To avoid mounting social problems - which steadily increase in traumas and costs inflicted with duration and advancement - a certain universal buoyancy of personal wellbeing is required among oneself and one's peers.
Fundamentally, this amounts to housing, clothing, means of transportation, self-maintenance, and reproduction, food and water, and heat and energy that is on par with what is available to one's peers, so that each can stand with a daily dignity and respect in the eyes of each other.
In an advanced industrial society, this means a set of specialized and professional commitments to perpetually generate each individual in this image. A "job" then not only has to secure those basic and fundamental needs that all individuals socially related to each other should have, but should also act in concert with the other "jobs" to faithfully produce them and make them accessible to secure. A delicate balance.
A balance which we - the supposed masters of the universe - should nevertheless have no problem striking, yet it is not so.
For one thing, we are continuously expanding the nature and definition of that most basic set of fundamental needs for each member of the community. Only so many palaces and beachfront sprawls and giant manicured gardens and driveway fountains can be built, and so higher tiers of community must be artificially constructed based on principles of superiority and exclusion.
And for that matter, it could be said that this idealized equilibrium of social status and participation was corrupted from the start with early processes of conquest and forced labor like slavery and indentured servitude, and those reactionary prescriptions for race, class, gender, and etc. which set in motion powerful social and material forces that take great exertions to reverse.
At the very least, to maintain the flow of "nice things" there must be a supple and flexible organization of associated labor to maintain high productivity and social harmony. That is, individuals must be able to free associate in accordance with their talents and their chemistry in working with others in association, and of course for many this is not the case either.
One is thrust into the world and expected to generate for oneself a whole range of goods and products through one's economic activity, all of which require intensive and voluminous amounts of labor, knowledge, and usable energy, or else one is dirty, unwashed, vagrant, lazy, crude, unstable, and most of all, suspect. To avoid this, one has to throw oneself into the arms of an organization that delivers for oneself these economic goods, which through concentration, monopoly, economic depression, and artificial and hidden unemployment, is fewer and further between, with less available positions than socially necessary.
And so those that still hold onto these increasingly rare and valuable positions hold them with a deathgrip, and live in fear of losing them, which causes all sorts of social problems of its own. The organizations become less dynamic, less open, and trust and communication die while cultivated image and signaling reign supreme.
And with the curtailing of quality economic goods and the spreading of suspicion, paranoia, and resentment, the greater body politic is set against itself. A few lord over the rest and the many prostrate themselves this way and that. And in mirroring the deathly organizations, here too communication and trust die, and a smile in front with a knife in back becomes the dominant mode of relation.
And here, when these dangerous social relations set in, it is already too late to reverse them. There is far too much weight in economic commitments alone, and far too many obligations to hold onto to take a break and re-evaluate one's position. Lost trust takes much more labor to restore - and opportunity cost in stopping one's "progress" however temporarily to take a breath and take stock - than incrementally increasing levels of surveillance, manipulation, and coercion.
But the problem with this is that the former clears the air and repairs the foundation, while the latter only muck up the air and erode the foundation until everything gives at once.
