There’s something I don’t understand about the cruelty we’re facing now. Used to be, you got up and worked hard most days because you had to. Because rich people made money from your labor, and set it up so you needed to work for them to survive. Massive unemployment, then, would have been lost money. People not working, people sleeping in, people having an easy day every day… that’s money the rich weren’t making. An inconceivable notion!
But today’s rich seem not to mind people not working. Not hating Mondays. Sure, they want the poor to starve and die, but SURELY people can starve and die while still making money for the rich, right? But today’s automation doesn’t mean people work in different jobs, it means people STOP WORKING.
How come our rich are so self-destructively stupid of late? So lacking in bloodthirsty greed, and only knowing blood-thirstiness?
blfsays
“Monday” is not a cheese, vin, band name, MUSHROOMS!, grog, cheese, known Universe, or moar cheese. It might be pea, and sounds like the name of a horse. Or a Doctor Who monster, “Adventures in Worse”.
The mildly deranged penguin postulates it is a corruption of “Moaned”, or possibly “I need cheese!”, undoubtedly a reference to the MOON (Massive Orbital Cheese Vault (the acronym is a result of poor cuneiformship). She points out that has lived in as, e.g., “the man in moon”, another possible corruption.
Amusing, the Online Etymological Dictionary notes: “Black Monday (mid-14c.) is the Monday after Easter day [so this post is perhaps a week early –blf], though how it got its reputation for bad luck is a mystery. Saint Monday (1753) was ‘used with reference to the practice among workmen of being idle Monday, as a consequence of drunkenness on the Sunday’ […]. Clergymen, meanwhile, when indisposed complained of feeling Mondayish (1804) in reference to effects of Sunday’s labors.” I suppose extorting a tithe can be imagined to be exhausting.
blfsays
In @4, please insert a “)” and replace an “in” with “on” wherever it makes you feel comfortable. You might even produce a version with fewer offerings to Typos.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem))says
nice to be retired, where monday is just another day same as the rest of them.
Even when I was working, Monday was the day to get back to normal after a weekend of !pressure! to enjoy myself, !pressure! to relax [aka oxymoronia].
Never understood the reaction most would express about Monday. I would just nod with sympathy on my face.
Jessie Harbansays
Being too disabled to work (or do much of anything), I find Mondays vaguely refreshing. None of the days are enjoyable, but the weekends are worse because all the offices I need to call in my increasingly-desperate attempts to apply for benefits are closed.
Monday reopens the offices, and if I have any extra spoons they’ll probably be on a Monday because I didn’t spend as many on the weekend.
Though for what it’s worth, no economic system is going to change the fact that goods and services require labor. Eliminating capitalism (and replacing it with what?) won’t change that; best case scenario, everyone will work shorter hours for more pay because the aristocrats won’t steal everything and maybe end up hating Tuesday or Wednesday depending on how those hours are distributed throughout the week.
davidnanglesays
Jessie @ 7,
“Eliminating capitalism (and replacing it with what?)”
We shouldn’t live and die by the billions with this crooked system for lack of imagination. It isn’t a hard problem, it’s just hard to enact a new system.
Firestartersays
This is cute, but plenty of systems that I don’t remotely hate have facets that I do. I love eating, but hate cooking. I love video games, but hate level grinding. I love modern medicine fixing my problems, but hate getting a root canal.
unclefrogysays
the problem isn’t Monday nor working .
it is feeling forced to do work you do not enjoy for enough money to live.
More money would help so would being treated with respect while working and being able to contribute to the decisions and processes involved. As would doing work you find interesting, engaging, rewarding and just plain fun.
then even very hard work can be fun.
uncle frogy
Jessie Harbansays
We shouldn’t live and die by the billions with this crooked system for lack of imagination. It isn’t a hard problem, it’s just hard to enact a new system.
But what system should we enact? How would it work?
Creating an extensive social safety net, guaranteeing free health care, education, and a universal basic income, abolishing inheritance of wealth, and enacting many consumer and environmental protection laws would do a lot to improve things, but technically we’d still have capitalism.
davidnanglesays
Money is a tool of the state* to enable and regulate an economy. Social Credit was partly defined, never refined, and only briefly practiced. That’s one concept.
* We are the state. If money is not aiding the people… ALL of the people, it’s not functioning correctly, and needs to be used differently. When it’s hoarded, it’s not fulfilling its function.
Oh! This all reminds me, I should share a thing I found which helpfully corrected some of the glibertarian worldview I had gotten tangled in. I doubt I agreed fully with every detail, but the main idea was one I had somehow mostly lost.
Plus it made a few other points that seemed novel and worth checking out. Though it also seems a bit repetitive, oh well.
*it covered key nuances too, which is probably what really cleaned up my brain. I’m not sure I bought what it was saying until it addressed the dissenting views.
There are lots of viably different approaches we could be taking. We don’t live in the best possible system, it has been kludged together over centuries, shaped mostly by the wealthy in the interest of their own profits. The idea that our liberal free market system cannot be improved upon, and that there’s no other reasonable way to more fairly manage resources is pretty silly.
Rey Foxsays
I wanna shoot, ooh ooh oooooh oooooh oooooooooh…the whole economic system down.
To protest capitalism, I never work on Monday. (Except when I have a dayjob.)
That’s wonderful!
There’s something I don’t understand about the cruelty we’re facing now. Used to be, you got up and worked hard most days because you had to. Because rich people made money from your labor, and set it up so you needed to work for them to survive. Massive unemployment, then, would have been lost money. People not working, people sleeping in, people having an easy day every day… that’s money the rich weren’t making. An inconceivable notion!
But today’s rich seem not to mind people not working. Not hating Mondays. Sure, they want the poor to starve and die, but SURELY people can starve and die while still making money for the rich, right? But today’s automation doesn’t mean people work in different jobs, it means people STOP WORKING.
How come our rich are so self-destructively stupid of late? So lacking in bloodthirsty greed, and only knowing blood-thirstiness?
“Monday” is not a cheese, vin, band name, MUSHROOMS!, grog, cheese, known Universe, or moar cheese. It might be pea, and sounds like the name of a horse. Or a Doctor Who monster, “Adventures in Worse”.
The mildly deranged penguin postulates it is a corruption of “Moaned”, or possibly “I need cheese!”, undoubtedly a reference to the MOON (Massive Orbital Cheese Vault (the acronym is a result of poor cuneiformship). She points out that has lived in as, e.g., “the man in moon”, another possible corruption.
Amusing, the Online Etymological Dictionary notes: “Black Monday (mid-14c.) is the Monday after Easter day [so this post is perhaps a week early –blf], though how it got its reputation for bad luck is a mystery. Saint Monday (1753) was ‘used with reference to the practice among workmen of being idle Monday, as a consequence of drunkenness on the Sunday’ […]. Clergymen, meanwhile, when indisposed complained of feeling Mondayish (1804) in reference to effects of Sunday’s labors.” I suppose extorting a tithe can be imagined to be exhausting.
In @4, please insert a “)” and replace an “in” with “on” wherever it makes you feel comfortable. You might even produce a version with fewer offerings to Typos.
nice to be retired, where monday is just another day same as the rest of them.
Even when I was working, Monday was the day to get back to normal after a weekend of !pressure! to enjoy myself, !pressure! to relax [aka oxymoronia].
Never understood the reaction most would express about Monday. I would just nod with sympathy on my face.
Being too disabled to work (or do much of anything), I find Mondays vaguely refreshing. None of the days are enjoyable, but the weekends are worse because all the offices I need to call in my increasingly-desperate attempts to apply for benefits are closed.
Monday reopens the offices, and if I have any extra spoons they’ll probably be on a Monday because I didn’t spend as many on the weekend.
Though for what it’s worth, no economic system is going to change the fact that goods and services require labor. Eliminating capitalism (and replacing it with what?) won’t change that; best case scenario, everyone will work shorter hours for more pay because the aristocrats won’t steal everything and maybe end up hating Tuesday or Wednesday depending on how those hours are distributed throughout the week.
Jessie @ 7,
“Eliminating capitalism (and replacing it with what?)”
We shouldn’t live and die by the billions with this crooked system for lack of imagination. It isn’t a hard problem, it’s just hard to enact a new system.
This is cute, but plenty of systems that I don’t remotely hate have facets that I do. I love eating, but hate cooking. I love video games, but hate level grinding. I love modern medicine fixing my problems, but hate getting a root canal.
the problem isn’t Monday nor working .
it is feeling forced to do work you do not enjoy for enough money to live.
More money would help so would being treated with respect while working and being able to contribute to the decisions and processes involved. As would doing work you find interesting, engaging, rewarding and just plain fun.
then even very hard work can be fun.
uncle frogy
But what system should we enact? How would it work?
Creating an extensive social safety net, guaranteeing free health care, education, and a universal basic income, abolishing inheritance of wealth, and enacting many consumer and environmental protection laws would do a lot to improve things, but technically we’d still have capitalism.
Money is a tool of the state* to enable and regulate an economy. Social Credit was partly defined, never refined, and only briefly practiced. That’s one concept.
* We are the state. If money is not aiding the people… ALL of the people, it’s not functioning correctly, and needs to be used differently. When it’s hoarded, it’s not fulfilling its function.
Oh! This all reminds me, I should share a thing I found which helpfully corrected some of the glibertarian worldview I had gotten tangled in. I doubt I agreed fully with every detail, but the main idea was one I had somehow mostly lost.
Plus it made a few other points that seemed novel and worth checking out. Though it also seems a bit repetitive, oh well.
*it covered key nuances too, which is probably what really cleaned up my brain. I’m not sure I bought what it was saying until it addressed the dissenting views.
@11: https://youtu.be/oB9rp_SAp2U
There are lots of viably different approaches we could be taking. We don’t live in the best possible system, it has been kludged together over centuries, shaped mostly by the wealthy in the interest of their own profits. The idea that our liberal free market system cannot be improved upon, and that there’s no other reasonable way to more fairly manage resources is pretty silly.
I wanna shoot, ooh ooh oooooh oooooh oooooooooh…the whole economic system down.
We need Unconditional Basic Income.