Okay one last quote:
“Perhaps a third of the population of Classical Athens was enslaved; they were integral to the city-state’s economy. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing, not only necessary, but expedient, wrote Aristotle; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.
Only a minority, the adult male citizens, could vote in the assembly. Just as women’s work at home gave men free time for public life, slavery provided the material basis for Athenian Democracy; the philosopher Bernard Williams argues that ancient Greeks were unable to imagine civilization without it. The effect of the necessity was, rather, he wrote, that life proceeded on the basis of slavery and left no space, effectively, for the question of its justice to be raised.”
Enslaved people and women have enabled our western opulence as much if not more than inventors.
We have a lot of enslaved-lite people now; part time gigs, warehouse madness, delivery nightmare. OnlyFans, Patreons and Substacks too I guess.
Enough money that it’s worth doing the work, not enough to keep doing it. Ad nauseam.
And women at home, still! I’m sorry y’all (not with me though, stay safe).
Sure enough, we’re in the world of machines being dedicated to us now. Right?
So if we depend on machines more and more, and we sure do, the question of justice rises and needs to be answered once and for all. Productivity’s gains since the 1970s thanks to tech have never been properly re-distributed. Let’s start there.
We can’t help ourselves through individual capitalism. Every single family in America has two or three vacuum cleaners, right? There’s nothing to buy, really. Homeless folks streaming music with ads, it’s a new world. Tech is going all in with subscriptions, leaving no space for anyone starting a business. VC money can’t just float everything up. And, the craziest think to me is how everything is so volatile: all new markets or ideas become commodities in like, 18 months these days.
Please discuss those UBI ideas with your friends and families. We need a government that makes sense and acts on that. There’s literally no other solution.