hey, listen - reality is that society is running just fine without me, and that the challenges i'm facing are not unique to me, and will become increasingly prevalent over the course of the next generation. youth unemployment in this region is pushing 30%. there are places in europe where it's pushing 50%. this is a structural level of unemployment that is likely with us permanently moving forwards. the solution is not to magically create jobs where no jobs are necessary, to dig ditches and fill them in as the old saying goes, it's to come to terms with the reality that we've already reached the technological requirements of full communism and adjust the social system to account for that reality. my generation is just unfortunate enough to be on the bleeding edge of it, where the shifts in technology are ahead of the shifts in mass consciousness. there's no future in western society beyond that realization, but there's a lot of social norms and traditions pushing against coming to terms with it. the fact is we live in a reality where we're increasingly only able to employ a small percentage of the population, and the rest is not going to have any option but to live on the wealth that the machines create, in one way or another.

there's a popular misconception that we've lost all the jobs to offshoring, but if you actually look at statistics and ask economists about it the truth will come out that the largest share of job losses are due to mechanization. mexico didn't steal your job, robots did. the robots and artificial intelligences are just getting better. i've seen a number of articles recently asking if doctors are about to be replaced by smart phones. well, i think we'll always have a place for doctors and surgeons especially - but the workload may decrease dramatically. a "family doctor" may soon be a thing of the past. the classrooms of the near future will probably not have teachers in them. &etc.

as all these shifts in technology create ever increasing levels of unemployment, we're going to have to adopt ideas like job sharing. to an extent, we're already there, with the ubiquity of part-time employment. but, again, the social system hasn't adjusted to it. perhaps, more problematically, workers movements haven't adjusted to it. demanding higher wages seems progressive, but it's masking a larger problem. from a quality of life perspective, working part-time is far better than working full-time, is it not? that's less work and more play, which ought to be the goal (i understand it isn't currently). but, it requires structural adjustments like guaranteed incomes to fill in the holes. otherwise, we need to turn the machines off - or adopt ghastly measures to decrease the population.

these are realities that we all need to come to terms with. more and more people are going to be living the way i am, out of necessity, because a prole has nothing to sell but labour, and if capital isn't buying labour then the prole simply doesn't have a way out. i'm just a little ahead of the curve in understanding these things.

the only reason it's not hitting us right now with mass movements is that there's so much wealth tied up in the older generation. i didn't get the worst hand in life, but i didn't get the best one, either. there's thousands and thousands of people in my age group in my situation, but they have family they can live with, so they're not in dire straits.

i mean, i'm sure you've seen these self checkout machines at grocery stores.

consider the consequences if every grocery store, big box chain and retail outlet let their cashiers go as obsolete in the face of new technology. well, it's gonna happen....