While reading your excellent summary of the history of working conditions In the United States, it occurred to me that the new normal is a lot like the old normal, only different. In two or three generations, working conditions seem to have come full circle. The working people were downtrodden, they rose up, and now they are downtrodden again. What's different is that being downtrodden today is not nearly as bad as being downtrodden a hundred years ago, but it's all relative. Everything was worse a hundred years ago than it is today, so you can't compare to that. It's more relevant to compare to what it was 50 years ago, which was the middle of the cycle, if it is, indeed, a cycle. There is no guarantee that what happened before will happen again, although it seems likely because most things do go in cycles. The thing about a cycle, though, is that it's not necessarily a circle, it could be a spiral or a wave type of thing. I hope that I'm making sense to you, because I am starting to confuse myself.
If you think of labor as a commodity, it's affected by supply and demand like most other commodities. During World War II and the Vietnam War, lots of young men were off fighting the wars, which constricted the supply of labor and made it more costly. Another factor was that, after World War II, most of the industrial capacity of Europe and Asia was in ruins, which created a big demand for American production. Europe eventually rebuilt, and Asia rebuilt and kept on going to exceed all previous levels. Looking back on it now, everybody should have known that what we had after the war was not sustainable, but hindsight is 20-20.
Like you said before, people are just highly evolved animals. Like the coyotes, we all have to make our living as best we can. You can't blame the coyotes for eating your sheep, but that doesn't mean you have to like it or be resigned to it. Now you might think that, if you regularly put out food for the coyotes, they would leave your sheep alone, but that's not how it works. All that food will just attract more coyotes and encourage them to breed in your neighborhood. Before long it will cost you so much to keep the coyotes fed that it would be cheaper to just let them have the sheep. Then you wouldn't have to feed the sheep anymore, or the coyotes either. Going out of the sheep business means that you have to find another way to make a living for yourself, and your new business will surely have problems of it's own. Is there any way out of this mess?
I tell you, what we need is a way to make money that is not dependent on other people. I've been racking my brain since the paper mill closed trying to come up with something, but I am no closer to it now than I was 23 years ago. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. When you think of it, there would be no money without people because money was invented to facilitate trade and, without people, there would be nobody to trade with. Maybe we should be trying to find a way to live without money at all. Just because others have tried it and it has never worked very well doesn't mean that it can't be done. Maybe they didn't do it right, or they overlooked some key component in the process.
I have never been what you would call a materialist. I don't have nearly as much stuff as a lot of other people, and I don't really want any more stuff than I already have, but I don't want to give up any of my stuff either. We shouldn't have to give up our comfortable lifestyle anyway, the whole purpose of living without money should be to remain just the way we are, or even get better. I'm not selfish about it either. If I discovered a way to live comfortably without money, there would be no point in selling the idea to anybody, so I would freely share it with anybody who was interested. Now that's the way to eliminate poverty! If you define poverty as the lack of money, then we would all be poor, but it wouldn't matter because we'd have all the stuff we needed.
Well, all this thinking has made me tired, so I'd better sleep on it for awhile and get back to you. Have a nice weekend.
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