Mastodawn

Matthew Miller Jul 17, 2025

“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.

It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. [...]

The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller (March 1970, _New York_ magazine)

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Skiros Jul 18, 2025

@mattdm Many thoughts about this 👀

1. I agree in principle

Many people merely accept that they must work for decades to survive, which I find depressing. It may be functionally true, but there are many ways to explain and ground this necessity.

Do you work out of obligation to get that bread (monetary and social worth)? Or are you part of a community, where you're valued regardless of your current contributions?

1/4

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@skirov @mattdm no, we work by obligation because we need money, because powerful people have declared that money is now required to get basic necessities. Who works for fun? This is the greateat fallacy ever.

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Skiros

@f4grx Some people work for reasons beyond obligation. Their impact shines through, even in shitty and exploitative systems. These people are the core around which communities gather, and demand change from the powerful.