Living as a Wage Slave …
I had more money than time. So when the dryer broke, I fixed that problem with money–calling a tradesman, or buying something turn-key at Lowe’s, or both.

Existing as a lumpenProle …
I have much more time than money. So since there is a plumbing issue, I am spending time to fix it–a lot of time, because I have to work around it in very labor-intensive ways until I can find more time, all at once, a good large chunk of hours or days, to truly tackle the underlying issues.

This is not a great solution, but I think it has important advantages over spending money. The perceived or real advantages are what you would expect from someone who wants to get (and stay) the hell out of the way.

When I was a wageslave, that was classic Following. I obeyed orders and did what the PMCs said in order to get the money to fix the problems ‘easily’.

Often it seems like the best answer of all is to be a Leader (and of course that was what the commander was secretly implying in his pithy sermon).

But again I don’t think he was really right.

Trying to become a Leader is trying to become a Master, rich in both money and time.

Nothing wrong with that?, except all the many nasty things you have to do to get (and try to stay) there, including the brutal cognitive dissonance involved in Having It All while so many billions of others have nothing, and the ugly things that turns you into. Inevitably.

So no, I don’t want to be a LeaderMaster, and I sure don’t want to have to go back to following some fucking boss of a supervisor.

Theoretically there is some other clever way. But youTube millionaire didn’t work out, and coffee-roasting entrepreneur is even worse, in bottom-line dollars and cents terms, because I haven’t made back anywhere near enough to even pay off the roaster machine itself. So I’m paying interest on that debt, instead of making money.

So if there is a clever way around the harsh facts, I am still looking for it, and maybe I will be forever.

In the mean time

I am my own lumpen Plumber, and not naturally good at it, and learning to live with those truths.