Sunday debate

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

Richard Buckminster Fuller

Let this sink in for a little while and note how it makes you think and feel. Then ponder my questions below or make up your own.

yellow

  • Do you find the idea repulsive, a lazy person’s manifesto?
  • Attractive but an impossible dream? (after all we need a roof over our heads, and somebody must collect the trash etc.)
  • How many people do you think enjoy having a steady employment vs. those who thrive on “having ideas” regardless of income but feel miserable in “some kind of drudgery”? Would it in fact even out without much hassle or would everybody want to be artsy fartsy useless buggers?
  • Would you feel exploited if you did in fact enjoy your day job, to finance the artsy fartsy buggers? And why, if you’re actually enjoying it and they wouldn’t?
  • What, in your opinion gives a person the right to exist and be happy (and have a roof over their head etc.)?
  • How could we even implement this without becoming a population glued to the tv and smoking weed 10 hours a day? Let’s pretend there was just food for everybody, what would happen?
  • Wealth distribution – can we rethink and redo, or are we doomed and determined to do what we’ve always done?
  • Which questions didn’t I think of and how would you reply?

I’d love for you to share your sentiments below and feel free to discuss amongst yourselves too. Just keep it civil, please.