Well, for
one thing it requires the expenditure of ever more energy in terms of the coal,
natural gas and petroleum products that are burned in order to produce,
distribute, sell, and ultimately dispose of all these products for which wants
must be created. That, in turn, adds to
the abnormally high levels of CO2 in our upper atmosphere, which is of course
the main cause of the global warming that is triggering ever larger and more
destructive hurricanes, tornadoes and typhoons.
And at some point in this fairly rapid increase in the size and
destructiveness of these extreme weather events, these events are going to be
so large as to make us wonder whether all this expenditure on global-warming
consumption is really worth the ever increasing and terrible price we are
ultimately going to be forced to pay, for damaged homes, infrastructure and businesses,
lost lives, millions of downed power lines, flooded subway systems, missed
business opportunities etc.
At that
point, I predict, people will become open to the consideration of those steps
we might take as a nation that would allow everyone to work fewer hours . . by
means of redistributing the most essential work (that needs to be done), among
much larger numbers of workers. That way
there would be no need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, every decade,
in the promotion and creation of wants for products and services "that the vast
majority of people would not buy unless they were surrounded by advertising,
marketing efforts, and a culture that emphasizes the personal gratification and
status that can be gained through consumption of these products and services --
all so as to begin to provide enough employment for all those who need jobs."
Can you
imagine what would happen to our ecocidal hyper-production, hyper-consumption
tread-mill society if we ever found a way to allow any low-paid worker who
wanted a better job . . to work directly, cooperatively and efficiently on the
production of all basic goods and services -- and then, in return for such work,
they would receive their fair share of all the basic goods and services they
helped produce?
What would
happen is that the ecocide would stop. It
would end within a few years, as the vast majority of people learned to
appreciate leisure time over the national gluttony and ecocidal results of ever
more consumer goods and services produced and consumed, virtually without limit. Those who were particularly low-paid would
quit their jobs in the superfluous-goods production sector of the society and would
immediately go to work in the new cooperatively-based arm of the
basic-goods-production sector of the economy, wherein they would be able to
acquire what is today a median priced home, and acquire it with far fewer hours
of work than they would ever have to expend in the superfluous-goods production
sector.
By this
means, huge numbers of the middle class would no longer be transitioned to the
lower class by way of the low-paid jobs that must usually replace the
better-paid jobs they've lost to continuing automation, computerization, and low-wage
countries like China. And those who have
already been transitioned to the lower class would have the means to get back
into the middle class.
Why would the
downward transitioning no longer take place?
It would be due to the fact that the vast majority of low-paid workers
would abandon such work in order to go to work in the new
basic-goods-&-services production sector.
And in order to replace these
lost workers, employers would be forced to pay much higher wages, thereby
bringing still more people back out of the lower class.
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