The Goddess Libertas
Are you free if you need a job? For most people lack of a job means homelessness (indeed many homeless have jobs, that’s how far things have sunk) and you’ll go hungry, and almost certainly wind up dead sooner than otherwise.
This was well understood by the people who created capitalism. The central requirement of capitalism was enclosure (getting rid of common land which people could use for crops and animals.)
The fact is that peasants worked a lot less than workers. They had more holidays. They had to do some work for their lord, to be sure, but that was far less than the 12 hour days typical of industrialization, or even the eight hour days we now work. And, mostly, they controlled their own time.
The condition of having a job is that you do what your told. It was called wage slavery by Americans being forced off farms by low profits (because of railroad monopolies) for a reason: they had controlled their own time before. To be sure they had to work, even work hard, but they weren’t taking orders from a boss.
The fact that one can, sometimes, choose one’s master (for that’s what a boss is) doesn’t change the fact that they’re a master. In good capitalist times, in my experience before 90 or so, the worst boss behaviour was mitigated by plentiful jobs and easy choice: but today people put out hundreds of applications to get a job. Once you’ve got one, you can’t risk it by telling your master to bugger off if they order you to do things you find distasteful.
Bottom line, modern life is do what you’re told in school for twelve to twenty years, then spend your adult life doing what your told by bosses, then when you’re too old to work maybe you’ll be allowed a few years of declining health without a master. Quite likely you won’t even get that.
This is the modern form of slavery, where we pretend that most people have a choice. Oh a few escape, I have (at the price of poverty), and some others do, but the structure of the economy is that most people, the vast majority, must spend most of their life as wage slaves, doing what their masters tell them to. There is no way around this, it’s what giving control of the means of production (what you need to feed yourself, have shelter and goods) in the hands of a tiny minority of people.
It’s been a while since I discussed fundamental of how societies operate and what to change to make them better. We’re going to come back to freedom, a lot, as part of a series. We’ll also do a series on the fundamentals of societies: what is used to make them stick together, what determines how we run them, and how those are used against us or could be used by us to make a better world for 99% of humanity.
For now it is important simply to understand the chains that bind us, and not to fall for the lie that we are free or that our current civilization is the best that is possible.
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spud
i view capitalism as theft. theft of just about everything that matters, as well as your life. i vowed to free myself of the theft of my life, and became self employed, and have been for about 43 years now. its been a wild ride, feast or famine as they say. but i was more than willing to go without at times, and never ever to live beyond my means.
humans evolved through cooperation. capitalism killed cooperation, and the reason why we got socialism, enough people understood that cooperation is how we evolved.
ayn rand even proved we cooperate, when she applied for social security and medicare:)
so capitalism response to cooperation is, fascism. and you can see that failing right now before your very eyes. it might take years of brutality, or as lenin said, sometimes it can seem like things never change, then all of a sudden in a few weeks, everything changes, or something like that, but failing it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REB64DhO58I
How Human Cooperation Made Us the Dominant Species | 1/26/2026 | Part 147
Humans didn’t become the dominant species because we were the strongest or fastest—we succeeded because we learned how to work together. 🌍🤝
In this video, you’ll discover how cooperation shaped human survival, from early hunter-gatherer groups to the rise of complex societies and civilizations. Learn how sharing food, protecting one another, building trust, and collaborating beyond family ties gave humans a powerful evolutionary advantage.
If you’ve ever wondered why teamwork is so deeply wired into human nature, this video breaks it down in a simple, engaging, and science-backed way. You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how cooperation influenced culture, innovation, and the world we live in today.
If you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to like 👍, share it with curious minds, and subscribe for more fascinating insights into human history and evolution. Drop your thoughts in the comments—how do you think cooperation shapes our future?
Feral Finster
I am hardly a libertarian, but what we live under is crony capitalism.
Keep in mind that when Lord Bishton wrote his report, corporations were almost non-existent, requiring an Act of Parliament to establish and they typically were established for a limited period of time.