Kill the Economy

[NoOneMan]

5. Not a bit

1) Why must we have so many clothes that we wash so often? A non-consumerists, non-labor exploited society would surely deem that as a waste of resources and time. A modern economy creates the very problem (by generating demand for excess clothing) that a machine is supposed to "fix". The magic washing machine is therefore only "good" in the context of a modern economy where people own lots of clothes and spend lots of time washing them anyway, which is not necessarily a natural condition.

2) You are still working whether you are washing clothes for a few hours or working a job to pay for an inefficient washing machine, water, energy to run it, home it sits in, infrastructure to carry the water & energy to your house, etc. With the machine, not only is your labor being exploited in your modern job to pay for it, but the actual slaves in China that make the machine and mine the resources are being exploited by the machine's manufacturer.

Yes, the modern economy is slavery. That is how it operates (by exploiting labor to create surplus for owners, pubic or private). Most of its products not only take slavery to build & operate, as well as massive amounts of energy to run as pointed out in the video (which makes them less efficient in the sense of energy). One thing thing that Hans presents as a priori is the "goodness" of education & reading (from reduced washing time that is only necessary in a modern economy in the first place), when that surely just turns one into a better energy commander to grow the economy further (infinitely, without fundamental reason). Why is being a better commander of energy better than having more leisure, as a simpler society would?

The machine "fixes" a problem that only exists in a modern economy. It fixes it by necessitating more labor and infrastructure, and ultimately, energy, which is a problem itself.