Wealth Comes Slowly

 

Take some time sometime to go onto YouTube (other platforms are available), and look for documentaries on "the world's most expensive xyz..." If you watch those documentaries fully - ideally several of them in a row (they make a great background if you're working from home, doing creative projects, or getting through the housework), you'll notice something: All of these expensive products - some selling for literally thousands of dollars a piece - are made slowly. Often very slowly. Days at a minimum, more commonly years. And these products are still very much in demand. Many companies are struggling to keep up with demand, because - globally, including in "countries that don't pamper people with bs like a 'welfare state!' - businesses of all types are experiencing recruitment challenges. People aren't arguing the toss over the cost of these products - they're paying deposits to join years-long waiting lists for them. So, why are you believing your version of capitalism (because, for the most part, these high end goods are being made and sold under capitalism, by people who value capitalism as the most effective form of dealing with the need to have a money-and-goods-and-labour based economic system) when it insists that "working faster and harder" is how you get the big bucks? When it tells you that "productivity and efficiency" is "how the money gets into the business?" China has a huge population. It has extreme degrees of systemic inequality. It has global ambitions; if China could charge high prices for goods made quickly, it would definitely do so. I've worked for companies that were directly involved in manufacture negotiations with China - my bosses would routinely be frustrated by how "intransigent" the Chinese were on doing what they wanted even cheaper than they were already offering. (And yes...I saw the markups...150% minimum, in most cases...) They hated going on buying trips, because the Chinese didn't shift from their price. Very politely, very respectfully, very making the white tightwads believe they were getting a favour for paying £3.50 instead of £2...but very definite. The price was the price; if China could get the goods out in volume, at speed, and charge more? They definitely would. But speed has a very narrow value range. You might value the mechanic being able to look at your car right away, but how comfortable would you feel if she told you she'd fixed it in five minutes? How would you feel if she then told you the cost for the five minute fix was £500? An interesting position on cost and value can be seen in hairdressing. I typically only actually go to a barber if I have an in-person job interview, or some other very important event, as otherwise I can accomplish a 1 all over perfectly adequately at home with a £20 set of clippers. When I do go to the barber's, my haircut takes 10minutes, and costs between £10-15, depending on which barber's is able to see me immediately. 10 minutes. £10-15. There's six sets of 10minutes in an hour. I may be paying £10-15, but my barber is charging £60-90 an hour. There's endless barber shops and hairdressers in every town and city centre - but the capitalists in control insist that "the economy will collapse! No one will have any job!" if the minimum wage is increased to £15 an hour (which still wouldn't see it keeping pace with longterm inflation and increases in cost of living). Yes, often, hairdressers and barbers have costs that minimum wage workers don't have; let's say they get to keep a third of their hourly wage; that's £20-30 an hour... and the hairdressing industry isn't "collapsing" from what I can see...which means the minimum wage could easily be £20 an hour; perhaps businesses would have to have fewer meetings, stop opening on Sundays and Bank Holidays, refine their wider opening hours around when people actually come in and spend money, rather than when they insist on surveys they absolutely will come in and spend money. Perhaps some businesses would actually realise they were just hobbies with extra steps for their owners, and be wound up. But people with both more time and more money can do a lot more in their local economies, through volunteering, and in their national economies, through increased spending. The minimum wage is paid for work done at speed. Even the £20 minimum wage barbers and hairdressers suggest should be being paid to everyone. And the problem with speed is...computers are far better at it than humans can ever be. AI excels at working at speed. We're not burnt out and overwhelmed because we have to work; we're burnt out and overwhelmed because we're being expected to work as fast as computers, and we're being told that achieving that impossible demand is "how you get genuinely decent pay." Humans have always worked. People actually do experience poor mental health when they don't work - work in the sense of "engage in purposeful activity which enables one to afford an acceptable-to-them standard of living." Many of us aren't working - we're employed, but we are very obviously not "engaged in purposeful activity which enables us to achieve a standard of living which is acceptable to us." This is why so many people shop recreationally - going out to buy genuinely discretionary (ie, not actually needed) items, clicking "add to cart" multiple times a week, signing up for yet another subscription, ordering takeaway, rather than using the food they have in the house; we are working to the point of exhaustion, but we do not have a "good" standard of living, much less the standard of living we want to have; by cluttering our lives with drastically underpriced "extras" which still leave us overspent and overdrawn, we can look around and briefly believe that we have achieved that "good standard of living" we feel the extent of our labour should be affording us. Don't "pivot to AI." Don't "invest in upskilling".

Find your slow process with a high price point.