Everyday millions of citizens in the United States wake up with the sunrise, grab a newspaper or turn on the television. They make breakfast, maybe even some coffee to start the day. Simultaneously they leave there homes, start their cars, and drive. After their commute, they enter their work place. About 8 hours later, they leave, get back into their cars, and go home, or out for the night.
There are twenty four hours in a day. If they take the advised 7-8 hours of sleep every person needs, that leaves roughly 17-16 hours of time for their day. Now, we must take another 9-10 hours for work, communting and preparing for work, and this is a rough estimate as some have lengthy commutes to work. Now, these workers, have around 6-8 hours of leisure time. Sometimes more of this is taken up by personal needs, or affairs at home, like making dinner for a family, or cleaning the house, etc.
The problem with this equation that repeats on a daily basis is these citizens are always working, or doing something involving work. There is no time for relaxation or personal enjoyment.
Also, as these citizens continue there daily routine, they are bombarded by many, in the hundreds, of advertisements. These mechanisms are created by industries to continue economic expansion through the creation of wants. The worker, therefor, is forced to continue putting into the system by working, and buying.
These workers have become tools, exploited by capitalist interest to keep the system running. They work, they consume, they work, they consume. As this system continues, the standards of living increase, and the worker is forced harder and harder to work more the be able to afford this standard. And the consequences of this cycle is the slow destruction of their leisure time.
This begins to create a large divide in our society. There is the oligarchy of our society, the ones who control the business world and seek to keep our system running, that capitalist gains continue. Then there are those who are able to keep up with the race for the standard living of life, and able to afford some leisure time. But, unfortunately, there are those who fall behind because they cannot keep up with the “ideal lifestyle” which business keeps creating so that its system will survive.
The capitalist system keeps up a state of obsolence, the idea that what we had is now obsolete and we need the new, better product. An example is the auto industry. They continually come out with a “new” yearly model of each car, advertising it as “better than the other” year. All industries in the capitalist system create this psychological need for the new product, which then raises the standards of living in our society. Many times this new item is not even innovative, they just need to create the want and need for the item to keep the system running.
All of these things keep the economic system running and in place, but it keeps our society unbalanced. If this spiral continues, the divides in society will be sharp, there won’t be a lower, middle, and upper class. There will be the oligarchy and then the regular citizens.
But, if the workers open their eyes and realize this run around that the capitalist have created, they can prevent it. If citizens stopped buying the “new thing” that isn’t really that new, the system would get a wrench thrown in its gears. The industries would have to create products that are truly innovative and needed.
An example would be, again using the auto industry, that consumers stop buying the “new” year model until they can find a car with better gas mileage, or that supports new fuel technology. Auto makers always advertise that the new model has “this much of that” and flares off different technologies included, but they use that to mask different draw backs. They’ve created a society that wants flash, not innovation.
Our current system relies on our obedience and willingness to be consumers at large. If the citizens of our society just opened their eyes a little bit, they would realize they can control the standards of living. They can control the products that the industries produce. They can control themselves. The system works on wants and needs, if the society can control their wants and needs by disregarding what advertisements tell you to want, they can control the products they consume.
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