Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a

Orson Scott Card, with wit sharpened by truth, declared: “Unemployment is capitalism’s way of getting you to plant a garden.” Beneath this jest lies an ancient wisdom: that when the wheels of capitalism cease to turn for the individual, the soul is driven back to the elemental labor of survival. In the absence of wages, one rediscovers the eternal bond between hand and earth, the sacred act of planting, cultivating, and reaping.

The ancients knew this law well. When kingdoms fell or coin grew worthless, the people returned to the soil. Gardens sustained them when treasuries failed; seeds became wealth more enduring than gold. Thus, Card reminds us that when the machinery of employment casts us aside, it is not the end but the call to return to simpler truths—the soil that never refuses the faithful laborer.

This saying also unmasks the cruelty of capitalism, a system that measures worth in profit and casts out those it cannot use. Yet even in this harshness, there is irony: by denying one path, it forces another. The garden, humble and ancient, becomes not only a refuge but a rebellion. To feed oneself outside the system is to reclaim power, to declare that sustenance need not be bought when it can be grown.

But more than sustenance, the garden is a teacher. It instills patience, humility, and reverence for cycles beyond man’s control. To those stripped of their place in the market, it offers a new place in creation. Work done with the hands in soil restores dignity that no paycheck could confer, for it ties human life back to the eternal rhythm of seed, sun, and harvest.

Let the generations remember: when unemployment comes, it need not be only despair. It may also be a turning, a chance to rediscover the primal truth that the earth provides for those who honor it. As Card teaches, the garden is more than survival—it is freedom, resilience, and the rediscovery of the ancient covenant between man and the land. In this, what seems loss becomes the seed of renewal.