Thread by @couchguy

I’ve been talking about this a long time before finding this #Buckyquote yesterday. With our existing technology, a fraction of our cumulative available man-hours could feed, clothe and house the entire world in conditions our ancestors would have called luxurious. #RainingSoup

Robert Heinlein was fond of saying “It’s raining soup! Grab a bucket!” We live in a world of plenty… but buckets are being issued to only a few. Everyone else can only catch the drops in their mouths. Now the bucket holders want to ban most of us from looking up. (2

The only thing keeping us from living in a veritable paradise is greed. Having enough for all is not sufficient. Some people aren’t happy unless they have far more than everyone else. They would rather see the soup fall on the ground than let someone else have any. (3

Science/technology has increased our capability to create wealth, and reduced the number of man-hours of work needed to support each person comfortably. That number is *way* below eight hours a day. Hell, we *throw away* enough wealth to cover everyone’s needs. (4

Yet, somehow we have been misled to believe that all of this bounty of wealth depends on every person spending 1/3 of their time and effort in life creating more, and that just isn’t true now. Most of what we are creating is being deliberately wasted! (5

When I say “wasted”, I’m not just talking about the soup that falls on the ground. Most of the soup that is being collected by increased productivity is funneled into storage tanks by a favored few, who dole out small amounts to the hungry to control them. (6

The collected soup provides a few with an insanely lavish lifestyle while others starve, but that isn’t the worst of it! A few have more wealth than they could consume in multiple lifetimes and massive leisure time to enjoy it all. That is also “waste”. (7

Look at the Sam Walton Wal-Mart fortune as an example. Walton was by far the world’s richest person, at the top of the Top Ten. When he died and his wealth was distributed, Walton heirs still filled at least half the slots in that Top Ten! (8

The top multibillionaires have so much wealth that it is impossible for them to consume it all. No matter how much they give away, spend, waste or simply bury in their back yards, they will STILL end every day with more accumulated wealth than they can ever use up. (9

This proves that the work week of five 8-hour days is absurd. Even if all wealth were distributed widely enough to insure a comfortable living for everyone on Earth, there would still be plenty left over, even given our ability to waste a lot of it. (10

So why are so many working so hard that the number one true cause of death in the wealthiest nations is STRESS? Because we have created a culture which tells us the biggest lie of all — that work is IN AND OF ITSELF a virtue! (11

Children are directed from Day One not to Waste Time, to the point that even in wealthy nations more and more “playtime” is directed toward organized events designed to teach them to work harder to create wealth in which they will not share. (12

Our educational system reinforces this to a ridiculous degree. Teaching the young to create art, music, poetry and other cultural wealth has fallen in favor of educating them to be productive in the narrowest sense by working as hard as possible for others. (13

Our “work until you die” ethic does not value cultural wealth unless it is put in a form in which it can easily and immediately be sold. This discourages anyone from engaging in any effort except toil for mere survival. (14

The tragic irony is that this so-called “work ethic” discourages the very creativity that has made the work we do so much more productive in the first place. Spending wealth to learn and grow as a species is not just wasteful, it is considered sinful and antisocial. (15

You only have to look at the stock market to realize that effort toward long term goals and betterment of the lives of everyone is discouraged in favor of creating more wealth in the short term for those who already have far more than most. (16

Human effort toward home, family, ethical living, sustainment of resources, culture, clarity of mind and virtue of the heart is LAST priority. Pursuing these when you could be “working” wealth is sinful. Only feeding the capitalist machine makes one worthy to live. (17

In a world where our effort is multiplied a thousand fold because of past thinkers and innovators most of us must work harder and more inefficiently than necessary to just ensure our personal survival. It is wrong. It is just STUPID. (18

It is even more stupid that we spend more on more of that excess wealth to protect those who have it and the system that props up the inequity. The biggest expense the wealthy have is leveraging control so that no one else can have any. (19

A massive, insane amount of all wealth, most of what is spent by the wealthy, is directed toward politics, lobbying, bribery, manipulation, propaganda — all activities to make sure wealth does not accidentally come to those considered “undeserving”. (20

Government and business is not directed any longer toward bettering the human condition overall. The success of any activity that appears to do so is mostly measured by how well it supports the propaganda machine rather than by a reduction in human suffering. (21

We did this to ourselves. We believed the lie that as individuals we could only get “our share” by taking it away from someone else. It is more important than anything else that we keep people from getting anything they didn’t break their backs to get. (22

Things will not improve for any of us until we stop believing that lie. Government should only exist for the purpose of organizing society’s efforts toward making everyone’s lives better. A business should thrive and grow only by better serving everyone’s needs. (23

Greed drives the western world’s “work ethic”, and we are about to see a world wide collapse and the death of the culture of freedom we worked so hard to create. We are orchestrating our own doom, coming all too soon, if we do not change our thinking. (24

Truly, all we must do for the “better tomorrow” we say we want is to stop believing the lies. The majority want to do better, but the few who lie manipulate those that believe those lies to act against their own best interests. It is up to us to use truth to change that. (END

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