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Every Bit of Unnecessary Production Is A Waste of Life and An Abuse of Our Earth

Ray Katz
5 min readFeb 13, 2025

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We need healthy food, shelter, medicine and a few more things. All other compelled work is a crime against humanity and Nature.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Why do we forget this? Why do we forget our lives are short, miraculous and precious? Why do we never question work?

Yes, even radicals don’t question work. Here’s what we believe—people of nearly every political and economic and ideological viewpoint: We all need to work—until we can’t. It’s a moral obligation. We need to avoid free riders. We need to do something to keep ourselves busy, and to give our lives meaning.

We do need justice and meaning. But work doesn’t provide that. Work that doesn’t produce what’s truly needed (like healthy food) or truly valuable (like vaccines) is foolish at best.

And in most cases, it is literally destruction. We rape the Earth of resources and steal the time (that is the lives) of people to use them as labor.

This is nearly always for the benefit of a narcissistic elite, to help serve the limitless greed and power lust of dictators, plutocrats, and other privileged people. In return, all those working people get—if they are lucky—is enough to survive another day.

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Ray Katz
Ray Katz

Written by Ray Katz

Internet pioneer. But I’m most interested in stabilizing the Earth’s climate and promoting our common humanity. WeAreSaners.org

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