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The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies

Book by Ivan Illich · 2 quotes · Economics, Autonomy, Consumerism

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The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies Quotes

“An ever growing part of our major institutions’ functions is the cultivation and maintenance of three sets of illusions which turn the citizen into a client to be saved by experts...The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services. This illusion is due to an educated blindness to the worth of use-values in the total economy. In none of the economic models serving as national guidelines is there a variable to account for non-marketable use-values any more than there is a variable for nature's perennial contribution.”

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Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“We are the witnesses of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language: verbs which formerly expressed satisfying actions have been replaced by nouns which name packages designed for passive consumption only -- 'to learn' becomes 'to accumulate credits'.”

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Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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