Percentages

As a rule I don’t post things about work up here. I also try and post things relevant to my life (it’s my server space after all). But sadly, most of my life has been consumed by work-related drama lately, so it’s quite difficult to sit down and crank something out for the site that has nothing to do with my professional life. Hence the low traffic this week.

So without violating those rules I must say, it’s a curious thing, this capitalistic system we’ve forced our selves into. Pay to go to school, to get the money to get the car so you can drive to work to pay to get the things you want that break or wear out so you get to work harder to replace them. And repeat.

Alarmingly, according to my social Security statement, which came in the mail today if i earn at the same pace I’m going for another 37 years, the government will pay-out about half of what I’m making now (this provided that the avian flu or the republicans don’t get us first). What will half my salary now be worth in 2046, I wonder. A loaf of bread?

So where’s the reward? What am i working for? The system seems like an infinite logic loop that only leads to a system failure at the end (think Windows 95). Except the crashes are at the expenses of thousands of hours of real people’s time. Is the work we do enriching peoples lives, changing the planet, elevating our society? Mine’s not, how about yours – and more frighteningly, do we even care? Consider that time is the most precious thing someone can have, and people are our most precious resource – by the transitive properties the cumulative waste of our lives in this system is monumentally mind blowing.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to go back to being a hunter/gatherer, but at the same time i think we’re smart enough to see when a system is broken. The question is what will the answer look like.