Hand to Mouth

Some common ground between anti-capitalists (labour should get all the reward) and anti-welfare (work ethic/ safety nets make people lazy) is a romanticising of work. Work for work’s sake. This commits us to hand to mouth living. Hand to mouth living commits us to cycles of booms and bust when our hands aren’t sufficient. Hand to mouth living commits us to hunger when there is not enough work. If you think of work as problem solving, then presumably you want the problem to be solved. We shouldn’t be afraid of technological advances solving problems, or increases in supply of people able to solve the problem making it cheaper to solve. We shouldn’t build borders that keep problem solvers out. We shouldn’t want to create fake problems just to keep people busy so we can pay them with “dignity”. We should welcome the spread of knowledge. This can only come if we turn everyone into owners. With Capital that moves from solved problem to new or harder problems. Work isn’t just a way of keeping us busy. The last thing we should be killing is time.

Free Rider

An Engine is Capital that can earn money on your behalf, so that you can focus on value that is hard to monetise. Income is the lazy man’s way of comparing the incomparable. We don’t have the capacity to understand each other’s worlds without concerted effort. We are mostly too busy on our own stuff to try. We don’t appreciate Free Riders and Lazy Eaters. The base assumption is if you aren’t earning coin, you are leeching. It is a terrible assumption. A symptom of our societal obsession with weighing and measuring each other, rather than seeing the person. Not all ideas are good business ideas. Not all business ideas are good ideas. Most of my time is spent on things that don’t make money, because I “front loaded” my earning. I didn’t spend it all, but instead got it a job. It still earns money. That enables me to do unpaid work. To explore. To get lost in the grass. To appear lost, because I don’t have a big pay-check to print on my shirt. I don’t have a boss to justify myself to. I am cool with that. The world mostly isn’t.

Free to Wonder

Income Addicts

You can live off an Income, a Buffer, or an Engine, but they are very different beasts. If you live off an Income, it has to come in. What you get, you spend. So if you don’t work, you don’t get, and you can’t spend. A Buffer has to be very liquid. You have to be able to sell it quickly if it isn’t already cash. That means it can’t be working too hard, or be doing something where the benefits only come in the future. If you are living off a Buffer, the clock starts ticking. It will run out. But, it gives you time to retrain or find more work. An Engine is a long-term vehicle. It provides Endurance if you can live off less than it produces. If you are a good custodian who doesn’t extract all its future potential during the short term. If it is protected by a resilient Buffer, and invested in when there is work available. Unfortunately, the world focuses on humans as productive assets and calls this “Work Ethic”. With no Buffer, and no Engine, there is no space to pause. To breathe. To reflect. When you have no choice but to stop, the cost suddenly becomes real. When the world restarts, we must never again forget the need for Buffers and Engines.

Work (1852 - 1865) - Ford Madox Brown