GDP Is Actually A Misery Index

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

What happens when you work more than needed to acquire material necessities? You WASTE YOUR SHORT PRECIOUS LIFE producing crap for idiots.

roductivity and production, up to a point, is good. We must have healthy food, functional clothing, shelter, medicine and the like. It may even be worth additional effort and time to make the food tasty and the clothing and shelter attractive. But at least 90% of labor is useless, and even destructive.

Work isn’t a virtue. After a certain amount, it’s destructive. Work uses energy, usually dirty energy, and-in addition to the portion of your life it wastes-it ruins the Earth for its inhabitants. Including ourselves and especially for our children and grandchildren.

Excessive work is a crime against humanity. It’s deadly. It’s wasteful. It’s underpinned by greed and selfishness and, among elites, an addiction to luxuries and power. Too much work, which is what nearly everyone on Earth does, is an abomination.

Life is short and should be lived fully. Not wasted on useless and destructive activities.

To produce only what’s needed, we would probably work maybe 10% of what we do today. So, what about that additional 90%, the greatest portion of the GDP? That’s the misery index. Our time is our life and any unneeded labor is costly, and that costs the most valuable thing you will ever have: your time which is your life.

Your limited lifespan will be in total (almost certainly) less than 10 decades. Now, you are wasting your life because you are, more or less, forced to. But you also either support or at minimum do not oppose this whole system of exploitation.

Your obedience is what makes your exploitation possible. That is something that needs to change.

Capitalism AND Communism AND Most Other Systems-Same Result

This is the point when people start calling me a Marxist. Because ideology requires these people to endorse a particular form of exploitation. NOT being exploited is not an option and so ALL exploitation is conveniently labeled “Marxist.”

Except that our group, The Saners, opposes all exploitation and we see that the communists are just as abusive (and possibly more so) than plutocrats. We don’t think anybody should waste a lifetime serving elites, and don’t care if the elite is a corporation, a communist party, or a dictator.

We want everyone-including the fools who are destroying the Earth while exploiting us-to live life fully as human beings. Nobody should ever be reduced to the inhumane status of a “human resource.”

What’s Good For “the Economy” Is Usually Bad for People

Our thinking about “the economy” is itself a kind of insanity. We celebrate when there are more jobs-meaning in reality, more exploitation. We restrict our thinking about everything physical in the world as resources for commerce. Even people, as noted earlier, have no value except insofar as they are Human Resources, producing wealth for some egocentric nitwit.

Let’s stop making everything subservient to what is essentially a very bad idea-systems whereby the vast majority of people waste their lives serving an undeserving elite. It doesn’t matter if the elite is a communist, a plutocrat, or a dictator. For the working person, it’s the same wasted life.

I’m going to state this directly: People are inherently valuable. Stuff is only valuable insofar as they make things better; under our systems, people are subservient to things and therefore those things are making our lives worse. In fact, they are ruining our entire planet, making the Earth itself increasingly hostile to human life.

We need to reverse course, and refuse to obey any and all systems of exploitation. At this late date, after decades of doing the opposite of what scientists warned us was necessary—we increased rather than sharply cut our consumption of fossil fuels—we need to take quick and drastic action. But we want that drastic action to be as benign as possible.

We’ve already suffered enough and yes, it is undeniable that we must now slash fossil fuels use quicker and more sharply than if we had started decades early. But this is Natural Law and biology. There is no way around it. The time for evasion is over. It’s now change or die.

The Saners Way

The Saners way—and the way of most successful movements—is to NOT cooperate with evil acts and to disobey authorities when they demand you do something seriously destructive. The Saners way is to NOT discuss issues within the framework of fools, and instead to speak truth plainly and clearly.

In other words, the Saners seek to embody the best in people in word and deed. This, and not violence, is and has been historically the best and most effective way to create positive change.

But it’s tricky to pull off. Still, this is within our power and it’s our best chance to save our species from self-destruction and to enable our children and grandchildren to live happy and meaningful lives.

I don’t know about you, but I’m all in.

How do we actually DO nonviolent noncooperation? Well, it’s not one thing and you can begin withdrawing your support from actions that damage the Earth in stages and at various levels. I suggest beginning small.

Start by signing up with The Saners so that, as we make progress, we can work together as a group, coordinate our actions (and inactions!) and have the maximum impact.

Then, look at this video about “Quiet Quitting.”