Labor Day, Jobs, High Hopes and Rubber Trees

[Lightning Rod]

Labor Day, Jobs, High Hopes and Rubber Trees

To be a plumber, you need to know two things. Shit flows down and payday's Friday. To be an economist you need to know that shit flows up and payday is whenever you say it is if you own the store. At least that is what a capitalist or a 'free-market' economist would say. Differences of opinion on the details of payday have given rise to the labor movement which we in America commemorate with Labor Day.

if you want to see a good example of the free market and where it naturally leads, take a look at feudalism. In a purely free market the wealth naturally moves upward or into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Before you know it the only players are Google, Exxon, The China Corporation or the Hapsburgs or Bourbons.

The invention of money made it possible to trade real things in a more streamlined way. Until about the twelfth century, money was itself a real tangible thing of value, it was gold or silver. Around that time, some Northern European bankers saw that the real essence of money was confidence. The concept of property-backed currency was born. The confidence comes from the assumption that the currency represents something of real value. Today money is a total abstract. Not only is it not worth the paper it's printed on, it's not even printed but exists only in theory in the computer ledgers of some abstract 'person' called a bank or a government or a corporation. It's cyber-money.

Maybe it is because money is simply an idea and thus lighter than air that it rises in the atmosphere of the ownership society. It trickles up and only an illusionist like Ronald Reagan can convince us that it trickles down. The natural end of laissez faire or free-market capitalism is the same as a game of monopoly, one player eventually owns everything. In real life this is not so bad as long as the player who owns everything is infinitely compassionate or totally accountable. These conditions are not likely to occur but, thankfully, neither is the end-game.

Most humans take it for granted that we are the dominant life-form on this planet. We see ourselves as the Crown of Creation, the most intelligent species, top of the food-chain etc. Humans sit atop the evolutionary ladder which is of course a human invention. One of the other branches in the tree of life might see this differently. At the top of the invertebrate branch is phyla Arthropoda and at its top are the species like bees and ants and termites, the social insects. They've been around longer than we have. They out-number us, they out-weigh us and they occupy every diverse habitat demonstrating that they are as adaptable as we are. They have organized societies, they communicate with each other, they have architecture. They bury their dead. If they wrote books, those books would probably assert that they were the most successful forms of life on the planet and that God has antennae and compound eyes.

You may be asking the same question that almost everyone is asking these days, 'What does this have to do with Jobs?' Consider this: ants have no money and no unemployment.

If you turn on the television news, only moments will pass before you hear the word 'jobs.' Everybody seems to be clamoring for them. The government is promising to create them. The economists say that they are the answer to our problems. Those that don't have them want them and those that have them are afraid of losing them even though they also hate the damned job. Why are we so obsessed with jobs?

It probably has something to do with the fact that we see a job as our sole means of support and our only claim to social status or community standing, Even if we have a job, we fret when we see the unemployment numbers go up because not only do we wonder if our jobs are secure, we are asked to work harder in order to take up the slack in productivity. Our jobs become like marriages only more important, and happy jobs are approximately as common as happy marriages. Ants don't have unemployment or divorce. They must be very happy.

Obviously the Chinese have been studying the higher insects. Their society has always tended toward the hive model but state capitalism has nurtured this tendency. Strict division of labor always creates efficiency; conformity and group-think are qualities of Chinese culture that fit quite nicely with modern industrial realities. Americans don't share these values. We pride ourselves on individuality and independence. We value competition over cooperation and our phobia of socialism has prevented us from productively reconciling the two.
Social evolution will determine and only history will tell which ethic is the more successful.

Labor day is the day that we celebrate the American worker. We celebrate those who do the actual chores, who chop wood and carry water, who take out the trash, those who have real jobs. Another thing that we celebrate is the eternal conflict between labor and capital. The by-product of this conflict is jobs. Jobs are the social means that have evolved to resolve or at least manage this natural battle. Jobs are the arrangements that we make to share the fruits of labor and resource. We celebrate jobs even though that celebration may soon more resemble a wake for the American idea of what a job means. For several generations the standard for world labor was defined by American labor unions. But in the past generation capital has succeeded in doing an end-run on the unions and now the world standard for labor is what the Chinese worker is getting. But don't worry, this is only cyber-money, remember? They make iPods and game-boys and we give them virtual dough. What's not to like?

What's not to like is that because money is a complete abstract, it can be manipulated. It can be made to flow even faster to the advantage of the few. The financial crash that we are witnessing now is the same periodic adjustment that we see every time the financial structure gets too top-heavy, when those in the ownership/investment class get too greedy. The oligarchs have gotten smarter over the centuries. They don't sport their wealth in public like the dandies whose heads rolled during the French Revolution did and they have arranged for sufficient wealth-sharing so as to avoid unmanageable social unrest, but the natural conflict between labor and capital will continue as long as one man owns while another man toils. The ants are watching and waiting and smiling. They wish us a happy Labor Day.

So any time you're gettin low
Stead of lettin go
just remember that ant
Ooops there goes another rubber tree plant.
--Cahn, VanHeusen

[Doreen Peri]

as usual, fine writing Lrod!

I'm ready to celebrate retirement myself.... trying to figure out how to do it 10 years early. can't even imagine working 10 more years chopping wood and carrying water and all that

..............

you were in my dream last night... i was in germany in the dream and i was sitting in a hotel lobby looking out the window... right outside the window, there was a show.... it was summer... outdoor show, audience in folding chairs, platform stage... a young lady was on stage... she said, "This song was written by Lightning Rod" and started singing a song about monkeys.. lol... and I tapped on the window because I saw you right outside the window... you had cut your hair... much shorter... about chin-length... you looked healthy and very young... I tapped on the window and waved to say hi... you totally ignored me... well you nodded at me but that's it... then you took a mic and started singing the song you wrote , walking down the aisle toward the stage singing, got up on the stage and concluded with a duet with the lady who introduced you... it was great! then I woke up... great tune about monkeys... i suggest you really write it!

Oh, btw, the show was in germany and there were soldiers wearing old nazi germany uniforms... standing by the stage... I don't know whether they were part of the show or what but that part was creepy

[Lightning Rod]

glad you liked the monkey tune, my dear
could you hum me a few bars?
german monkeys have a rich musical tradition

the last time I dreamed of you, it was a wet dream
that is, we were underwater
moving in slow motion with hair floating
and bubbles escaping our nostrils
you weren't a mermaid, but your toes were webbed
and tiny glistening scales on your legs like fine hair
you looked beautiful in slow motion
and you couldn't talk underwater which was nice
just before I woke up you were writing with a seashell on the ocean floor and before I could read it....well, you know, the inevitable end of dreams.

Love on Labor Day
(you labor so beautifully)

[mtmynd]

I like this one, eLRod, because it mentions several things that I've been thinking about meself.

Yes, money is an abstract and such an abstract that the vast majority of us cannot understand the damn thing at all. So we just continue playing with this abstract because it 'pays the bills' until the stuff becomes more and more difficult to accumulate.

On our way to our show yesterday morning, we were passing thru farmland and the occasional run down trailers and broken houses with junk cars and trash scattered about here and there. We hu'mans are still a developing species who are for the most part totally clueless on how to live and live successfully on this one planet we're on. Surely, for this Crown of Creation for the majority of our species to live in hunger, ill-health and squalor is a contradiction. We can do so much better. But it's that goddamn money racket that crushes us more than any other 'thing' and it's an abstract... in reality a non-existent means to classify us into lower class up to the uber-wealthy that calls the shots by paying off the government to do their bidding. A ridiculous system but as those who apparently know better than me assert, a system that cannot improve, capitalism is what it is.

I will disagree that there is no improvement. I have to. Mankind will and must demand a system of fairness, honesty and an equality that sustains us as Nature sustains all other creatures great and small. Collectively we must find that system or destroy ourselves with our negligence and ignorance to do otherwise.

Thank you, amigo...

[stilltrucking]

I have had a couple of dreams about you, and Doreen was in one of them too.

An American Ku I tried to write about a dream I had about waking up from a dream about dreaming I was back in jail again and dreaming about the trucks rolling down Hwy 69 where it passes through Atoka Oklahoma and then waking up and finding myself in that cell. Had the same dream about every forty five minutes the first night.

Ku for Clay
I woke from a nightmare
with Kafka’s blues



Nice work bro
you know I hate you
I am looking for a new keyboard
that has a large button that says
"Oh lordy let me write English prose like Clay January"

So lazy in my golden years
I used to like being my own boss
but I was such a lazy boss
I never could get myself to work for a living every day
I had a little computer business a good day I would make 200 and then take the next three days off.

These days
I just want to scuffle for a few bucks now and then.

Always liked that song
I remember it from the sound track to the movie Pal Joey

pardon the ramble
and please pardon the pardon

[stilltrucking]

Wrong movie
not Pal Joey
but still I always liked that song

[stilltrucking]

Cecil there is an interesting book called Achilles In Vietnam. Some interesting things to say about "human nature" it is our nature to live in a culture.

Our culture is getting more feudal everyday.
they can manage us better and better

they have arranged for sufficient wealth-sharing so as to avoid unmanageable social unrest, but the natural conflict between labor and capital will continue as long as one man owns while another man toils. The ants are watching and waiting and smiling. They wish us a happy Labor Day.

[mtmynd]

In today's tumultuous times, the mere suggestion of wealth sharing is akin to communism which reminds people to fear anything that even smells of communism much less socialism.

As I said, the collective 'we' are still growing up, learning how to live and live right on this still strange and unknown world we are inhabiting. If it were more familiar to us we would have no need to study it as much as we do, but we don't and we continue our search for understanding.

I find it vital that during our learning process we must find an economic system that benefits not only our immediate family but our hu'manity. Without improving that system beyond what we have now will be suicidal in the long run as our needs far outweigh the wants of a few who control the purse strings.

[stilltrucking]

In the meantime where can I get a job
I am a high school drop out
and my girlfriend is ten months pregnant

[Lightning Rod]

There are a handful of people in this world who can say 'I hate you' to me and I draw it to my heart like a gift. You are among them, Jack. A tried and trusted intimacy will not only render that statement harmless but turn it into a term of endearment. We share that kind of intimacy by virtue of the virtual, I suppose. You have probably read as much of my scribbling as any person on the planet. The heck of it is that you keep doing it and of course this causes me to ask myself, 'is this guy really one of the rare folk who can attain the level of awareness required to fully benefit from my prose or is he just a glutton for punishment?'

From your responses to my posts and to the posts of others on this site, it is plain to me that whatever the subject matter, you 'get it' so consistently that you can often expand the subject in wonderful ways. I give you and your ensemble of puppets credit for multi-handedly keeping this place alive with your banter.

Cec, I puzzle over it to the point of distraction. I don't know if it would be better to study the ants or the Chinese.

[stilltrucking]

Thanks Clay
you know I never used enough emoticons
not hard for me to be humble about my writing

Cecil got his livelihood right

My little rock and roller got to have a job
I expect him to join the army any day now.
When we have more people like Cecil in this world
we all be better off
till then
We got Harvard grads
I wonder if Obama ever met A.O.Wilson

Random thought
Nice thing about being Chinese is everyone looks alike, mostly except for a few minorities.

[stilltrucking]

E.O.Wilson

[mtmynd]

LR: "Cec, I puzzle over it to the point of distraction. I don't know if it would be better to study the ants or the Chinese."

I, too, used to puzzle over that same thing until I began my studies of Chinese ants. I now know how Chinese calligraphy came into being.

JT: "When we have more people like Cecil in this world
we all be better off"

I wish you could convince people of that. I'd share more of my life with you, amigo. Until then, I'm content with what life has given me and continues to give, including the clumsy reminders that I'm full of shit.

[stilltrucking]

speaking of no shitz
I could never interest N.S. to talk about Filthy Lucre,

[stilltrucking]

broken link

Life against death:
Norman Oliver Brown - 1985 - Psychology - 366 pages
... x1v The Protestant Era 202 xv Filthy Lucre 234 Rationality and Irrationality; Sacred and Secular; Utility and Uselessness; Owe and Ought; Time Is Money; ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0819561444...