Contributor > Consumer

Karl Marx said that in order to establish a different, cooperative, economic system, people would need to give according to their abilities and take according to their needs. Labels aside, this makes a lot of sense to me.

What did I consume today? And what did I contribute?

I've been watching a survival show where a bunch of strangers need to work together to survive the Alaskan wilderness. The premise is simple. You must be part of a team and you are the only person that can decide to quit the game. If you are stubborn and get carted off by the medical team, one of your teammates has to shoot your flare for you after you've been evacuated.

Not everyone needs to be a hunter or a forager. Everyone comes in at a different skill level and the ones that don't necessarily have a lot of survival skill take their natural place as workhorses to earn their keep. If you do not participate, you starve. If you act dishonorably, sometimes your own teammates will vote you off so that you have no choice but to forfeit or convince another group to take you in.

It becomes really obvious who is or is not pulling their own weight. You have to weigh every decision because you still have needs like eating, but if you don't have any abilities... Well, you're left to rely on others. And sometimes, even if you have abilities your teammates still might not like you very much because you are an asshole with an ego the size of Texas.

But eventually, it evens out. In order to survive, your collective abilities must fill your needs. If you aren't skilled enough to meet them, you have no choice but to lower them, forfeit, or pair up with someone that can and make it up to them in other ways. You can't keep eating free lunches indefinitely. The natural world won't let you.

I've been minimizing my needs for a few years now since my goal is to move out on my own. But the question I have yet to figure out is what are my abilities? Not my competencies but natural abilities? The things that I am better than others at or have an easier time doing than other people? If the world really were to end and I had to join in on a team for my survival, what could I contribute so that they wouldn't regret their decision?

An easy formula to weigh your abilities vs needs is to ask yourself on a regular basis What did I consume today? And what did I contribute? Because as fun as TikTok may be, or rather was, if you're simply watching other people and not posting stuff yourself or thoughtfully engaging with your favorite creators, you're taking more than you are adding to this global community.

Bringing it back to Karl Marx, your participation is necessary to upend existing capitalistic systems. Society at large does not benefit in having an excess of consumers so be mindful about where you spend your money and time.