Thank you for subscribing and always supporting me. I can’t thank you enough. Like, comment, share.
Immediately I alighted from a matatu, I strolled within our local open air market, casually peeking at a variety of items on display. I neither had a plan to buy nor sell; just a random, lazy walk. A walk in which no-where was the destination. Beside the road was a young man, in his mid-twenties, with a clawed right hand, a kind of congenital defect, I guess. He had treked some miles to pitch his 'office' by laying on the ground a white bag plus size. On top, a bushel of oranges, which I estimated to be worth $10, was stretched out. It was his networth. Yes, his whole networth.
Impressed by his decision to vend for himself, I bought half of the oranges, left a tip, began a tete-a-tete from local politics, downtown gossips, small talks to everything in between us. I couldn't help much but I admired his tenacity and resourcefulness. With nothing to his name but a flicker of hope, he turned despair into a possibility. He had everything to be desperate but chose nothing other than being productive.
I understand, all of us, we have been accustomed to be productive. Government wants us to be taxpayers. There is a complexity of bleeding expenses screaming for our attention. We live to work and we work to pay. We have key performance indicators measuring our input versus output. We have a salary scale separating us. On top of 24 hours, we have 7 extra hours. So we have a 24/7-hour economy running like a conveyor belt. We are, at all times, psyched to do more, produce more, and be more of ourselves. We require more time, more money, more raw materials and so on.
What's the economy for? To serve our perpetual existence as our human final endeavour. Not make money and get rich or just work to survive, though that's the case currently. Yet, this was only true during the eons period when the economy was like a natural social ecosystem. No one was superior to the ecosystem. No one maneuvered the ecosystem. Its equanimity propelled the hardworking poor up the social economic ladder. Only then when we evolved into the manmade system did we loose the sole essence of the economy. We lost the self-adjusting mechanics. Humans poisoned the natural ecosystem with greed, jealousy, fear, envy. And they encouraged consumerism to meet those greedy goals.
It takes magic, in this era, to be productive and useful when the current economic model is extractive and materialistic. So many activities are productive but do not add value. A gambler takes money from the many and give it to the few. Stock manipulation is what it is and we presumed it as the measure of economic progress. And now we are gearing up to the robots to replace us in almost everywhere we have laid our hands on. They're separate from us. They aren't part of the little things we care. The economics of the few rarely produces real value that lasts longer to benefit all. It can't be decentralized; it can't be diffused; it remains and circulates among the few who rarely adds value to the economy, yet what they accumulate isn't commensurate with their inputs.
I know we're a society obsessed with optimization, efficiency, and cost-benefit analysis. So, human labor that isn't fully used is encouraged to be more in the money model. If labour isn't streamlining operations, then it's a loss, so we presumed. If labour doesn't serve more profit we need, we can't think twice of dismissal. The further we lean in towards more efficiency, more optimization, and more profit, the further we alienate those whom we are supposed to protect.
However, there is still hope. Hope in which the unprofitable, as considered under the umbrella of the labor power, still have a role to play in the regeneration of capital. The exclusion from the economy isn't a problem of the disabled as has been the case. It was, I suppose, a structuring problem of the political economy, which in itself, was designed to prioritize extractive activities. While the disabled can still serve under the same money model, it makes sense to include their needs in urban planning and development. Like designing pro-disability market facilities. Serving with compassion. And on it goes.
I know it's easy to fall into a dog-eat-dog world. But, what does it imply to work for the collective good in an economy that favours rugged individualism, "a me-first approach"? It means to elevate the needs of somebody else above your own needs. We are in symbiotic relationships. And these relationships work best when we factor in problems of other people. It's a sort of a community. Yes, you can be useful to yourself only, but only for survival. But, it follows that you can thrive even more when you think of the welfare of others. Doesn't that make us who we're more; emphatic?
Agreed, although we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. The drive to improve one's lot in life is crucial to success, so there has to be some form of upward mobility, but all things need balance, and we are so far out of balance in the direction of greed that it's just silly.
Thank you, Edwin. What you are describing is what Robert Reich (and a large proportion of Americans) call the Common Good. Acknowledgement that if Homo sapiens wants to survive we must share evenly with others. The only way to achieve this is through a well regulated capitalism; such as we used to have in America, that is before the "me-first" generation took over in 1981.