"Wanted: Locker Room Attendant"
Notes from the front lines of the Great Recession
by Brian Wright

Please go to the new Coffee Coaster site implemented more gracefully in Wordpress. This page:
http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=2554

As part of my Old Paradigm[1] job search process, I have resumes posted on a couple of online search firms: Monster.com (and—Senior Moment!—I forget the other one it's been so long since I've received any reasonable inquiries). I also had listed my resume with a more direct peddler of personnel named QuintCareers, where my account profile specifies technical or marketing writing/editing but also, apparently, leaves a big door open by listing an "Other" category in my preferred industry focus... not to mention leaving the low end of my salary needs at 10,000 FRNs annually. So I've been going along for probably three-four years receiving emailed newsletter lists of mainly technical writing jobs in three regions of the US: New England, Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes.

Basically, none of these jobs has ever got me remotely close to some kind of reasonable technical documentation contract. I'll discuss that in a minute. In fact I thought I had set my Outlook filters to dump anything from QuintCareers into a Misc "bit bucket" folder that I hardly ever open. But somehow the following notice from Quint came straight into my inbox:

So what the flock, over?

First I thought someone was playing an April Fool's joke. But a glance at the November portion of my 2010 Scrolldown nixed that notion. Sure enough, based on my profile—and perhaps the fact that I hadn't answered a single job match for more than a year—QuintCareers' computers spit out "locker room attendant." I'm a degreed mechanical engineer with 15 years of engineering experience and 15 years of technical writing/editing experience, including Fortune 100 companies, published coauthor of a textbook on a major Internet routing technology, several noteworthy freelance projects completed, with sterling references, excellent health, and a positive mental 'tude. [Fortunately, I'm still getting a handful of freelance hookups.] Here's my online professional services sheet.[2]

The paranoid side of me, especially during the search years 2005-2008, would think because of my conviction for growing marijuana in a Phototron in Keego Harbor, Michigan, in 1992—hence technically a felony conviction—and the fact I was in my late 50s in those years, perhaps I was on some corporate insider blacklist. This seemed to be corroborated by a number of times reaching an interview only to be jettisoned precipitously for no reason. In any case, I learned slowly that the Old Paradigm job market was completely unavailable to me. None of the jobs that paid close to what I had been making in the 1990s would come my way again.[3]

So where did the jobs go?

Jobs and Liberty

In my humble opinion if you trace the causal chain that leads to the loss of liberty you find the loss of jobs. Think about it simply in terms of property and wealth transferred from the productive class to the political class: for the military-industrial complex, for the prison-industrial complex, for the bankster-welfare complex, for incarcerating children in government "schools," for mind-numbing bureaucracies, for "welfare mothers," and so on. Every unit of real wealth stolen from productive persons is a unit of real wealth lost. When the government steals our property it deprives us of our freedom to make a living. Wealth stolen = liberty stolen = jobs stolen.

So if you wonder why Main Street is full of potholes, think of the $trillions spent turning Iraq and Afghanistan into depleted-uranium dumps. Or since most of that money was borrowed (created as IOUs by the Federal Reserve system), just consider why that tube of Pepsodent now costs you $10. If you ponder a moment, you'll see that the reason nobody—meaning, "a disturbingly dwindling number of individuals"—has jobs is because nobody has money. The reason nobody has money is because it has been stolen by the state (or, more accurately, the oligarchy running the state).

Continuing to think out loud, I believe I can suggest a solution to all of our economic problems and political problems in a single paragraph:

For a quick fix, refer to Ending the Great Recession: 1) end the empire 2) legalize drugs, 3) legalize hemp. This provides, almost immediately, the engine of wealth production humans need as a base. At the same time spread the understanding of the Barrier Cloud—the impediment to a society without coercion—especially ideas I've articulated to address the external cause (the Anglo-American finance oligarchy) and the internal cause (the seized-up limbic systems of many men) of the Barrier Cloud.[4] Finally, the primary strategy is to end the 9/11 Lie Basket, which the Men of the Deep Power Sickness have put all their eggs into. 9/11 Truth indeed represents a Catharsis of Civilization, the imminent arrival of the New Paradigm. QED.

By the way, while I do have writing/editing contracts at the moment, if you have a need for those kinds of services indicated on this brochure here, please send me an email.

[1] The Old Paradigm is a designation some spiritual teachers use for the current world of aggression and domination, where a hierarchy of power takes wealth from the many using coercion and mind control... i.e. the current statist-corporatist world. The New Paradigm, by contrast, is about decentralized power, voluntary arrangements of living, and helping one another achieve optimum consciousness and natural material well-being and abundance... i.e. the wholistic libertarian ideal. [At least this is my own interpretation.]

[2] Please understand that I don't have a problem with any line of work, and I feel with Omar Khayam that "work is love made visible." But I wouldn't want to take away the job from some high school jock looking for his dream job in a sports environment, either. [Not that that was at all likely: I'm sure I would not get even this job, no matter what.] [A gadfly pal mentioned I should follow up, maybe it's a women's hockey team. Yeah, right, what am I going to do with a woman hockey player?! She'd break my spine like a cheap swizzle stick.]

[3] By no means am I alone in this. Many others. In fact a roommate of mine in Merrimack has been working as a chauffeur. He tells me the FRNs he makes are not enough to cover the FRNs he owes. He has strong background in business, but he's in his 50s and there aren't any jobs. Even in the Free State. Where did all the jobs go?

[4] I know it's cheating to have a footnote here, but there are signs everywhere that numbers of young thinkers are figuring out the fundamentals of the Barrier Cloud and its penetration. Please visit this site on panarchy (government by choice) and this site on Oligarchy Economics.