Work, you proles, work.

This is on us. Not the politicians, not the billionaires. Us. The consumers of the developed nations. We have raped Mother Earth dry in the pursuit of our trinkets which we use as placebos in our artificial quest for self-worth.

We have allowed ourselves to be transfixed by the self-interests of the corporations, who sit there in their ivory towers, smoking their fat cigars and drinking their Hennessy, laughing at us as the psychology of their childish marketing tricks works it's magic on the mindless proles. I always return to the lipstick ad showing a beautiful woman with bright-red sensual lips with the tagline: "Say goodbye to boring lips". Must. Buy. That. Lipstick. The mind screams.

We have allowed ourselves to be transfixed by the promised Valhalla of 'economic growth' as both parents need to spend their best hours working to survive now with their mortgages and car loans taking the bulk of their salaries, all the while destroying the family and promoting individualism to create jaw-dropping statistics like, by 2030, 40% of women between 22-45 will be single and childless. Work, you proles, work. Don't save, you proles, spend spend spend.

And look what we have done. We have traded our freedoms for trinkets. And for what? Here's a question for you: Our real wages in 2023 are equivalent to what year in the past? How does 2008 sound? And our wage growth has been considerably less than the labour productivity gains for each of the last 22 years. We've been spinning our wheels for over 20 years. And it's purely our fault.

We have lost ourselves, and in doing so have allowed others to determine our own fates.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/world-facing-hellish-3c-of-climate-heating-un-warns-before-cop28

A better system: Punishment for crimes without prison time

 

Here's a thought experiment. I've long thought about the concept of incarceration. It seems like it sort-of works because it denies something very valuable for people: their freedom. But is it the best system for societal punishment? Especially when considered along side the goal of rehabilitation (since 99.9999% of the incarcerated are ultimately released) and reducing recidivism.

Here's another method for societal punishment. You are convicted and you are not put into prison. In fact, your life continues as it has; you still go to your job, live with family, etc etc. But each day you are given a 1 minute session of pain at 6PM. The intensity of the pain is commensurate with the severity of the crime. Obviously, a murderer would have a significantly stronger pain setting than someone who commits fraud. And someone who commits fraud, and then re-offends, will have an increased pain intensity.

I think that psychologically this would be very difficult to deal with; knowing that every day at 6PM, you will be subject to pain. You would start to dread the experience, and the anticipation of such daily pain would be absolute misery. Especially coupled with the threat that additional offences would result in harsher pain.

Now this might be deemed as barbaric, yet I can't think of a more barbaric punishment than being forcibly enclosed in a caged environment amongst violence, gangs, not seeing loved ones, etc.

So would this system produce the desired outcome? A punishment for their crimes and the incentive not to re-offend, without the loss of freedom?