Forum Post: A Long Way to Here from There

Circa 12,000 years ago settled agricultural communities and cities began to disrupt the lives of nomadic herdsmen and hunter gatherers. Soon priests and kings arose to claim a share of the produce of the people, as they set themselves above us.

2000 years ago most European communities were local and self-sufficient. Everybody worked to make their living. Most worked cooperatively with their neighbors. Most of the grazing and farmland was in the commons, which were the center of an economy manned by essentially equal community members.

Until some asserted ownership of the commons as their private property and began to extract rents and taxes from the others in the community, everyone was more or less equal. When lords began to parasitize the rest, the egalitarian life ceased to exist. We worked for them and they didn't kill or maim us. They also protected their domains from rival gangsters. They said then and say now that they protect us from foreign invasion. We are socialized to know that foreign leaders will always be worse than the devils who abuse us today.

As unemployment grows because leaders can extract income from us with fewer workers, the greedier lords of Wall St remind us that to feed, clothe and shelter excess population encourages working class people to be lazy parasites. In fact, some workers do think they should be able to have a living without work just like businessmen and bankers, who own (or hold the mortgages on) everything. Our leaders distract us by pointing to such wannabe upstarts whenever anyone notices that the elite classes are actually the original parasites. Don't think about the nature of neo-feudal capitalism. Worry instead that your peers may be getting something for nothing, while you have to work for the scraps your employers leave for you.

The Parasite Economy - https://prospect.org/labor/confronting-parasite-economy/

Video link https://youtu.be/tTJwLInbz8M