The Consumers and the Consumed

[demwing]

Truly, the only reason we need to earn money is because we "need" to spend money.

Once we were craftsmen and laborers, thinkers and inventors. Now we are consumers, and we have become separated from the value of the things we consume because they are made in another country, in a poorly lit warehouse, by people we will never meet. In exchange for those trinkets, we trade "capital" - a thing of imaginary, not intrinsic, value. We are told that this is a convenience, but the truth is we are currency slaves, and the only convenience is to the "capitalists" - men who take a percentage of every trade and call it "profits."

We work so that capitalists may profit. When we don't work, those who would profit call us lazy and useless, and thus we are separated from the value of our very lives.

Now we are consumers. One day we will be the consumed.

Bernie Sander wants us to change our futures through a social/economic/political revolution. If we pass on that opportunity, I can see only two outcomes-more of the same with the oligarchs at the top of the food chain, or an actual revolution of tears and of blood.

Think hard about your choices, think hard about your vote.

[robertpaulsen]

1. "We are currency slaves" - you nailed it.

Until you change the way money works, you change nothing.

The currency we're slaves to has no intrinsic value anyway. It's just debt. Debt from fiat, debt from fractional reserves and debt from usurous compound interest.

So why are we working ourselves to death?! For what?!

This commercial is a great parody of that Cadillac ad that asked why we're not more like Europe (5 weeks vacation per year) and came off sounding like go-go capitalist Reagan-era bullshit, even if it was for a plug-in.

Better to question why than be a mindless consumer.

[Hestia]

2. Housing is a large percentage of our costs - bring that back inline and everything else

is gravy. Grow your own food, live by the sun, etc. It's doable.

[demwing]

3. Imagine what compromises we would settle for

if we argued over fundamental changes instead of incremental?

[merrily]

4. Currency slaves--a personal epiphany

I was very young. I had recently gotten a high-powered, great-paying (it seemed) job. We took a vacation to a beach area that was basically for tourists and only tourists. On a rainy day, I tried to shop, but the shops closed for a few hours during midday. I thought, "Don't they get how much money they could make if they were open all day on a day like this? In the very next second, I realized, "Of course they get it. They just have different priorities than most USians." They were right. I was wrong.