
The Human Cost of the Ghost Economy - prostoalex
https://longreads.com/2017/12/13/the-human-cost-of-the-ghost-economy/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
======
shams93
Its possible to push the majority of people so hard that you reach a social
breaking point, suddenly things can go from seeming to be normal to a sudden
social collapse. I lived through this during the LA Riots. The LA Riots were
about a lot more than just Rodney King. The video of the King beating was the
one incident that was like the straw breaking the camel's back, after
suffering through massive social upheaval and loss of income for the majority
of working people in LA through the 80s, the CIA using their assets to dump
crack cocaine into poor neighborhoods, after 12 years of Reagan and Bush life
had gotten so bad in LA for the majority of people that one video was all it
wound up taking to instigate a sudden social collapse where every block in LA
was going up in flames where guns were going off everywhere and the police
fled the city in fear and let it nearly burn to the ground for 2 weeks before
the national guard showed up. That's sudden social collapse nobody saw the 92
riots coming but in the aggregate it wasn't hard to predict if you were paying
attention to statistics on the impact of Reagomics and crack on LA.

~~~
e40
This. 100%. And that build up is happening again. This time, it's happening to
white people (gasp!) [disclosure: I'm one of them]. What will happen in 10+
years when all those people with College debt are still working at Starbucks
(or worse) and have 1) no hope of paying back their loans, and 2) have no
prospects for saving for retirement? I would expect that a significant number
of Americans will start mobilizing in some way. You can only push people so
far.

~~~
ianai
In the US people can change the government peacefully with a vote. But that
process only gives them two choices that largely represent no one but
corporate interests. I hope at some point the US adopts a better voting
system.

~~~
cannonedhamster
No real change has ever happened in America without blood being spilled.

* Labor unions had state militias called on them and thousands were massacred at the hands of private security agencies during the Mine Wars

* Women had to die in the Triangle massacre before safety became a concern.

* Martin Luther King along with tons of other black people needed to die just to be considered humans.

* Vietnam required the Kent State Massacre.

* How many children and civilians have we had die needlessly at the hands of the police? You can't get a jury to convict them.

The American government has never represented the people. It will take nothing
less than large amounts violence to change the country if history is any
indicator of the future.

~~~
dvtv75
What was the Triangle massacre? I can't find much about it.

~~~
harimau777
I'm guessing he's referring to the Traigle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Basically
the management locked the women working at the factory in because they thought
they would sneak out instead of working. So when a fire broke out the women
couldn't escape.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire)

------
gumby
>Its possible to push the majority of people so hard that you reach a social
breaking point, suddenly things can go from seeming to be normal to a sudden
social collapse.

People learned from that. Unfortunately they learned the wrong thing: a
massive militarization of society and a politics of fear date from this
period. My gf's kid just had "active shooter prep" at school -- prepping for
an almost nonexistent threat, while ignoring things that actually kill kids,
like choking or traffic). So now we see things like what happened in Fergeson:
massive numbers of police with military gear, simply amping up the experience.

I think what may be different now is that the middle classes are getting
fucked as well. You have to belong to rebel. Revolutions (despite the
rhetoric) never start from below; they inevitably are either elites against
elites, or upper middle classes against elites. The yeoman farmer with a rifle
has never been the base of any rebellion.

And the elites have prepared: legitimate protest is to be met with massive
show of force.

------
tobbyb
This really feels like another world. Here is a confession, I have stopped
believing people need to be informed, to be made aware.

I think most of us, adults know exactly what is happening, the consequences of
capitalism, the reality of our societies, the reality of poverty, the reality
of a large number of people struggling, suffering, sad, desperate, unhappy.

We have a sophisticated mental model to deal with it, we pretend it doesn't
exist, untill you are absolutely forced to confront it, at which point you may
signal, posture, be shocked, but life goes on. Our systems fundamentally and
deeply reward unethical behavior and greed, and humans are survivors, we
survive.

~~~
emmelaich
People have a profound disagreement over the meaning of 'capitalism' so I
don't think it's a useful term.

The fact is that poverty has been dropping markedly over the years due to the
free market and 'capitalism'.

We tend to see crises because they're short term and fail to see the benefits
because they happen over generations.

I suspect what is really happening here is that the USA (and similar
countries) are getting closer in gdp/capita to other rising countries.

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-
extre...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extreme-
poverty-absolute)

~~~
Avshalom
'during' not necessarily 'due to'

------
walterbell
Undercover reporting on temporary workers, with a focus on legal violations
and enforcement, rather than helplessness: [http://projects.thestar.com/temp-
employment-agencies/](http://projects.thestar.com/temp-employment-agencies/)

Largest improvement in labor protections for “precarious workers” in two
decades, but still no liability for injuries to temp workers:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/news/gta/20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/news/gta/2017/11/22/sweeping-
updates-to-workplace-protections-become-law.html)

------
ThomPete
Adding on top of that that 95% of all jobs created in the US since 2008 are
temp jobs and you begin to see the true cost.

~~~
nicholas73
Source?

~~~
ThomPete
[https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/most-jobs-
created-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/most-jobs-
created-2005-are-temporary-or-unsteady-n693631)

[https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-
created...](https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created-
since-2005-are-temporary/)

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-23/top-white-house-
eco...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-23/top-white-house-economist-
admits-94-all-new-jobs-under-obama-were-part-time)

------
nol13
Time to close the 'contractor' loophole?

lol j/k, the man would never let that happen

(alternatively, completely separate out benefits from wages by law, or
whatever other changes that would make it not always the correct business move
to hire as few people as possible)

~~~
Noos
it's not that temp jobs are bad. It's more that they really aren't designed to
be someone's sole source of income. The issue is the lack of real jobs created
by the internet/tech boom; we need more retail chains and less amazon.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Jobs aren't designed to do anything except fulfill the employer's needs at
minimal cost. We need to stop waiting around for employers to start looking
out for their employees' interests and start forcing them to.

~~~
EliRivers
I wonder how fast you'd get blacklisted if you mumbled something about
unionising whilst on one of these jobs. Maybe outside union organisers could
start turning up; they'd probably get roughed up by security and ultimately
arrested, but the cycle has to go through that phase again before it reaches
the next phase.

------
nickbauman
While I have done my share of this kind of work when I was young, this is
still horrible. I remember Richard Linklater's book _Generation X_ had a
couple of rules I still live by.

1\. Don't eat yourself

2\. Don't eat other people

If we could live by these two rules, there would be no Ghost Economy.

~~~
jotm
Could you explain that better?

I'm not into cannibalism, not a Survivor Type either
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Type)

Or is it sexual?

~~~
the-dude
I read it as burning out is eating yourself. Working too much regardless of
the income, regardless of burnout or not is eating yourself.

------
jdblair
I spent much of the summer after my senior year of high school working temp
jobs, earning minimum wage. This was the early 90s in Northeast Ohio. There
was a lot of light manufacturing and I mostly worked in factories in
Twinsburg. One job I even shrink wrapped Sun OpenWindows manuals. It was clear
to me then that the factories required the temp agency to fill out the
workforce, especially for the less desirable jobs like stacking boxes on
pallettes at the end of a manufacturing line.

One day I was sent to a medical equipment warehouse. Another worker and I were
assigned to untangle a pile of hospital beds easily 12 feet high. We were
supposed to climb on it and free each frame. The bedsprings were snagged on
each other and the pile was unstable. I called the temp agency, said the job
was too dangerous and walked out. I wanted the money but I was lucky enough
that I didn't need it.

------
foxhop
This is a really great read. I wrote about my experiences with this and
although I don't go as deeply into detail, and although I wasn't as low as
these ghosts she talks about, I did see and feel some terrible things.

I'll never forget the feeling of being treated as a resource over a person.

[http://russell.ballestrini.net/how-to-work-from-home-the-
roa...](http://russell.ballestrini.net/how-to-work-from-home-the-road-to-
remote-chapter-1/)

------
smnrchrds
A Toronto Star reporter went undercover for over a month to expose the abuse
temp workers suffer. The article was published this year. I recommend that you
read it for more concrete examples of the shadiness temp agencies get away
with.

[http://projects.thestar.com/temp-employment-
agencies/](http://projects.thestar.com/temp-employment-agencies/)

------
fithisux
This article's final words, say it all.

~~~
drchiu
@fithisux is referring to:

"This feature has been supported by the journalism nonprofit Economic Hardship
Reporting Project.

Melissa Chadburn is a fellow for Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Her
essay, “The Throwaways,” received notable mention in Best American Essays and
Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is
forthcoming with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux."

~~~
ssalazar
Or possibly the final words of the article proper:

> Meanwhile, gazing down upon the snowglobe of our disparity was The
> Corporation. A man in a suit, getting wealthier, plumper, more powerful, a
> rapacious beast delivering the shocks.

~~~
emmelaich
Yeah that prose is a bit purple and dramatic.

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fallingfrog
I wish every entitled brat that is born with a free ticket to Harvard and a
potential career in congress would have to live this life first..

------
cyberpunk0
Welcome to the horrors of capitalism.

