Are Humans Becoming Redundant?

There is a latent, but pervasive, sense among Americans that the rich need the rest of us as a market. As Henry Ford is said to have believed, he had to pay his workers decently if he expected them to buy his automobiles. However, this serf-like view of humanity is true only if wealth is being generated by mass production for mass consumption and that production cannot be moved from one region to another. The truth is, however, that markets are not people, they are money. If money is concentrated in relatively few hands, the market cannot be "mass:" to wit nobody markets to poor people because they have no money--except in a scam such as subprime mortgages.

The message here is that an unregulated, market-driven economy cannot meet the needs of humanity at large, which in substantial measure, is why we are seeing the global turmoil being generated by the fallout from the Great Recession.

It follows that as the market-driven economy continues to concentrate increasing amounts of wealth in fewer individuals that the demographic size of the market shrinks and increasing numbers of humans cease to be effective members of the economy.

Sam Pizzigatti, editor of the online publication Too Much, which is concerned with economic inequality, has published an article detailing one major indicator of this phenomenon-- advertising. Sam reviews a report in Ad Age, the major trade journal of the advertising industry, which tells advertisers to forget marketing to individuals who make less then $100,000 a year. Useful amounts of money are not to be made there. Additionally the report advises that long term marketing strategy should focus on 20-30 year olds who make at least $100,000 a year because the probabilities are that they will be the wealthy cohort from which future profits are to be made. Here we have one of the most wealth sensitive segments of our economy, advertising, laying out their assessment of our economic future, which envisions increasing concentration of wealth and the power that accompanies it as well as increasing numbers of economically deprived human beings. We shall address some of the social consequences of this below. Sam's article titled, Madison Ave. Declares 'Mass Affluence' Over, may be found at http://toomuchonline.org/madison-ave-declares-mass-affluence-over/.

In another article titled, Are the American People Obsolete? Michael Lind, political policy director at the New America Foundation, examines the fate of the American worker if wealth continues to concentrate. Here I would observe that the reason that the wealthy oppose public employment is, at root, because the public sector is the only place that people cashiered by the private sector have to go to get employment. It is difficult to think of a more economically vicious catch 22. But as Grover Norquist, a patron saint of the wealthy anti-taxers, said of government "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

The wealthy, in so many words, see government as the enemy standing between them and total domination of society.

Michael begins his article by asking "Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes." He then goes on to unfold a scenario in which increasing joblessness forces Americans, like the citizens of so many poorer countries, to migrate elsewhere in search of employment. Americans have not seen this possibility before, but it is common to the rest of the world, indeed, it was migrating poor Europeans who created this country.

Perhaps a couple of quotes from Michael's article will encourage you to read the complete article, which I highly recommend.

This is a message that must be made as clear to the American people as that greed is a primary Wall Street motivator.

" The point is that, just as much of America’s elite is willing to shut down every factory in the country if it is possible to open cheaper factories in countries like China, so much of the American ruling class would prefer not to hire their fellow Americans, even for jobs done on American soil, if less expensive and more deferential foreign nationals with fewer legal rights can be imported."

You want to know how to stop incessant war?

"The American people also could put a stop to any thought of an American Foreign Legion and declare, through their representatives, that a nation of citizen-workers will be protected by citizen-soldiers, whether professionals or, in emergencies, conscripts. The American people, in other words, could insist that the United States will be a democratic republican nation-state, not a post-national rentier oligarchy." Michael's article can be found at http://news.salon.com/2010/07/27/american_people_obsolete/.

Again, the message is if the rich have no need for you, you become redundant. Obviously this cannot be a continuing process. Obviously it must be stopped either within the capitalist system or through a replacement system.

Let us now look at some of the social fallout from this attack by the wealthy on government and, hence, on us. Support for public universities and colleges has diminished to the point of canceling some courses and outrageously increasing enrollment fees, reducing or eliminating monetary aid to students from poor families and reducing teaching staff. At the same time the wealthy continue to get tax deductions for their extensive gifts to their private colleges and universities. As I say, vicious! The concentration of wealth in the few has left public schools strapped for resources. Teachers have been let go thereby increasing class sizes, when everyone knows class size is one of the most significant determinants of effective education. This also increases the numbers of unemployed. Deliberate and vicious! There could be a direct transference of money, by way of a transaction tax on pure speculative investing, to public schools both to correct this awful imbalance and demonstrate to the American people the direct connection between the speculation-ridden life of the wealthy and the working life of most Americans. Of course, however, the wealthy would then claim their enormously wasteful and economically distorting practices support public education. Similar transfers of wealth by this kind of tax should be made to the victims of mortgage fraud and to the millions homeless with parents and children frightened of the future and desperate for some sort of security. And the Republican party of wealth and privilege would have us believe they care? Liars of the thousand lights of charity! These are but a few of the known, deliberate, consequences of increased wealth concentration and those who benefit from it. As we have said before wealth, especially concentrated wealth, is an enemy of the people and of democracy. It should be an object of social scorn instead of the focus of envy and icon of achieving that it now is.

So, is the bulk of humanity headed for economic irrelevance? If you look at the major trends as Michael did the answer would be "yes." None of the forces in play naturally encourage societal development. Labor requires less and less human endeavor. This is called efficiency, but efficiency presupposes a goal which one process is more efficient than another at accomplishing. What is the goal of this kind of efficiency? Simply more money called profit. Notably not human well being. Being as neither technology nor the power of the wealthy is directed at creating a viable, rewarding society for the majority of mankind, the only mechanism for changing human destiny is the informed will of the vast majority of mankind. Our operating principal is that we still outnumber them. Many people understand this. One union speaker at the Occupy Wall Street rally on the occasion of union support showing up, said to these predominantly young protesters "Well, we finally got together." Unions have been pitting manpower against wealth for years. This is a place to begin learning. Unions, like other organized efforts, whether corporations or religions, are subject to corruption, which requires a vigilant membership, but at least they are focused on human beings not merely money. As Benjamin Franklin said "We must all hang together or, assuredly, we will all hang separately." To do this we must develop a new understanding of what it means to be human at our best and to build a value system based on this reality. This is a tall order, but we are faced with a tragic reality. I still remember Denis Kucinich crying into the microphone during a candidates forum in the 2008 election "Wake up America, wake up!" This was by far the most powerful utterance in that whole devious, manipulative charade.

Corrective action.

For starters corrective action must begin with the realization that excessive concentrated wealth is a threat to mankind and must be eliminated at its first appearance. The methods of its accumulation must be as continuously monitored as we monitor the rise of an epidemic-causing virus. Instead of encouraging our young to "go forth and make their fortune," we need to encourage them create a better world, to live modestly and help make this planet the livable place it should be. We need to create a global value system that will take precedence over any existing cultural system. Because of overpopulation, over consumption, maldistribution of wealth, and the increasing efficiency of weapons technology, we have got to the point that humanity is its own worst enemy.

Bob Newhard