I've been noticing something lately. It isn't hidden. It's right out in the open, but I haven't seen anyone else drawing attention to it, so I'm wondering if nobody noticed.
We still have a slave class in America.
I'm not talking about prison labor, or illegal immigrants, or low-paid minorities, or even the euphemistically named "working class," which has come to mean the poor and/or blue-collar workers. (Have you ever wondered why a lawyer working 60 hours a week isn't considered to be "working class?")
I mean that our economic model boils down to "Obey your boss or starve."
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I abandoned this post two years ago, but I've written so much about it since then...unfortunately, mostly lost to the bowels of Facebook and Quora. I have another whole blog devoted to this topic called "Relearning Humanity" that I apparently started way back in 2012 and only posted in sporadically for seven years. But I've recently decided to continue that theme as a YouTube channel. I've worked up storyboards for a few different videos I'd like to do, and I have a few other general concepts in mind.
I'm torn about the format. At least one of these videos would, I think, be done best as an animated short, probably with a voiceover narration. But that would require me to learn computer animation, which requires a good, functional computer and a whole lot of time, at a point in my life where there are too many other demands on my time. So the desire to make this perfect keeps me from doing anything at all.
I notice that most of the YT channels I watch regularly are just a person talking into a camera. Sometimes they're playing a fictional character or wearing a costume, but it's still mostly talking heads speaking to a camera. That's easiest, and I notice that these people put out a larger volume of content on a more frequent basis than animators and other YT filmmakers do. (Editing takes time!) So on the one hand, I really love the idea for this channel and want to take time to "do it right" and produce quality content, even if it's only just a few videos at first. But then, I see that if I want to get the message out quickly AND get more eyes on it by releasing videos on such a frequent basis that watching them becomes a habit for people, I need to just do it.
One thing I don't like about that idea, though, is that I don't really want to make it about me. I want these ideas to take off and gain traction without becoming a cult of personality, or conversely, being dragged down by my own personal lack of charm and aesthetics. I'm a fat, cranky, dour-looking, pushing-50 man with perpetually messy hair, broken teeth, glasses that would glare into a camera, a stained wardrobe, and a voice made for print media. After enduring a half-century of in-person trolling, I'm not looking forward to putting my mug out there to catch everyone's ad hominem attacks and luring the occasional stalker to my home...or pouring my heart and soul into this and then nobody but my closest friends ever even looks at it.
So however I do eventually go about it, I want to get this message out that you don't have to have a boss, and that if you do choose to have a boss, there are things you can do to make yourself less dependent on that relationship for your basic necessities. I want to show people how to do that, how to "buy their freedom," so to speak. Think of it as a mash-up between "Your Money or Your Life," "The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving," dozens of books on homesteading and bushcraft that I've read over the past 40 years or so, and my own life experience up to this point. Part theory, part practical skills, and maybe, if the channel starts making enough money to justify traveling, actually going around interviewing people who've made the jump to living off grid, starting their own business, going mortgage-free, becoming independently wealthy, and otherwise telling their boss to take their job and shove it.
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