A thought I had on the way to work today.
The first person who worked for someone else traded their labor for something the other person had an excess of.
Work has always been created by someone with more than they need or can maintain for themselves trading at or less than fair value for someone else to help them maintain or increase the excess they have.
Probably not an original thought, but one I had and frames work in a different perspective for me. In that I mean, food security is a wonderful thing to have and in earlier societies I can understand having a larger farm than you can use or maintain yourself and trading with your neighbors for help bringing in large harvests might benefit the community overall in times of famine.
The runaway wealth inequality we see today is a completely other animal, I think driven by the creation of currency. Currency makes wealth into less a question of survival and more of a game. And the game is the more I can short people the value of their labor, the more currency I can accumulate.
What are your thoughts?