The Cancer Stage of Economic Parasitism, 26
There is, in fact, an idea, an observation, a question, which lingers almost universally among those who put some pieces toghether and which definitely has to be put into words explicitly, and posed explicitly: how come that with all the progress we’ve had, not only we’re not working less than before, but quite to the contrary we’re even working ourselves to death now worse than before? How come that the flow rate of the taps has increased but the water level in the tub has decreased?
Some call it “productivity paradox”. From the stone age up until the industrial revolutions, we did not have the technologies and servomechanisms whom afterwards expanded significantly our capability to control the elements of nature, hence our productivity was low: merely earning our daily bread, between time and toil and all the rest of it, then required 90 percent of our resources. Then from the industrial revolutions on, we increasingly had those technologies and servomechanisms, hence our productivity increasingly boomed: merely earning our daily bread, between time and stress and all the rest of it, now requires… 120 percent of our resources. What a forward leap we made.
If the flow rate of the taps increases but the water level in the tub decreases, then a drain exists which drains more water than the taps bring. It’s that simple.
There is only one answer, and the answer is: powerful, effective economic parasites and bewildered, apathetic, zombie victims.
That is, the suppressive and the potential trouble source.
Parasitology comprises a range of theories, some of which hypotesise various degrees of usefulness of parasites for their ecosystems. These theories lack the factors of the suppressive and the potential trouble source, which enter the scene in the shift from biological parasitism to economic parasitism.