Unemployment is not a disease; so it has no “cure.”

If there is one proposition which currently wins the assent of nearly everybody, it is that we need more jobs. “A cure for unemployment” is promised, or earnestly sought, by every Heavy Thinker from Jimmy Carter to the Communist Party USA, from Ronald Reagan to the head of the economics department at the local university, from the Birchers to the New Left.

I would like to challenge that idea. I don't think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. I propose that unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society.

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

Suppose, for a moment, we challenge this Calvinistic mind-set. Let us regard wage-work – as most people do, in fact, regard it – as a curse, a drag, a nuisance, a barrier that stands between us and what we really want to do. In that case, your job is the disease, and unemployment is the cure.

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

What I am proposing, in brief, is that the Work Ethic (find a Master to employ you for wages, or live in squalid poverty) is obsolete. A Work Esthetic will have to arise to replace this old Stone Age syndrome of the slave, the peasant, the serf, the prole, the wage-worker – the human labor-machine who is not fully a person but, as Marx said, “a tool, an automaton.” Delivered from the role of things and robots, people will learn to become fully developed persons, in the sense of the Human Potential movement. They will not seek work out of economic necessity, but out of psychological necessity – as an outlet for their creative potential.

(“Creative potential” is not a panchreston. It refers to the inborn drive to play, to tinker, to explore, and to experiment, shown by every child before his or her mental processes are stunted by authoritarian education and operant-conditioned wage-robotry.)

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, “What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?” The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.

— Robert A. Wilson, The RICH Economy

All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being.

No more of such vague formulas as “The right to work,” or “To each the whole result of his labour.” What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!

— Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread (chapter 1)

The “right to well-being” means the possibility of living like human beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours, whilst the “right to work” only means the right to be always a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the [bourgeoisie] of the future. The right to well-being is the Social Revolution, the right to work means nothing but the Treadmill of Commercialism. It is high time for the worker to assert his right to the common inheritance, and to enter into possession of it.

— Peter Kropotkin,
The Conquest of Bread (chapter 2)

“A day unemployed is like a bagel — even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.

I stayed home from work one day and never went back.”

— CrimethInc., Evasion (three)

“When Alexander addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied: ‘Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine.’”

— Plutarch, Alexander (§14. 4)

“It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, ‘But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.’”

— Plutarch, Alexander (§14. 5)

Diogenes supposedly replied thus: “If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes.”

“Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.”

— Plutarch, On Exile (§12)

“Diogenes [of Sinope] was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, ‘A spy upon your insatiable greed.’”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 43)

“Once Diogenes saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, ‘The great thieves are leading away the little thief.’”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 45)

“The love of money he [Diogenes] declared to be the mother-city of all evils.​”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 50)

“Asked where he came from, Diogenes said, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’”

— Diogenes Laërtius,
Lives of Eminent Philosophers (VI. 63)

“Diogenes received an invitation to dine with one whose house was splendidly furnished, in the highest order and taste, and nothing therein wanting. Diogenes, hawking, and as if about to spit, looked in all directions, and finding nothing adapted thereto, spat right in the face of the master. He, indignant, asked why he did so? ‘Because,’ Diogenes, ‘I saw nothing so dirty and filthy in all your house. For the walls were covered with pictures, the floors of the most precious tessellated character — and ranged with the various images of gods, and other ornamental figures.’”

— Galen,
Exhortation to Study the Arts (8)

The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper.

He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.

Said Aristippus: “If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.”

Said Diogenes: “Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.”

— Anthony de Mello,
The Song of the Bird

“Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.”

— Diogenes, as quoted by Stobaeus in Anthology (IV. §31c. 88)