The fine, fine folks at Haymarket Books recently gave away 10 free ebooks. (Plug: please support Haymarket Books.)



How recently? Who knows anymore, right? It coulda been days ago. Maybe months. Anyone's guess, really. Does it even matter? I can barely remember that it's March right now.



Anyway...



Among the 10 ebooks was a collection of selected writings by Marta Russell, whose contribution to the field of disabled theory was approximately infinity. Perhaps even more. Definitely not less.



One of the many great things she wrote was this:

Civil rights, though still necessary to counter individual acts of prejudice and discrimination, have only the power to randomly distribute the maladies of unemployment and income and wage inequality throughout the population.



If everyone were equally educated and trained for jobs, and civil rights were strictly enforced, millions would remain unemployed and underemployed in any capitalist system.



I think about this a lot when I'm in the shower and sometimes other places: competition versus cooperation.

What...? You don't think about the unemployment system in the shower? What a loser!