Imagine A World Without Slavery
By James Donahue
December 31, 2017
Slavery has been a way of life on Earth for as long as humans have recorded history. It has appeared in many forms . . . from the concept of one man owning another to serfdom under the rule of kings and assembly line workers laboring for whatever the employer chooses to pay.
Existence under slavery has always meant a life of hard labor and drudgery. Workers are owned by the master in one way or another. When jobs are plentiful and there is competition for skilled labor, workers can choose where they will work. But they always must work to live.
There has always been a quest for freedom. The founders of the United States declared their new nation "the land of the free." That slogan has remained with us, even appearing in the lyrics of the National Anthem. Americans consider themselves free, but free of what? They have been relatively free of tyranny and after a bloody fight to gain the right to have collective bargaining at the work place they gained such extra things as paid health care, paid vacation time and paid sick time. They bargained for five-day work weeks and eight-hour work days. And child labor laws stopped employers from working children in their sweat shops.
But they always had to return to that grueling place on the assembly line, or at a desk in front of a computer, spending eight long hours of monotonously doing the same thing day in and day out just to earn what they need to pay the rent, buy food for the family, and keep the family car on the road so they can get to and from their jobs.
Were we always destined to live on this planet by the sweat of our brow? The Book of Genesis suggests a time when humans lived free in a plush garden where the climate was temperate and food was plentiful on trees and vines. But because of his "sinful nature," Adam and Eve disobeyed the Creator’s order not to eat fruit from the Tree of Life. The moment they ate of this fruit they were filled with wisdom.
As the tempting serpent described it: "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil."
Because they chose to turn from innocence and total dependence on the Creator, the Hebrew story says humanity was cursed to "live by the sweat of your brow" all the days of our lives.
The verse reads: "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow."
Now that is a really severe curse from a God that is supposed to love us and provide for his creation. And according to the story, it happened because this God placed two innocents in a beautiful garden with nothing to do with themselves except lie around, feed on the fruit of the land, and contemplate what would happen if they dared to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree planted in the center of their garden. We all know it was only going to be a matter of time before they dared each other to sample that forbidden fruit.
Thus it is obvious that if the Genesis story contains an ounce of truth, mankind was set up to fail from the start.
While we allegedly began our existence on this planet in a free state, the work of just staying alive has always been difficult. Seasonal changes, biting insects and storms meant we needed to find ways to cover our bodies and build shelters from the storms. We had to learn to either hunt or grow our food. Living as hunters and farmers has always involved hard work. But even in that state, there was a form of freedom of choice. Early humans wandered the globe looking for better climates, richer soil, and greener grass.
Eventually we developed a system of community living and working collectively to produce the food, building materials and clothing to meet our basic needs. This has been refined over the years until we came to the point we are at today, but because we invented money, we are caught up in constant conflict between the employers and the workers over the issue of distribution of the wealth.
Writer Nina Powers for the Guardian recently suggested that the concept of work may soon be considered obsolete. How can she come to this radical conclusion?
She wrote: "as wages bear less and less relation to the cost of living, it seems as good a time as any to ask if the underlying fantasy is that employers will one day be able to pay their workers nothing at all because all those issues like housing, food, clothing, childcare will be dealt with in another mysterious way."
Whether Powers was writing with tongue-in-cheek, she brings forth an interesting question. She wrote: "Some discussions at Occupy focused on what an anti-work politics might mean, and campaigns not only for a living wage but for a guaranteed, non-means-tested "citizen’s income" are gathering pace.
"As what it means to work becomes both more obscure and increasingly desperate, (now) might be the perfect time to ask what work is, what it means, and what it might mean to live without it."
Indeed, with so much unemployment raging in the world, a lot of people are learning the hard way how to live without having to get up every morning and go to a job, and also how to live without receiving a weekly paycheck. While unemployment insurance and welfare programs help soften this blow, there is a limit to how far this public assistance can go for the unemployed and homeless. Thus people are learning new ways to live without money.
Unfortunately, existing without money involves creativity, careful thought and usually lots of hard labor. People barter tasks for food and goods. They "dumpster dive" behind restaurants and food stores for meals. They garden on public lands for produce. And when all else fails, they steal.
As another new year falls upon us, we find ourselves in the midst of a dynamic shift in our lifestyle. There is an extreme conflict between the advent of robotics, or machines that do much of the manual labor, and Trumpism, the movement by corporate controlled legislators in Washington who seek to shut down all of the social assistance programs designed to help the unemployed and homeless.
As the number of homeless people fill the streets, many cities are struggling to deal with this growing problem. The solutions range from city-financed housing, the creation of "tent cities" and public showers and toilet facilities, to simply providing one-way bus rides out of town. But these are not solutions to this crisis.
With the advent of driver-less cars and trucks, people who make their living operating trucks and chauffeuring people around are already being replaced by machines. The Rolls-Royce marine unit in Norway is developing computer operated ships that will soon traverse the high seas, without crews. And with drone aircraft already filling the skies to conduct military missions and parcel deliveries, the concept of pilotless passenger aircraft cannot be far behind.
Looking at this problem from the eyes of the employers; labor costs have always been the bane of big business. And as robotic services become more readily available, we can be assured that if a robot can do a job, the job will soon disappear. Once the investment is made a robot will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week without demanding weekly paychecks, vacation days off or health benefits. The only problem will be occasional maintenance. Someone has to be around to grease the gears.
This may not be all bad. The concept of machines handling all of the hard manual and cognitive functions could be a key to an exciting future for humanity. It could lead to short work days, more free time for creative thought and expression, and a richer life-style for everybody. But to reach that state there has to be some major changes in the way our nation does its business. In fact, it calls for a brand new economic system, free of corrupt banksters and highly-paid CEOs intent on bleeding and enslaving the masses.
There needs to be a re-education of the people so that they no longer fear the concept of socialism. A socialistic system appears to be what it will take to guarantee everyone a universal basic income. Coupled along with this the world needs a solution to housing, health and nutrition needs.
Nils J. Nilsson, a professor of engineering in computer science at Stanford University, in a recent published paper addressing this problem, suggested things like a negative income tax, more entitlements, shorter workweeks and stock ownership by all of the people as possible solutions.
The late Jacque Fresco, a self-taught industrial and architectural designer, social and structural engineer, created what he called The Venus Project, an interesting futuristic plan designed to meet the world's changing social needs. He designed a city that offers a solution to problems of overpopulation, climate change and an alternative to the failing world systems of government.
The Fresco cities are built in circles, with a master computer in the heart, surrounded by schools and universities. This is surrounded by plazas where goods and services can be found, then agricultural areas, and residential neighborhoods beyond that. The homes are custom designed to fit individual life styles.
Everything in Fresco’s world is designed to self-replicate and repair in the event of accidental damage. Vessels at sea and high speed trains are designed with sections that can be lifted from the whole, with people and cargo unloaded. They are replaced by new sections thus speeding the trains and ships on their way.
There is no waste in Fresco's proposed world. Everything is recycled. In fact, every city has its own recycling system with utility pipes, wires and other services placed in the ground before the buildings are put in place.
By James Donahue
December 31, 2017
Slavery has been a way of life on Earth for as long as humans have recorded history. It has appeared in many forms . . . from the concept of one man owning another to serfdom under the rule of kings and assembly line workers laboring for whatever the employer chooses to pay.
Existence under slavery has always meant a life of hard labor and drudgery. Workers are owned by the master in one way or another. When jobs are plentiful and there is competition for skilled labor, workers can choose where they will work. But they always must work to live.
There has always been a quest for freedom. The founders of the United States declared their new nation "the land of the free." That slogan has remained with us, even appearing in the lyrics of the National Anthem. Americans consider themselves free, but free of what? They have been relatively free of tyranny and after a bloody fight to gain the right to have collective bargaining at the work place they gained such extra things as paid health care, paid vacation time and paid sick time. They bargained for five-day work weeks and eight-hour work days. And child labor laws stopped employers from working children in their sweat shops.
But they always had to return to that grueling place on the assembly line, or at a desk in front of a computer, spending eight long hours of monotonously doing the same thing day in and day out just to earn what they need to pay the rent, buy food for the family, and keep the family car on the road so they can get to and from their jobs.
Were we always destined to live on this planet by the sweat of our brow? The Book of Genesis suggests a time when humans lived free in a plush garden where the climate was temperate and food was plentiful on trees and vines. But because of his "sinful nature," Adam and Eve disobeyed the Creator’s order not to eat fruit from the Tree of Life. The moment they ate of this fruit they were filled with wisdom.
As the tempting serpent described it: "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil."
Because they chose to turn from innocence and total dependence on the Creator, the Hebrew story says humanity was cursed to "live by the sweat of your brow" all the days of our lives.
The verse reads: "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow."
Now that is a really severe curse from a God that is supposed to love us and provide for his creation. And according to the story, it happened because this God placed two innocents in a beautiful garden with nothing to do with themselves except lie around, feed on the fruit of the land, and contemplate what would happen if they dared to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree planted in the center of their garden. We all know it was only going to be a matter of time before they dared each other to sample that forbidden fruit.
Thus it is obvious that if the Genesis story contains an ounce of truth, mankind was set up to fail from the start.
While we allegedly began our existence on this planet in a free state, the work of just staying alive has always been difficult. Seasonal changes, biting insects and storms meant we needed to find ways to cover our bodies and build shelters from the storms. We had to learn to either hunt or grow our food. Living as hunters and farmers has always involved hard work. But even in that state, there was a form of freedom of choice. Early humans wandered the globe looking for better climates, richer soil, and greener grass.
Eventually we developed a system of community living and working collectively to produce the food, building materials and clothing to meet our basic needs. This has been refined over the years until we came to the point we are at today, but because we invented money, we are caught up in constant conflict between the employers and the workers over the issue of distribution of the wealth.
Writer Nina Powers for the Guardian recently suggested that the concept of work may soon be considered obsolete. How can she come to this radical conclusion?
She wrote: "as wages bear less and less relation to the cost of living, it seems as good a time as any to ask if the underlying fantasy is that employers will one day be able to pay their workers nothing at all because all those issues like housing, food, clothing, childcare will be dealt with in another mysterious way."
Whether Powers was writing with tongue-in-cheek, she brings forth an interesting question. She wrote: "Some discussions at Occupy focused on what an anti-work politics might mean, and campaigns not only for a living wage but for a guaranteed, non-means-tested "citizen’s income" are gathering pace.
"As what it means to work becomes both more obscure and increasingly desperate, (now) might be the perfect time to ask what work is, what it means, and what it might mean to live without it."
Indeed, with so much unemployment raging in the world, a lot of people are learning the hard way how to live without having to get up every morning and go to a job, and also how to live without receiving a weekly paycheck. While unemployment insurance and welfare programs help soften this blow, there is a limit to how far this public assistance can go for the unemployed and homeless. Thus people are learning new ways to live without money.
Unfortunately, existing without money involves creativity, careful thought and usually lots of hard labor. People barter tasks for food and goods. They "dumpster dive" behind restaurants and food stores for meals. They garden on public lands for produce. And when all else fails, they steal.
As another new year falls upon us, we find ourselves in the midst of a dynamic shift in our lifestyle. There is an extreme conflict between the advent of robotics, or machines that do much of the manual labor, and Trumpism, the movement by corporate controlled legislators in Washington who seek to shut down all of the social assistance programs designed to help the unemployed and homeless.
As the number of homeless people fill the streets, many cities are struggling to deal with this growing problem. The solutions range from city-financed housing, the creation of "tent cities" and public showers and toilet facilities, to simply providing one-way bus rides out of town. But these are not solutions to this crisis.
With the advent of driver-less cars and trucks, people who make their living operating trucks and chauffeuring people around are already being replaced by machines. The Rolls-Royce marine unit in Norway is developing computer operated ships that will soon traverse the high seas, without crews. And with drone aircraft already filling the skies to conduct military missions and parcel deliveries, the concept of pilotless passenger aircraft cannot be far behind.
Looking at this problem from the eyes of the employers; labor costs have always been the bane of big business. And as robotic services become more readily available, we can be assured that if a robot can do a job, the job will soon disappear. Once the investment is made a robot will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week without demanding weekly paychecks, vacation days off or health benefits. The only problem will be occasional maintenance. Someone has to be around to grease the gears.
This may not be all bad. The concept of machines handling all of the hard manual and cognitive functions could be a key to an exciting future for humanity. It could lead to short work days, more free time for creative thought and expression, and a richer life-style for everybody. But to reach that state there has to be some major changes in the way our nation does its business. In fact, it calls for a brand new economic system, free of corrupt banksters and highly-paid CEOs intent on bleeding and enslaving the masses.
There needs to be a re-education of the people so that they no longer fear the concept of socialism. A socialistic system appears to be what it will take to guarantee everyone a universal basic income. Coupled along with this the world needs a solution to housing, health and nutrition needs.
Nils J. Nilsson, a professor of engineering in computer science at Stanford University, in a recent published paper addressing this problem, suggested things like a negative income tax, more entitlements, shorter workweeks and stock ownership by all of the people as possible solutions.
The late Jacque Fresco, a self-taught industrial and architectural designer, social and structural engineer, created what he called The Venus Project, an interesting futuristic plan designed to meet the world's changing social needs. He designed a city that offers a solution to problems of overpopulation, climate change and an alternative to the failing world systems of government.
The Fresco cities are built in circles, with a master computer in the heart, surrounded by schools and universities. This is surrounded by plazas where goods and services can be found, then agricultural areas, and residential neighborhoods beyond that. The homes are custom designed to fit individual life styles.
Everything in Fresco’s world is designed to self-replicate and repair in the event of accidental damage. Vessels at sea and high speed trains are designed with sections that can be lifted from the whole, with people and cargo unloaded. They are replaced by new sections thus speeding the trains and ships on their way.
There is no waste in Fresco's proposed world. Everything is recycled. In fact, every city has its own recycling system with utility pipes, wires and other services placed in the ground before the buildings are put in place.