Why is Everything a Hustle These Days?
How many crumbs do you have
Is it me or is everything a hustle these days? Everywhere I turn I see some writer, influencer, or company selling a subscription, a coaching course, or hawking a Web3 non-fungible token (NFT).
Are we so desperate to make a buck these days that we’re monetizing everything?
It appears so and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
I heard the term “side hustle” a few years ago before the COVID pandemic. It was mostly relegated to the Millennial population, who started businesses or had side businesses to earn extra income. Some grew their side hustles into thriving companies and I don’t begrudge their success for one moment.
My issue is with the fact that they had to start side hustles in the first place.
Are corporations and capitalism so broken, so exploitative, that hardworking people need to have two or even three jobs just to survive? Never mind thriving and growing, but just to cover the basics like rent, food, and utilities?
It would appear so and that’s frightening.
My late father used to say that if you worked hard you should be able to provide a good life for yourself. You should be able to have a safe place to live, food to eat, and a little spending money left to buy yourself a beer.
He believed that work and life should be balanced because work can bring meaning to your life. He enjoyed working and volunteering at a charity that did handyman work for senior citizens after retirement.
My father always wanted to be productive. If he needed more money to pay for something we needed, he’d work overtime or do an odd job for someone else. The money he earned and the labor he expended were directly proportionate to each other.
More money equaled more work.
Nowadays, that equation is broken. The more jobs you have and the more work you do, the less you seem to be able to stay above water. How does math even work? It does not compute.
Inflation is stripping away our purchasing power at a record pace. Monetization of everything means you can’t enjoy simple things anymore.
Everything these days is an upgrade or an upcharge. If you want to watch The Mandalorian you need a Disney+ subscription. Want to watch The Last of Us? Pay for that HBO subscription.
Want to learn something new, there’s a 20-year-old kid hawking a coaching course for it.
Order some food and pick it up? There’s a request for a tip.
Everything, every move, and every activity is becoming monetized for the simple fact that we can’t afford to live in this society anymore.
It’s fucking bonkers.
The exploitation of workers has been going on for a long time. It started with Nixon, accelerated under Reagan, and went supersonic during the real estate bust in 2007/2008.
We didn’t notice that our wage growth stagnated because everyday items fell in price like TVs and mobile phones. Items like healthcare and higher education skyrocketed in price. The capitalistic games we’ve been playing for decades are reaching the end game, where one person or entity controls everything, and no one can live anymore.
Isn’t that what happens in Monopoly? One person has everything and no other player can pay rent. They make $200 every time they pass Go but then can’t pay the rent on a property or utility?
This is why I always say that unregulated and unfettered capitalism is cancer. It will kill us all if we let it, and we’ve taken away the brakes over the years.
What can we do? How do we solve this? Simple, just die. At least that’s what the prevailing thought is by the 1%. They always operate on the “Fuck You Jack, I got mine” attitude so they don’t care about you — until you can’t afford the shit they’re selling.
The solution is simple, at least to me it is. First, every worker needs to organize. Organized labor is powerful, it scares the crap out of companies like Tesla because the “many” is more powerful than the “one”.
If you can’t organize, form a cooperative. If everyone shares the surplus of their production (i.e the fruits of their labor), then they can share in the profits. Your work will become directly proportionate to the money you earn.
The answer isn’t side hustles, it’s cooperation. We need to put to rest these ideas of rugged individualism and being capitalistic titans of industry because they’re killing us. The entire system we live in is built on exploitation and it’s got to stop.
We’re all in this together and the sooner we realize that and organize, the sooner our lives will become better.
Follow me
