Writing, Politics and the Loss of Alternative Income

In recent months, I have been watching the slow but steady decline of income from my online writing efforts.

Amazon pays less than it ever has, Google Adsense pays less than it ever has, my "revenue sharing" venues are paying less than they ever have. For the first month in many years, I might actually make less than $10. I used think that as long as I "made enough for a dinner out" I could justify spending some time writing every day.

The decline not because readership is down. In fact, readership is fairly broadly up, across my writing venues. The decline is the result of any given page view having less value than ever.

Meanwhile, the "Political Circus" is ramping up as the US Presidential elections of next year draw closer. Various candidates are trying to "establish position" and lots of viewpoints are being tossed around. Conspiracy theorists (at least some of them) would have us all believe that we are powerless anyway... and "nothing short of anarchy" can change our system.

To me, there is little doubt that most politicians are-- to some degree-- little more than sock puppets for business interests. It's one of the great weaknesses of the US political system: Government is ultimately run by those who stand to profit from government.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, by any stretch of the imagination.

What I do see, however-- purely as a keen observer of the human condition-- is that the ever-growing chasm between the "haves" and "have-nots" seems partially fueled by the fact that our ability to create "alternative" income streams is closing... that is, it gets harder and harder to be "outside the system."

Well.

Not harder to BE outside the system, but to LIVE outside the system. You can BE outside the system to your heart's content, you just can't make a living there, anymore. Or it's a lot more work than it used to be.

Again, not being a conspiracy theorist here... just postulating that just like the income earned by minimum wage (and most hourly) workers hasn't increased at the same rare as the life expenses of those people, similarly the income increases of the self-employed (most of us) haven't kept up with increasing costs to do business, and simply to live.

It's 2015, and I make about the same as I did in 2006. "Product X" or "Service Y" from a small contributor like me sells for about the same then and now. And if I have "the nerve" to up my prices, I will just lose overall business. When it comes to writing and getting paid... the "per word" rates are largely unchanged.

The math behind that simply doesn't work, from a functional perspective. And this, many feel increasing pressure to "comply" and just go get a mainstream job that fits "in the establishment" somewhere, and serves the "machine" we have been trying to operate independently of.

I feel sad for those writers who actually depend on this gig for paying their electric bills...

The "Facts of Life:" Not having time

It always ends up sort of offending me when I don't have time to write.

Perhaps what is really bugging me is living a reality in which I am sincerely struggling to make the daily living, to the point where time given to writing has an "opportunity cost" that literally means that when I give three hours to writing, I am taking away three hours from doing something income producing... which, in turn, means that the "cost" of writing could be "the electricity gets turned off."

Just another reminder that writing isn't generally something people get paid for.

Recently, I have been considering writing "social commentary" again. One of the things I like to rant and rave about is the inequities of life generally attributable to a capitalist system run rampant. Or, at least to a system where the Machine of Life has been given free license to operate without restrictions, and greed is "valued" as an attribute that leads to ostensible "achievement."

My thinking about taking up this angle of writing again mostly has to do with a call from Liane at OM Times Magazine, lamenting that her pool of some 1900 contributors seem to exclusively want to write about Metaphysical Woo-Woo, rather than some of the other areas broadly covered by a magazine about "Consciousness."

And so, I was thinking to myself "I can do that!"

The idea of "consciousness" and living consciously has always appealed to me... perhaps since my childhood days where I just couldn't figure out why people were so unkind to each other.

Stay tuned for updates.