THE CORPORATE MIDDLE AGES
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TECHNOSERFDOM
HOW TO SELL YOURSELF, CHEAP
The Meaning Of Life: Making Other People Rich
Ever wonder what it's all for? Why you schlep off to your soul-killing, meaningless job every day, just to pay the endless bills for all that crap you buy to help you forget how awful it all is? Ever consider suicide, and then realize, you can't even afford that? Now there's an easy payment plan! Just prick your finger, and sign here. Yes, in blood, if you don't mind. Ah, now THAT'S a contract!
No, you haven't sold your poor miserable soul to the Devil. You probably wouldn't get much for it, anyway. Hell is almost full. They're renting space in Utah. Not to worry, your life is already bought & paid for. The incorporation of the world is now complete. All you have to do is produce shit, buy shit, and produce more shit to pay for it. Some company somewhere will give you directions. Well, they're really all the same company now, aren't they?
In Medieval times, no one owned anything. God gave the King the right and responsibility to use and parcel out the land, the fruits of the Earth, the people and whatever they produced. The King had to protect and care for it all, or God would take it all away. The people had to obey the King, and pay his taxes, or suffer the consequences. People were taken care of, in a primitive fashion, if only as assets, or creatures of an all-knowing but unsee-able God. The people had nothing, no property, except the clothes on their backs, and whatever the could carry or accumulate in the way of "personal possessions."
Now, we don't even own that. We rent everything we own, including our clothing. Think about it. How often do clothes last longer than it takes you to pay off your credit cards? Even if they're still intact, they're out of fashion. Your house is actually the property of the mortgage-holder and the eminent-domain-wielding, tax-liening government. Your car is yours as long as you can make the payments for the loan, the insurance, the maintenance, the repairs, the taxes and fees, the gas, the parking, the tolls, etc, etc, etc. Your business, if you have one, is subject to many of the same strictures. And your job, if you have one, is not yours at all, you have no "right" to it. Even your family is yours only according to the whims of the Courts and the legislature.
Soon, you will literally be renting, not owning even the smallest little tchatchkes you rely upon to give you some sense of ownership, of belonging, of meaning, of joy in your life. All of your toys and tools, all of your techie gadgets and amusements will be subject to rents, fees, renewals, subscriptions and replacement before you ever get done with paying for them. Movies, songs, TV shows, radio programs, Internet services, computer programs, etc, etc, etc, everything will be rented, nothing will be owned. You will possess nothing, you will have no ownership rights to anything, you will exist only as a tenant, a toiling peasant, a tax-payer and a subject of a planetary corporate monarchy where capital is king.
Here's your future, today: The ultimate business model is the utility monopoly: Your local gas, electric, water, telephone, cable-TV providers. More or less automatically, without having to do a lot more than provide the basics, sometimes spottily, they get a check every month of every year for decades from everybody in the jurisdiction. You don't like it? Emigrate to another planet.
Just think of having a captive market, being able to charge whatever you want, and getting money constantly from everyone, no matter how mediocre your product was! It's the next best thing to being born rich, lazy & stupid. Or President.
Big Pharma is into the same mode: Don't cure the disease, or prevent it: Milk it. Just alleviate the worst symptoms, keep the patient alive as long as possible, spreading the disease, running up a bill, hooked on the drugs. They've learned their lesson from Big Heroin: Create a need, then fill it, again and again and again and again.
Look forward to a lifetime of paying everyone for everything on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis, from computer software to your child's college education. They've all learned from the car business: As long as you can afford the payments, who cares what the total cost will be? Likewise the out-of-control housing market. The more you make, the more your house costs. Realtors are like hookers now. When you ask them how much, they say, "How much ya got?"
OK, so you spend all your waking hours working to pay off all this junk that you never really own. But it's not like your life ever had a purpose, is it? Buck up, consumers; the worst that can happen is that you die before you finish paying them. Not to worry: For a small monthly fee, there's insurance for that. Better living through techno-serfdom? You betcha!
Who do YOU belong to this month?
"You’re Not Buying Gadgets Any More, You are Subscribing To Them"
.
.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM YOUR BLOGGERS:
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: BRING THEM ALL HOME ALIVE, NOW!
TECHNOSERFDOM
HOW TO SELL YOURSELF, CHEAP
The Meaning Of Life: Making Other People Rich
Ever wonder what it's all for? Why you schlep off to your soul-killing, meaningless job every day, just to pay the endless bills for all that crap you buy to help you forget how awful it all is? Ever consider suicide, and then realize, you can't even afford that? Now there's an easy payment plan! Just prick your finger, and sign here. Yes, in blood, if you don't mind. Ah, now THAT'S a contract!
No, you haven't sold your poor miserable soul to the Devil. You probably wouldn't get much for it, anyway. Hell is almost full. They're renting space in Utah. Not to worry, your life is already bought & paid for. The incorporation of the world is now complete. All you have to do is produce shit, buy shit, and produce more shit to pay for it. Some company somewhere will give you directions. Well, they're really all the same company now, aren't they?
In Medieval times, no one owned anything. God gave the King the right and responsibility to use and parcel out the land, the fruits of the Earth, the people and whatever they produced. The King had to protect and care for it all, or God would take it all away. The people had to obey the King, and pay his taxes, or suffer the consequences. People were taken care of, in a primitive fashion, if only as assets, or creatures of an all-knowing but unsee-able God. The people had nothing, no property, except the clothes on their backs, and whatever the could carry or accumulate in the way of "personal possessions."
Now, we don't even own that. We rent everything we own, including our clothing. Think about it. How often do clothes last longer than it takes you to pay off your credit cards? Even if they're still intact, they're out of fashion. Your house is actually the property of the mortgage-holder and the eminent-domain-wielding, tax-liening government. Your car is yours as long as you can make the payments for the loan, the insurance, the maintenance, the repairs, the taxes and fees, the gas, the parking, the tolls, etc, etc, etc. Your business, if you have one, is subject to many of the same strictures. And your job, if you have one, is not yours at all, you have no "right" to it. Even your family is yours only according to the whims of the Courts and the legislature.
Soon, you will literally be renting, not owning even the smallest little tchatchkes you rely upon to give you some sense of ownership, of belonging, of meaning, of joy in your life. All of your toys and tools, all of your techie gadgets and amusements will be subject to rents, fees, renewals, subscriptions and replacement before you ever get done with paying for them. Movies, songs, TV shows, radio programs, Internet services, computer programs, etc, etc, etc, everything will be rented, nothing will be owned. You will possess nothing, you will have no ownership rights to anything, you will exist only as a tenant, a toiling peasant, a tax-payer and a subject of a planetary corporate monarchy where capital is king.
Here's your future, today: The ultimate business model is the utility monopoly: Your local gas, electric, water, telephone, cable-TV providers. More or less automatically, without having to do a lot more than provide the basics, sometimes spottily, they get a check every month of every year for decades from everybody in the jurisdiction. You don't like it? Emigrate to another planet.
Just think of having a captive market, being able to charge whatever you want, and getting money constantly from everyone, no matter how mediocre your product was! It's the next best thing to being born rich, lazy & stupid. Or President.
Big Pharma is into the same mode: Don't cure the disease, or prevent it: Milk it. Just alleviate the worst symptoms, keep the patient alive as long as possible, spreading the disease, running up a bill, hooked on the drugs. They've learned their lesson from Big Heroin: Create a need, then fill it, again and again and again and again.
Look forward to a lifetime of paying everyone for everything on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis, from computer software to your child's college education. They've all learned from the car business: As long as you can afford the payments, who cares what the total cost will be? Likewise the out-of-control housing market. The more you make, the more your house costs. Realtors are like hookers now. When you ask them how much, they say, "How much ya got?"
OK, so you spend all your waking hours working to pay off all this junk that you never really own. But it's not like your life ever had a purpose, is it? Buck up, consumers; the worst that can happen is that you die before you finish paying them. Not to worry: For a small monthly fee, there's insurance for that. Better living through techno-serfdom? You betcha!
Who do YOU belong to this month?
"You’re Not Buying Gadgets Any More, You are Subscribing To Them"
.
.
Labels: corporate-middle-ages, landless-peasantry, monthly slavery, owning nothing, tecno-serfdom, the meaning of life
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SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: BRING THEM ALL HOME ALIVE, NOW!
posted by Cosa Nostradamus @ 1/18/2008 12:02:00 AM
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