Is the Most polite form of economic violence I've ever heard in my whole life.
Because what is liveable wage?
Livable to who?
For how long?
Well what dignity?
Well how many skipped meals are considered reasonable in this equation?
You know what livable means in this economy?
It means you don't die fast enough to disrupt business, it means you just make enough to come back tomorrow.
Not enough to rest
Not enough to breath
Not enough to leave, just enough to keep showing up grateful.
I want you to hear the translation, here's what they are really saying - we need your poverty to keep up profit margin stable, we need your exhaustion to stay in power, we built a system that only works if your souls stays discounted.
They want you to live in the grey zone between breakdown and submission. And that's when you technically, don't starve, but you've never well fed enough to leave.
Because the system ain't never been broken, it's working exactly as design.
Work is immoral. Wage labor is immoral. It renders people objects, it commodifies their existence. It steals their time and it destroys their hopes, their connection to nature and to themselves.
You are not wrong for hating Work, you are not immoral for wanting to avoid it, you are not insane for wanting to get rid of it.
I know you're not lazy, and I know you're not selfish.
Your hatred and despair at this life of work, is the response any animal trapped in a cage would make.
These who tell you "everyone must work", who patronize you, who make you feel guilty, who hound you for not being "productive" enough, they are the ones who have the most to lose.
And that's why they use every tool available to them, to make you belive, that dragging yourself out of bed every morning to do a job you hate is the normal way to live. But it is not normal.
I hate the word "productive".
The root word is product, and when we think about it, it's about the individual output into the marketplace. It's one of those encrypted ways that capitalism influences our everyday speach. And also our thought patterns.
We think that we are unworthy unless we are maximizing our productivity, and giving the fruits of our labor to the greedy capitalists.
Most people don't think too deeply about the implications of the words they use. But nonetheless, it does influence them subliminally. We internalized that we are expandable products.
Capitalism ends up elevating sociopaths. Because, if you're worried about people, if you don't want to exploit them, if you don't want to give them less while you take so much more for yourself, you might not succeed so well in business.
How can you get rich on the backs of other people, while giving them less and worrying less about the conditions of their workplace, unless you learn to disregard them, in order to make a profit for yourself.