The Progress of Technology Makes “Earning a Living” Obsolete – Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, inventor, and philosopher known to many of his friends and fans as “Bucky” Fuller. He developed numerous inventions, the most famous of which is the geodesic dome.

Bucky designed his inventions with the core belief that there are more than enough resources available to feed and house every single human being in the world.

Fuller’s philosophy claims that convoluted politics and unnecessary labor are the biggest obstacles of human progress:

The Sale of Existence

Banksy-Slave-Labor-Buckminster-FullerWe must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest.

The youth of today is absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.

We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.

The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Pressure from an Illusion of Scarcity

working-resource-based-economy-Buckminster-FullerMan is operating on a fundamental fallacy that assumes there is nowhere nearly enough resources to go around and never will be. The idea that man is supposed to be a failure and therefore has to prove his right to live has led to a division in consciousness:

“It has to be you or me. I must show I can earn my living, and let other people go die.”

On this basis, society has been assuming it is a handout or socialist system if you’re not “earning a living” at some job somebody has set out for you.

So we have the idea of a job as something you have to do that you don’t like in contrast to what your mind tells you needs to be done or what you’d like to do.

The Inventions of Buckminster Fuller

A brief look at Buckminster Fuller and his legacy, now more relevant than ever.