The Dominant World’s Life-Commodity-Competition Model

Abstract

Following Europe’s implosion in the wake of two internal wars and our decolonization struggles of the 20th century, Empire set on a strategic shift toward a politics of “universal human equality” that, rather than dismantle the world built by 1492, brought us deeper into it by having us mimic and depend on it. Today it is a generally accepted, even if a ceaselessly controversial idea in this now-dominant world, that all human beings have the right to live, even the non-European ones (Schmitt 2006). And we are told – and many of us believe it in spite of all evidence – that our new world of nation-states and those who head them up and even look like us now, will see to the enforcement of this right – no need to pay too close attention to how things go and, much less, threaten consequences if things end up going the way they’ve been going. Instead, what we’re supposed to be concerning ourselves with is our money situation; for if the human right to live in the dominant world is today universally granted, the economic system chosen to enforce it carries with it an unspoken caveat: we must have the ability to pay for it. For those of us with little or no money to buy our life-sustaining goods and services like clean water, air, food, housing, education, healthcare, and safety, we are told we can acquire that money by selling our labor as long as somebody is willing to buy it. That latter part is another unspoken stipulation, but for many of us, it is often the loudest, for even when we try, even when we never pause to wonder if it’s even ethical or desirable to sell ourselves so that we may live (Weeks 2011), for many of us out there selling, nobody is buying. The list of possible reasons is long and can include obstacles such as having a disability that makes us unable to do the type of work considered valuable enough for payment; or lacking the required years of formal education specified in the job ad, or attending a school considered unimpressive; or having the wrong citizenship, or being considered by the buyer to be of an inferior race, gender, sexuality, religion, age, or social class (whether directly or indirectly said out loud, depending on the history