The plight of recent post-graduates is extensively documented. Even more notorious are the stories of student debts that drive the younger section of the working class towards the service industry. You have technical institutes recruiting mostly minority male youths knowing very well that there are simply not enough jobs for their indebted graduates. There are mid tier retail jobs occupied by bright, creative and over-educated adults who need the hours. Certificates and diplomas hang shamefully on the walls of underemployed young people like the trophies of retired, and usually washed up, athletes. The fact that the term 'Human Resources' exists is evidence of a society that has put a price on people. Because it is the fate of all resources to lose value at some point we can begin questioning where this machine is heading.
I am of the belief that human value, in this sense the sum total of those characteristics that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, is a diminishing resource due to our inability to make decisions based on humane reasoning. We are the product of profit minded ancestry who lived in a much harsher world which dictated their values. Marx foresaw it and we live through it. But this is not only a machine take-over, a corporate overhaul, or a matter of greed. There is the nastiness of society mirroring itself in every one of us as we slowly lose our self worth and exchange it for the pervasiveness of a profit driven mentality. You see everywhere people selling themselves cheaply. This is not to say that we must all take ourselves overly seriously, but rather that we must adjust our values to make room for choice. Does the youth lack a prevalent voice because it chooses to or because there are only so many voices available to it? If the latter is true then why does it not produce more voices? Does the youth choose underemployment or is this simply a circumstance of socioeconomic conditions out of their control? If things are out of the youth's control then why do they not take control?
Idleness and action are not to be taken at face value. A young person who produces online content regularly, regardless of how good or bad it may be, is considered idle and unproductive if it does not produce income. Yet they are active, even if it is in a digital, almost immaterial sense. This concept of an idle portion of the population is a strange product of our day as we are online so often scrolling through the content created by these same "idlers." Corporations have caught on, late as usual, and actively hire young people to manage their digital presence. Young people are being paid to tweet, blog, post, like and interact in the name of their employers. The incentive is profit but the resource mined is human. When money becomes involved our idlers are no longer lazy and incompetent: they are transformed into creatives.
But action should not rely on the hopes that your creativity is turned profitable by a corporation who sees an opportunity in your work. Children overcome their parents by obtaining independence through their labor. In this same vein the youth must create its own form of wealth to be distributed in a more efficient and egalitarian way than their predecessors. Overcoming the same society that socializes youths only to later on be in need of repair is natural. This is progress.
This brings us to the creation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. If these new currencies are regarded as tools that may provide the youth with an escape route from an unstable capitalist system that goes through recessions and depressions, without any regard for the human resources that fuel it, we are witnessing a revolution. But firstly, how cryptocurrencies are created, distributed, and used should be decided upon solely by their respective creators and not those who have done a terrible job of distributing archaic varieties of wealth. To see this opportunity squandered for a quick buck would be a shame. It would also be quite ominous.
If the youth as a whole were to reclaim its dignity by using the creativity and humane touch our current regimes lack, they will be taking direct action in a nonviolent language unknown to those in power today. Recycling past socioeconomic models is not an option. It is quite clear now that it never was.
- Alex Moran
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