My almost 1-year return to part time retail work drove home for me the understanding that some employers and consumers see people as disposable.

Bottom line: Free or cheap labor, or even actual slavery, keeps massive parts of the economy chugging along. It just does, it always has, hasn't it?

(Obviously retail work does NOT equal slavery! Just cheap labor.)

I suppose things could be worse, they certainly have been worse, and I am counting my blessings!

For me personally, it makes me think 2 things.

One: How am I giving/using my time? Because it is valuable, it literally helps make people money.

Two: How am I treating others? Am I taking advantage of anyone or forcing them to do things they don't want to do? Am I seeing them as people or overlooking them entirely? Am I stealing anything, like their time or energy, or ideas.?

All right so that was more than two. 😂 But it's what I'm reflecting on.

And you know what? It ties back to slavery, and all this ridiculousness about "What started the US civil war?"

Slavery, of course!

But Slavery, in addition to being a horrific human rights violation, was/is a thing that kept economies moving and made massive amounts of money for people.

No, my retail work does not compare, not really! It's not that bad and there are benefits.

The thing that strikes me is that people still rely on low-paid individuals to generate wealth.

Will they always?

There's always going to be work to do, I imagine, and maybe there's always going to be someone wanting to benefit from that work more than the workers themselves.

Am I sounding communist?

I'm not really, I absolutely believe in personal property and think giving it all to the government is a very bad idea.

But it seems like the whole work/money dynamic could stand to be improved somehow. Not sure how, exactly.

It needs to be more mutual, IMO. People need to be able to do whatever work they do and thrive, and get their fair share of whatever resources they need. And have time off, too!

I don't think we're there yet, collectively.

Oh, and that includes creative work, too, thank you very much.

Looking at the AI folks who are seeing a lot of people's work as their own personal wealth bonanza.

I don't even know where to start with that one! I LOVE Adobe... but... but...

Whatever else AI is, including very cool, it also is free or cheap labor that other people benefit from.

@janallmac I used to love Adobe. That’s been over for a few years now. They charge ridiculous rates to basically rob folks of intellectual property. Had to disconnect after nearly two decades of using their tools.