It feels all but certain that I won’t be able to enjoy a prosperous life or get to retire. All of the wealth is going straight to the top. All of the opportunities to move up in the world are being rug-pulled. All of the federal agencies that help keep us safe and healthy are gone. The social safety net is getting flushed down the toilet. We will live in disease and squalor, and the most vulnerable of us will die.
Because I dared to not be a sociopath, I and anyone else who voted for sanity will be deemed enemies of the state and hunted down - which won’t be hard, because it would be trivial to build the most robust surveillance state in human history if it doesn’t exist already.
I myself have disabilities (which I don’t think qualify for benefits) that make it hard, but not impossible, to find a job. The problem is that I just can’t bring myself to do it because I don’t get what the fucking point is anymore. I have to work so hard to get out of this rut just for some fascist fuck to kill me or toss me into a torture facility before I can even experience life on my own.
Have you been in a similar headspace and were able to escape it? If so, what snapped you out of it?
I don’t know, I’m in the UK and feel similarly.
TL; DR Get in on the scam.
Pick something you like to do, or have a talent for, and plan a path to make money from it. You may still have to work for someone else initially, to develop skills and get experience, but it will be better than doing a shit job only for money.
Research what resources there are to support your startup. Even in places where there is no help from government or anything else for individuals, you will find they want to support business.
Especially if you have extra challenges, if you get good, they will make a narrative around your success and promote you as an example.
Log out of social media, go outside, interact with real people. Life is not remotely as bad as all that, it just seems that way because social media has told you to be scared. Humans are extremely adaptable, we will overcome whatever the problems are.
If I want things, I need money and the only way to get money without practically committing any financial crime that there is, it’s to work for it. Quite frankly, it’s unhealthy to be bathing yourself with this mentality of dreading the reality of the matter. I won’t disagree that it sucks, but there has to be other directions out there for you than just that.
But I do suspect the reason you’re feeling this way is because of you mentioning disabilities and I can’t imagine the kind of world you’re in where, it seems like there’s a layer of disrespect towards the disabled when it comes to work.
I work to have money for shelter and food and, just as importantly, some spending money for hobbies and travel. The freedom to be able to drive basically anywhere any time is a great thing to have.
The inequalities today are large but also the standard of living for even the lower class is probably higher than any other time in history. You can go your entire life without holding a shovel or hammer or piece of firewood, now imagine instead having to build your own house, grow your own food, and cut firewood to stay warm. Things aren’t so bad.
Capitalist Wage-Labor is a scam. Surplus value comes from labor. Labor is a commodity just like anything else on the market, but the price of labor itself is tied to general subsistence plus replacement, it isn’t tied to how much value is created. Differences in wages come from various factors but regulate around cost to replace, ie training requires a lot of time, so this is represented by higher wages.
Instead, we should be advocating for public ownership, so that the people get the spoils of their labor, and can pay into a general fund of sorts to provide safety nets, infrastructure, and more that don’t rely on the profit motive.
I recommend you read theory. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism if that appeals to you or anyone else.
Maybe try to find a small business you care about or interests you? I own a small business. It’s me, my wife, my sister-in-law and two friends I made in the industry. We all get paid $16/hr. We got to create the environment we wanted to work in. Its a lot of work but we’re happy and feel more free than we would elsewhere.
I know I’m coming from a point of privilege writing this but I like to think we’re all on equal footing at my place and we’re doing our best to grow together rather than making me rich. I’ve worked for a lot of small businesses as well and they often have more respect for skills and individuals - not all - but a lot. If you find a place you like or even love it can become like a second home.
God I miss my job.
More than 20 years of peace and I took it for granted. When the boss started talking about selling the place I thought, “Who would buy this outdated hole in the ground that makes no real money and is surrounded by competition?”
What bums me out the most though is that when I was 16 he said, “Come work for me. In 10 years I intend to retire and I’ll lease one of these places out to you and you’ll take over when I die.”
I knew it wasn’t happening at the 11 year mark.
Don’t be loyal. Jump around. Don’t throw your life and time away. Everyone I know who has ever made any money did so by selling their skills to the highest bidder.
I helped someone else get everything they ever wanted and I got nothing but promises.
Don’t do that. Seriously.
(I should have made this its own comment but yours is the one that moved me to write it. The speech is directed mostly at OP and anyone else who stumbles onto it.)
For a while there I was a homeless alcoholic. Now I’m an alcoholic. Given the choice between the two I know which I’d rather.
If you can swing the training, even at the CNA or EMT level, there is healthcare. Purposeful work. Knowledge that helps your daily, and is never entirely useless. If nothing else it will save you from spurious trips to the urgent care or emergency room, or tell you when to use the urgent care instead of the emergency room, and save you money there. Even before ACA there were shortages. There’s potential here for fallout as with everything else, but if hospitals can retain nonprofit status I don’t see much changing in terms of need.
For now anyway, until nonprofit status/benefits get yanked, hospitals pay part of education upgrades. They typically offer better health insurance too, if you stay in their corporate system and don’t have kids.
I’m sure there’s other purposeful professions that don’t have an impossible buyin.
I usually recommend trades. Building something with your hands, again with a skill set that carries over into your household, has purpose. But with immigration policy, a sizeable piece of the grunt work force may be kicked out, so I’m not sure what will happen there but I suspect house building will slow down.
This is why im in the field im in. My labor goes directly to people who need it. Its still a scam and im still taken advantage of monetarialy but I come into work and do things directly for people who need them.
It is a scam, but we need to eat and have a roof over our heads. So you have to find something that you can tolerate and try to get paid as much as you can for a little time as you can give. This is the game we are in. Unfortunately in the current system money talks, it is not fair but that is how it is.
you unironically just have to cope with it in whatever way makes sense to you
I personally think of my career as: “some things I do are interesting and keep me from blowing my brains out, the rest I don’t care about”
when it comes to the company I work for: I treat everyone I meet well, no corporate bs, no yes sir yes ma’am. I do whatever I’m assigned and meet deadlines
but I never go above and beyond (because of burnout)
everything you’ve thought about hard work = reward or better pay is a scam
put everything into work-life balance and when you go home focus on things you really want to do, such as hobbies or hang outs
don’t do unpaid overtime, don’t bend over for anyone, don’t offer yourself up when shit goes down
you want to be as invisible as possible while not burning out AND not working your ass off (everyone has different standards for what this means)
tldr: just find some way to cope because there isn’t really anything else you can do
Get offline, and simplify. Start doing things that are good for you. There is yet joy to come.
I’d say qualitatively and quantitatively, this system is a scam. I get up and deliver by getting myself into interesting shit that matters no matter who’s writing the check (excluding Raytheon or any of those other psycho motherfuckers).
Energy security is important, particularity environmentally compatible forms.
Medical services that don’t bankrupt people are important.
Making processes easier is important even it comes to reducing/eliminating waste.
Even the seemingly mundane ‘basic research’ has a lot of interesting caveats buried below the surface.
Find what interests you in this one life you have, do the work to get there, make friends with people who want you to get there (and help them too).
Good luck, fuck capitalism.
Yep, we need to move on towards Socialism to really begin to start fixing these problems.
You are not wrong. It’s a very unfair world we have build. And a lot of people are struggling even though there are plenty of resources to make sure every single person on earth could have their needs met and the opportunity to live a meaningful life.
BUT we have to dare to hope. Because otherwise we just give up and the people on top is counting on that. ”We have the power and there is nothing you can do about that”. I think David Graeber is one of the most hopeful people to read:
“Hope is a tricky business among intellectuals and activists. Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.
His essay Despair Fatigue opens: “Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit
I like this sentiment. Hope is also very important in my life. In my darkest times, there was always hope to cling to. It wasn’t always realistic and most of it has failed. Some have succeeded though and I am in a much better place now.
However, it is important to learn that failure is a good thing. Society has imprinted in most of us that failure is bad. It is not. Failure is a way to learn. Without failure you cannot learn and you cannot grow.
For this same reason it is perfectly fine for hope to fail. You can learn from that and adjust your hopes and expectations accordingly within the scope of you values.
Brother you need some help. The rate of decay is slow and steady and almost imperceptible to a normal lifetime. Finding a job may actually help. Now’s your chance to get in where you fit in. Love games? Get a job at local games store. Like animals? Go apply at a zoo. Find people that you can relate to. Good luck man. You can do it.
