I wrote myself a checklist for today which consisted of very little big or taxing, and included leisure as an entry. It has been exams, and I have been dizzy with love and busy with study and unable to get much sleep, as I stay up late and my roommates always wake me with their conversations in the morning.
So I have had a quiet day deliberately for once. I set away my laundry, I enjoyed my tea, I ate leftovers and a shawarma on my way back home from a walk. The snow glitters like tiny flashing stars everywhere. Across the ground and in the air, the world around me shining with pinpoint mirrors, facets on a tiny flake of ice. Craft glitter could never match this, for all that it might be designed as though to try.
I Googled up some podcasts to do with finance and bookkeeping and Irish experience or systems in particular, and listened to one first episode of a couple on my walk. In one of them, the voice of the speaker sounded so similar to my dear friend Coda that I giggled to myself about it. In the other, the accents brought me nodding recognition and a reminder of the lecturer who taught my marketing class in Athlone.
The man at the pizza shop (who made me a shawarma) was good-natured and complimentary, happily chatting to me about all the diverse ingredients that make up the flavour, and shared the basic ingredients in the garlic sauce when I confessed I didn't know how to make it.
Half way along the long stretch of Oxford St. which is bordered in great sports fields and open to the wind, I paused and stared in some wonder at the sky. Lights... Lights on the distant side of the field stretched straight up in gorgeous vertical beams, visible high into the sky, diffuse with gentle auras. Some lights more reddish, others more bluish, and a couple thicker and brighter and yellow. I suppose, the light must have reflected off the sparse falling snow, to show those magnificent beams like pillars or signal lights up into the sky. It was worth stopping to stare at for a while, and I could not help but wish I had you with me to see it and awe at it alongside.
My phone had died of podcast. Its battery is rubbish these days and I hadn't fully charged it before leaving anyway. Otherwise, I would have taken a picture. As it is, I describe it here and encourage anyone who might read this and who lives in a place where it snows to look for the beautiful sight on a night when it is only just snowing in tiny flakes, so you can see into the distance.
I certainly must have overexposed myself to those Elbow songs in the past couple of days. Now I can hardly get them to stop interrupting my thoughts, and I am a little irritated of the feeling, even though they are good songs.
I am trying, for the moment, to calm myself down and return some focus on the present and near future, as much as it is habitual and forever tempting to continue daydreaming of meeting you again. I do not want to overdo it and lose sight of the broader existence and variety, and the options in my life. I hope to continue to find ways to enjoy my time here in more than just waiting for it to be over. I see myself in a broad variety of lights, as a student, a traveler, a romantic, a strong creature going on adventures, a restless youth barely able to pull myself together for an hour or two to study and touch ground between flights of fancy and self-indulgence.
Yesterday I went over to the college for a while just to get out of the house, and wandered into the library. There I found on a rack of books to be returned to the shelves a volume called Celtic Mythology, and I picked it up and sat down and read a while, a description of what disperate and scattered records shed any light at all on the religions and folklore of old Irish and broader Gaul or Gael culture. Records in Greece, observations written by their foes, suggestions in the content and the labels of some various works of art; statues, a cauldron somewhere... I read a brief English summary of the stages in the Book of Invasions.
Although I felt restless and tired and was frequently tempted to return home, my mind was also hungry for this context of some of the scant few things I heard others say while I was visiting, and one bit in particular, a mention of one surviving boat of a migration, which carried fifty women and three men, prompted me to blink to myself in some astonishment. I had heard that story before. Only briefly mentioned in this book, but I had heard a much elaborated version in a book I had read while still living at my mother's house what must have been over ten years ago.
It put me in a keen interest to someday take some time to visit other sites around Ireland, any place which still has symbols or record of these old stories, or special relevance in them, and see what it might inspire me to wonder. I thought, perhaps I could become a scholar of these great old stories someday, perhaps write conjectures on them... That, though, is another big and bold idea. It must be enough for now to be fascinated and pleasantly distracted by them, and keep going about my business of learning business, putting forth however much effort performing well at that must demand of me.
And it must be enough, for now, to bring my writing to a close and wish you and myself a good and restful night.
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Friday, July 18, 2014
The Art of Frugality
Of Poverty I was Made, and I Know the Art of Frugality.
Excerpts from a conversation on July 10th
My secret on saving? Well, primarily, I suppose, it's a combination of two things. Firstly, keeping expenses low, and secondly, putting my savings away in a distinct account and treating it as different from the rest of my budget - once I put money into my tax free savings account, I do not take it out again unless I really need to in order to cover necessities like groceries, rent and laundry. I try to put $100 into my savings account every paycheque, if I can, which is twice a month. To be fair, a large chunk of my savings also came from my tax refund this year. Goodwill employees get a free tax preparation with H&R Block, and my refund was modestly impressive, perhaps in part because I was only employed for half the year, and that only part time at minimum wage. I suppose I can claim it is to my credit that I was responsible enough to save the extra money instead of finding some personal fancy to spend it on.
I could also share some of the things I do to keep expenses low: I entertain myself with low- to no-cost hobbies like watching YouTube, playing inexpensive video games and collecting images from various sources, then making them into tokens compatible with the Maptool program (I'm sure to most other people, it would be boring busywork, but I enjoy it). I buy cheaper brands and types of food supplies and do some cooking with simple ingredients. I keep a casual eye out for decent sales on practical necessities like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, etc, and buy non-perishables when they are very cheap even if I don't need them yet. It helps that I work at a thrift store, where I can find a lot of useful things at low prices, like clothing, utensils, dishes... even furniture and a vacuum cleaner.
I also, incidentally, have a habit of collecting potentially useful things when I can buy them for a dollar or two at the Goodwill where I work, including: shoelaces, pencils, soap, spare earbud headphones, an extra USB mouse, greeting cards and notebooks (I have long since reached the point of confessing to myself that I collect stationery not so much out of a genuine belief I will use it all but as a little hobby because I like to), gift wrap, and generic presents or gifts suitable for friends of mine.
Heck, I'm a scavenger by nature. That helps too.
I rarely buy clothing or shoes, because I recognize that I have enough of both, and I have a habit of preferring to wear my clothing and shoes until they are ruined, in order to feel I have gotten full use out of them. An exception is socks, which I buy occasionally from the thrift store and have a large collection of stored away for the future, many of which I have never worn. There is a reason for this. With socks as well, I like to wear them out, and so there are a large number of pairs of socks I am doggedly trying to wear until they get holes in so that I can get them out of circulation. There is another reason. From time to time, especially before I started taking my mood-balancing medication, I used to wear a brand new pair of socks as a way to treat myself if I was having a hard day and wanted to go easier on myself than normal, or just felt in need of a little bit of luxury. I still occasionally do this, which puts a new pair into circulation. I only ever choose to wear a pair of socks I have never worn before with careful consideration. There's just something special about it.
I think one of the vital things I do is leave myself a buffer in my budget for little treats and shortcuts. New socks are wonderful, but sometimes one needs more to cheer one up, like eating out at Subway for a meal, or picking up a coffee at Tim Hortons during my lunch break at work. I strongly suspect that some people fail by telling themselves they won't spend money on these kinds of extras, and using it all up, then finding that the temptation is too great and spending money they don't have anymore on extras anyway. Then they feel guilty. Why feel guilty? I give myself permission to get treats from time to time, and I budget accordingly, saving a fair amount of my day to day budget for little pick-me-ups and also unexpected needs - like having to replace something that breaks, or buy cough medicine and throat lozenges, for instance. And if I turn out not to need it all, great! That just means I have more money for next month, and maybe I can afford to get something really neat! Or make a donation to somebody or something I want to support.
Excerpts from a conversation on July 10th
My secret on saving? Well, primarily, I suppose, it's a combination of two things. Firstly, keeping expenses low, and secondly, putting my savings away in a distinct account and treating it as different from the rest of my budget - once I put money into my tax free savings account, I do not take it out again unless I really need to in order to cover necessities like groceries, rent and laundry. I try to put $100 into my savings account every paycheque, if I can, which is twice a month. To be fair, a large chunk of my savings also came from my tax refund this year. Goodwill employees get a free tax preparation with H&R Block, and my refund was modestly impressive, perhaps in part because I was only employed for half the year, and that only part time at minimum wage. I suppose I can claim it is to my credit that I was responsible enough to save the extra money instead of finding some personal fancy to spend it on.
I could also share some of the things I do to keep expenses low: I entertain myself with low- to no-cost hobbies like watching YouTube, playing inexpensive video games and collecting images from various sources, then making them into tokens compatible with the Maptool program (I'm sure to most other people, it would be boring busywork, but I enjoy it). I buy cheaper brands and types of food supplies and do some cooking with simple ingredients. I keep a casual eye out for decent sales on practical necessities like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, etc, and buy non-perishables when they are very cheap even if I don't need them yet. It helps that I work at a thrift store, where I can find a lot of useful things at low prices, like clothing, utensils, dishes... even furniture and a vacuum cleaner.
I also, incidentally, have a habit of collecting potentially useful things when I can buy them for a dollar or two at the Goodwill where I work, including: shoelaces, pencils, soap, spare earbud headphones, an extra USB mouse, greeting cards and notebooks (I have long since reached the point of confessing to myself that I collect stationery not so much out of a genuine belief I will use it all but as a little hobby because I like to), gift wrap, and generic presents or gifts suitable for friends of mine.
Heck, I'm a scavenger by nature. That helps too.
I rarely buy clothing or shoes, because I recognize that I have enough of both, and I have a habit of preferring to wear my clothing and shoes until they are ruined, in order to feel I have gotten full use out of them. An exception is socks, which I buy occasionally from the thrift store and have a large collection of stored away for the future, many of which I have never worn. There is a reason for this. With socks as well, I like to wear them out, and so there are a large number of pairs of socks I am doggedly trying to wear until they get holes in so that I can get them out of circulation. There is another reason. From time to time, especially before I started taking my mood-balancing medication, I used to wear a brand new pair of socks as a way to treat myself if I was having a hard day and wanted to go easier on myself than normal, or just felt in need of a little bit of luxury. I still occasionally do this, which puts a new pair into circulation. I only ever choose to wear a pair of socks I have never worn before with careful consideration. There's just something special about it.
I think one of the vital things I do is leave myself a buffer in my budget for little treats and shortcuts. New socks are wonderful, but sometimes one needs more to cheer one up, like eating out at Subway for a meal, or picking up a coffee at Tim Hortons during my lunch break at work. I strongly suspect that some people fail by telling themselves they won't spend money on these kinds of extras, and using it all up, then finding that the temptation is too great and spending money they don't have anymore on extras anyway. Then they feel guilty. Why feel guilty? I give myself permission to get treats from time to time, and I budget accordingly, saving a fair amount of my day to day budget for little pick-me-ups and also unexpected needs - like having to replace something that breaks, or buy cough medicine and throat lozenges, for instance. And if I turn out not to need it all, great! That just means I have more money for next month, and maybe I can afford to get something really neat! Or make a donation to somebody or something I want to support.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Left Forgotten
Wow. Yeah. I really did completely miss October of this year.
Well, there goes my streak of updating this thing at least once every calendar month, huh? Ah, well. I'll start again. Everyone makes mistakes.
You know, I had been meaning to come back and talk to you unseen eyes for a while now, but it always just seemed like I didn't have a good stopping point. Everything was up in the air, and reporting on my current status would give no closure, because I didn't have much. It's silly, in retrospect. I think some of my best writing on this blog has been from when I've been uncertain about the future.
So. October. I spent most of September desperately trying to find a place to move into for October. It didn't work. Me and Robby were turned down everywhere we applied, for various reasons. We suspected that the reasons were largely due to us being a couple, and therefore perceived as less financially stable than a single person with high earnings. So, he asked his current landlord for permission to stay where he was already, and continue to pay rent month by month for now, and I started looking for a place where I might be able to do the same thing. That way, once he was working again and had passed his three month probation, having been fired early September at the end of his last one (likely part of the reason for our rejections), we could look for a place to rent together with little to no time pressure, and wait to find a good place that would accept us, then move out of our flexible month to month situations only once we had found one.
I asked my roommate to let me stay at the apartment for the month of October even though my term on the lease was over, and offered to pay him the same amount in rent that I had been contributing when it was just us two... Despite the fact that his new girlfriend was now living there, too. He accepted, and I resumed the search for a place, but to move into for November. With the help of his girlfriend's mom, I found the place I am sitting in now. A bedroom in the fairly posh basement of a nice couple's house. I have my own bedroom across an open living room that the landlord sometimes walks through to use the laundry facilities down here. I share the upstairs kitchen. It's quite nice and very affordable, but I need to ask permission to have folks over. I've had Robby over to visit twice, under the restriction that he needs to leave by 11 PM.
My position at Goodwill continues to gradually accrue age and experience. I've been working there I think six months now, and I feel generally quite competent at almost every part of my job... The big exception being confrontation with difficult customers and thieves. While my social anxiety has not been crippling me nearly as badly now that I have the confidence of a job in which my work is appreciated and I've passed my probation, and a house that shows no sign, thank goodness, of being infested with blood-sucking bed bugs (I must have done a fairly good job of getting them out of all my things when I moved), but still, being faced with a particularly difficult or conflict-ridden social situation paralyzes me. Thankfully, my workmates are generally understanding, and can accept that it's not something I'm good at, so take the burden off me somewhat.
Though I am usually fairly happy at work, and my new place is safe, much more comfortable, and very convenient, I grow restless. I had feared, before finding employment, that if I was employed, I might become complacent with my passionate socialist ideals among other things... And to a degree, that's proven valid. My perspective is very different now that I'm making money and am not just on welfare. However, when I think about what I believe should be, much of it is still the same. I still think that welfare would work better, and people would be better off, if basic essentials were available without cost. Now, though, I look at a different set of advantages to the thought. It would be harder to defraud or take advantage of the welfare system, as well, if it offered you goods, shelter and services directly, rather than through money allowances. It's a lot harder and much more work to get simple food and goods and have to sell them somehow to get easily exchangeable money to spend on luxuries that the benefit wasn't intended for. Or, indeed, drugs or alcohol, for that matter. I imagine people who do have their own income stream would far less often bother to do that than to fraudulently claim money benefits they are not entitled to, as they might do now.
I've also been reading a little bit about becoming rich through real estate and stock market investments.
Yes, I know. Funny how much things can change, right? I'm seeing more of the picture now, because I'm seeing a lot more of a side I wasn't able to before. I'm trying not to lose sight of my old thoughts and the things that made them valid, too, though.
My half-brother emailed me yesterday asking how my life has been, and commented that he had been to check out this blog to find out, but there were no recent entries. So, if you've been missing my blog entries, you can thank him for reminding me to return and talk about how things have been.
I'm still getting used to working, and I'm trying to make up my mind whether or not it's okay for me to wait longer to become more secure and save up more money before I start doing interesting things. Probably not. It's just a matter of remembering that some of the interesting things I want to do don't take much money, and getting out and doing them.
We'll see how it goes.
Live on, bloggers.
Well, there goes my streak of updating this thing at least once every calendar month, huh? Ah, well. I'll start again. Everyone makes mistakes.
You know, I had been meaning to come back and talk to you unseen eyes for a while now, but it always just seemed like I didn't have a good stopping point. Everything was up in the air, and reporting on my current status would give no closure, because I didn't have much. It's silly, in retrospect. I think some of my best writing on this blog has been from when I've been uncertain about the future.
So. October. I spent most of September desperately trying to find a place to move into for October. It didn't work. Me and Robby were turned down everywhere we applied, for various reasons. We suspected that the reasons were largely due to us being a couple, and therefore perceived as less financially stable than a single person with high earnings. So, he asked his current landlord for permission to stay where he was already, and continue to pay rent month by month for now, and I started looking for a place where I might be able to do the same thing. That way, once he was working again and had passed his three month probation, having been fired early September at the end of his last one (likely part of the reason for our rejections), we could look for a place to rent together with little to no time pressure, and wait to find a good place that would accept us, then move out of our flexible month to month situations only once we had found one.
I asked my roommate to let me stay at the apartment for the month of October even though my term on the lease was over, and offered to pay him the same amount in rent that I had been contributing when it was just us two... Despite the fact that his new girlfriend was now living there, too. He accepted, and I resumed the search for a place, but to move into for November. With the help of his girlfriend's mom, I found the place I am sitting in now. A bedroom in the fairly posh basement of a nice couple's house. I have my own bedroom across an open living room that the landlord sometimes walks through to use the laundry facilities down here. I share the upstairs kitchen. It's quite nice and very affordable, but I need to ask permission to have folks over. I've had Robby over to visit twice, under the restriction that he needs to leave by 11 PM.
My position at Goodwill continues to gradually accrue age and experience. I've been working there I think six months now, and I feel generally quite competent at almost every part of my job... The big exception being confrontation with difficult customers and thieves. While my social anxiety has not been crippling me nearly as badly now that I have the confidence of a job in which my work is appreciated and I've passed my probation, and a house that shows no sign, thank goodness, of being infested with blood-sucking bed bugs (I must have done a fairly good job of getting them out of all my things when I moved), but still, being faced with a particularly difficult or conflict-ridden social situation paralyzes me. Thankfully, my workmates are generally understanding, and can accept that it's not something I'm good at, so take the burden off me somewhat.
Though I am usually fairly happy at work, and my new place is safe, much more comfortable, and very convenient, I grow restless. I had feared, before finding employment, that if I was employed, I might become complacent with my passionate socialist ideals among other things... And to a degree, that's proven valid. My perspective is very different now that I'm making money and am not just on welfare. However, when I think about what I believe should be, much of it is still the same. I still think that welfare would work better, and people would be better off, if basic essentials were available without cost. Now, though, I look at a different set of advantages to the thought. It would be harder to defraud or take advantage of the welfare system, as well, if it offered you goods, shelter and services directly, rather than through money allowances. It's a lot harder and much more work to get simple food and goods and have to sell them somehow to get easily exchangeable money to spend on luxuries that the benefit wasn't intended for. Or, indeed, drugs or alcohol, for that matter. I imagine people who do have their own income stream would far less often bother to do that than to fraudulently claim money benefits they are not entitled to, as they might do now.
I've also been reading a little bit about becoming rich through real estate and stock market investments.
Yes, I know. Funny how much things can change, right? I'm seeing more of the picture now, because I'm seeing a lot more of a side I wasn't able to before. I'm trying not to lose sight of my old thoughts and the things that made them valid, too, though.
My half-brother emailed me yesterday asking how my life has been, and commented that he had been to check out this blog to find out, but there were no recent entries. So, if you've been missing my blog entries, you can thank him for reminding me to return and talk about how things have been.
I'm still getting used to working, and I'm trying to make up my mind whether or not it's okay for me to wait longer to become more secure and save up more money before I start doing interesting things. Probably not. It's just a matter of remembering that some of the interesting things I want to do don't take much money, and getting out and doing them.
We'll see how it goes.
Live on, bloggers.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Choice and Responsibility
I clicked into a serious talk on YouTube today. I wasn't really looking for it, not actively anyway. It was about choice, capitalism, and the paralysis of clinging to what little we have rather than risking the loss of it by moving to engineer social change. It strikes kind of hard... I'm familiar with this truth. I think it may be one of the things I was trying to talk about with To Do What I Must While I Am Who I Am.
It also reminds me of The Little Prince. I find myself almost wanting to cry as I think even of myself, trying to force myself to ascribe to something I do not believe, the idea that submitting to the need to work on whatever my employer's terms are will empower me to make a difference, rather than making me a supportive cog in a system I despise and disempowering me by giving me something I must fear to lose...
I see myself trying to mount a stressful job search, with minimal resources and trying to bury my resentment of the system that puts me here and demands that I serve it in order to live a better life... turning into what the Prince would call a 'mushroom'; putting off, ignoring, or dismissing important matters of emotionality, sensitivity and wonder because "I am concerned with matters of consequence!"
I do not want to take solace in that phrase or in the necessity of my busywork. I don't want to allow myself any excuse for not doing what I believe in in every way I can.
And yet... I must job search, I must work. If I refused, I would be denied what little survival budget I am being given, and pushed into an even smaller, darker hole. To avoid both would be dishonest and as such a betrayal of principles I hold most dear. I am already concerned with matters of consequence... matters of survival. And I must admit I already kind of hate myself for it.
I wrote in the very first pages of the notebook that's now become my journal, quite some time ago:
It also reminds me of The Little Prince. I find myself almost wanting to cry as I think even of myself, trying to force myself to ascribe to something I do not believe, the idea that submitting to the need to work on whatever my employer's terms are will empower me to make a difference, rather than making me a supportive cog in a system I despise and disempowering me by giving me something I must fear to lose...
I see myself trying to mount a stressful job search, with minimal resources and trying to bury my resentment of the system that puts me here and demands that I serve it in order to live a better life... turning into what the Prince would call a 'mushroom'; putting off, ignoring, or dismissing important matters of emotionality, sensitivity and wonder because "I am concerned with matters of consequence!"
I do not want to take solace in that phrase or in the necessity of my busywork. I don't want to allow myself any excuse for not doing what I believe in in every way I can.
And yet... I must job search, I must work. If I refused, I would be denied what little survival budget I am being given, and pushed into an even smaller, darker hole. To avoid both would be dishonest and as such a betrayal of principles I hold most dear. I am already concerned with matters of consequence... matters of survival. And I must admit I already kind of hate myself for it.
I wrote in the very first pages of the notebook that's now become my journal, quite some time ago:
People in a culture with as much technology, resources and interconnectivity as ours have absolutely no right to be concerned about their mere survival.I am guilty of this, and feel that I have failed, not on my own lack of merit, but as one of the billions, as a member of the whole human race. I also wrote:
Western culture has adopted the image of an organization collapsing under its own obsession with efficiency - efficiency itself compromised by endless lawsuits over liability and breach of protocol...
A machine so frantically upgrading and replacing its pieces that it tears itself apart.
Friday, March 23, 2012
From The Fruits of Whose Labour
I have been talking to a friend about my socialist ideals, and there are a couple of things he said in response that I'd like to address publicly, not just to him. My friend said: "As I understand it you are suggesting that everyone should be able to live without 'working'."
If this is the case, he misunderstands it, but only slightly. I am suggesting that each individual should be able to live without having to work. Without being compelled to work. The pivotal point is the idea that we do not have enough, or advanced enough, technology that things can function without anyone doing anything... but that we do have enough technology that we could, conceivably, fill all the roles truly necessary for everyone to have a decent minimum of safety, comfort, and happiness, on a volunteer basis.
And that even more easily, we could produce significantly more wealth (measured in things like food, living spaces, technology, medical care, and other goods and services both basic and luxurious) than would be required for everyone to live at this comfortable minimum standard... and portion some of the extra stuff, particularly the luxurious and higher quality or less fundamentally necessary stuff, as rewards to those who do wish to work.
The system would not be that different, fundamentally, from the way it is now, save that instead of having to earn enough money to cover our rent, groceries, medical bills, transportation, education, legal assistance and all other services we require... we would automatically be entitled to a certain adequate standard of every one of these free of charge, regardless of status or wealth.
If we wanted a higher standard of essentials, or wished to indulge in extra things like a night at the movies or theatre, some fun new technology, travel to a far away land for a vacation, or things like that...
Those. Those are the rewards that we might be compelled to work for, were the satisfaction of a job well done and desire to actually do something useful with our own special talents not reason enough. Not to mention social status and respect for being a benefit to society in general.
Really doesn't sound too far from current reality, does it? It isn't too hard to imagine a world in which there are some grocery stores where you don't even NEED money, you can come and get a certain amount of food to take home for free. We technically already have those in Canada, if you think about it. Food banks, we call them. Odd, that it should be called a bank when it's one of the few places in the modern world that does not deal with currency in any way. There would be some apartments that you could live in free of charge, albeit likely comparatively small ones without the best features or design. There would be places where you can get second hand or lower quality furniture that nevertheless is sturdy enough to trust, and fulfills its function as well as you need it to.
And I would hope, as I expect anyone else would, that these minimum standards, the way people can survive even without giving anything back, will continue to improve... I hope that they'll even gain a little bit of ground on the continually advancing cutting edge of technology, as time goes by. Maybe in 2024, the poorest people in Canada will still have easy access to technology that's only two years old, things we haven't even begun to dream up yet, and the richest will have what was invented in their own yesterday.
Now for the other point I'd like to address. "The key question that comes to mind is this: from the fruits of whose productive work do you take the resources to support those who choose not to work in the capitalist sense?" And that is a good question that a lot of people feel compelled to ask people who believe in the ideal of socialism.
It is phrased in such a way as to not be the right question, from my point of view, since from my point of view no-one should be 'entitled' to keep for themselves the entire fruits of their labour to begin with. Human culture simply does not work like that, it involves trade and sharing. Not everyone can cook, not everyone can build, and not everyone can hunt... or wants to, for that matter, for any given of the three. But a skilled cook can cook for a hall full of people, a builder can build many houses, and a skilled and lucky hunter can bring home enough meat for his entire tribe. It is not presumed that we would be better off in a society where the hunter keeps all the meat, the cook prepares meals only for himself and his immediate family, and you don't live in a house unless you can build one worth living in. I realize that the concern is how we can justify asking anyone to provide services even to those who are giving nothing back - why the cook should have to feed not only the person who built his house and the person who brought him the meat for his cooking pot, but also members of the community to whom he owes nothing, who have not exchanged services with him. I'll get to that point a little later.
For the sake of fairness, I can answer the question as asked. Whose productive work? Anyone who is willing to do the work just for the sake of doing it, or with an understanding that it is by virtue of others' similar willingness that they have the things they cannot produce independently and would not always be able or willing to trade for. Love for the work itself, a genuine desire to help people, or a desire to contribute for social validation and bragging rights are all good reasons to work and it is possible to find people who are willing to help other people just because they are people and they have needs and desires to be met, which "I" have the power to fulfill. If this were not true, there would be no volunteers in the world. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
The historical solution that most "civilized" societies seem to have adopted to solve the matter of human beings developing specialized skills and needing to be able to share them without general societal disarray and confusion over who was trading what for what has been to try to measure the values of each of these contributions against each other, and use physical tokens to represent value contributed to society and thus earned, versus value taken back from society and thus spent. Thus, currency is born, and we just try to get all the prices for things figured out in such a way that everyone contributes to the group in order to benefit from it, and everyone makes enough to afford the things they need, when they need them.
Oh, what a great circus act THAT turns out to be.
Enter endless arguments about whose services and goods are more valuable, more necessary, higher quality, and otherwise worth more money, endless jockeying for social position and wealth, and a million and one little traps into which we fall by trying to make sufficient quantities of necessary goods readily available to everyone, even the poorer classes. How badly has this completely fucked over the industry of simply growing plants, the first stage food industry and probably the single most essential job in the history of the human race? Not to mention that tokens can be easily misplaced or even stolen, so even if the balances are set to an impossibly ideal and perfect balance, some people who feel that they are not well enough compensated for the work they do may go about trying to correct this by imposing a small re-compensation tax from anyone they find they can get away with taking it from.
But back to the plight of underpaid farmers for now. One might well ask, if one wishes to pose a question, why the businessman and the doctor and the lawyer should, and indeed whether they should, "give up" part of their justly earned wages and the fruits of their labour, for the benefit of the lowly farmer, whose goods are appraised at a much lower price?
But of course, the answer is obvious. Because while some of us may greatly value the convenience of the businessman's newest appliance, be desperate for the defense of a good lawyer, and sing thanks to the doctor for his help fixing your broken leg and your sister's ulcers...
We all, even more importantly, need to eat.
The fact is that the art of civilization is effectively the co-operation of all or at least most people within it, with diverse skills, talents and strengths. We work together, and together produce a world of convenience, plenty, power and security that would not be possible otherwise.
Then the question comes down, as indeed it must, what of the invalid? What of the children? They don't have anything for us to buy from them, they don't have any services to charge us for...
... Does this, then, make them useless? Not in the case of the child, surely, for children grow up and learn skills to share, they contribute when they are older. The invalid? Some of them can be healed (ah, the power of the good doctors at work), and can contribute with concrete skills, but some, alas, will never be able to do so competitively if at all. So what of them? Do we allow them to live half-lives, buy whatever lowly scraps of food, and live in whatever slums, their lesser efforts can afford, until they waste away?
No. We don't condone this cruelty. We believe, as well we should, that simply being human is virtue enough that one should be able to survive with some comfort and dignity by that virtue alone, and it is with this reasoning that we will sacrifice some of the wealth we do not technically need for the good of those who can give nothing back. It is commendable and human of us to be so generous.
There is, however, another problem yet unsolved, one that is much less obvious. It has begun to creep up on us, but we still seem very reluctant to acknowledge it.
Actually, there are two, and they go together.
Firstly, again, there is the matter of how to balance the importance and values of completely different services and products, in order that they be appropriately priced and fair. Here, there is a fundamental problem. The more valuable a thing is, the more dramatically it makes life better, we assume, the more it benefits society when it is contributed, so it should be worth more money. That stands to reason. On the other hand, the more important a thing is, the more important it is that everyone be able to afford it, because it may be necessary for their wellbeing, and the wellbeing of a person is inherently important. Everyone, including people who don't have much money. Therefore, the more important something is, the more affordable it should be, the less money it should cost. It stands to reason.
However, the result of these two perfectly logical conclusions interacting is that the most important, basic and vital parts of society, the things we literally cannot, or would not want to live without... are the things that we reward people the least for providing us with. We will make our inventors and psychologists and lawyers and businessmen rich and privileged... And leave farmers, teachers, doctors, and the producers of things that everyone needs, like simple clothing... poor. So poor, sometimes, as the results of flaws in the system continue to build up, that they may not be able to afford any more than a life of basic essentials. It should be no wonder, then, if we find ourselves short of people willing to do the hardest work, that is the most important... and because of our twisted hierarchy of what deserves how much money... the least rewarded.
The second problem is that as technology progresses, it becomes much more efficient and autonomous. A garden that takes a whole family to maintain can soon be run by one, or else multiply in size and still require the same amount of labour to farm due to advances in weed and pest control, new fertilizers and better tools, like tractors and machines for threshing wheat.
A database of information that once took a dozen people and an entire room to write down, keep track of and maintain can now not only be expanded a hundred fold, but even with all the extra information, be kept running and maintained by just one person using a sophisticated computer, while simultaneously being accessible to literally thousands of people at once without using additional work hours, thanks to the wonders of the internet.
Routine medical tissue tests that once had to be done by eye and took hours can now be automatically checked by machine in minutes, with an astonishing leap in reliability.
Et cetera.
In each one of the cases above, it has become possible to provide the service involved to many, many more people at once... with an actual reduction in the number of people who need to spend their time arranging for it to happen. This has occurred in every single industry, which is very much to our credit, and the number of new industries we've invented now that we have the spare people to power them, while impressive, does not actually fill up the difference.
In the middle ages, it may have been necessary for the survival of a village, that everyone spend long days labouring at their assigned tasks, because otherwise there would not be enough food, or adequate defense, or enough houses, for them all.
We no longer live in that world. The percentage of people who need to be farmers to feed us all has fallen dramatically, and we even have the luxury of more choices in our foodstuffs, with a trading culture so strong that we can get fresh or close-to-fresh produce of almost any kind from anywhere in the world, all year round.
With more efficient practices and better tools as well as many more drugs and medicines and a completely evolved sense of how the human body works, we need a smaller percentage of the population to be doctors to keep us in good health.
Even with inventors, scientists, politicians and government officials at all levels, teachers, plumbers, engineers and the creators and producers and maintainers and servicers of every new invention we've come up with, and the veritable army of customer service personnel, accountants, waitresses, cleaning staff, and salesmen (a job which I am convinced provides no benefit to society at large whatsoever by its existence), there is still a huge block of the population who are not employed in any of these fields... that we can afford to, and do, provide basic services for anyway.
There is, quite simply, nothing that they are actually needed for. There are, of course, always things that could help, new ideas to come up with, smaller, unnecessary but pleasant roles they could fill...
But there arises a new problem. Firstly, that many of these people may simply have no idea what additional benefit there could be for them to provide, worth the time of doing it... And secondly, and most damnably, the rather massive problem that even if someone does come up with a wonderful thing they could do and be good at, and make humanity richer by the doing... there is a very good chance that they will not be able to find anyone willing to pay them to do it.
With the same hierarchy of value and importance that devalues food production and teaching the next generations simply because they are so important that we need them... this same system by which professions jockey and push for dominance, where a million different voices of producers and servicemen proclaim "I am the one worth the most! I deserve the best reward!"... some of the most humane, generous, beautiful activities that human beings can come up with...
...Are ranked so low, that they are awarded no compensation at all.
Consider relief and community project workers in foreign countries, many of whom work without pay, or even pay for their "hero vacations" themselves to help cover the cost of supplies. Consider the fact that the Global Fund to fight AIDS has been suffering considerably for lack of donations from world governments, and a couple of times, has come close to having to suspend vital operations... like giving free AIDS medicine to impoverished Africans. Thankfully, campaigning and philanthropy have kept it above water... so far.
On a less serious note, why is it that skilled, old fashioned craftsmen, makers and repairers of fine wares, need to be shutting down their shops and ceasing business when they are still providing excellent service and goods that should be considered valuable, and the space they are taking up is not needed for anything bigger or more important - no, it's likely there are already empty and unused shopfronts in the same neighborhood?
The answer is that while we value these things, or at least claim to, when it comes to paying the bills, we have to prioritize and assign, decide where our money is going to go. For some reason, our currency, the manner by which we measure and trade and use wealth to ensure that everyone gets a fair share, not only creates inequity but actually causes us to discard some of the wealth we already have, by placing a limit on what we can "afford" which is completely independent of both the wealth we actually have, and the number of people we have available to do work for us creating wealth.
It creates complicated scenarios in which it makes more sense for a company to treat its workers more poorly in order to increase overall efficiency, despite the truth of the fact that workers perform better when treated well and kept healthy, and also despite the moral problems with such a business model.
It creates a world in which we have more than enough food, technology, manpower and skill, all just sitting there, to feed everyone the most delicious feasts we can imagine... and instead of doing that, we obsessively keep track to make sure that no-one gets away with taking more than they can pay for, even if it means we have to throw food away and make it useless rather than give it to someone who is hungry but has no money.
And due to the extensive legal issues surrounding money and its transactions, we actually have a significant chunk of the economy which is effectively entirely dedicated to cleaning up the messes left by its own flaws!
The money system and the requirement that people earn money from employers willing to pay them started out as a good idea to keep things organized, but like the original printing press and European feudalism, it has had its day. We can do better now. We have the technology. The times have evolved past it, and frankly we do not need it anymore. It places pointless artificial limits on the amount we are able to do, encourages greed and hoarding and theft by putting far too much value in tiny, useless coins and papers, and makes just as many problems with value assignment and prioritization than it solves by making sure everyone has to contribute... even though we do not actually need them to.
If we stripped away the redundancies and accounting and sales that money makes necessary all by itself, I am confident that we could care for 100% of the people using the man hours and skill of 10% of the people. We could do it better, more efficiently, and with less grief all around, than we do it now. It would be just another mighty leap forward in social efficiency.
Even if we just restricted the use of money to certain luxury industries like travel and entertainment, and the finest of material things, we could make our society much more streamlined, efficient, and inherently more caring and generous. We could stop making 10% of the population work 40 hours a week and get 50% or more of the population to work 10 or so hours a week, too, if we wanted to. I bet people would be happy to volunteer for shifts like that. I did it myself, for a while.
And that, actually, is my final, and most personal complaint.
Me. Myself.
I am a goodhearted, intelligent, insightful person. I have the skills and the power to cheer and console, to help people through their problems and keep things in perspective. I have lots of good ideas.
And the way things work now, I am not authorized to act on any of them without paying thousands of dollars I do not have to be lectured at for a few years first. Because society "can't afford" the risk that I might do it wrong and hurt someone.
Fuck this world. I want to go home. I want to make home. Here. So damn well fucking let me.
If this is the case, he misunderstands it, but only slightly. I am suggesting that each individual should be able to live without having to work. Without being compelled to work. The pivotal point is the idea that we do not have enough, or advanced enough, technology that things can function without anyone doing anything... but that we do have enough technology that we could, conceivably, fill all the roles truly necessary for everyone to have a decent minimum of safety, comfort, and happiness, on a volunteer basis.
And that even more easily, we could produce significantly more wealth (measured in things like food, living spaces, technology, medical care, and other goods and services both basic and luxurious) than would be required for everyone to live at this comfortable minimum standard... and portion some of the extra stuff, particularly the luxurious and higher quality or less fundamentally necessary stuff, as rewards to those who do wish to work.
The system would not be that different, fundamentally, from the way it is now, save that instead of having to earn enough money to cover our rent, groceries, medical bills, transportation, education, legal assistance and all other services we require... we would automatically be entitled to a certain adequate standard of every one of these free of charge, regardless of status or wealth.
If we wanted a higher standard of essentials, or wished to indulge in extra things like a night at the movies or theatre, some fun new technology, travel to a far away land for a vacation, or things like that...
Those. Those are the rewards that we might be compelled to work for, were the satisfaction of a job well done and desire to actually do something useful with our own special talents not reason enough. Not to mention social status and respect for being a benefit to society in general.
Really doesn't sound too far from current reality, does it? It isn't too hard to imagine a world in which there are some grocery stores where you don't even NEED money, you can come and get a certain amount of food to take home for free. We technically already have those in Canada, if you think about it. Food banks, we call them. Odd, that it should be called a bank when it's one of the few places in the modern world that does not deal with currency in any way. There would be some apartments that you could live in free of charge, albeit likely comparatively small ones without the best features or design. There would be places where you can get second hand or lower quality furniture that nevertheless is sturdy enough to trust, and fulfills its function as well as you need it to.
And I would hope, as I expect anyone else would, that these minimum standards, the way people can survive even without giving anything back, will continue to improve... I hope that they'll even gain a little bit of ground on the continually advancing cutting edge of technology, as time goes by. Maybe in 2024, the poorest people in Canada will still have easy access to technology that's only two years old, things we haven't even begun to dream up yet, and the richest will have what was invented in their own yesterday.
Now for the other point I'd like to address. "The key question that comes to mind is this: from the fruits of whose productive work do you take the resources to support those who choose not to work in the capitalist sense?" And that is a good question that a lot of people feel compelled to ask people who believe in the ideal of socialism.
It is phrased in such a way as to not be the right question, from my point of view, since from my point of view no-one should be 'entitled' to keep for themselves the entire fruits of their labour to begin with. Human culture simply does not work like that, it involves trade and sharing. Not everyone can cook, not everyone can build, and not everyone can hunt... or wants to, for that matter, for any given of the three. But a skilled cook can cook for a hall full of people, a builder can build many houses, and a skilled and lucky hunter can bring home enough meat for his entire tribe. It is not presumed that we would be better off in a society where the hunter keeps all the meat, the cook prepares meals only for himself and his immediate family, and you don't live in a house unless you can build one worth living in. I realize that the concern is how we can justify asking anyone to provide services even to those who are giving nothing back - why the cook should have to feed not only the person who built his house and the person who brought him the meat for his cooking pot, but also members of the community to whom he owes nothing, who have not exchanged services with him. I'll get to that point a little later.
For the sake of fairness, I can answer the question as asked. Whose productive work? Anyone who is willing to do the work just for the sake of doing it, or with an understanding that it is by virtue of others' similar willingness that they have the things they cannot produce independently and would not always be able or willing to trade for. Love for the work itself, a genuine desire to help people, or a desire to contribute for social validation and bragging rights are all good reasons to work and it is possible to find people who are willing to help other people just because they are people and they have needs and desires to be met, which "I" have the power to fulfill. If this were not true, there would be no volunteers in the world. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
The historical solution that most "civilized" societies seem to have adopted to solve the matter of human beings developing specialized skills and needing to be able to share them without general societal disarray and confusion over who was trading what for what has been to try to measure the values of each of these contributions against each other, and use physical tokens to represent value contributed to society and thus earned, versus value taken back from society and thus spent. Thus, currency is born, and we just try to get all the prices for things figured out in such a way that everyone contributes to the group in order to benefit from it, and everyone makes enough to afford the things they need, when they need them.
Oh, what a great circus act THAT turns out to be.
Enter endless arguments about whose services and goods are more valuable, more necessary, higher quality, and otherwise worth more money, endless jockeying for social position and wealth, and a million and one little traps into which we fall by trying to make sufficient quantities of necessary goods readily available to everyone, even the poorer classes. How badly has this completely fucked over the industry of simply growing plants, the first stage food industry and probably the single most essential job in the history of the human race? Not to mention that tokens can be easily misplaced or even stolen, so even if the balances are set to an impossibly ideal and perfect balance, some people who feel that they are not well enough compensated for the work they do may go about trying to correct this by imposing a small re-compensation tax from anyone they find they can get away with taking it from.
But back to the plight of underpaid farmers for now. One might well ask, if one wishes to pose a question, why the businessman and the doctor and the lawyer should, and indeed whether they should, "give up" part of their justly earned wages and the fruits of their labour, for the benefit of the lowly farmer, whose goods are appraised at a much lower price?
But of course, the answer is obvious. Because while some of us may greatly value the convenience of the businessman's newest appliance, be desperate for the defense of a good lawyer, and sing thanks to the doctor for his help fixing your broken leg and your sister's ulcers...
We all, even more importantly, need to eat.
The fact is that the art of civilization is effectively the co-operation of all or at least most people within it, with diverse skills, talents and strengths. We work together, and together produce a world of convenience, plenty, power and security that would not be possible otherwise.
Then the question comes down, as indeed it must, what of the invalid? What of the children? They don't have anything for us to buy from them, they don't have any services to charge us for...
... Does this, then, make them useless? Not in the case of the child, surely, for children grow up and learn skills to share, they contribute when they are older. The invalid? Some of them can be healed (ah, the power of the good doctors at work), and can contribute with concrete skills, but some, alas, will never be able to do so competitively if at all. So what of them? Do we allow them to live half-lives, buy whatever lowly scraps of food, and live in whatever slums, their lesser efforts can afford, until they waste away?
No. We don't condone this cruelty. We believe, as well we should, that simply being human is virtue enough that one should be able to survive with some comfort and dignity by that virtue alone, and it is with this reasoning that we will sacrifice some of the wealth we do not technically need for the good of those who can give nothing back. It is commendable and human of us to be so generous.
There is, however, another problem yet unsolved, one that is much less obvious. It has begun to creep up on us, but we still seem very reluctant to acknowledge it.
Actually, there are two, and they go together.
Firstly, again, there is the matter of how to balance the importance and values of completely different services and products, in order that they be appropriately priced and fair. Here, there is a fundamental problem. The more valuable a thing is, the more dramatically it makes life better, we assume, the more it benefits society when it is contributed, so it should be worth more money. That stands to reason. On the other hand, the more important a thing is, the more important it is that everyone be able to afford it, because it may be necessary for their wellbeing, and the wellbeing of a person is inherently important. Everyone, including people who don't have much money. Therefore, the more important something is, the more affordable it should be, the less money it should cost. It stands to reason.
However, the result of these two perfectly logical conclusions interacting is that the most important, basic and vital parts of society, the things we literally cannot, or would not want to live without... are the things that we reward people the least for providing us with. We will make our inventors and psychologists and lawyers and businessmen rich and privileged... And leave farmers, teachers, doctors, and the producers of things that everyone needs, like simple clothing... poor. So poor, sometimes, as the results of flaws in the system continue to build up, that they may not be able to afford any more than a life of basic essentials. It should be no wonder, then, if we find ourselves short of people willing to do the hardest work, that is the most important... and because of our twisted hierarchy of what deserves how much money... the least rewarded.
The second problem is that as technology progresses, it becomes much more efficient and autonomous. A garden that takes a whole family to maintain can soon be run by one, or else multiply in size and still require the same amount of labour to farm due to advances in weed and pest control, new fertilizers and better tools, like tractors and machines for threshing wheat.
A database of information that once took a dozen people and an entire room to write down, keep track of and maintain can now not only be expanded a hundred fold, but even with all the extra information, be kept running and maintained by just one person using a sophisticated computer, while simultaneously being accessible to literally thousands of people at once without using additional work hours, thanks to the wonders of the internet.
Routine medical tissue tests that once had to be done by eye and took hours can now be automatically checked by machine in minutes, with an astonishing leap in reliability.
Et cetera.
In each one of the cases above, it has become possible to provide the service involved to many, many more people at once... with an actual reduction in the number of people who need to spend their time arranging for it to happen. This has occurred in every single industry, which is very much to our credit, and the number of new industries we've invented now that we have the spare people to power them, while impressive, does not actually fill up the difference.
In the middle ages, it may have been necessary for the survival of a village, that everyone spend long days labouring at their assigned tasks, because otherwise there would not be enough food, or adequate defense, or enough houses, for them all.
We no longer live in that world. The percentage of people who need to be farmers to feed us all has fallen dramatically, and we even have the luxury of more choices in our foodstuffs, with a trading culture so strong that we can get fresh or close-to-fresh produce of almost any kind from anywhere in the world, all year round.
With more efficient practices and better tools as well as many more drugs and medicines and a completely evolved sense of how the human body works, we need a smaller percentage of the population to be doctors to keep us in good health.
Even with inventors, scientists, politicians and government officials at all levels, teachers, plumbers, engineers and the creators and producers and maintainers and servicers of every new invention we've come up with, and the veritable army of customer service personnel, accountants, waitresses, cleaning staff, and salesmen (a job which I am convinced provides no benefit to society at large whatsoever by its existence), there is still a huge block of the population who are not employed in any of these fields... that we can afford to, and do, provide basic services for anyway.
There is, quite simply, nothing that they are actually needed for. There are, of course, always things that could help, new ideas to come up with, smaller, unnecessary but pleasant roles they could fill...
But there arises a new problem. Firstly, that many of these people may simply have no idea what additional benefit there could be for them to provide, worth the time of doing it... And secondly, and most damnably, the rather massive problem that even if someone does come up with a wonderful thing they could do and be good at, and make humanity richer by the doing... there is a very good chance that they will not be able to find anyone willing to pay them to do it.
With the same hierarchy of value and importance that devalues food production and teaching the next generations simply because they are so important that we need them... this same system by which professions jockey and push for dominance, where a million different voices of producers and servicemen proclaim "I am the one worth the most! I deserve the best reward!"... some of the most humane, generous, beautiful activities that human beings can come up with...
...Are ranked so low, that they are awarded no compensation at all.
Consider relief and community project workers in foreign countries, many of whom work without pay, or even pay for their "hero vacations" themselves to help cover the cost of supplies. Consider the fact that the Global Fund to fight AIDS has been suffering considerably for lack of donations from world governments, and a couple of times, has come close to having to suspend vital operations... like giving free AIDS medicine to impoverished Africans. Thankfully, campaigning and philanthropy have kept it above water... so far.
On a less serious note, why is it that skilled, old fashioned craftsmen, makers and repairers of fine wares, need to be shutting down their shops and ceasing business when they are still providing excellent service and goods that should be considered valuable, and the space they are taking up is not needed for anything bigger or more important - no, it's likely there are already empty and unused shopfronts in the same neighborhood?
The answer is that while we value these things, or at least claim to, when it comes to paying the bills, we have to prioritize and assign, decide where our money is going to go. For some reason, our currency, the manner by which we measure and trade and use wealth to ensure that everyone gets a fair share, not only creates inequity but actually causes us to discard some of the wealth we already have, by placing a limit on what we can "afford" which is completely independent of both the wealth we actually have, and the number of people we have available to do work for us creating wealth.
It creates complicated scenarios in which it makes more sense for a company to treat its workers more poorly in order to increase overall efficiency, despite the truth of the fact that workers perform better when treated well and kept healthy, and also despite the moral problems with such a business model.
It creates a world in which we have more than enough food, technology, manpower and skill, all just sitting there, to feed everyone the most delicious feasts we can imagine... and instead of doing that, we obsessively keep track to make sure that no-one gets away with taking more than they can pay for, even if it means we have to throw food away and make it useless rather than give it to someone who is hungry but has no money.
And due to the extensive legal issues surrounding money and its transactions, we actually have a significant chunk of the economy which is effectively entirely dedicated to cleaning up the messes left by its own flaws!
The money system and the requirement that people earn money from employers willing to pay them started out as a good idea to keep things organized, but like the original printing press and European feudalism, it has had its day. We can do better now. We have the technology. The times have evolved past it, and frankly we do not need it anymore. It places pointless artificial limits on the amount we are able to do, encourages greed and hoarding and theft by putting far too much value in tiny, useless coins and papers, and makes just as many problems with value assignment and prioritization than it solves by making sure everyone has to contribute... even though we do not actually need them to.
If we stripped away the redundancies and accounting and sales that money makes necessary all by itself, I am confident that we could care for 100% of the people using the man hours and skill of 10% of the people. We could do it better, more efficiently, and with less grief all around, than we do it now. It would be just another mighty leap forward in social efficiency.
Even if we just restricted the use of money to certain luxury industries like travel and entertainment, and the finest of material things, we could make our society much more streamlined, efficient, and inherently more caring and generous. We could stop making 10% of the population work 40 hours a week and get 50% or more of the population to work 10 or so hours a week, too, if we wanted to. I bet people would be happy to volunteer for shifts like that. I did it myself, for a while.
And that, actually, is my final, and most personal complaint.
Me. Myself.
I am a goodhearted, intelligent, insightful person. I have the skills and the power to cheer and console, to help people through their problems and keep things in perspective. I have lots of good ideas.
And the way things work now, I am not authorized to act on any of them without paying thousands of dollars I do not have to be lectured at for a few years first. Because society "can't afford" the risk that I might do it wrong and hurt someone.
Fuck this world. I want to go home. I want to make home. Here. So damn well fucking let me.
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