Pumpin' Up the Vision:
What is our responsibility to others?...
Nascence to End Work
Go With It:
As of 08.03.09:
"Hello! Wow - reading a little bit of "WAKE UP" was incredible! I am so happy that this information is out there.
Please send me a hardcopy of WAKE UP, and any other literature you would like to send. I am in on this movement!"
Of course I agree 100% that waged work, together with money itself, must go. I would value your suggestions on how to use the combined opportunities of the internet, the foreclosure boom, mass bailout thefts of trillion$ to help bring this about.
As of 07.15.09:
"It is SO up to us!"
"Thanks, I think your book is very important. It`s a different form to see our work and the world. I explore it in internet and it make me to think about the arguments and about what are we doing with our work? and what are we doing in our places, nations and the world?.
I‘m very interesting to read your book, I live in Bolivia, then if you can send the book to me, it is good. If you can`t, please tell me, I can read it in the website."
"We're totally together with your goal of ending wage slavery. Have you read the first book by Louis Kelso and the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, which you can download free at the homepage at www.cesj.org. Don't get turned off by the tital. Read Adler's preface and chapter two, "Economic Freedom: Property and Leisure," which discusses the nature of economic work versus leisure work. We call Kelso's vision "the Just Third Way" to distinguish the new system from capitalism and socialism. (http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/comparison3rdway.htm)."
"The right to work under just and favorable conditions, as stated by the UDHR, is not adhered to by any government that I am aware of.
Ending wage work, should go a ways towards bettering the lot of the wage slave.
I like the pareconist approach to rewarding work: "remuneration" based on effort and sacrifice."
"I'm all for a huge social transformation and maybe we need to redefine what we call work. Absolutely agree that wage slave system vile, corrupt and dehumanizing. I "work" 7 days a week as a volunteer but never call it work. It's my life and how I want to spend it.
Predatory capitalism hugely exploitive. Our survival as a species depends on replacing it with a socially sustainable system; name not important and I'm for purging all the "isms.""
As of 06.15.09:
"i am reading your book from your website: i've read the I and II Chapters, and they are indeed very interesting."
"I looked at your website and I can't possibly agree with you more. I have two jobs and work probably 60 hours a week and I hate it so much and feel so trapped. I am working really hard right now because I bought a schoolbus that I am going to convert into and RV so that I can quit my jobs and just travel and try to sustain a lifestyle that is as money free as possible. I think about it all the time, how we only have this one life (maybe) and how detrimental work and money and social structure is to our existence as happy human beings. It doesn't make any sense to me. I worked for almost 5 years building a career as a hairstylist until I realized that it was bullshit and sucking out my soul and even though I make much less money I am so much happier now that I quit that job. But I really do dream of being able to leave wage work behind, and even though our society is structured to be on "the career path" I do think it is possible to leave all of that behind. Anyway, I would love to read your book. I think that what you are doing sounds great and I would be interested to learn more about it."
"And I'm with you that we have to figure out a different way to live, that isn't dependent on supplying 5-7 billion jobs for people! the book I read that got me to create the Timebank here said "The world doesn't need, and therefore will never provide, 6 billion jobs." well, duh. It boggles the mind that we keep trying to manipulate things to make that kind of system work."
"It really pisses me off that I can't think of any truly free land to live on."
"It certainly seems like a good time to re-examine and assess capitalism in its current state and materialism as unlikely roads to happiness but unfortunately there seem to be few who are using this time as an opportunity rather than a dread. Though we all need to do some serious inner work simultaneously, even us radicals."
"More freedom and a bigger awareness of people is the only way to solve in a positive way our current problems..."
"I would like to see a more cooperative support network rather than a hierarchical system. Have you read "The Future of Money" by Bernard Lietaer? He is inspiring."
Gaps and Concerns:
As of 07.15.09:
"The site and book sound very interesting. I’m personally strapped for time as many of us are. Until we end land value assessment and mortgage payments, I don’t see how we can just stop working; sorry to be such a pessimist."
As of 06.15.09:
"I am all for changing how we work and see work as part of our human-ness and humanity, work for the social good and not for exploitation – now that would be a job everyone would want. I am also anxious to see what your vision says or implicates for farmworkers, especially migrant farmworkers."
"As for feedback on your site/book so far, I feel that visitors to your page could greatly benefit from a brief rundown of your proposed system exit plan and strategies for supporting themselves."
"I understand the concept, but its a very privileged idea. If you're a poor single black woman or, like my grandmother, a poor single latina mother, and you have mulitiple jobs that you spend hours getting to on several buses, being told that this book will just cure all your problems is a joke. Only those who have the privileges to even have the time to read your book, let alone put it into practice, will get any use out of it. And I don't aspire to work for those privileged folks. My job is to make sure that the people out there doing 60 hours a week in a farm harvesting your salad, or the people who sit in sweatshops for the clothes on your back at $1.45 an hour, or the youth who group up in the projects and were never encouraged to go to school by counselors and who are fighting in gangs just to survive get what they need. And this book is not an answer."
"If you would like to have a review published, and a link to your blog, or a running series, please help us to consider these possibilities by providing us with a concise answer to this question: If the premise is to end the traditional practice of working for a wage, what is your suggestion as to how the individual, in general, will create enough income to pay for the necessities of a continued existence?"
"I must admit that at first glance I find myself skeptical of using the word "nascence" in the name of a movement building organization. I rarely hear the word used and it feels too more academic than rousing."
"As much as I am sympathetic to the cause of eliminating wage work, politically I feel there are a few intermediate steps that need to be taken first. I also believe in the durability and even desirability of market forces, though not in the forms that they now take. "