Thoughts today:

Of how businesses in the capitalistic system, as much as you might not like the bosses and CEO's, those businesses are like animals backed into a corner. Well, perhaps not all of them - banks seem to get bailed out by governments.

But the system overall is that we leave businesses to the dogs - they run out of money, they fail, they go bankrupt and die.

Then we complain about business people only caring about money.

When we support a system that leaves them to the wolves if they don't get money.

I'm not supporting bailing out of businesses here. Just saying that its a bit of a set up - condone the repeating scenario of people getting into a position where they face losing all that stuff they've built up - you're essentially making desperate people.

The best bit is, you have those desperate people in charge of other peoples supply of food and shelter.

Or to be more accurate, those people are in charge of your job (or whether you get one, if you are unemployed and looking for work).

But hey, blame them rather than the corner we set up for people. And the society we base upon people (ie, to provide jobs) who are backed into corners, snarling.

Do you play travian? Covert recreation?

Work *HURR!*, what is it good for!? Absolutely nothin'!

We were having a discussion over here about why people play the browser game travian (I wonder if I should link to the game - google would probably like that, but I'm morally disinclined).

At this point someone said people basically play it at work and play against co-workers. I had this reply

So not as a genuine recreational activity, but instead as a way of making rec time at work?

That kind of gets into the 'the only show in town' crowd draw, since there are specific requirements for what games can be fitted in (obviously you can't sit down for a session of fallout at work, for example!). So a game like travian is one of the few that can meet those requirements - thus it's the only show in town (or one of the few shows in town).

It makes me think there should be some new word for recreation at work - covert recreation? Basically games designed around filling the niche of what you can get away with at work AND also recruit your fellow coworkers?

Here's a quote I came across somewhere...

As a professional, I want to be paid well for the high quality work I do. I do not do high quality work only because I want to be paid well.

Currently for my own situation I think I need to be paid for what I do out of sufficiency needs. It's kind of crushing of the creative spirit, really. Some people spend many hours on their games then either put them out for free, or provide content for portals at mere handful of cents.

They say they choose to give the game away? Is it really? If no one would have bought it, is it really choosing to give away the game?

And I mean, you want to be paid for high quality work - you don't just do it to be paid well? Do you really have that choice? Lets say you don't do it - say you lose your job, your capacity to supply yourself with food and shelter. Is not working for the money really an option that you have, or are you just humouring the idea your in such a position?

Is it just denial to think you really have a choice? Like if you had a patch of land you didn't have to pay tax on, and had crops going for food and had a house, yeah, you have a choice about whether you do work to be paid because your basics are covered.

I write this because I think there is, perhaps, a vast number of people out there sustaining a rather nasty, exploitative system, because they are off in their own private matrix's where they have a choice about things, when they don't.

Or in more TL;DR terms, three days of missed meals before revolution...