Basically, we get five years off from birth to the age of 5 because we're pretty useless workers. By age 5 or 6 we start our training. Companies of the world agree to allow that 15 years of downtime when we COULD be put to work, in order to make us better employees later in life. That's euphemistically called our education. Used to be just get your high school and you could move on to a good job. Nowadays it's almost mandatory to get some university education so we get a few more years of the good life before becoming the property of some company or other. Then you just work. For 50 years. That whole time we may get enough to have what we think is a "good" life with a home, a car, cable TV, but added in there are children. Future workers that we are responsible for overseeing while they're trained to put in their 50 years. We still only have 2 days out of 7 that are good ones, if we're lucky. You could look at that and say it's 28.5% of our lives that our owners allow us, but after we get the shopping, banking, kids activities, social responsibilities etc., taken care of, how much of the weekend actually IS what we call "me time?"
Is it any wonder that by the time most of us reach retirement, we're so used to being robotic workers, we're practically racing to the grave to escape the non-productivity of retirement? How many people reading this actually feel GUILTY when you're not busy? That's our programming. You can consider me a conspiracy theorist, and I am so you'd be right, but am I wrong on this? Are we not programmed to practically self-destruct if we're not doing something? "How are you? Keeping busy?" If we were not so well trained our answers to that would (and should) be, "Hell no! I'm doing nothing my friend!" But when was the last time you felt proud of doing nothing? Here's an extreme example:
It's extreme NOW, but this is where we're all heading. Japan may be the perfect corporate society. It's a bit of a long vid, but watch it and see how stupid we are. The subject of the video, if your owners have not allowed you the time to watch it, is how the Japanese are concerned with their declining birth rate. It's the same here in Korea. They are all told it's disastrous, but every time I leave my apartment I am slapped in the face with the nagging reality that Korea would be SOOO much better with fewer people! Japan is like that too. So why is it a "disaster?" It's bad for the companies. Less livestock. That is all.
In case you doubt this, watch this vid all the way to the end when there are a few brave people who talk about the overwork, "karoshi" culture and suicide rate in Japan. "Karoshi" is basically dying from overwork. And if they don't die, they commit suicide. Similar in Korea. These SAME people who are (acting) so concerned about declining birth rates affecting the happiness of the people, when confronted with this very real problem in their society, will generally say, "This does not exist. You are mistaken. We are all happy in our work. Look at our national joy!" Maybe joyless people don't multiply.
If you have the balls to actually TAKE your vacation even though you can see the boss looking favourably on the sycophantic employees who didn't and looking down his nose at you as he shakes your hand while saying, "Enjoy your vacation..." while invisibly stabbing you in the back with the other hand and thinking, "... you decadent, lazy, non-team player! I can find a thousand people right now who would forfeit their vacations for the privilege of having your job," just think how exponentially stupider that is when considering automation. It's coming, and instead of preparing for it by cutting workweeks and lengthening vacation time, two things the workers of the world have more than earned from the companies, well, a lot of companies are just going the exact opposite route because... GREED.
In an ideal society, large companies, not the workers, will have to PAY for automation. They don't just get to axe our jobs and put the extra livestock out to pasture where they'll eat all the grass in a day, then die of starvation. They have the responsibility of easing the machines into our lives. This will cost them money. The employees must still maintain their wages but work less. In our present corporate world, which is only getting worse, in which maximization of shareholder profit is the one and only thing that matters, and this is a socially acceptable virtue, machines, robots, computers are going to cost people jobs and put people in the poor house. We are told, and more importantly, we BELIEVE, that there is no alternative, but that's bullshit. Corporate bullshit. The smelliest kind.
SKhynix, where I used to work, has a great example. Not long ago, the computer chip factories that I live right across the street from (and smell when they're cooking chips) employed people to carry chips by hand from place to place. Now they have robots that do the same thing. The guys who work in this area at SKhynix will tell you that the robots are slower and less efficient. But that doesn't matter. They're doing the work more cheaply. You have electrical and maintenance fees, but compared to a worker's salary, those are much better... for the shareholders who care about nothing but money. But when you talk to the executives, which I used to do 5 out of every 7 days, they'll tell you that the very worst thing about these robots is that they have cost hundreds of people their jobs.
From what I learned while working with Hynix people, this is not a totally evil company. The employees who are let go (well executives anyway) are given a two year severance parachute package. I am not sure if chip movers get that deal or not, but if they did, it would give them a little bit more grass to graze on while they try to insert themselves back into a society with fewer and fewer (not to mention worse and worse) jobs available. The execs agree, this is reckless and irresponsible behaviour on the part of the company for whom a lot of these workers have worked ten, twenty, thirty or more of their 50 year terms. They should be treated better. And most, if not all of my execs agreed that if the company can't afford to take care of the employees instead of just heartlessly releasing them, then they should NOT use the robots. Problem is, exactly none of them have to balls to present this idea to management and owners because they'll lose their jobs.
Management and owners need to be forced to do what is right and the agencies who are the only ones who have ever succeeded at this, namely unions and government regulatory agencies, boards and commissions, are being systematically dismantled as part of our deteriorating global society. Will 2020 be the year we slide into another seemingly inevitable depression? I dunno, but HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!!!
Another way the whole world is getting stupider: online shopping. I have avoided getting a credit card my whole life... okay, I can't just pass this stupidity by. Before we get to online shopping, let's talk about credit cards, which are a necessary part of it. There's a word that Montgomery Burns and people of his ilk (or worse) don't want you to know about.
Usury. It's pretty high up there on the list of the most despicable things a person can do. Jesus himself was forgiving of murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and other criminals, but he thrashed the usurers. Scorn for moneymen has a long pedigree. Jesus expelled the moneychangers from the Temple. Timothy tells us that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Muhammad banned usury. The Jews referred to interest as neshek—a bite. The Catholic church banned it in 1311. Dante consigned moneylenders to the seventh circle of hell—the one also populated by the inhabitants of Sodom and “other practisers of unnatural vice." With credit card companies combining with the ingenuity of the financial minds who brought us credit default swaps and bundling to maximize the interest on credit card usage to well over 20%, and minimize the regulation, or what they'd prefer to call "government interference," credit card users really ARE being Sodomized.
But who among us doesn't have and use them? Even I, a lifetime boycotter of this evil, stumbled into one when I found out that the bankcard I got with my most recent Korean account is not an actual credit card but CAN be used as one on an increasingly large number of online shopping sites. (And I won't get into how stupid we continually are to just allow banks to be the holders of ALL of our money because I've blogged endlessly about that before. But with stupider and stupider ways to make us pay more to pay them more, it's still the stupidest thing we do.) My bank card actually worked as a credit card last time I was in Japan too. I saved the receipts because I wanted to calculate the exact rate of usury that was applied, but I lost them. I assure you that with the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to Japanese yen) plus a service charge on top of the interest rate, the "bite" VISA took out of me was probably closer to 40% than 20%. This is legal usury folks. Prove me wrong. So why do we allow it? In fact ENCOURAGE it by getting all the credit cards we can? Because we're stupid.
Okay, now for the online shopping. It is not by accident that I inserted the Simpsons and Jesus references above. For it was through the wanton desire to purchase a Simpsons related product, not for myself, but as a Christmas gift for two of my best friends, ONLINE, that the stupidity of online shopping was illustrated. And if you've known me a minute you know exactly NOTHING is illustrated to me the easy way. I have to go through some highly unlikely experience that sucks like a nuclear Hoover at the time, but makes for great blog fodder later. And here we have another. I saw a site through an internet ad (don't let me forget the next category of stupid: internet advertising) on Facebook called Toon Me On. It's a good idea but DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM.
I sent a pic of my friends Amber and DB to them. They were going to draw it in the style of the Simpsons then put it on a bag for Amber and a baseball cap for DB. Amber loves bags and DB collects ballcaps. I was all excited about it! I just KNEW they would LOVE these gifts. It was a great pic of them too. The site says that within a few days you will get a jpg of the drawing emailed to you. Delivery was going to take 3 weeks to a month but I had ordered well before Christmas so I reckoned they'd get here on time or early. Two weeks went by and I still hadn't received the drawing. I was noticing on the Facebook site of theirs that a lot of people were complaining about them being slow. I sent an email to their contact email address asking what the schedule was. I received a couple days later, "Working on it." Three weeks after ordering I started participating in the Facebook chat and got ANOTHER response, "Dave, what's your order number?" I replied, "1035." They did not reply. A month after ordering it was nearly Christmas and I had sent emails, Facebook questions, everything I could and they were just ignoring me.
I was supposed to be sent an email when my order was shipped. Still no email and it's been 6 weeks. The site is a scam. Trust me to find a site like this! 105 American dollars down the shitter. With the worst possible exchange rate (Korean won to US dollar), a service charge no doubt and the exorbitant interest rate. Plus on Christmas Eve, I had to go out and buy Amber and DB replacement gifts that were nowhere near as nice. I reported the site to a sort of online scam reporting site, but what the hell are they gonna do? It's probably some enterprising young Chinese capitalist trying to "teach" us stupid westerners the error of our ways. I've mentioned this before on this blog. The Chinese cheat generally has the same mentality as the western con man: they convince themselves that they are doing us a favour by scamming us so that in the future we won't be so trusting. It's how they can sleep at night. But in this instance I think this Toon Me On fraudster may have tuned me in. I had previously avoided online shopping the same way as I had the credit card. Because they're both STOOOOPID! Think about what we are doing!
If I asked 7 billion people around the world their top three secrets, just about every one of them who had a credit card would include that number as one of their top three secrets that they don't want anyone to know. In some cases that number is actually the same as their bank account number. With only this information, somebody could steal all your money for crying out loud! WHY are we so cavalier about just giving our credit card/bank account numbers to online sites? It really IS stupid and in my final email to this fraudster I actually said something to the effect of, "This was a really good scam! Congratulations and go fuck yourself."
Before I leave the topic, I have to mention the delivery of these online goods. Here they are just left on the floor behind an unlocked door where any Joe Blow can pick one up and walk away with it. In other countries, they're left on the doorstep. Now we have a new kind of criminal. What do they call them, Amazon porch pirates? 90,000 packages go missing daily in the US? Maybe this is just a really loud and clear message to us: stop being STUPID! Read this article. It makes some awfully good points about online shopping being just another way the internet is making us antisocial. Don't fall for the cooked up stats that say it's good for the environment. You KNOW credit card companies and Amazon can afford misleading studies like the ones tobacco companies used to pay for. Online shopping should only be done by people who don't have access to some products because they can't get out or they live in a place where they can't get that product. Otherwise, get off your lazy arse and go out. You'll feel better afterwards. You might even have to TALK to a friend or MEET a new friend. You may even help save a small business from getting absorbed into the burgeoning monopoly of Amazon.
Okay, on to internet ads. Do you remember way back when we thought that the internet was kinda like, sorta, almost, in some ways FREE? Yeah a long time ago. Like a few years back? Yeah. I member! D'you member? We could pay our 50 bucks a month and then we'd have all kinds of stuff available free! Free music, free movies, free chat sites, free information, libraries of free books, free news, free comedy, free videos of all sorts and, of course, free porn! Best 50 bucks of every month. Well it used to be anyway. Here's another phrase The Man doesn't want us to know: Bait and Switch. They get you hooked on the goods, and with the internet it didn't take very long, then they take it away. And we're so stupid we act like they're heroes and we pay these assholes money to give us back what we used to get for free.
I remember when I could go to Youtube and watch a video. That's it. Just watch a video. Those days are long gone. Now I go to Youtube and immediately have to scroll past a banner ad for some Korean shit. Often it has some music, and to say annoying Korean music would be redundant, that I have to mute. Then I type the song I'm looking for. It comes up. I click. An ad comes up. Five seconds later I get the option, and this is beautiful, the option to "skip ads." Oh and by the way, there's another little banner ad in the bottom left corner. I select "skip ads" and we go to ANOTHER fucking ad! Sometimes it's another 5 seconds until you can select "skip ads" or even more misleadingly, "skip all ads" again. And by the way, there's another small banner ad in the bottom left. Other times, especially if it's an Apple ad, the ad will play for its entirety. Sometimes 15 seconds or even longer. Then your song starts and I swear to GOD at a random time in your song there just might be ANOTHER AD!
My internet rates have not gone down since the addition of all these extra ads. In fact they've gone up a little. Ahh but have no fear fellow stupid people, there is a new and improved internet we can purchase for a little bit more that is almost completely ad free. The bait and switch. They're doing the same thing with clean air and water but that's been a longer and stupider process.
And now for the final example of the world's increased stupidity, the university/college degree. This could very well be considered a beautiful example of the bait and switch con. For years and years, and I do believe I even said so at the beginning of this post, it was nigh onto impossible to get yourself a decent shot at feeling a little better than some company's asset without one. In certain professions and certain specific institutes of those professions, this remains true. I gave an example in a recent post of a place where I was hired before, refusing to hire me for not having the same master's degree I didn't have when they hired me last time. This is a sign that employers are feeling like they are getting the upper hand in the power struggle between the worker and the employer. They are getting more brazen and even refusing to hide their power tripping, much like we can see from their political cronies nowadays. There was a time when they kept their abuse of the working man better hidden. But the steady erosion of government agencies and people's organizations that will do anything about it, has emboldened them.
In the university example, they are no longer shy about admitting true mastery of a skill, study or profession is meaningless. It's the purchase of a piece of paper denoting that mastery that is meaningful. The PURCHASE. After 20 years in the field, I am a master of teaching English as a second language. When I took my TESL certification a few years into my career, my teacher said I could teach the course and I have little doubt if I signed up for a masters in TESOL now it'd be the same thing. I'd be teaching the teacher as much as he/she would be teaching me. But that's not important. The important part of the transaction would be me paying some education business (college or university). That's what these institutes have become. Schools are businesses nowadays. And I can't teach at one until I pay my dues and bow to the powers that be, admitting that I literally buy into what they're selling. Like getting a credit card and online shopping, I have avoided this for a long time, but it might be another thing I get forced into. Why? Because I am stupid too! The world is stupid and I am stupid.
Happy stupid new year.
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