Entitlement (TEST RUN NOTHING TO SEE HERE)

You know the firefox spell checker doesn't work in titles. So I am pretty sure I spelled entitlement wrong. Wait...wow no I didn't. What an ungainly word. Oh well so for once my blog title has something to do with something that is actually going to happen within this blog entry. That is so strange that I am not even sure if I should proceed or talk about something like jeans. Well I have nothing to say about jeans so to bad. Though I was taking stock and I actually have far more blog posts inside my head than I have time to write all of these so I guess I should stop dillydallying around and actually get started.

Entitlement. Still an ungainly looking word. It doesn't roll off the tongue well and it isn't a word you hear very often anymore, yet there it sits like a giant elephant in the room that everyone feels they shouldn't have to pay atension to because someone else should have to deal with it. This started as a responce to an unusually well written article discussing 5 reasons why it still isn't cool to be a gamer. I'll be linking to that article in a bit. Because it fits into what I have to say in a bit. But for now lets put it aside for a bit. Which I suppose means it is thesis time.

Entitlement is a ubiquitous force in america that eats away at our fundamental ability to live life and enjoy the things that are happening around them. Through looking at entitlement issues we can start to uncover all sorts of things. The thing I want to focus on is labor, theft, and "hazing rituals".

On one of my more thoughtful veturnes I've made into defending Marxism I explained to someone that the main attitude that needs to be killed within both the burgeosie and the proletariate is the idea that "I provide. Therefore I am owed...". It is a simple idea that is insidiously simple. It is also an idea that is notoriously difficult to argue with. Lets go back to a nice familar example, the textile factory. The factory owner provides the workspace, the textiles, the lighting, and all the other essential means through which wealth is allowed to be generated. The workers are the things that allow the wealth to be generated. Now in this situation the workers don't need to be very skilled. THe diffrence between a skilled worker and an unskilled worker is negliable enough so that it is simply easier to replace workers than provide inscentives to keep the workers you have. Okay then! Because of all of this the factory owner feels that he is OWED a bigger share of the pie than the workers. After all without the factory the workers wouldn't be working there, they would still be in the fields or somewhere else. The factory worker is the one who put up all the money ahead of time to provide this factory, and believe me that is no small amount of money. He also is responciple for keeping everything running and for keeping the raw materials in stock, and moving the raw materials out.

Hrm. Here we are in the territory of an economic system. So we aren't going to go to much in depth here with how the whole textile thing works. What is important is that the factory worker puts forths a signifigant amount of money, not labor, but money, in the exchange for more money. That is what investment in. Oh good I found my in road. See when a bank gives you a loan or someone makes an investment it is never about getting back the same amount of money you put in. That is ludicris. In a way they have a point. However, as a side effect this basic ecconomical concept forms the basis of a thought process that extends downwards through history and many facets of society. It isn't so much that the concept itself is bad, but rather it is the idea of how much you are able to profit from an invidual capital investment. THAT is where the problem comes in. As it stood then with the textile factory, and still stands today the amount of money you can make from putting forth an investment is uncapped. Stratigicly, you put forth as little money as possible and thus you are able to reap profits off of other people's labor that much faster. This is how we get things like skimping on lights, not having enough windows, not bothering with fire exits, and the other generally horrible things that happened during the industrial revolution.

This changed when miners realized they have dynamite and they didn't have to take their bosses shit anymore.

Flash foward a few years and you have a new sort of entitlement. It is the entitlement that is spoken of int the cracked article and since you've read this far you get a link now.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer.html

NO you need to copy and paste it I am not using your fancy h tee mee ell or things like that. BAH.

I think this is the first time I have ever read an anti piracy message that I compleatly agree with. Holy good god what the hell is wrong with people. No I am not telling you go read the article it is actually good even if you don't play video games.

Now we have to work backwards to see how we get from the mustash twirling factory owner who locks his employees in the factory causing sever hunderd of them to burn to death one day when it caught fire, to the scramble to get more stuff for less because it is owed to us. Part of it one thing is a symptom of the other. Thanks to those who have come before, Marx, and feminism, the work place has become a lot more hostile to its workers. We can now speak out against our bosses and not get fired. Hell in some situations it is so difficult for employers to fire someone that the process could take the better part of 6 months. Also with time and the general flow of ideas that idea that people using money to make more money off of what we do is one that is becoming far more common and it is starting to really...

You know what this second part is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It isn't that I am on the wrong track. Part of it is because I am hungry. Part of it is because I am trying to avoid the human nature argument. What I think I might do is take the idea of vengence/revenge and apply it to this. Because there are greedy corporations, or because our job is shitty we are allowed to steal from it. Fuck them anyway right? They are making money hand over fist and blah blah blah. I also want to touch on the idea of not having to do certain chores, not having to do certain jobs, or certain tasks at certain jobs. These all tie back to the idea that we want to be able to profit off of our labor too, not most of it going to just the bloke who put up the money. But that is to much of an anachist/marxist argument for my taste. I want this to be more about how we live our lives and interact with work. Maybe I should skip the first part and focus more on the problems of entitlement and where it comes from. The clearest example of this would be the bank bonuses that went out right after they crashed our economy.

That is actually an interesting point when you compare it to what I said earlier. Factory workers were discarded when prooved troublesome. Bankers crash the economy but get a bonus because we don't have enough bankers.

If it seems like I am dancing around materialism it is because I am. Saying we should just be less materialistic is a purely unelegant solution to this situation. Also fuck that, especially when computers are involved. If we are willing to cut out the hassle of physical media then we shouldn't have to pay even half of a printed version. Also if we are going to put up with the bullshit of a capitalistic society we should be able to buy our goods and services quickly and effenciently. Every marvel at how amazingly ineffecient going shopping actually is? See there is it is right there (yeah totally not immune to the effects which might be another problem). I have a wad of money I am willing to hand it over to a store in exchange for an Amilie dvd and 20 stores later none of them have it. There is always internet shopping but why on earth would I do that when I could just pirate it using the same internet. Or rather I pay for the internet, I am certainly not going to use it to spend more money, I am going to use it to help me save money.

I dunno. But I am going to let this one sit and stew for a minute or three. It is one of those things that I will gather up my horses and try it again.m TEST RUN LADIES AND GENTLE MEN NOTHING TO SEE HERE.