To watch a short video click here! :-)
What are
these law enforcement folks protecting to begin with? The assets,
infrastructure and personal privacy and security of the top 1%,
that's what! The problem with that is the top 1% regard everything in
sight as theirs, as if all the people in the lower income brackets –
the other 99% – didn't deserve one stinking thing. In short, its
all a game of acquiring the most stuff, the biggest collection of
material goods of one kind or another, the fastest or most luxurious
car, the most powerful truck and the biggest house. And for what? If
one of us should die tomorrow, he or she can take absolutely none of
it with them. As Rev. Billy Graham used to preach, “nobody ever saw
a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer behind it”. It's all temporary,
left behind when we are dead and gone, as all of us eventually will
be, including me. It's what we leave behind that counts. Maybe we
should ask ourselves – if you haven't done so already – what kind
of legacy do we want to leave? Not someone who did great things in
the sight of others or who made a great fortune, but someone who took
care of the needs of the people on a case by case basis. Not someone
who is lauded with praise by men and women, but one who seeks the
praise and approval of Almighty God as I and others like me do. I
love giving some homeless guy a couple of dollars, paying an elderly
widow's electric bill to keep it from being turned off, donating a
used computer to an inner city school kid who needs one, and never
mind their skin color either. Performing volunteer work, giving
generously to your church (it doesn't have to be financial aid, there
are many ways to help), sponsoring a hungry kid overseas, or adopting
one here at home are the things people remember about us after we
have passed, and so will God. We are to be leaving behind the things
that people remember about us long after we are gone, and they must
be positive things that build people up, not negative things that
tear us down. We are to be contributors, being sure to give wherever
possible and not living just to see how much we can earn, or even
take. Takers are losers who leave holes in time.
What if we
didn't need money at all? What if we had an alternative way to buy
things without using traditional cash, checks or plastic? What if we
didn't have to work at all, or maybe not nearly as much? Using
profit as a mechanism for the control of liquid assets by and for the
top 1% when the overwhelming majority of Americans have no access to
those assets is obviously an economic barrier that keeps the
remaining 99% of us in a bare subsistence mode that is clearly
unethical and discriminatory and therefore illegal. Eliminating the
need for money instantly wipes out poverty while putting the 99% in a
favorable position to have all their basic needs met (never mind all
the fancy BS stuff, just the basics of life). The replacement of
money, and of the work that is necessary in order to earn it, are
already being accomplished by computers and robots.
Technology
has eliminated jobs across the board on an alarming scale – from
secretarial positions to auto workers. The resulting crisis is
compounded by our culture's deep denial of the basic problem. I'm old
enough to remember the '60s and '70s when so many pundits described
the coming glories of the "cybernetic age." Then computers
would at last liberate us, they promised, from the drudgery of 9-5
jobs. Back then the worry was, what would we do with all that leisure
time? Leisure time has proven frustratingly elusive. Instead, most of
us are working harder than ever as our employing firms "downsize."
Alternatively, we're pounding the pavement looking for non-existent
jobs to replace those that have been "outsourced" to Asia
somewhere. Additionally, so many of the "jobs" available to
the more recently laid off labor force are extremely low-paying to a
humiliating degree (such as the current and pathetic minimum wage of
$7.25 hourly). In the end, they are nothing more than useless
make-work projects that are not only completely unnecessary, but
positively destructive. Things like weapons manufacturing, the
military itself, the advertising industry and telemarketers,
insurance companies, fast food, and (above all!) Wall Street jobs
connected with financial speculation. None of these occupations are
truly productive. And naming them as I have represents only the tip
of the iceberg.
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