We need a new model
Mostly to take the place of traditional employment. It's going away, and fast. Replacing that's just a start, of course.
But without a start ... we're finished.
I'm not talking about jobs going away. Or not just that. Because of course they are, and they're going to go faster.
(Just a side note: all those economists and pundits you see or read talking about "recovery"" aren't idiots. They're paid liars. Specifically, they're being paid to keep us cattle headed peaceably down the chutes to our dates with a hook and a sharp knife.)
No. What's going away is the entire concept of jobs, as traditionally thought of and constructed. And what's more, it needs to.
We need a new model to replace the old, dying ways. And I need you to help me figure out what it is. What they are, because one size never fits all. And then put all those new models into action. Soon.
I'm reading Cory Doctorow's Makers. I shouldn't be, evidently; it got me worked up so I had to come try to relieve some of the emotional/mental pressure when I should be sleeping.
(This is why I call this blog Tragic Waste. I need sleep. I have things to do - such as my real writing, which also pays, and more importantly is my avocation. But apparently I need to do this too. It's apparaently a vice I cannot yet control.)
I'm at a point that really set me off - obviously, I guess. I'm not going to go off and try to describe what's happening, here. The point is, either Doctorow or his characters aren't getting it (based on various evidence, I suspect his characters.) They're basically trying to build a decentralized base - with the same old massive hierarchy pyramid still standing on top of it. And that just won't work.
The thing is, centralization is going away. It's breaking down and going away. It's been kept shuffling along for years, a zombified corpse, animated by habit, ignorant and complaisant media, and animated by the awful energy of inflation. And now parts are falling off the thing and it's done.
Hierarchical bureaucracy is breaking down. Partly it's being out-competed by distributed systems of creation. Partly it's an ancient illusion that's coming to pieces before our eyes, like a mirror shattering in slow but accelerating motion.
We're losing centralized authority, centralized power provision, centralized medical care, centralized defense - centralized employment. The Government/Corporate Complex is crashing down. The proprietors are torn between cashing out and heading for their high-tech bunkers and imagining that wizard DARPA technology will miraculously save their wastrel, incompetent fat asses and force the slaves to stay on the plantation.
Your job is going away.
But here's the thing: people will still have needs. Obviously. Food, shelter, water, power, entertainment. People will still have the means to provide those things. Crops will continue to grow whether Archer Daniels Midland tells them to or not. Nails will fasten wood, machine tools will cut metal.
The means of producing wealth - to fill those needs - will continue to exist. What we need to do is start finding our own ways to produce it - to provide for ourselves the only way it's possible: by providing for others. To provide for others the only way that's possible: by providing for ourselves.
Here's the trick: we need to learn to do it without the permission of our employers. Without the paycheck. Without the benefits. Without a boss. To do it for ourselves and one another.
What we need to do is figure out how to make the transition - from the managed, centralized economy to the true marketplace. Like, now.
What I envision is a world of free agents - of independent contractors - artisans, individually and in small groups - producing, exchanging with one another, coming together to cooperate on greater projects, splitting apart to recombine or seek separate paths, ceaselessly, flowingly. Without needing The Pyramid, if you get my drift. Without needing that hierarchy to tell us what to do, how to do it, why we can't change, why we shouldn't be so selfish as to desire to benefit from the fruits of our labors.
But how do we get there?
The process is going to be organic. It has to be. It cannot be imposed - that's what's breaking apart, that imposed order, like a cement block pierced by a million tiny rootlets. But we need to start cultivating the process. And in a hell of a hurry, yes.
It shouldn't be that hard, should it?
Here's the problem: I don't know how. I've been thinking about it, agonizing over it, off and on for about fifteen years. And I haven't come up with a neat solution yet. Maybe there is no "neat" solution.
But there is a solution. There always is.
Rather, there are myriad solutions. Infinite solutions.
But I can't see them. I remain too limited.
So ... I'm crowdsourcing the problem. Crowdsourcing freedom. Real freedom: the freedom to live, and choose, and create, and exchange, and share, and grow. What the real economy has always been about.
I believe the real economy - the real free market, not the government and plutocrat-managed shell-game that's been masquerading under the name for a century or more - inevitably will reassert itself. I believe it inevitably is. But we are in for hard times. Soon. If you'd like to survive them, would like your loved ones to survive them, you need to start figuring out what part you can play. And what parts the rest of us can play: it'll be a joint effort.
Please share your ideas. With me. With each other. Then start doing something. Don't just talk or write or make comments on blogs. Do.
Help?
