113 – Bullsh*t Capitalism (transcript) (Patreon)

By Sam

There are those who'll always say, no matter how efficient the financial markets are, no matter how much automation there is, the outcome will always be the same: more jobs and more human prosperity for all. But if more jobs are created by greater efficiency, then what's the difference between efficient and inefficient? Because efficiency is supposed to mean fewer people for more work. 

For example, a computer that replaces everyone's job would mean greater efficiency. So we've all been sold a bill of goods, there's less real work out there but we're constantly being told "No, you're wrong. Greater efficiency is creating more jobs. Don't trust your eyes!"

And though over the past century there has been a dramatic decrease in productive jobs, there has also been a proliferation of bullshit jobs. Jobs that basically do nothing of actual use. The answer to greater efficiency replacing real jobs was to create more fake jobs. Then capitalism sounds a lot like our stereotypes of communism, doesn't it?

Anthropologist David Graeber talks about this in his book "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory." But really, social critics, behavioral economists, and even guilt-ridden technologists have been talking about this for hundreds of years.

Think about this, we live in a modern society that has penicillin and self-driving cars, yet still pays people to handwrite reports that don't need to be written.

Or how about writing emails about emails and setting meetings about meetings? And all this just creates more emails and more meetings. Or how about whole industries that should go away because of greater efficiency that won't because their corporate lobbyists and lawyers keep fighting to keep their industries alive? Even though no one needs it anymore? Then it's no longer a bullshit job but a bullshit industry. The difference is, in this corporate communism, the people don't benefit, only big corporations do.

The system is rigged to keep bullshit alive and well. But to keep this long-con running, you have to pretend to be working. Just as a rich dad will tell his son who he makes VP of bullshit, "Could you at least pretend to be working?" Which really means, "Don't make it so obvious. Otherwise, regular people will see through our bullshit and turn against us."

It's routine for conmen to rent out office space and hire employees to look like they're actually doing something. But it's all for show. But we think it's only conmen and money launderers when the whole economy is a long-con. But so long as you put some petty criminals away on occasion, it makes the rest of the industry seem legitimate.

According to Graeber, two out of every five jobs are bullshit. We're forced to sit at work because we aren't allowed to leave early or do our work remotely from home, basically wasting time we could be using on things we actually enjoy. It's a bullshit version of universal basic income, which I call arbitrary bullshit income, where they want you to do bullshit before they give you money. But who gets this bullshit income or the amount you get is also completely arbitrary. Society today is full of pointless, bullshit jobs. Is capitalism as efficient as we think? No. And it never was and it never will be because self-interested rich humans are in charge of it.

Many economists of the early 1900s, in particular, John Maynard Keynes, believed that by the twenty-first century, we'd be so advanced and efficient, that most countries would adopt a 15-hour workweek. That we would have some sort of benevolent automated luxury capitalism.

Nope. Not even close. The actual productive work being done probably takes a combined 10 hours a week. However, most people are still forced to do overtime. Technology and efficiency advanced further than what Keynes and others had imagined. However, their idea about work hours also becoming more efficient along with everything else... dead wrong. These ideas came before the study of behavioral economics, which essentially debunked all of capitalist theory. 

Capitalism assumes humans are rational, and even more rational as a group, behavioral economics proves this is not true. You would think this was common sense. This is why the markets are so unpredictable because humans are unpredictable. Yet when we think of capitalism, we pretend behavioral economics doesn't exist. That human behavior doesn't matter. It's like pretending the Earth is flat. Which many still do because they get paid so much to say so.

It's a runaway system and the number of bullshit jobs is only rising. We're inching closer and closer to the world of George Jetson. Remember George Jetson from the cartoon? All he did for a living was press the same red button over and over again. But that button did absolutely nothing. Yet he had to stay late and work overtime to keep pushing that button. That button-pushing job that did nothing caused George constant stress!

The number of people working in farming, manufacturing, domestic service, and industry, has plummeted since the 1910s. Meanwhile, professional, managerial, sales, and service jobs have tripled in the same period and now account for 75% of all American jobs. So in basic terms, we have more paper pushers than actual paper.

Forget about jobs going overseas, the US has become so efficient through new innovations, streamlined systems, and automation, that most productive jobs are no longer necessary. So rather than paying people more to work less, the economy got more creative in inventing bullshit jobs to fill the gap. All jobs that didn't exist until very recently, and we all lived fine without them.

And though these jobs tend to be white-collar and high-paying, they aren't actually necessary like janitors, health care professionals, and city employees are necessary. I mean, would your life be any different if lobbyists and hedge fund managers didn't exist? Actually, yeah. It would probably be better.

If you haven't gotten the picture by now, bullshit jobs are jobs that are pointless. We no longer value jobs on utility, but rather on the salary. So a bullshit job that pays well is valuable; a janitorial job that doesn't pay well is not valuable. We don't pay for usefulness but the opposite. This current system rewards people for doing nothing. You think only the government does that? The economy does it even better because the private sector always does everything better than the government. Right? And when we think system, we always think government, but that's only a part of the system. It's the only one we focus on because it's the only one we can do something about. We have no power in electing CEOs or lobbyists or lawyers. But the system we have no control over is the one we should fear, and not the system beholden to we the people.

The fear we had with communism is alive and well with capitalism. Because that fear of communism is a fear of human nature, but with fewer regulations, they're freer to do that scary thing you were fearing in the first place. Taking from you and giving it to themselves. But, for whatever reason, if they seem fancy, we're okay with it. If they look poorer than us, we get mad.

Wait, so I get it, taking from you, and giving it to others is no good. But fancy rich people getting it is more palatable than those who actually look like they need it getting it? Okay. Yeah. Sounds reasonable.

A 2013 YouGov poll in Britain found that 37% of employed people believed that their jobs weren't meaningful and contributed nothing to the world. Similar polls in other countries had even higher figures.

But the American dream IS bullshit jobs. We want to pay our dues, put in the grind, to hopefully one day get to middle management, and get paid to do nothing. Or chase your dreams and do nothing of value and hopefully get famous for it. Kim Kardashian is queen in the world of bullshit.

If a teacher's union goes on strike, we don't hate on the overabundant amount of highly-paid administrators who do nothing—who are also protected by the union—we hate on the teachers, who actually do something, like teach our children. We do this because most of us don't want to be teachers, but we do hope one day to have that cushy desk job that oversees people who actually work. So we want to protect it so it's there waiting for us someday. Why attack our carrot on a stick? Let's instead attack the mule with the stick. And when there are no more teachers, we'll blame the teachers.

Same with doctors, we complain they get overpaid and ignore all the hospital administrators and the people who actually make millions running the hospital. Because we might never get the education to be a doctor, but if we put in the grind, we can conceivably be a high-paid hospital bullshit artist. Stick with something and we know it's possible to keep failing up.

And even if our jobs aren't wholly bullshit, that doesn't mean a big chunk of it isn't. When we're sitting there, wondering why the hell we can't just get up and go home because we have nothing to do, that's the bullshit part of our jobs.

Now, let me clarify something: hard & difficult jobs where you clean toilets or pick up trash, it's gross and doesn't pay nearly enough. Yes, this isn't a great way to spend your day. But is it bullshit? No. Because you're actually doing something of value. Could an office survive without maintenance? Not for long. Could it survive without an HR assistant or a brand ambassador? Yes.

In "Bullshit Jobs," you meet Kurt. Kurt works for company C that's contracted by company B that's contracted by company A. This is super common in corporate waste.

So whenever company A needs to move a computer down the hall, an employee at company A has to fill out a form, then that form is sent to company B, which then must approve the request to move the computer, then company B requests company C, Kurt's company, to move the computer. Kurt, then, has to drive nearly 300 miles to company A, but the drive is charged to company B, who tacks on fees and charges it back to company A. When Kurt arrives at company A, he has to sign some paperwork, pick up the computer, then ask someone from company B to actually carry the computer down the hall, to set it up in a new office in company A. All this bullshit and 600 miles round trip, just to move a computer 20 yards. This is peak middleman where the middlemen also have middlemen. It's like a consultant who hires a consultant but charges it back to their client. Believe it or not, this IS business as usual.

This costs everyone a lot of money, and Kurt gets paid a lot to do something utterly pointless. But this isn't just Kurt, this is becoming the nature of jobs. Giving people spoons to dig a ditch that doesn't need to be dug, just to give them jobs to do. We have a romanticized idea about how well businesses run, but we're mistaken.

What's frustrating about these jobs is, you can't really tell people how bullshit it is. You have to pretend it's important so that you can keep the job. This keeps your bosses happy and helps to maintain whatever self-respect you still have.

How many jobs exist just to be the liaison between the boss and the people who have to do the actual work? Who acts as a gateway between the people at the bottom and the boss, just so the boss doesn't have to interact with them directly? Just so they can feel important? And usually, they call these middlemen, executives, or VPs. And they get paid ridiculous salaries. Because the head boss feels better the more cronies he or she has working underneath them and the further he or she is away from the bottom. It's like a paper pusher hiring middlemen to keep them far away from the paper. So the boss tells the liaison to write something on the paper who tells another person who tells another person until finally, the person at the bottom does it. Then the bottom person tells the previous person that they're writing on the paper, which is told up and up the ladder until it finally gets to head paper pusher. What a circle jerk.

I have a friend who gets emails from her boss, telling her what needs to be done, and then she regurgitates that message to the people below her to do. Then when they tell her about the progress, she regurgitates it back to her boss. Yet she would complain about too much work and not enough pay. Meaning she wanted millions for her email exchanges, not just high six figures. I mean, what the fuck? This is capitalist efficiency? That's some fucking expensive emails.

Imagine hiring my friend for a small company. She would put the company out of business. Whenever they needed her to do something, she would hire some other company to do it for her and make herself the liaison. Unless you have an unlimited budget, this is not sustainable. But as these megacorporations grow in size, they basically do have unlimited budgets.

Whenever someone brags about how good they are at delegating, they probably have a bullshit job.

Sometimes having a lot of employees and an inefficient company is all about ego and self-image. The boss wants an entourage, just as feudal lords once had. How can you call this crony capitalism when this is the only capitalism we've ever had. This is not an abnormality, this IS the norm.

Look around. How many jobs are ornamental? How about someone just to open your door or operate an elevator. How about being a receptionist for an office that gets no calls? Unless your office is consumer-facing, it probably doesn't need a receptionist. Yet they have them anyway. Just to sit there and make the company look important... if anyone were to ever walk in. We think only fronts for illegal businesses and money laundering or scammers have employees just for appearance sake, but no, that's all very normal. Or maybe most of the economy is just a scam.

And if someone off the street did ever walk in, the receptionist would probably have to tell them to leave. The only person who can appreciate these decorative jobs is the boss. It says, look at me now, I'm living large.

Imagine working for a big ad agency. If a client calls the agency, they call someone directly, not a receptionist. And since the clients are so big, the ad executives will either go to the client or walk the client into the office when they arrive. (Or send one of their assistants or unpaid interns to do it.) Then what's the point of a receptionist? Yet they all have them. So do publishing companies that would never take calls from regular people looking to get published. When I asked an ad exec why their office has a receptionist when it doesn't need one, she said it would just be weird not to have one. Okay... just so people won't be weirded out, let's create an unnecessary job. Hopefully, they let the receptionist do whatever she wants with her free time. Unfortunately, they rarely do that. Usually, you're forced to sit there and do nothing.

I once worked at a talent agency that had a receptionist. What they do is get jobs for established actors. So no one should ever be walking in or calling for representation. That was a rule. They courted you and not the other way around. So of course, my whole time there, I never saw the receptionist answer one call. She was there purely to make the agency look fancy. Which is why no one looked at her resume, but only at her attractiveness. My former boss called her "eye candy." That's not only a tactic for conmen, messing with our psychology is a feature of corporate America. But then is it any wonder, if bad people hire someone purely for show, they'll try to use and abuse them for their appearance.

Hollywood, in particular, is notorious for having jobs just for appearance sake. What does a manager do? Not much. But a manager does make a would-be actor feel fancy. What does a writer's assistant do? Writes down everything that's said in a writer's meeting. Could a computer program do that? Yes, and it probably wouldn't miss anything either. So why have a writer's assistant? It makes the writers feel fancy.

One could argue, the writer's assistant is there to learn how to be a writer. Then why not create a legitimate apprenticeship program instead of creating a servant's position and calling it an assistant? Where the assistant is always too busy to actually learn anything or ask questions? What kind of training program is this? It's like trying to convince me that photocopying pictures of paintings is the best way to train future artists. Get the fuck out of here. They spend more time getting coffee than they do learning how to write.

When I worked in the mailroom of the talent agency, my job was to take a pdf attachment we received by email and then print it out. Then make dozens of copies, bind it, and then hand it out to the assistants so they could give it to their agents. I could have just forwarded the PDF, or in fact, the PDF could have been sent directly to each of the agents. But that's not how things are done. Instead, the norm is to hire people to solve problems that don't need to exist. Some people get paid to photocopy all day, or to print out emails for their bosses, or to create paper files for electronic documents, just to file them away, when they're already filed away electronically, on the cloud, and several different servers.

But here's an ordinary one for you. Reports. Entering things into reports that even a simple Google add-on application could do for you automatically... for free. Yet millions of people do this, enter stuff into reports that a software could do better and automatically, just to create reports that no one ever reads.

How many tasks are there solely for shits and giggles? Just to tick a box off and say, yep, we have that covered. We don't need to have it covered, but we do anyway. Just because we have so much excess money.

There are people who get hired by food companies to throw away perfectly good food so no one can eat it. Clothing brands that have people burn their products rather than give it away to the needy. They have excess, and they bullshit it away instead of sharing that excess. Why pay more taxes to help society when you can use that same money and then some for bullshit? I mean, that would make too much sense, right?

When I worked as a bank teller, there were many days where we had more bosses than we had actual tellers. The overabundance of pointless managers and supervisors creates unnecessary conflicts. Because you have two different bosses who basically do the same thing, both sharing one employee, you can have one boss tell you to do something, and when you do it, it upsets your other boss. It's stupid. 

Where can you find a league with more coaches than players? And one where the coaches for the same team are competing against each other? That's corporate America.

In "Bullshit Jobs," you meet Alphonso, and he's in charge of a team of translators who don't need managing. So Alphonso, like many of us, fills his days with busywork and constant email checking to make himself look busy. And when he gets home, like many of us, he doesn't know how to stop trying to look busy and checking his emails for no reason. He always feels like he has to pretend because he always feels like he's being watched.

We do busywork to keep ourselves occupied because that's what we've been conditioned to do. Find something to do. No one said, find something useful to do. We have a busyness mindset. We can't relax because we've been taught to always look for bullshit to do that does not need to be done. Why? Because a free and free-thinking society is dangerous to those already in power.

Yet even though bullshit jobs is the American dream, when we finally get there, the false sincerity and lack of purpose just make us depressed and anxious. It sucks our soul dry.

In that previously mentioned YouGov poll, along with the 37% who found their jobs pointless, another 33% found their jobs personally unfulfilling. So you either feel like your job doesn't do anything, or you feel like your job does do something but it still makes you feel like shit.

It's a rarity to find anyone really happy with their bullshit jobs. Yes, all 100 of those emails are urgent and important. Keep believing that.

One reason we hate bullshit jobs is the falsity, pretending nothing is something for a living. Look at call centers where employees have to make cold calls to people to sell them products they don't need? Or have them pay for things that they could easily get for free?

Or to add another layer of bullshit, you call on behalf of the actual salesperson, to make the salesperson seem more important. You're not even the bullshit, you're the bullshit before the bullshit. You'll see this often in the financial sector, where half the people who work for a financial firm exist to make the person they report to appear more important and powerful, and in demand. And the person they report to is not needed by society anyhow, so what's your value if you're the assistant to the bullshit? Some think you can't go below 0 and that's not true, that's what negative numbers AKA debt is called. And when we pretend debt doesn't exist, that's called inflation.

Psychologist Karl Groos, in 1901, found that babies experienced great happiness when they saw their actions led to a predictable impact. Something like a rattle, shake it, and it makes a sound. This is the pleasure of discovering you're the cause of something cool. It feels good to have an impact, and it feels terrible when you're completely invisible, even if you get paid well. Unless you have no soul, that is. And lots of people don't. I've had plenty of soulless bosses.

Why do billionaires to lottery winners continue to work even though they don't need to? Because they want to be doing something. It's not just for the money, it's also for mental health. This is why in particularly grueling and pointless work, you find high levels of depression and suicide. Imagine that, right? Not only is your job useless, but you're also expected to work 100 hours a week under a massive amount of bullshit pressure, harassment, and abuse. So you have to pretend this pointless job is essential because no one wants to admit the whole thing is pointless. That would mean your abuse had no meaning. But that kind of thinking only keeps the bullshit machine going.

You're working 100 hours a week as a development exec for another random production company working on creating another reality show. Do we need another bad reality show? No. But is your job stressful anyway? Yes. Does your company need 20 other people who do the same thing you do to give 20 different notes for the same project? Also no. But does that make things more competitive? Affirmative. It's not even survival of the fittest because there is no sacred resource you're all fighting for. It's not like you're all fighting over a steak, you're all fighting over an imaginary bullshit steak. You're all fighting over something that doesn't exist, probably will never exist, and even if it did exist, no one will probably like it.

So you're stuck in a box, you can't eat healthily or eat at home, and you're no longer a free-range animal. Your pet may get more freedom of movement than you. Actually, since you're so busy, you try to raise your dog like it's a cat. And you tell yourself this is not abusive because all your coworkers do the same. Telling yourself that only makes YOU feel better, not your dog. Just hope no one calls animal protection on you for neglecting your dog and trying to make it poop in a litter box.

You don't get beat, you aren't a slave, yet companies rent you by the hour, to do pointless work. And we may not know this consciously, but our soul knows, and it's depressed. You're owned by the hour and that hour is owned by your company. Maybe slave isn't the right term, perhaps prostitute is more accurate. Prostitute doesn't have to mean sex worker, it just means slave by the hour.

Even though there's less actual work being done and technology has made things more efficient, we actually have far less free time. Even feudal peasants didn't work as long as we do. Albeit, they might have worked harder and spent their time more productively. But if they got their job done, they were done. They didn't have to watch the clock or wait until six to go home. But now we're on the clock, no longer hired to do a task. That's why often, in that same amount of time, we're asked to do things that are not in our job descriptions, because we're owned for that piece of time. Think about it, how strange and new this is, owning a human for a piece of time? Is that not fucked up? No wonder from customers to bosses, we get mistreated, because all of us have bought into the idea that we are owned by the hour.

This is then why other forms of abuse come, even sexual. Some bosses will actually believe they literally own you. So since they do own you, they can do whatever they want with you. And sometimes, unfortunately, you believe that also. People are often compliant to their own abuse, as sad as that is. They'll often say, they thought they were supposed to. We have bought into this completely unethical idea, that we are hourly slaves.

You ever worked in retail or in the service industry? Then let me ask you something: What makes an asshole customer? It's when they literally believe they own you, that they're your owner. And what sucks is when your boss believes this also and doesn't have your back.

But it's easy to brush it off and say they're just an asshole. But no, they're more than that. They're worse than that. Because there are people out there who do really believe you are their slave. That you exist to do their bidding. That you have no autonomy or free will. That we have to do what they want because that's what they command us to do.

If you get conditioned to believe that working life means being an hourly slave, you become so compliant, it might take you years to finally resist. If ever at all. Lots of people never will, and they'll shit on others who do resist. Be thankful for the whipping! Don't be ungrateful!

Uhh, say what?

I've read customer complaints where people basically explained the point of my existence to me, which was to make them happy. And outlined all the ways how I as a human being must serve them. The crazy thing is, they really believe it. That they're entitled to my life. These are the people who will have no problem abusing others, especially as a requirement for work. Because to them, you're not human, you're a servant. To do whatever they want at their beck and call. Value by the hour is dehumanizing.

You finished your work early? You still can't go home. Double-check it, or do it again. Cleaned the floors already? Do it again.

Imagine being told every day to pick up rocks. Then when you got off work, another crew comes in to lay the same rocks where they were before, so you can do it again the next day. Because that shit happens. Your dignity doesn't matter, your utility doesn't matter, the point of the task doesn't matter, we own you. That's the message. So do stupid human tricks to fill the time. That's what the system wants.

Under our current economic model sometimes the biggest bullshit jobs are the ones funded by families. Where even a large company can't find a use for you, so you're family funds you're bullshit. Even under capitalism, we still have the remnants of feudalism and the divine right of kings. Fuck merit or talent-based rewards. Just be born to the right parents, you'll be rewarded. Not very efficient.

Let's say Tom has a bullshit idea for a restaurant, but he's born into the right family, his business idea might not need to make money, and he might never have to concern himself with what customers want. It only matters what he wants because his family will be the investors, so he'll never have to pay it back, and his family will give him a salary anyway. At least in the USSR, you had to at least pick-up trash to get paid.

Here's a scenario I often see in Los Angeles. You're a bullshit realtor. Someone who can maintain a fancy life without ever having to sell a house. You live off of family money, but you needed a job title so it's not so obvious you live off of family money. You can just as easily say DJ or producer. Most of the “actors” and writers in this town are on full-time salaries by their families.

People from wealthy families live in a utopian communism. Capitalism by design is supposed to be like the jungle, dog eat dog, but these nepotists never have to fear the big bad scary jungle. They've built a commune for themselves so that nothing they do ever has to be useful or productive. They can be VP of bullshit for their family company while living on a yacht and never having to work. 

If you come from the right family, you can be shielded from so-called free-market capitalism. Even though the parents might espouse the virtues of capitalism, they never want their children to be exposed to the cruelties of real market conditions. No one gets to judge their kids, especially the free market. But the free market was designed to judge the usefulness of everything and everyone. But they don't want their kids to actually be useful. Otherwise, they'd just be another laborer. So to maintain high status, be useless and mommy and daddy will protect you from the labor market. Don't worry honey, you can provide no service or utility, and the market will never punish you like it's supposed to.

To them, life is like a holodeck on Star Trek. If you think it's real, it is real. Who cares what actual reality says. Yet these people still have lots of opinions about our reality. Sound like a lot of rich people you know?

Rich people want more bullshit so they can pretend to be working. The bullshittier, the better. Bullshitness equates to fanciness. "Oh, you're inventing a new form of flower arrangement? Oh, you're creating an upscale hotel for cats? Oh, you're starting an expensive cave spa for sound healing?"

If we do bullshit, it's useless, but when "they" do it, it's "innovative." And if it's a particularly useless idea, then to the ultra-rich, it's an idea worth spreading—they're changing the world. They want to give a TED talk. You have people in their 50s not working real jobs, not earning an income, living off of family, because they're working on those "really big ideas." So you can make an innovative new app game company or work on a new type of cupcake delivery app. It's not unusual for them to do mock TED talks at social events. Just to make sure everyone is aware of how special they are. So many of these people think they're the main characters, the heroes of this planet when they're probably the oppressors of the world. Because everyone works for them or their families. So yeah, technically you are the oppressors.

Under this current bullshit economic efficiency, Adam Sandler is peak entertainment. I mean, come on.

The idea of capitalist efficiency will never exist because the so-called capitalists will always rig it, so it always turns into bullshit oligarchies. In capitalism, the best is supposed to rise to the top, but that's not what's happening. We have whole marketing teams and publicists that can guarantee, so long as you have money, anything can rise to the top, whether it's good or not. In fact, under this rigged system, being best has nothing to do with quality. They've become independent from each other.

History keeps repeating itself with new versions of wasteful oligarchies. Look at how much food is wasted under feudal capitalism? How many lives are wasted? How much money is wasted on bullshit jobs rather than on new roads, schools, healthcare, or basic income?

We do have free money in the US, and it's beyond just basic income, but luxury income, it's arbitrary bullshit income, it just happens to go to the people who don't need it. Imagine a high school wanting to do Romeo & Juliet with everyone participating. How many new roles would they have to make up just for participation's sake? Lots. Now, imagine if this high school was doing a normal version of Romeo & Juliet, but all the rich kids wanted to participate but didn't want any of the regular roles, they all wanted to be stars. But the play only has two big roles. So what do you do? You make up roles only for the rich. Do you cast the best? No. You cast the rich. What about everyone else in the school? They're fucked. What is that?

We say communism is getting paid to do nothing, then what do you call bullshit jobs? What do you call wealthy oligarchs who get paid to do nothing? But if THEY do it, it's okay. But if everyone else gets a share of that, then that's unfair? That's the definition of unfair? What the fuck?

How did we get so warped? Only someone so warped could take themselves that seriously and give a faux TED talk at a dinner party or at a wedding—with no self-awareness, irony, or humor. All real live stories folks, I'm not making this shit up.

And they're not doing it as a joke or to be funny. Because they really do believe everything they do is a big deal because they're the ones doing it. But along with this is fancy rich people treatments like jade eggs to vaginal steaming, isolation tanks, freezing your balls, to bead parties. Rather than vapid, pompous, or obnoxious, they believe they're inspirational, and these same people have conditioned us to accept this as well. Remember what I said about their expensive marketing machines? They have too much time on their hands, which allows them to continually come up with new bullshit.

This isn't new, it's still feudal court rituals. For the ultra-rich, it only matters to them what they think. If the only person who likes something is the king, that's feudalism. Those who have the wealth have the control, and those in control get the wealth.

A lot of these attitudes came not only from feudalism but also from religion. Even the virtue of richness that we now call prosperity gospel is just the divine right of kings, that God rewards certain families with the right to rule and we should not question it and just listen. Why question authority? How dare you! You got slapped, you got shot because you questioned the divine right of kings! If you just listened to their orders, you wouldn't have gotten hurt. So it's your fault! And the people who will say this to you won't even be the authorities, it will be other people without power like you. If it's about defending you or their overlords, they'll defend their overlords. That's how they've been trained. To be good and obedient.

Religion was the right hand of feudalism (and it still is the right hand), it polices deviant thought, like speaking truth to power.

Don't question their stupid human tricks and if told to do stupid human tricks yourself, just do it, because that order is effectively coming from God.

We were taught that work, even pointless work, was a virtue. 

Why can't we have a 15-hour workweek? Why are people so against it? Why give people bullshit tasks when you can skip all the pointless foreplay and games? Because centuries of religious moralism have led to our associating useless work with virtue and the lack of useless work with sin.

Sixteenth-century Puritans, the ones who really defined the American culture, taught us that work was punishment and redemption, and thus had a value in and of itself. What it produced was beside the point. Toiling was what mattered. Even after the industrial revolution, thought leaders of the time would say some bullshit like, work was the very essence of life, making it the “noblest thing yet discovered under God’s sky.”

Lame.

I mean, work is super good, if it has a point, or if it helps others. But if you're just rolling a rock up a hill every day, just to roll it back down, and to do it all over again, then that's just work porn, that's just time masturbation. It's just things to fill up your time before you die.

Why don't we have more innovators? More artists? More of any of the things that make us humans? Because we don't have leisure and, in fact, we hate on leisure. Imagine if there was no bullshit, but we still got paid the same. We could use all the extra time to get more degrees, self-educate, learn things, paint, write, play guitar, and read a goddamn book from time to time.

If the minimum for mastery is 10,000 hours, if everyone worked 15-hour workweeks, we'd have to increase that 10,000 hours to 50,000 hours, because everyone would be getting so good at so many things. Even video game players would be better. Hobbyist basketball players would have skills equivalent to NBA players of today, and the NBA in this new society would grow up with their parents and coaches giving them more of their time... imagine the increase in shooting percentage. It's not by coincidence communist countries do so well in the Olympics.

How many more inventions would we have if people had more free time? How much more tinkering? Rather than it just being the job of companies to innovate, it would be like how it was before the industrial revolution where everyone could participate in innovation. Yet that's not us, but we keep telling ourselves we're more efficient. People need to look up what that word actually means. Bullshit robs time for discovery.

Whenever you engage in anything other than bullshit small talk, you'll have people say "I never thought of that." Yeah, no shit. Because we don't have time to think about things. We're too busy doing bullshit. It's an intellectually dark time, a time of anti-discovery and anti-progress in many ways.

People complain there's waste in the city or in public sector jobs. For you to waste lots of money, you first need lots of money. And that money only exists in the private sector. I'm sure the public sector wishes they could hire 50 people to work in a small library or 500 people to work at a DMV, but they can't. And we as residents have to do with just five people working at our DMV or one person at the post office. But none of these jobs are bullshit, in fact, they're overworked with real work. To see bullshit, go to the private sector. Remember, the private sector is always better than the public, and they'll always remind you of this, but that also means they're better at pretending to work.

In fact, bullshit in the private sector forces the government to do more bullshit. Because who does the government contract work to? That's right, the private sector. Wars make the private sector lots of money. We need those wars to keep those bullshit jobs. In fact, the lobbyists make sure the government never haggles with defense contractors. The private sector has no problem selling thousand-dollar bullets to the US government. No discounts for the US. The private sector gotta make that loot. Go patriotism. And the people they put in charge of these deals will never ask, hey did we just get ripped off? Because they used to work for those lobbies anyway. From Vietnam to Iraq, wars make the country poor but the private sector rich. It's different incentives folks. When they say the economy is doing well, they mean they're getting rich, not you. They don't care about you. And why would they, you're not their bloodline. From a self-interest point of view, they're saying what they're supposed to say. But from our own self-interest point of view, we're supposed to call them out on their bullshit, not go along with them. You think you have things in common with Charles Koch? More than your coworker just because they have a different political affiliation than you? Say what?

You and your coworker work the same job. You're both working class. You both shop at the same place and live in the same town. What the fuck, how much more obvious is this? They're playing you two against each other.

But what about single-payer health insurance? No way. Think about all the jobs we'd lose. Wait a minute, if they could lose their jobs that easily due to better efficiency, then did we even need those jobs? And that's not how efficient markets work, you don't keep things inefficient just to save jobs. Best systems are supposed to rise to the top. But the private sector pays politicians to protect their bullshit jobs. The private sector tells TV what to say.

Besides, feudal capitalism has something better than single-payer healthcare, we have GoFundMe. Where rich people with the best insurance can raise more money than poor people with no money. Where, in fact, you don't even have to use it at all for medical bills, you can totally just use it to scam people. And we have a whole industry that exists just to make fees off of this bullshit. Yep, the best keeps rising to the top, doesn't it?

But if people having a living wage is that important, then avoid all the middlemen and bullshit and just give them the money. We can clearly afford it. But no, we must keep doing George Jetson stupid human tricks. Arbitrary bullshit income, which doesn't even work right because it only makes the wealthiest even richer. Wait, I guess to them, it IS working right. It's just like when they say the economy is doing good, they just mean they're doing good, not that median income is going up. The confusion happens because they think they're speaking for us, and we ALSO think they're speaking for us. So to make things clearer, whatever they say, just add a (for me) at the end. The economy is doing so good (for me). The affordable care act is awful (for me). See, so much clearer.

So let's talk about automation, yes it's getting rid of jobs. But it could be happening much faster. You don't think most jobs in the financial sector alone couldn't be automated? It can, and they know it. Same with law firms. They insist on using out-of-date programs and actively resist innovations because, well, first of all, they want to keep their jobs, and secondly they want to maintain their entourage. And if you let everyone work remotely from home, then no entourage. You don't want to be the leader of a bunch of computer servers. What is a boss without his or her flunkies and yes-men? So let's slow it down just for us. Keep writing that report and keep printing my emails. But in farming, manufacturing, and everyone else who work real jobs? Thanks for your service but we don't need you anymore.

Capitalism will never be equally efficient. But if we got paid more for working less, or even got a basic income, you could keep working as that administrator but also as a pre-school teacher, the job you really wanted. Time gives us freedom. In so many ways. Most of all, the freedom to pursue.

But, if there were fewer administrators, we could hire more preschool teachers, and even pay them more. And we could save more money because we wouldn't need to eat out as much or self-medicate. We'd be in better health, which would lower overall medical costs. We'd actually get more efficient.

More time and more money wouldn't solve all of society's ills, but shit. It certainly wouldn't hurt.

How many people dream of going back to school, but time and money are what's stopping them? Ever wonder why tuition is so high? It's not because they pay the professors so much. In fact, assistant and adjunct professors barely get paid anything. And for grad students, they're lucky to get a stipend to teach. 

Tuition is high because colleges keep hiring more and more administrators. And without all the bullshit jobs, tuition would go down, or for state universities, it could go back to being free for state residents. We complain about the lack of education yet look at the ridiculous barrier to entry? Look at how fucking expensive it is. Even for in-state tuition. People will talk shit of educational ivory towers, but most people DO want to be educated. And most teachers want to teach. But the professors and teachers don't have the power, the administrators do. And they won't disappear without a fight.

During feudal times, there was something called alchemy: where you supposedly made gold out of thin air. And though it never worked, you still got paid in real gold. Then, I guess it did work. But now alchemy is called bullshit jobs.

Our society is wired to value the duration your ass is in a seat over actual output. But what we really need and could easily afford, is more income for less bullshit. And the only reason for bullshit is ego and pride. I mean, if you could just give someone a dollar, what point is there to make them run around the block before giving them that dollar, other than to feel like you own them. Other than to act like a typical movie bad guy.

Just cut the bullshit and stop being an asshole. But unfortunately, we've fallen in love with bullshit. We loved it starting from back when it was called alchemy, and before then when it was just called magic. 

Those who do bullshit jobs are now the new bourgeoisie. But first, what is capitalism? It's in the name. Capital-ism, the promotion of capital above all else, even over people. What is feudalism? It's also in the name, feudal-ism, where feudal lords own and run everything, and the other 99% of us are peasants and serfs.

So what we have now is feudal capitalism. Where the new nobles don't have to compete in the free market, they can maintain their wealth and power, and in fact, produce nothing, and still keep their positions, while the rest of us have to compete against each other for the scraps. This is not true feudalism or capitalism but a hybrid.

Why is it that we never see poor people in Congress or wealthy landowners sweating in factories? The wealthy always seem to inhabit positions of power they don't have to fight to keep, while the rest of us are at their mercy. But how did this come to be? The answer lies in economics.

Changes in the economy drive changes in society. Every change in social relationships is triggered by a change in the mode of production, i.e., the method by which the necessities of life (food, shelter, transportation, and so on) are created.

The mode of food production in the age of hunter-gatherer societies, for example, was such that humans could only provide for their immediate communities. As a result, there were hardly any class distinctions within a community; people were more or less equal.

However, with the advent of farming, a more efficient mode of food production emerged. Suddenly there was an abundance of food, enough for farmers to sell to other people.

This change in the mode of production caused a hierarchy to develop between those who controlled the food supply and those who had to work for them. And so the first class system was created and the class that held economic power also held the political power.

Historically, all societies have organized into complicated hierarchies of conflicting classes. The lines that separate these classes can be traced back to their degree of control over production. In essence, the class that controls a society’s wealth controls that society by using its position to maintain their power while making sure others can't rise up to take their place.

In the Roman world, for example, you have the wealthy and their slaves. In feudal societies of Europe: poor serfs worked the land for the rich, while the rich did... bullshit. As a serf, you made money for the rich while putting yourself into greater debt. Everything you needed, you had to buy from them. (This was the beginning of our credit system.)

Initially, in America, serfs and indentured servants from Europe worked the plantations. America supposedly never had feudalism, so this was already feudal capitalism from the get-go. And what was cheaper than European serfs? Enslaved Africans. Especially since they were more resistant to malaria than the European serfs. This was cheaper labor capital, more efficiency.

The wealthy dominate the economy and therefore society. They accumulate capital and resources, and when the common folk lacked enough resources of their own, rather than the wealthy sharing their capital, this often led to mass killings and genocides so there wasn't enough common folk to fight over the limited resources. Rather than pitchforks and torches joining together to overthrow the wealthy, the wealthy said, hey pitchforks, go kill the torches, then you'll have enough for yourself. And somehow, this fucking worked. Over and over again.

So how did the rich elite take over? Their ascent to power took place after the supposed downfall of the feudal system.

In the feudal system, production (mainly agricultural land) was owned by the crown, its nobles, i.e., the aristocracy, and the church. Because they owned the land, they maintained control over the other classes. And look, we're still obsessed with land. Where do you think that obsession came from? And the only way for peasants to access land in order to grow or earn enough to survive was to sell themselves into servitude.

However, eighteenth-century industrialization brought alternative modes of production to feudal servitude, giving farmers an alternative form of labor for survival: factory work.

Farmers left in droves from agriculture to industry, and the old social system vanished. Oppression, however, did not vanish with it: a new dominant class emerged—the bourgeoisie or as we now call them, the rich elite.

Changes not only in technology but in the way business was being done brought about the so-called end of feudalism, where feudalism was supposed to be replaced by naked self-interest and the invisible hand of the free market. That on its own would have problems, but that's not what happened. The feudal overlords just became the new capitalists. It's not like their money just disappeared. Feudalism gave way to feudal capitalism and the fundamental social hierarchy remained unchanged: workers were selling their labor for a wage that wasn’t equal to the amount of capital (or the total wealth) they were producing. This extra wealth is what allows for so many bullshit jobs.

Even with automation, you still have factory workers working for a wage that is not enough to live on. It's a fraction of a fraction of the profit generated. The remaining capital goes into the hands of the rich elite, which in turn not only allows them to grow their power even more but allows them to invent more bullshit jobs without having the people who actually produce the goods make more money.

In this system, the people who send emails all day about emails, get paid more than the people who actually do stuff. Why? Because it's still about status. Why did people wear monocles when it would fall out of their eyes so easily? Or wear heels? Or a top hat? Or even a cane when they didn't need one? They were all symbols that you didn't work. It would be impossible for you to do physical labor with a top hat on, which is why it's so ridiculously shaped. So it will fall off your head if you ever bent over. Same with heels, so you can't bend over for housework. They're symbols of status. You're signaling. And we're still signaling.

But what about dress shirts? How did they become the official work shirt? What's their utility when it's so easy to sweat through? That's the point. That you can exist without sweating, that you can exist without working, you can get paid just for occupying space. Dress shirts mean you've made it. This was all intentional. So these kinds of ridiculous jobs where nothing gets produced have higher pay because they're so-called high-status jobs AKA careers.

I'm a noble so I should get paid more than you, for doing absolutely nothing of value. You can work all you want but you won't get equal pay for your output because you are not a noble. Because if you were, you would be on this side with me writing emails. Being best has and still does mean best birth rather than best talent.

If there had ever been a charm in work, it's certainly gone by now. You don’t work and produce for yourself, but for your boss. You sacrifice your life to make their lives easier. You produce so they don't have to.

Thus, you’ll live as long as you find work, and die soon after your labor is no longer sufficient in increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. This doesn't sound too different from a serf.

As if that weren’t bad enough, with each increase in the division of labor, i.e., when the steps required to produce something become smaller, simpler, and more specialized, the individual workers become increasingly insignificant. They become just cogs.

Rather than individuals producing an entire product as they would have in the past, they now suffer the monotony of cranking a single factory lever all day long for a minuscule wage. Until even that gets replaced. That means more division of labor, more automation, more robots, and more bullshit jobs for the nobles, but fewer jobs for everyone else without status.

Sports, even with all its problems and scandals, is probably the closest thing we have to a capitalist free market, where everyone has to compete against everyone else. And you must always earn your spot, you don't just get it out of tradition or legacy or birthright. It doesn't matter who your father is or what your name is; if you can't play, if you can't win, then they'll find someone else who can.

But in feudal capitalism, it's only the workers who are forced into direct competition against one another through labor and wage and never in direct or indirect competition with the bourgeoisie. The market is not free, we all have to pay the champions.

Look at politics, it's always two sides of the poor fighting each other while the rich of the left and right go to Aspen together to talk about bullshit, and how their bullshit ideas are changing the world, giving talks to each other which they'll post on YouTube to inspire us, and donate to both parties to keep the working class fighting. So they can remain in power. 

Imagine a sport where the championship team never had to defend their title or compete in a tournament with anyone else? In fact, the championship is no longer up for grabs. And this team can get fat and out of shape and never play, and still remain the champs. Because that's what our current system looks like now. That's not competition.

In feudal capitalism, you can opt-out of competition. Motivational speakers shouldn't be able to make a living. In feudal capitalism, motivational speakers can become billionaires. In feudal capitalism, the more woo-woo and bullshit the medicine is, the more the rich elite gravitate towards it. In feudal capitalism, the kids of the rich become the next generation of rich.

I know a spiritual life coach who makes 400 an hour, while my teacher friend struggles to make a living wage. There's a rich history of this sort of nonsense that goes back to the beginning of feudal society. It was a feature of the royal court to have a magician, psychic, or sorcerer, someone like Rasputin. There's a high place for bullshitters in feudal society. And that kind of comedic waste continues in feudal capitalism. 

Waste belonging to high status isn't an exception it's the rule, waste makes it high status. This is proof that private enterprise does everything better than the government. And you're right, the government can't even afford a $400 an hour shaman.

I saw a recent ad that said “Anyone can be a millionaire, but to be a billionaire you need a psychic advisor.” That's exactly what Rasputin told Tsar Nicholas. This line of thinking goes back to the very first days of kings.

Conmen are capitalists. Drug dealers are capitalists. The mafia is capitalist. The people who literally take your money every day are capitalists. Anyone who wants to separate you from your capital by definition is a capitalist. And they all also existed during feudalism, just as the nobles did. Like roaches, they're all survivors.

The top hat serves as a great metaphor for the type of capitalism we live in, where the less practical something is, the more status it gains. But real capitalism is supposed to be about real utility.

Rather than survival of the fittest and best, or even natural selection and adaptation, you have something closer to the problems the royals had with constant inbreeding. But this time, rather than the problem being genetic in nature, it's societal. Instead of the best ideas or best people rising up, you usually get the weirdest ideas and the weirdest people rising up. Survival of the weirdest.

Capitalism is supposed to promote innovation through competition, but how can you have any competition or innovation with so many bullshit patents? You can get rich off of stopping competition and stifling innovation through patent trolling. It's like a sports team coming out with a new play and patenting it so no one else could use it. It would ruin the game. It's big companies using the government to stop innovation.

But sports luckily doesn't have such bullshit, which is why games such as football and basketball keep getting more competitive. It remains a competitive market, something we as a society is supposed to have. But the rich blame us, not the feudalism that makes it impossible to compete.

But look at the free market of sports, something like MMA. Everyone is constantly forced to level up. But you can be a slow lumbering dinosaur in feudal capitalism. The only way a rich old dinosaur could fall is through some world calamity, but even then, their friends in the government will bail them out. It won't bail regular people out, but it will bail the rich dinosaurs since they stacked congress and the white house and the courts with their boys. Yet when the mafia does this, they get arrested. Go figure. But, you know, you can't have bribery without capital. In a world where money doesn't exist, like in a hunter-gatherer society or in Star Trek, there are no bribes.

The rich will call themselves capitalists, and it's true only in that they are the ones who have all the capital. But they aren't capitalists in the truest sense, which is believers in the capitalist system. They don't want a true capitalist system. They want oligarchies. If they really believed in capitalism, they would have no such thing as inheritance or trusts.

Because in true capitalism, it doesn't matter who you are, you must compete. But in reality, the rich kids live like luxury socialists. They live in Star Trek. Which is a show, by the way, beloved by two groups, poor socialists, and rich white men. The poor kids want everyone to have Star Trek, the rich kids want to keep Star Trek to themselves.

Nepotism is a derogatory term only if you're poor, but to the rich, nepotism is a virtue. Might is right. Nepotism isn't to be avoided, to the wealthy, that's the point of living. Power exists to set me and my bloodline up. But that's feudalism, power by bloodline. 

If you're having a hard time getting a job in Hollywood, but then some other guy not only gets in but gets a cush job from the start because of who his father is, we think that's bad. But to that father and to his son, that power is being used for good.

I can't stress this enough, how we don't see eye to eye with the rich no matter your party affiliation. We think unfairness is bad, but they think unfairness is good because they benefit from our unfair treatment. Their self-interests go against our self-interests and vice versa. We think domination is bad, they think it's good. We think oppression is bad, they think it's good.

The rich just show up to be awarded the championship title every year while we're supposed to just play for the love of the game.

Feudalism learned to market itself differently. More fan-friendly but the same old shit.

If you actually work, you actually have a real job, not a bullshit job, then you will never make enough money to build up capital for yourself. In fact, to even get a bullshit job, you usually need connections. If not family, then you at least need a "hook up." When people say it's all about who you know, they're saying the system is nepotism AKA feudalism.

And if you have no hookups, you have to get a real job, and that's if you're lucky enough to get one as there's not enough of those jobs to go around. Too much competition, which also drives the pay down. This is why people with bullshit jobs call real jobs, shit jobs. And compared to doing bullshit, I guess real work does seem shitty. And since it is a shit job, all your extra capital will go to you know who. And no, not the government, your money was stolen even before you got a paycheck. With a shit job, you'll never be able to accumulate capital to be a capital holder, a capitalist. (And capitalism can only work for you if you can keep accumulating capital.) But every day companies will try to rob you of more of whatever capital you do have. And on top of that, with the working class adopting the rich elite's anti-working class politics, the actual workers are creating the instruments for their own exploitation.

Doing nothing, or bullshit and getting paid for it is called rent-seeking, and it's about the worst thing there is in capitalism. But that's literally the American Dream. Rent-seeking just means passive income. Which by literal definition and by application, means income for doing nothing. But we're the suckers.

But Europe and other parts of the world have given up on a lot of these feudal ideas even though they invented it. Perhaps since they had the most time with it, they had enough time to think better of it. The US who's never had kings are now the protectors of feudalism. And along with rent-seeking as the American Dream, rather than seeking maximum happiness or maximum purpose and utility, we're status-seekers. Status over happiness, status over purpose, and status over usefulness. Who cares about being happy, right folks? When you can have status. Who cares about actually working and creating good when you have status and a top hat and can give talks as a life coach to the poor? And status, even though it's least competitive and useful, we believe should be paid the most.But the ones who control all the capital set the rules.

But it's not like the rich took a class on capitalism ever in their life or really know what it is. And neither do we. Feudalism is instinctual, nepotism is instinctual, no one needs to teach it to you. It didn't need an Adam Smith to create it. Capitalism and financial markets are complicated and needed to be thought up by academics. So if the rich are busy with bullshit, why would they want to take that class. They just know when they use capitalism as a buzzword, the working class like it. And when they mention communism and socialism, they know the working class gets triggered.

The rich can say whatever, but they want socialism for the rich and Mad Max for the poor.

Another thing that hasn't changed much is the power of religious institutions, who were and still are some of the biggest landowners. And still don't pay taxes. But they get to set societal virtues, which will always favor themselves and other owners of property. Religion needs hierarchy and the belief that some things are pre-decided at birth. But don't worry, even though you got a raw deal, you can still be rewarded in the afterlife. 

Just as the rich elite have lobbied the government, they have done the same with the churches, and what they have lobbied for is the prosperity gospel. It's dangerous because it uses fear. If you disagree, you're going to hell. The rich, the government, and the church have always been in bed together. And sometimes literally.

You have no idea how powerful the setting of virtues is. For instance, they'll sell you on the virtue of loyalty. But in the free market, there's supposed to be no loyalty. You as an employee should be free to leave your work if pay or conditions suck, and go somewhere else. This will force your employer to improve conditions and pay to compete against other companies. But if they convince you not to opt-in to the free market of labor, and control the system, they don't have to improve anything. Then the government has to step in, but only because we didn't realize the labor market is part of the free market. Companies are supposed to compete to keep us and keep us happy. But no, fuck free markets right. We have to be loyal to our lords, it's the virtuous thing to do. But why do you think in feudalism, the lords were called nobles? Because your loyalty was tied to the idea of nobility. Because your eternal soul was tied to the idea of serving your lord. This is noble, this is the virtue long-con. They fooled you all this time to abandon your freedom of free movement of labor. And who tells you this shit? The capitalists who say the free market will solve everything.

Neither under feudalism or capitalism will the bourgeoisie share the same interests as you. And they will never willingly give up their power to give you or anyone else a shot. Not through democracy, and not through competition. Even in feudal times, some serfs believed their owners had their best interests in mind. And we still think the rich elite have our best interests in mind. Why we keep thinking that makes no sense because the rich elite will keep making fun of us for voting against our own self-interest. What does that mean? They are literally telling you, hey, I will always vote for my own self-interest. But if you won't, all good for me sucker.

They divide us by left and right, convincing the poor that the rich of their same party share with them common interests. A poor person sharing the same interests as the rich? Let's be real. The rich, whatever party they belong to, share the same interests with each other, not you. So what politics is now, is two sides arguing over which side to take the poison from. But it's going to be the same poison, just with a different color cocktail umbrella.

Initially, only property owners were allowed to vote in the US. And even now, education is still property-based. Education is funded by property tax, which means the areas with the best houses have the best-funded schools. What group do you think lobbied for that? How is this going to allow for equal competition? It's not. That's the point. We don't want the best opportunities for the best people. We want best opportunities for rich elite people.

Someone with mental illness who is part of rich elite society will have better opportunities than a poor genius. There have been numerous cases in history where an animal or a baby became king. So that means any of those things, so long as it belongs to elite society, no matter how unfit for the crown, can become king over a genius commoner. Those odds are still the same. A rich person's horse will have a better life than most of us.

But that's not how competition is supposed to work. If feudalism was a sport, you'd have the shittiest players become the stars of the team. And these people get to innovate?

No wonder rich elites keep commissioning Hollywood to make movies where a king solves everyone's problem. It's brainwashing. And it's working. We keep wanting a king, and we keep wanting to serve a king.

People say, no matter how much robots and automation can do, there will always be jobs. Yeah, okay, but there will only be bullshit jobs. But real jobs will disappear and lots of real working folks will be without a job. It's already happening.

If the majority of real workers lose their jobs, who will be the ones buying stuff? And without consumers, then the whole system falls apart and the world will look a lot like Mad Max. 

But rather than changing course, we keep looking to them to save us. Really? Rich elites are going to make great politicians? They're going to screw themselves over to help you? Seriously? Come on. Why would anyone in their right mind screw themselves over? So perhaps the rich are in their right minds, it is us who have lost our minds by helping them to hurt ourselves.

But even though many workers won't turn against their overlords, they will still stock up on guns. Just in case. Or maybe the guns are to be used against other poor rather than the rich.

Only under our current bullshit feudal capitalism, could we have companies that would make something like the Terminator for profit. So it's easier for many to believe that robots will kill us all than it is to believe we'd give up capitalism so we don't ever make such a thing. Or, maybe we'd rather die by machines than give up this feudal capitalism. Maybe we're buying guns because we'd rather have a Mad Max world of kill or be killed than turn on our masters. Or perhaps, even though they are loyal to the system, a part of them understand the end game, that this loyalty will eventually lead to their own demise. But we've been taught as a virtue, to go down with the ship, to go down with our masters, so we'll be rewarded in the afterlife. So it's all good. We can only be okay with this doomsday scenario if we believed in an afterlife. If not, you'd be actively trying to change it.

But imagine what it must be like to be the rich elite, the bourgeoisie, having enough time and money to come up with new bullshit every day.

Someone I know went to a wedding for a really rich couple. As part of the multi-day event, every guest had to get up and give a 5-minute talk about how they're changing the world. They're trying to make it a new wedding tradition. WED talks. Man, how much free time did you have to come up with that bullshit? Because I am jealous.

Books to read:

• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
• The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
• The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream by Chris Lehmann
• The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff
• Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel by Kate Bowler
• The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett