“Work done off the paid job is looked down upon if not ignored. autonomous activity threatens the employment level, generates deviance, and detracts from the GNP...Work no longer means the creation of a value perceived by the worker but mainly a job, which is a social relationship. Unemployment means sad idleness, rather than the freedom to do things that are useful for oneself or for one's neighbour. An active woman who runs a house and brings up children and takes in those of others is distinguished from a woman who 'works,' no matter how useless or damaging the product of this work might be.”
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
“Wherever the shadow of economic growth touches us, we are left useless unless employed on a job or engaged in consumption...We lose sight of our resources, lose control over the environmental conditions which make these resources applicable, lose taste for self-reliant coping with challenges from without and anxiety from within.”
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
“An ever growing part of our major institutions’ functions is the cultivation and maintenance of three sets of illusions which turn the citizen into a client to be saved by experts...The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services. This illusion is due to an educated blindness to the worth of use-values in the total economy. In none of the economic models serving as national guidelines is there a variable to account for non-marketable use-values any more than there is a variable for nature's perennial contribution.”
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
― An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
― An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
“Our market-intensive societies measure material progress by the increase in the volume and variety of commodities produced. And taking our cue from this sector, we measure social progress by the distribution of access to these commodities. Economics has been developed as propaganda for the takeover by large-scale commodity producers.”
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
― The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
Daniel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Daniel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Daniel
Lists liked by Daniel











