Previously on “Drunk Thoughts”
Last night I consumed a pint of Christian Brothers® brandy from Royale Junior Liquor Market and sat down to determine my position on global capitalism and the future of the labor market. This was not inspired by Drunk History:
There are three people who want a job for every job. This doesn’t count people who said “fuck it” and just left the workforce. People underemployed, part time, cleaning toilets with a lit degree.
We don’t make anything physical in America now. The thing we do make, computer code– Mark Zuckerberg is lobbying congress so he can import labor for it. Otherwise he might have to train people. Those people might take that training and do something with it other than make him richer. Can’t have that.
It will get worse. Practically, there will be no jobs soon. First you will be replaced by cheap overseas labor. Then cheap overseas labor will be replaced by robots.
We hear this and we ask: but what will we do for work?
How will we be slaves?
Everyone is broke and underemployed. Leadership gets elected by promising them jobs. We’re gonna put this great nation back to work. America is a great nation. But Americans are fucking cretins. Who will create jobs? Nobody. Real jobs are gone forever. And all real jobs ever did was murder your life to make some jerkoff richer. Don’t demand jobs. Demand money. Take your jobs and shove them right up your ass.
Every other first world country, this is how it works: when people protest, they demand money. Social programs. Redistribution. We then look down on them. Lazy communist freeloaders. Not like me, I’m the most dedicated free market smoker of grisly millionaire cock in the world, sir. I’ll clock hours I don’t bill for, sir; I’ll get my hand chopped off by sheet metal and won’t sue. I’m happy never to see my kids, sir. To drink cheap beer in front of the TV as my dead-eyed wife snores under the Afghan; once she’s good and passed out I’ll sneak on the internet and pump one off to some Creampie Thais, sir. Thank you so much for making these quality electronic goods so affordable. I’m the best worker bee you’ll ever have, sir, not like these lazy Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese who want to take an hour– an hour! away from work and drink tea and have siestas. Not like these socialist bums who demand a pension, sir, sick time, sir, vacation, sir– I will suck your musky corporate dick and tickle your smelly gray balls for a free market driven wage, sir. A free market driven wage in a free market that now includes places where you can dump mercury in the well next to a schoolhouse. Places where the water gives you worms. Where young people fight to the death over the right to sleep forty to a room in windowless bunkers that stink of farts, spend their free market wage on speed to stay awake so their head doesn’t droop down into panes of iphone glass whizzing by, molten baths of solder. That is your wage competition. People one generation removed from their life savings being a water buffalo. Zero generations removed from selling their daughters. Their organs.
Well these people work hard, not like you coddled college kids. I dare you whiners to try picking strawberries for one day, ya bums! And we pay ‘em two dollars an hour because YOU want cheap strawberries. They line up to get it! Look at your fancy new phone! Ha! What if that phone cost more? You wouldn’t like that, would ya?
Yeah, I’m sure picking strawberries sucks. And I don’t deserve to eat any more than the pickers do, or the kid at the phone factory does. But it’s a moot point. Once two lines cross each other on a graph at Consolidated Strawberry International, it’ll be a machine picking those suckers. Anything that grows on a tree they already shake off with a machine. They’ll make one that works on a bush. Stoop labor will be in the same boat as the rest of us. Useless. If you don’t work you are useless. It is useless to just be a human being.
Work will go to the third world, then to the machines. Then get one of them STEM degrees, why don’t ya? Tell the robots what to do!
That’ll last you for a bit. Then the robots will be told what to do in India. Then the robots will tell themselves what to do. The Prime Directive will be to get a hold of whatever anyone else has left and funnel it to the Walton family.
There is not enough work now and there never will be again. They will figure out how to ship everything to the Third World. Once they get uppity, everything that can be automated will be. Governments might resist. But corporations don’t give a fuck about governments anymore. They are global. They will take their money wherever they can fuck people the most. Plenty of hungry holes on this planet. Apple is an Irish company now. So is facebook. No taxes in Ireland apparently. Fiddle dee fuckin dee. Every cruise ship ad says “ships registered in Liberia.” It’s not because of Liberia’s rich naval history and stringent maritime safety laws.
Companies will go where they can, do what they can, to fuck the most people the hardest. They must. They have an ethical obligation to maximize short-term gain for shareholders. A fiduciary duty to screw their customers and employees as much as they can get away with. Cut costs. Cut services. Cut bloat. You are bloat. Labor costs are a thing they tear their hair out over. Used to be taxes, too. But they bought governments and laws. They made taxes disappear. Soon they will buy robots and make you disappear. You and your simpering demands for food, medicine and leisure. If they pay you, they hate you. They want to make you go away. They will succeed.
Then what.
Unless you inherited something, you own nothing. And you never will. You own debt. The bank owns you. You get a bill every month for what you “own” and you better work to pay it. So much for your assets.
What the fuck happens when nobody does anything anymore? We gotta start figuring this shit out now. You won’t be growing your own food. Every piece of arable land in the country is owned by one corporation. That’s an exaggeration, but just barely. So what will all these people do? What will they be for?
I don’t know– fucking. Singing. Swimming in the creek. Playing board games. Jerking off between rounds of robot built Playstation 15. This idea of the nobility of work– “the pride of having a job”– kill it. It’s a relic of the witch-burning 1600’s freaks who poisoned this country from the get go. The puritans believed toil was sacred. They also believed in the death penalty for masturbation. Fuck those Thanksgiving decoration-looking prigs and everything they stood for.
What will I do for work? Forget that. How about this instead– hey rich man: give me free money. Hey government: use your force monopoly to take the Waltons’ dough and guarantee everyone a living for doing nothing. Kill the welfare bureaucracy and replace it with a straight check. 25 grand a year tax free for every human being over 18. If you want more you can work. Good luck with that. I’ll be jerking off.
It’ll never happen. Capitalism will burn to its natural end. Five families will own the Earth. Rest of us will be fucked. You won’t get a job cleaning their toilet. You won’t even be able to sell them your daughter. There will be robots for that.
We’ll be useless. Worthless. Or, we’ll be worth the value of our organs to the Waltons and Mark fucking Zuckerberg the 5th. Christ wept.
Fuck man, I better get more booze.
