" was actively instilled in us. The publicist M. Zolotonosov wrote angrily:

“The mythologemes“Justice”and“The right to happiness”(happiness in exchange for temporary poverty and righteousness) became the very basis of the Soviet mentality. Two milestones - the film "Bricks" (1925) and "Moscow does not believe in tears" …"

Zolotonosov and his magazine "Znamya" consciously or unconsciously expressed the view of "perestroika" degenerates on happiness, peculiar only to thieves and prostitutes:

“Life is accidental and meaningless … happiness cannot be received by a bill of exchange, happiness is received only as a gift. His undeservedness and unexpectedness are indispensable properties; it might not exist, we ourselves might not exist …"

So the circle closed: in place of the "Protestant work ethic" an anti-morality of the lottery of life and success in life grew …

The trick rolled, and the catastrophe that we had to prevent - happened.

Now that this catastrophe of the impoverishment of millions (and on a planetary scale and billions) of people has become a fact - we need to think about how to get out of it?

The state and society are obliged to think over a system of paid, useful employment. So that a person can say: "I am ready to work, give me paid work, and what is the business of the planning authorities!"

They need to be competent enough to make paid workers' employment useful, and not beating their backs, turning ribs and carrying water in a sieve …

This is not very convenient and very troublesome, especially for those in power. But only this system is able to stop the growth of unnecessary people. And the catastrophe of the Great Depression.

Otherwise, huge masses will begin to move into ever lower-paid strata until they find themselves completely outside of life.

Humanity lives so painfully from generation to generation and cannot come to general well-being, because - alas! - the convenience of some people is inextricably linked with the inconvenience of others.

Imagine your own bargaining with a plumber, carpenter or tailor, with any service personnel - and you will find that you directly, grossly benefit from their poverty and lack of orders.

The poorer and more unclaimed the service personnel, the cheaper and more comfortable the service will cost you. Let's say you are a state employee on a solid salary of 100 rubles. Of course, it is more profitable for you to have a plumber work for you for 10 rubles, and not for 20, 30 or 40. And so that at the same time he is afraid of losing your order. By lowering it, you rise yourself. If he has a lot of orders, then he will be rude to you and take a lot (for you) money for his services. And if he is dying of hunger - then for mere pennies for you, even on your head will dance!

By virtue of this law of the economy, certain segments of the population find it very beneficial to "cheap labor", which is given by a general decline in the standard of living in the country.

Any employer seeks to find cheaper employees - and therefore employers compete not in raising, but in reducing wages.

- What? - they say with their tinned throats. - Pay for your work ?! Who told you he was useful? Perhaps, condescending to your poverty, if you crawl on our knees, we will pay you half (a quarter, eight) of what you requested … But keep in mind: we do not need you, you need us desperately … a fence of ten is lying around, so if life is dear to you, try and not to contradict us in anything …

The result of such a dialogue of unnecessary people with employers is the molokh of capitalist labor employment, repeatedly described by the classics in the darkest colors.

Do not think that he is in the past. Billions of inhabitants of the earth will confirm that you just need to let the economy go by itself - and it will reproduce today this moloch of the 19th century down to detail.

Because the employer devilishly benefits from blackmail, based on his right to recognize work as useful or useless. Any amount of labor can be declared useless - and therefore not paid.

How it looks in practice. Let's take a simple example - earth. The amount of arable land (and in general any) is strictly limited since the discovery of America. There are no new continents. And the amount of money? It is, in principle, unlimited. You can print any number of bills and any number of zeros on bills …

Conclusion: the one who prints money, himself or through associates, will buy all the land. And then what should the rest of us do? We have already read about the tragedy of the landless peasantry in the neighborhood of large latifundia from the classics of the literature of all peoples!

A situation will arise in which the owner of the land can hire the landless disenfranchised on any terms. That is, to put forward any conditions to them, no matter how difficult or humiliating they may be.

But what about? Limit the size of the site sold to one person? But this is already a way out of the market economy, already a fundamental anti-market law, which evokes memories of the "leveling" cursed by the liberals …

This is an agrarian question. But cities and industry are about the same. What is metallurgy, for example? It is the ore that is in the ground, and the blast furnace that stands on the ground. Plus transportation that goes on the surface of the earth. That is, whatever one may say, metallurgy is the Earth, so far no metals are imported from Mars …

If the amount of resources is limited, but the amount of money is not, then the possibilities of blackmail on the part of those who buy (for them the cost is not important) all the resources are not limited either.

Marxists have written a lot about oppressive capitalists, but there are also … oppressive trade unions! After all, it also happens: the working people rallied around production press the unemployed and drive them away from work (calling them "streichbreakers"), sometimes with gross violence.

That is, the essence and basis of my theory: it is not the capitalist himself who oppresses; oppress the resource owners, monopolizing the ability to dispose of the resources necessary for useful labor.

But what happens? Some strata of the population (as well as countries, nations), which I call dominants (in the zoological sense of the word), in pursuit of their direct and obvious benefit, worsen the lives of other, recessive strata (countries, nations).

This is a stem market process. The advantages of some are bought at the expense of others.

I deduce the formula: you and your staff share a certain amount of "x". The less "n / x" you pay for services, the better for you, the more you will be left for entertainment and other services. Hence the secret of "popularity" among employers of disenfranchised guest workers who drive the local population out of the world of work. Nobody says that a Tajik will do better than a Slav: but everyone knows that a Tajik will take cheaper and will (due to his powerless position) be more submissive than a Slav.

But it is quite obvious that this is the path to nowhere, the path to the Morlocks and Eloi. The only way out worthy of man and humanity is rationing of labor and wages, state fixed prices, which do not allow playing with labor and employment.

The Soviet system was imperfect - but it was not infernal - like those that replaced it. She - with high-quality processing and improvement, rethinking of many units and parts - is able to build a normal human future.

Market systems will eventually build only hell on earth …