Table of Contents
A. Mercenaries
Before we understand the concept of employment, let us first talk about Mercenaries, the other system in history that pledged its loyalty based on the money and the wealth opportunities it was offered.
Mercenaries were independent companies of soldiers, led by an entrepreneur who sells his army company’s service for money.
History of Constantinople
In 1452 Byzantine king Palaeologu of Constantinople hired mercenary Giovanni Giustiniani. On the day of the fall, Giustiniani got wounded and fled with 3000 men. Constantinople became Istambul forever.
“Mercenaries are ‘disunited, ambitious, undisciplined, [and] disloyal; valiant among friends, among enemies cowardly; they have no fear of God, no loyalty to men’. At best, if they are led by a fool, they merely ruin you; if their commander is even remotely worth his salt, he invariably ‘tries to gain power for himself”
-The Prince, Nicole Machiavelli, 15th century Florance.
So, mercenaries in wartime were like modern-day small groups, (which is currently referred to as creator’s economy, solopreneurship, or freelancers) the work equivalent of work-for-money.
Greko Roman History of Mercenaries
Long before the debacle of Constantinople, all throughout history we had mercenaries, who were mainly foreign recruits to fight the wars for a state or the army. Alexander had several mercenary companies in his army. The Roman army had Mercenary legions led by a civilian captain. In the Punic wars, Carthage took the support of Mercenaries.
When Alexendar’s army suffered in India, the mercenaries refused to fight. When the Romans got heavy on the Carthaginians in 146 BCE, their mercenaries quit the war. When Rome was fighting Germanic and Franc tribes, and later Goths, the mercenary companies of those tribes also fled.
Nicole Machiavelli, an acute observer of the rise and fall of princes across Europe warned against taking the help of Mercenaries in the war.
B. Mercenary to Citizen Army
When small European states in the 19th century got integrated into Nations, Machiavelli’s “The Prince” became a de-facto political guide, and international law was made that armies will have only citizens. Heads of the states realized that too many wars are being lost due to fled mercenary companies when the opposition got better out of an army.
National Citizen Armies vs Past Princely State Mercenaries
Loyalty was at the very core of nationalism. When Europe was divided into small princely states, every prince dreamt of becoming the ruler of the world and continuously engaged in wars with the states. The number of wars got reduced as states became countries. Even though there was still a formidable number of wars even after the 1790 French Revolution and the uprising of Napoleon Bonapart as the French leader.
Russia, Dutch, Portugal, England, Spain, French, Prurasia, and several other nations battled against each other. The First and second world wars brought Germany, Italy, and other countries into armed wars. Seizing of the cities also continued. For instance, German wreaked havoc by its seizing of Moscow. However, it became very hard increasingly to get better of another country, as then you needed far too many logistics to take down major cities of the countries.
Divide and Rule Colonial Plot
Colonial powers understood that unity and state are hindrances to their rules. Therefore Asian, and African countries were divided into small princely states, pawn princesses were instilled there and the imperialists ruled the whole nations through this divide-and-rule policy.
Indian Mercenaries in the British Army to Indian Army
The British army also had around two million Indian soldiers, constituting one of the major forces of the army. However, when the Indian national army (INA) under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose called for Mutiny, the Indian soldier’s mutiny large loomed, leading to the final Britishers evacuating India.
After India became Independent, India created a national army, which under the leadership of Sardar Vallabh Bhai integrated all the princely states into the Republic of India.
C. Creator Economy(or Group Economy)
A micro-economy getting developed around creators is nothing new. For instance, in the 15th century Florance, a complete art industry got created around the likes of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Verrochio. Talented great artists were essentially solopreneurs who would have a team with them, interns and helpers. These artists come as entrepreneurs who would be commissioned by wealthy entities like churches and emperors to bring art into their properties.
Later entire music industry became a creator economy. Every composer would have a band that would have sound engineers, recorders, to musicians who played different instruments. This trend started with Opera, and we all know how Mozart made music composition an eternal art and business.
Goldsmiths, Potters, and Farmers have all remained solopreneurs and have to date continued the creator economy that is around one individual.
Creator Economy of Today
Today creator’s economy is centered around mostly content and art creators and social media influencers. They create informative, educative, and entertaining content in the form of videos, blogs, animation, and graphics, and get paid by the consumers through subscriptions, but mostly marketing and promotion.
Another formidable Creator’s economy has been the software App market. Youngsters build application software for mobiles which are used by millions of users. These apps are distributed through app stores.
Why Creators Economy is shortlived?
One of the classical examples of a creator’s economy is Alexander’s army. Alexander was way ahead of his time in understanding warfare and its logistics. Was a fierce warrior, who was also educated by the likes of Aristotle. He had great respect for the local cultures and unlike other war heroes in history, he never destroyed and plundered local temples of the places he conquered. He included the conquered land in his empire, rather than plundering the way Romans did.
So as Alexander kept winning wars, local armies would join this charismatic warrior. The Macedonian army’s rise in 330-323 BCE is almost like today’s scaling rate. From the Bank of Meditorrian to the Bank of Sindh River, every kingdom was part of Alexader’s empire. However, after his defeat in India at the hands of Chandragupta Maurya led a combined Indian army, on his way back home, the creator-entrepreneur fell ill. When he was asked who would be his successor, he replied “the most worthy ones.” Alexander’s generals spend the next fifty years battling each other for that successor place, and Macedonia never rose again to the heights of Alexander.
One of the critical problems of such an approach is that like the traditional creators, these are businesses that last less than one generation to at most two generations.
S. D Burman and his son R. D Burman(famously known as Pancham da) were legendary music composers in Indian cinema. However, the company did not survive past Pancham da. The same is true for the movie production houses of Satyajit Ray and his son Sandeep Ray.
Today social media influencers gain followers rapidly and each of their content is viewed by millions of viewers across the globe, making their voices and opinions extremely valuable in terms of authority as well as promotion. They also earn invitations to talk shows and consultancies.
However, the creators are dependent on the platforms run by venture capital-scaled internet companies like Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram, and this dependency makes them vulnerable to the actions and policies of the corporations. Of every money the creators make, almost 30% is taken away by the platforms in direct and indirect ways making the creators just unemployed earning sources for the corporations.
Creator’s economy is shortlived because:
- Its dependence on the corporations, and because they are merely non-salaried employees of the large corporations.
- Most creators serve individual interests or problems. When one serves groups and entities, the growth of the entity fuels the growth of the service company because the service company serves the system, not the entity, and the system evolves. When an individual grows in life, the need changes, and so those who serve them better change as life changes.
- Associates of the individuals are connected to them for only one of the two purposes: a) Riding on a horse’s back to earn livelihood b) Learning enough to become creators themselves. Again the association is not bound by theology and system, and is more of opportunistic in nature.
- As the creator economy is small units of corporation earnings where units themselves are mercenaries associated with the creator, the long-term evolution of the system, and people attached to the systems are the bare minimum.
D. Freelancers
There have been two forms of freelancers existed throughout history, and they are completely opposite spectrums. Firstly the intellectuals like scientists, philosophers, and all knowledgeable individuals have been sponsored by the prince, and businessmen, to be around them.
Mughal Darbar had Navaratn, the nine intellectuals. Similarly, across all the empires, princely states, and landlords have appointed intellectuals to be around them, helping them with judgment, and decisions, and improving the intelligence of their children by educating the children through the top brains.
On the other hand, the other extreme freelancers were from the notorious background who were secretly hired by the state, and the influencers to do their dirty jobs. It was a common practice since Egyptian times to send anti-social criminals to certain areas.
During the Roman times, Sicily became infamous as a criminal colony. Sicilian killers would be hired by Senate members to murder their competitors, plunder wealth, and settle disputes.
E. Employment
After 146 BCE, the fall of Carthage by the Romans, they realized the loophole with mercenaries and introduced “Employment” and offered weekly Salaries to the recruits(permanent army).
Back then, salt was produced only in limited quantity only in the northern regions of what is modern-day Belgium today. Salt had a high demand and low production. Romans realized that if they could pay people to buy regular salt, that would be a great motivation for people to get rid of their mercenary mindset and join the mainstream army.
The word “Salary” came from salt. After the Roman army became an organized unit with employed forces, Romans brought the former mercenaries and their children to Rome and educated them in Roman culture, lifestyle, and Latin. This further had a great influence on creating the Roman Empire brand.
Rome then extended the employment concept to the slaves too. Now slaves were employed in mines, schools, and construction. Collars and leashes were replaced with Salary. This made the empire look civilized before the world and other free tribes were called the barbarians.
Food, education, housing, hospitals, and several other facilities were added with employment, besides something called retirement, whose age was 60. So slaves who were employed would be declared free citizens when they became 60 and would retire with money to live a life after retirement freely. (Though during Roman times, not many lived past that age anyways).
F. How Employment Became the Norm in different sectors
Employment from Industrial Age
Later, Roman employment was adopted in every field. When the industrial revolution started in Europe after the invention of the steam engines, factories were created and employees were hired to work in these factories. Life was harsh, and like the Roman times when the mining employees would have to work their bodies off working in the mines for 16 hours, the same thing was adopted by the capitalists and the industrialists.
Rise of Socialism and Equality
On the other hand bureaucrats and intellectual employees had a much easier life with respect to physical hardship. Employees encouraged their children to get an education, which became mainstream since the 1820 onset of the Victorian age. In the later years, communism and socialism would rise due to labor disparity between field employees and intellectual employees. 8-hours of work day was established, with one day holiday.
Rise of Female Professionals
Till now the history of livelihood was strongly by the men. This is because life was hard, and anything productive needed physical labor and hardship. However, this was about to change slowly.
With the rise of machines, fewer and fewer physical jobs were needed, and more opportunities opened up in mental work. This is the same time when girls’ education became mainstream. Across Europe and America, girls became more and more successful in intellectual pursuits such as literature, poetry, and painting. However, they were still away from productivity.
Jane Taylor, the mother of Twinkle twinkle little star, Rosa Bonheur, the best horse painter of all time, and the first historical figure to live in a lesbian relationship, and a whole generation of successful female creators arose including Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and so on.
Females were making their marks, but mostly as solopreneurs, and some in creator economy.
Rise of Feminism
The first Women’s Right Convention was held in 1848 in New York for the equal rights of women. In the initial period, women mostly protested against the liquors. As physical hardship broke the body of the workers in the fields, factories, and mines, they needed relaxation and pain relief at night. Liquor served as the easy and cheap solution for the same.
However, liquor came with several ill effects. Household financials were disturbed due to spending on liquor. There was domestic violence which essentially made women the majority sufferer. The liquor culture also became more organized over a period of time with prostitution, gambling, and other activities. It is interesting to note that during the Roman times, such lavishness was available only to the wealthy people, and Pompei was the hub of “enjoyment”.
However industrial age and money brought such entertainment to the doorsteps of rather poor workers. They would literally destroy their salaries in liquor, later drugs, prostitution, and gambling.
Early feminist movements demanded opportunities for women in the workplace, which even till the early 19th century was not available to them.
Rise of Female Employees after the second world war
Millions of men died during the second world war. Several men got terminally injured. Several men lost their limbs. Household finances were shattered. It was then that the industrialists and the capitalists heavily invested in machines and science to automate physical labor and opened the doors of corporations and institutions for women employees.
Slowly over the decades, lower and middle-income blue-colored jobs started shifting from men to women because they were better in doing repetitive jobs, human interaction, and care, and were less demanding, more agreeable, and more disciplined than men.
Employment becoming mainstream in all the fields
Post world war II, employment became mainstream in every aspect of productivity.
- Holywood stars are all employed by the studios.
- Till 1965, most Bollywood workforce used to be employed by the studios.
- Sports clubs employ players.
- Companies employ workers.
- Army is employed across the globe.
- Teachers are employed in the schools.
- Scientists are employed in research organizations.
After the global push for education(because you needed more and more mental work for the future) after Ford created the first automated integrated assembly line in 1908, employment became so mainstream, that everyone aspired to study and get employed. Even those who worked in the factories and physical labor jobs got faster promotion to managerial roles if they were educated.
Education, Employment, and Marriages
Education and employment became synonymous and children were raised by their parents to be employed to have a settled and secure life.
People in business, and those who did not have any permanent employment found it hard to find a life partner for them. As the economy raised, several countries like South Korea discouraged their then population to reproduce, which has brought the country into a severe population crisis today with the child per woman coming down to 0.78 from the critical factor of 2.0 to maintain a country’s demographic dividend.
During the same time, men preferred employed brides, and therefore women too pushed hard to get employed.
G. Rise of Entrepreneurs and Returning of Freelancers, Creators
Computer and Internet Age
The way the second world war changed employment forever, the next profound change in livelihood came when the personal computers arrived with Apple I. By 1991, more and more clerical and blue color jobs were replaced by computers. The way machines started eliminating physical labor from the Industrial era, now it was the turn for human brains to be replaced.
Jobs such as bookkeeping, accounting, inventory management, supply-chain records, and publishing all started becoming computerized. Now those with technology skills had a profound upper hand over the others, and mere education was not enough.
Windows 95 contributed massively to this extraordinary speed of the computer age. And by 1995, the Internet revolution happened. Netscape Navigator, and thereafter Internet Explorer alongside HTML technology just changed the way we communicated, and consumed information.
This gave rise to several individual Internet Entrepreneurs, who were offering the Creator Economy around the Internet. Even though the bubble busted in 1998, the time for Internetpreneurs and Internet Creators had arrived. Several companies like Amazon, Google, PayPal, Yahoo, and Alibaba took the conventional businesses over the internet.
Entrepreneurs and Startup Economy
Earlier, establishing a company, and thereafter taking the company to become a publically listed and traded corporation required decades. Building a business was hard and often went through an evolution process.
However, the internet brought new technologies such as software platforms, APIs, tools, and frameworks. Solving extraordinarily impossible life challenges with these technologies became simple. In the beginning, scaling a website was a tough challenge. Then appeared the hosting companies who offered this for the businesses.
One did not have to work entire life to acquire enough experience to build a company. More and more youngsters joined the bandwagon and Technology companies skyrocketed. These tiny technology solutions were called startups.
Startup Transition to Corporations
All these technologies were the creator’s economy to start with. The capitalists(later came to know as venture capitalists) saw an opportunity to transform the creator’s economy and small businesses into companies and then took the companies to the corporation stage.
Technology builders now could focus on creating technologies and solving business and technology problems, whereas venture capitalists took care of scaling and operationalizing the creator’s economy.
Thus arrived the modern-day internet corporations like Google and Amazon. What is important to know here is that we do not know Google and Amazon the way they are because of the creators, but due to the scaling by the venture capitalists. The money invested in the startups was the money from the early industrial age returns and the VCs were the bloodline of the past capitalists and industrialists.
As the startup economy grew, founders or creators became employed by the VCs.
Return of Freelancers
As the personal computer was available at a cheap price to more households and more and more businesses, technologies could be created without any other infrastructures other than a personal computer and the internet, more and more youth preferred to become freelancers and preferred to work for themselves.
Several websites like Fiverr offered services of connecting freelance service providers to service seekers. From music composition to Graphic designing to coding, to writing, Freelancing became mainstream over a period of time.
Authors started publishing their own books. Good coders started publishing their own software and tools.
Mobile Phone and Smart Economy
Even though computers are spread in a large number of households, they still have only 15-20% penetration. Computers needed space and tables and not many households even had that space. All of these were about to be changed by Steve Jobs and Apple with the public announcement of the iPhone in 2006, and thereafter iPad.
In India, Reliance made mobiles available to everyone for less than $20. Now over 80% of the global population had access to technology. Productivity tools were created for the mobiles. Now technology could be scaled to the entire population rather than limited to 20% of the population.
This gave rise to App Economy. Technologists created mobile apps and connected service providers with service seekers. There were literally no businesses that couldn’t be run on mobiles. Freelancers with mobiles became solopreneurs. Freedom became the new norm.
Now machines are producing in the industries, computers were producing tools needed for businesses, businesses were run on mobiles, and the last bit of human value, that is social interactions too went virtual with WhatsApp.
People forgot that there were humans. By 2020, humans were breathing, eating, sleeping, dreaming, dating, talking, reading, writing, interacting, thinking, and feeling nothing but technology.
The Rise of AI
Humans did business with humans. When there were fewer and fewer humans left, and humans had become merely biological being beneath technologies, cyborgs, how can businesses target humans? Where were the humans? Physical strength had already been downgraded. Mental strength is reduced to a bare minimum. Machines were working, machines were earning, machines were talking, machines were thinking, machines were making machines.
Humans forgot physical work, learning, empathy, loving, interacting, humanizing, and socializing and so, capitalists see no reason as humans should exist in the workplaces, and why humans are to be served.
Venture Capital Theory of the Future
If unnecessary humans can be eliminated, families are broken, gender confusion is created, childbirth is made unaffordable, and men and women are taken away from each other, they will anyways not live for long. We have the money, we have the machines. Machines will serve us, and we will continue to survive.
Now Elon Musk talks about putting a Neurolink Chip on the human brain to finally convert a human being into a Cyborg.
It is at this point in time that this post is written. Because if you do not pause and take notice of what is happening, you are doomed, your future is doomed, and life has already been ruined and doomed by the capitalists.
Therefore, we will again take a look back into the whole notion of employment and try to figure out how to survive in today’s time when evil forces are hellbent on taking away basic living rights from humans.
H. Revisiting the Theory of Employment
Let us revisit traditional employment and see why employment became mainstream in the first place.
- Alone we fall, together we stand.
- Sense of belonging.
- Hard to take down a system, and easy to eliminate individuals(no independent has ever ruled any country).
- Common culture, goal. If struggle=>struggle together, so struggle doesn’t appear personal.
- Drill, discipline, training, growth.
- Tools, technology, and assistance.
- Recognition for the role.
- Emotion to the brand.
- Human interactions and exchange of energy.
- Working towards a common vision in a common mission.
- Security of the family and children as employment offers a livelihood to the family should any adverse life events happen to the employee.
- Fair wage, unions voice the concerns of the employees.
- Extended facilities such as housing, healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
- Availability of debt capital and payout through easy monthly installments. (Debts have been available to the employees since Roman times).
- Protection from scavengers, criminals, and other anti-social elements as companies take good care of the safety of their employees.
- Opportunity to travel abroad, (not that freelancers can’t do, but the employees get all the aforementioned benefits in their foreign duties).
- Key human professional desires of collaborate, cooperate, coordinate, communicate, create.
- Multi-culturalism(and we all know the benefit of interacting with people of different ages, gender, culture, and language and how that helps in reducing irritation)
If you think and analyze closely, employment theory doesn’t provide money against labor(physical and mental), it provides far too many additional benefits including all-important safety, security, and stability.
Handling Ups and Downs
Life is never flat and upward-only, and so are businesses. With time every business has to transform and adapt to new situations. For example, IBM was once one of the largest players in the PC market, where many other players like Compaq and Dell entered and IBM’s dominance in the PC decreased slowly.
Similarly when touching screen smartphones entered the hands of consumers through iPhone, a 200-year-old telecom company, and not so long ago 90% of market leaders in mobile phones went out of business.
We are driven by emotions and feelings. No one wants to work only for the money. If humans worked only for money, civilization wouldn’t have grown thus far and this fast.
Every emotions and feelings come from stories and not just events. Stories give us emotions because of the twists and turns, sadness and happiness, fear and relief, and such contrasting emotions. Therefore even the livelihood goes through such cycles of ups and downs(whether at individual levels, company levels, or market levels).
The arrival and popularity of new technology put an existing company at existential risk. The other factors that lead to such challenges are geopolitical changes, population changes, societal and economic changes, and so on.
i) Whether it is the Roman army(272 AD, 408 AD) or Golden Metro, Barcelona FC, Kodak, or Indian army(1961 war), Tata Motors (1994), Air India(2019+), Apple(1994), all employer faced existential challenges.
ii) The employee-employer fought together to overcome the tough times.
It is the difficult times that have strengthened or destroyed the businesses. Every technology gets saturated at one point of time in the future.
By 2000, the television, radio, and electronic goods service and repair industry was extraordinarily huge. Several electronic servicemen didn’t have time to breathe due to the high volume of work. However, with the introduction of single board highly denied PCBs and slot-based hardware units, the scope for individual component repair was gone, taking away with it millions of jobs in the service industry.
Companies and corporations are better at reading these macro technological and macroeconomic needs and they prepare their workforce for the transformation. Electronic servicemen who were employed by the electronic companies were upskilled to adopt new chips and technologies which were not possible by the individual freelance servicemen.
It is very hard to survive and grow at equal speed with the change in technology and market because:
- Servicing consumers have several layers: Sales, marketing, servicing, customer care, technology integration, education, upgradation, creation, maintenance, accounting, taxation, team, management, research, legal, and financing.
- Whenever there is a change in the technology or market, several layers of the businesses are to be changed and transformed simultaneously. For instance, the way an early assembled computer was made and sold couldn’t be used for high-resolution TVs.
- Making so many changes at the individual level appears downing as the individuals already would have spent years mastering the current technology which is getting obsolete now.
- Even when one has a team, or collaborative network, upgradation and adoption of the new technologies by everyone in the network is hard at the same time and at the same speed.
- Systems are easy to adapt to changes, individuals find it easier to adopt to the systems. Technological changes force systems to adopt new systems, as well as adapt to new changed individuals, and changes in the individual methods.
Companies do close when the business environment changes. For instance, companies like Moser Bear which once was a market leader in optical storage went out of business once cloud storage became popular. A similar fate was met by Nokia, and Kodak when mobiles were replaced by smartphones, and cameras were replaced by digital imaging.
However, when you compare the amount of livelihood affected by the solopreneur, creator, and freelancers, the ratio is a multitude of times more than the loss of employment.
It is this benefit of a system taking care of us in the adverse and transformation times, it is the togetherness in the battle, it is the protection of livelihood in these ups and downs that has made employment such a desirable livlihood state for over two millenials.
Returning of Mercenaries in the form of Outsourcing
We already have understood that the technology sector in particular is a fast-changing sector. We have also understood that even with robust systems in place, large corporations have gone out of business under technological changes. The rate of change we are experiencing today is too fast even for companies and corporations to keep track of.
Therefore even corporations have had to take the services of other small companies, consultants, creators, and solopreneurs to adapt to the changes faster. Security consultants, and marketing consultants (or agencies), have been two areas where the companies have had to outsource their business transformations.
As more and more employees became less and less interested in investing their emotions into the business, but rather the entire relationship had become “you pay me for my labor“, companies saw no point in keeping a large workforce. They slowly adopted a small number of permanent employees and many suppliers of the technology and business components.
A large number of companies today do not have supporting departments such as accounting, HR, and marketing, and rather prefer to outsource them to other individuals or entities.
Outsourcing labor to third-world countries
Roman masters in the past and their bloodline always took the services of slaves from Africa, and Asia to do their hard physical labor. Most of the Roman intellectual systems like hospitals and schools were run by the Greek slaves. Rulers hate working and instead focus on wealth acquisition through plundering to get more slaves to serve them.
Even though civilization has grown(or so we think), core human behaviors haven’t. Therefore we see the same patterns repeated over and over throughout history. Earlier in the Roman times, then later under British, Dutch, and French colonizers, Africans worked in the mines, Asians worked in production, and Western intellects worked in intellectual jobs like science and technology.
Dubai is a classic example of Master-Slave ruling and work outsourcing. You will hardly find any old citizens in Dubai, and you will not find beggars and poor people in the streets of Dubai. That is because this population is kept miles away from the main city, in the small colonies. Workers are recruited from developing countries like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Soudi’s native population doesn’t work hard in construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and production. All these works are reserved for slaves from third-world countries.
In the technology business “mundane tasks” like customer care are outsourced to Asian countries, which gave rise to an entire industry called “Call Centers.” Manufacturing was outsourced to China from many American and European corporations.
Cheap Labors=Profit.
Such outsourcing opened many employment opportunities in countries like India, Vietnam, Philippines, but the workforce was not part of an end-to-end economy, but rather an outsourced cheap laborforce microeconomy. What we had in these sectors was not employment but a Facade of employment.
The entire outsourcing business, theory, and implementation were based solely on profit by the Western masters. This was a form of slavery, that offered no key employment value to the workforce.
Outsourcing key activities for profit eliminated emotional energy exchange between employees, consumers, service providers, and distributers and disintegrated the entire core system into merely “connected for profit.”
Apple outsourced its iPhone production to China. Chinese workforce is not emotionally connected
Outsourcing the “Outsourcing” to the Machines
The core difference between a machine brain is the following:
- Abstract Correlation and Lateral Thinking: Combining Knowledge and Information from multiple domains into a multi-dimensional model of the Work (like this article presents history, facts, case studies, economy, and human psychology).
- Human relationship: We are evolved to care for not only ourselves but people around us. We find it hard to have food when people around us are hungry. Machines don’t have care and social relationships.
- Emotions: Very much all our relationships(whether it is with nature, other humans, books, our profession, our skills, our knowledge) are bound by emotions. So if one cares only for money, his brain works far less efficiently than another individual who is emotionally connected to his profession.
- Analog Observation: Human brain can process data from the five senses(touch, taste, smell, vision, audio), correlate them with the context, and therefore are much more efficient in decoding a situation. (For instance when we ask someone “How are you?” if the answer is “Great!,” machines will consider this as “great,” but our brain will look into body language, smell, and eyes, and may interpret “you don’t seem that great”
- Imagination: Human brains can imagine things that are non-existent yet and can work towards making that into a reality. Machines are just statistical probability.
- Biological Need: Human brain prioritizes decisions based on biological needs{survive, thrive, reproduce}. Machines on the other hand takes decisions based on quantifiable metrics such as cost.
- Purpose vs Task: Humans are often purpose-driven. (For example, this article is not like a task for me. I am writing this not to complete a task such as “write on employment”. I want to teach you, and stimulate your thoughts about the idea of livelihood so that you can protect your livelihood under the current times). However, all machines, whether it is a simple calculator or a pen, or an AI is task-based. However, when you provide the same prompt to AI, it has to construct an article from an existing source of information related to employment, and it will do a task.
Machines by definition are the ones that make the human effort less. We are at a point of time where we are not even utilizing 30% of the effort that we can put into things. Our brain and body are already working low. Therefore no machines can potentially reduce the effort anymore.
Now we need reverse machines to increase our effort and not machines to decrease our effort. This is because the less effort the brain and body have to put to survive and thrive, the less effort it put to reproduce, and the reduction of all three efforts by definition is approaching death.
If we pay close attention to this theory, the survival of the race in general would depend upon technology degrowth, rather than technology growth. However, as the capitalists have learned only to replace humans with technology, they have lost the plot of replacing technology with humans.
Therefore the plans of replacing humans with cyborgs (like implanting neuro-link chips) will be growing by the day. Every sane brain knows that AI can not be the future, simply because there are no efforts to reduce it in the first place.
After the smartphone age, constant interactions with the mobiles, and placing technology in between every form of human interaction have literally made humans interact with the technology. From the above table, we already know that interaction with technology has to be task-based, literal rather than lateral, and prioritized based on one metric such as cost, eliminating emotional attachment and care.
Now that capitalists(rather neo-imperialists) have already achieved dehumanizing the population, and there are not many human qualities left in the workforce, the workforce is on the verge of getting replaced by machines, because now companies are to serve the machines and not the humans.
On average when a car is put into the garage, it costs about $100 minimum. When we become ill, the OPD costs $7-$20. So for a very long, cars are being taken better care of than bodies. Humans aspire to own better cars and homes, and no better relationships in life.
Because consumers are ready to spend less time with their family to buy their dream car, and more interested to service the car than their body, are more emotional about their car than the relationships, and are ready to spend more money on the car than the relationships, where you think would technological advancement go? Towards creating better family doctors, or creating better cars, and better service for the cars?
As the focus of corporations is constantly shifting towards the objects you have in life rather than you, their focus will always be to build the machines that can serve your machines better.
I. How and why employment has been eliminated in the past?
Now that we know why employment must be eliminated from work(because consumers are machines, the workforce needs also have to be machines). However, the human race hasn’t always been this way. Machines have reduced human effort and served humans(mostly capitalists) rather than serving machines. Did machines then replace humans in the past?
As most of the present-day systems and tactics are simply the extension of Roman times, let us understand if Romans are the ones still ruling the world. Because if we can prove that the Roman bloodline is still ruling the world, we can easily find the tactics they will use. These tactics would also be a direct lift off of their ancestors.
How the Romans have continued to rule the world?
i) Constantine adopted Christianity in 312 AD(who himself never got baptized btw)
ii) In 1054, Eastern Churches(Latin theology), and Western Churches(Greek Theology) were divided in Great Schism, giving rise to Islamic rules.
iii) Florentine Banker Giovani Medici played a major role in combining the churches. Read about Europe’s oldest bank Medici Bank.
iv) Papacy was literally run by the Medici family since then with a direct bloodline in the papacy. They funded arts, science, and sea exploration.
v) Papcy confiscated lands in the name of the Inquisition.
vi) 18th-century large industries started getting built with Medici bank’s money.
vii) Bible, Dollar, Netflix! Implement Tsan Zhu’s “Win the war without shedding a drop of blood.”
Sword, God, Ship, Industry, Oil, Technology, Romans Pied Piper will always rule the Hamelin crowd.
Romans conquered England under the emperor Hadrian in 122 AD. Roman generals were placed there. In their quest to win England, Romans crushed the local Anglo-Saxon freedom-loving natives. Over a period of time Roads, Bureaucracy, Schools, Education, Materialism, every Roman way of life was embedded into the British genes.
When you study the way the British Raj ruled the world through its imperialism, invading the culture, language, religion, and societies of the places, you will find no difference between the Roman Empire of 20BCE-410AD and the British Imperial Empire of 15-20th century BCE.
By 210 AD, the Roman population was suffering severely from Obesity(physician Galen was the first to offer a lifestyle-based intervention to the Romans in 220 AD), and today Obesity is one of the major concerns of the British population.
Ramans got rich by slave trading, which was also a major source of wealth for the London riches. Humans have always been considered, treated, and traded like slaves by the Romans and their bloodline.
The American dream was fueled by London Riche’s money. We know where the wealth came to London and now we know how the money and the gene reached silicon valley.
Today’s Venture Capitalists are simply the bloodline descendants of Roman wealthy Senators and Generals. As employment was the Roman invention of glorified slavery, even though it promised to be different, the ending of employment would also follow the exact same trend that has happened in the past.
Let us walk a little back in modern time and validate this theory that employees will be dehumanized and mercilessly removed (as Roman Venture Capitalists no more need humans to serve humans, but a machine to take care of machines so that the machines can take care of them).
The Plot of Employment Elimination in 1991
i) In 1991 Globalization, Employees were offered VRS=>Take bulk money and become free. (pursue your dream with money)
ii) Almost 50-70% of the VRS takers(almost 70% of the workforce across industries) died within the first three years(suicide after loosing money, killed by children, wife and relatives)
iii) This also killed trade unions(not that they were not corrupt, but they were not killers.)
Understanding the 1991 execution better
i) In 1991, cheap liquors were supplied across almost all the factories which wanted to eliminate employment, because FDI wanted profit, not people.
ii) Women were transformed into prostitutes by hefty money. Families were broken.
iii) Matka centers were opened almost in all the industrial towns under the nose of the police.
iv) Easy loans were made available, and many employees were given Bikes (Hero Honda SS then), and Industry housing was converted to commercial housing and was sold at a low cost to the employees.
v) Employees took VRS money and paid that back to the company and thought they bought the houses.
vi) Companies liquidated their assets to foreign companies(like Alstom) who picked the clients, and engineering documents and replaced 90% workforce.
vii) Facilities were automated. The housing societies became dark, vacated historical places (Go to Gulbarga, then take a drive to a town called Shahabad and see this for yourself).
viii) Permanent employment was a thing of the past, and companies hired contract labors through contractors at 70% less liabilities.
If you can’t see what is happening in the industry, then you and your family are at risk of extinction. Pay attention to the time.
J. How Employment Elimination is Executed Today
We now know the theory of eliminating undesirable humans by eliminating employment first and that would be done by: Greed, Alchohol, Conflicts, broken families, promoting freelancing, demoting values, and placing a quantifiable object and technology between two humans.
Relationships are crushed beneath the truck for money is no more a reality that needs Ph.D. to discover. So let us see the result of this implementation.
i) Mercenary drivers: Hopping between Ola and Uber.
ii) Mercenary delivery: Hopping between Zepto, Zomato, Swiggy
iii) IT employees: Moonlighting
iv) Freelancer Sites.
v) Massive Scaling of Corporations, and converting independent entities as earning machines.
A teacher is creating content and putting in the youtube, thinking that “he is getting paid for his skills.” The machines are learning and this Youtube continues only till machines start producing educational content for other machines. Because as time goes on, humans will feel that knowing complex calculations is no more important as calculators will do it anyways. Slowly humans will theorize that knowing anything is not worth it as machines will know anyways.
Whether it was 220AD, 18th-century industrialization, 20th-century industrial automation, 1970 computerization, 1995 internet, or 2006 mobile, or 2023 AI, removing unnecessary workforce from not only livelihood but from the face of the earth will be implemented in exactly the same ways.
The Fine Elements of Employment Execution
i) Break the emotional bond between the brand and employees.
ii) Convert top employees into mercenaries.
iii) Use them against their employer.
iv) Eliminate them, and rule.
K. Cooperative Economy
In all our past discussions, one thing we have not mentioned is another form of economy called the Cooperative economy. Amul is one of the best examples of the cooperative economy. In this economy, individuals take care of the core processing of the raw materials, and then the production is taken care of by the system. The finance is managed within the cooperative groups.
Amul is one of the largest milk-based companies in the world, which was the outcome of India’s white revolution by Verghese Kurien. Households maintain a cow, collected milk, and deposit milk every day to the collection centers, which will be brought into the central production zone, processed, packaged, and would go to distribution centers, from which the milk packets will be distributed throughout the country. The money will then be rotated within the cooperative groups, facilitating better health for the cows, and the people, research and development of new equipment and processes, and product innovation.
From pickles to papads, to agro products, India has long had the tradition of a cooperative economy. This has a fundamental strength of human interdependency and social connections.
However, the urban population in particular, and the overall population to a degree today have been pushed towards social anxiety, and social interaction skills today are not even close to 10% of what this has been traditionally. Besides technology sector itself if dehumanizing and desocializing. Therefore cooperative economy will always be impossible in technology sectors.
People would collaborate,(like NVidia providing chips for AI), but this collaboration will be monetary, and not based on key human emotions that run and fuel the cooperative economy.
Freelancers, Companies, Creators, Corporations, Employees, and everyone will collaborate today for money and profit and not cooperate for any human values like emotions. As money is controlled by the capitalists, and interactions by technology, Capitalists will decide the form of collaboration and no cooperation would be possible.
L. Creator, Company, Corporate, Cooperative or Capital Which is the Economy of the Future?
You see, it is no more which one will survive, as survival of none of these is desirable to the capitalists in the first place. They do not want you. You also do not want yourself. You want and love your cars and money, and the capitalists also love and want your money, and serve your car with other machines.
Your unemployment, broken family, loneliness, fear nothing matters to the system anymore. Your need has finished. How do you know that this claim that your need has finished is true?
- From drivers employed by car companies, and drivers working under the umbrella of union, we had Ola and Uber freelance drivers hopping between brands. Now we have all the technology push for driverless cars.
- Swiggy, Zomato built a delivery network, and now Amazon is pushing Drone-delivery.
- Marketing had content writers from the beginning of the internet, and now we have AI writing content.
- Sales calls were outsourced in the past to third-world countries, and now that is replaced by machines making the calls.
- Fiverr offered youth to leave their jobs and become freelancers. Now almost 70% of freelancing tasks are being performed by generative AI.
- Banks are replaced by Apps. Stock brokers are replaced by Smart and Intelligent stock suggesting apps. Physicians are replaced by medicines.
- Theatre, Drama, and Puppet shows were replaced by movies, which were replaced by web series, which are now brought down to 15s shots by individuals, and now AI will create these shots.
One of the important things to remember is that it is very hard(and nearly impossible) for any individual to serve a large number of individuals over a sustained period of time. Any such thoughts or feelings are just mirages.
Raw material from production to distribution to the selling of anything(including software) is so complex, that as the scale increase, the complexity increase. No individuals or small groups can serve such complex systems. The way machines can serve machines, and humans do business with humans, the exact same way systems are served by the systems.
Small systems are like coriander farming. They can be capitalized early but would have be repeated over and over again to derive livelihood out of coriander farming. On the other hand, when you take care of some mango plants(or a mango garden, it takes longer time to give you fruit, but once the mango garden starts giving you output, they outperform years of capital income from coriander farming. Furthermore, it is easier for pets like cats and dogs, and birds to destroy a coriander field, but it is super hard for the mango garden to be destroyed.
Is is not worth leaving toxic corporate culture?
Anything that is big and complex and that intends to serve a large number of consumers over a sustained period of time has to completely crush any feelings and work like a mechanical system. Whether it is a production line, the shipment you saw, or even the creativity.
You can’t Scare me, I work for James Cameron!
James Cameron is one of the Holywood Directors, who has pushed film-making beyond boundaries. His movies Terminator 2, Avatar, and Titanic, have not only been some of the box office nuclear bombs, but his movies have been way ahead of their time in technology use and production values.
James Cameron is hated almost by all the cast and crew members he has worked with. No break, including no pee break, only one tea break, tough routines, and angry outbursts would make anyone feel dehumanized. In the movie True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger got pee in a fighter plane scene but Cameron denied giving him a break and asked “What would you do if you were a pilot and flying amongst enemy planes and got pee?”
Kate Winslet got pneumonia on the sets of Titanic but had to continue to shoot.
His crew would always come out of T-shirts like “You can’t scare me, I work for James Cameron”
If the above story is what you mean by toxic corporate, then all the good production is always toxic. The satisfaction is in the outcome of the production, not during the production. If one seeks comfort during production, then the outcome wouldn’t be as perfect as it needs to be in order to survive the competition and withstand any changes.
Steve Jobs was also infamous for pushing his team to the limits. Work has to be focused, highest quality, and intense, in order for the outcome to be robust and timeless. If you are looking for good feelings during your work, then know for a certainty that you are part of a mediocre production. Another team with intense psychopathy-like goal-centricity would outcompete your team.
The problem is today the families are so much in disarray that people are looking for healing from their work as they are putting intense effort to keep their families.
M. Final Theory of Survival
- Eliminate technology and inverse-machine your life.
- Place higher bets on human values that can not be replicated by machines over dead metrics like money.
- Don’t trade humanity for money, trade money for human values.
- Unlearn technology and learn back fundamental skills like talking, poetry, reading, and writing.
- Whenever there is a technological upgradation, go a step down in technology.
- Build families, have and raise children. This is the key as this is what VCs wouldn’t want if they don’t want you.
- Develop social skills. Nothing will save you today other than this one core skill.
- Reject alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution(and porn). These would be the tools attempted on you.
- Control the temptation for getting big money at once(always remember the VRS debacle).
- Avoid the Creator, Freelance, or Solepreneur mindset and motivations.
- Don’t do tasks for more money(like writing content for money).
- Protect your brain from the propaganda(and so avoid being fed content from large corporations).
- Capitalists have ridden on your back, on your emotions, and run on their insecurities. The fewer machines you own, the fewer machines are needed to serve those machines.
- Avoid being smart and avoid choosing shortcuts to success. Anything that appears lucrative would be your poison. Focus on gaining real-life experience, wisdom, and knowledge.
- Being an integral part of a large system that is serving other large systems, or population is always a better choice for safer employment than being a solopreneur and serving a small subset(content getting a million views is not serving the consumers, because you don’t know what percentage of them will be benefitted and in what ways).
You see this article could only have these many points. People would have glanced and few might find some abstract correlation. However, this article has narrated a story, an emotional story from the past to the present, the highs and lows of livelihood, and you are likely to think about this article for far longer than if it was only the above table.
You may revisit this post several times just to correlate a life situation with the post and try to see how your life fits into the theory and progress.
If you want to keep a digital copy of the post as an eBook, please UPI ₹99 to <9845048861> and email the screenshot with the post heading to rupam[dot]iics[at]gmail[dot]com.
N. Conclusion
In 1757, Mirzafar and his men became mercenaries of the British army of 2000 men, handed over India in plater to beggars, and then got executed, because Britishers had read “The Prince,” Mirazafar didn’t.
Pied Piper of Hamelin, Uncle Sam and Hypnotized Hamelinan Employees!
Additional Resources
If you are struggling with relationships, and finding it hard to connect with yourself: (Printed Book)
2. If you are building your startup or are looking for Investment or Fundraising with Cooperative economy:(eBook)
If you want to understand the theory of success better(free Article)