Concept album about what is wrong today and how we should fix it.

### License
These tracks (both music and lyrics) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

🆓 You are free to:
• Copy & distribute
• Remix & adapt
• Use the track in commercial and non-commercial projects

📋 Conditions of use:
1. Give proper credit:
“Song Title – Emergence – soundcloud.com/emergence-223803727/<relevent link> – CC BY 4.0”
2. Add a link to the license text: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
3. State whether you made any changes.
4. Do not imply that I endorse your work.

Enjoy!

MY CONTRIBUTION [free download]

Six AM, alarm goes off, same as my pops did
But his paycheck bought a house, mine barely covers rent
Forty hours turned to sixty, still ain't making a dent
Groceries cost twice what they did, gas tank on empty again
Used to be a deal: you work hard, you get ahead
Now I work twice as hard, can't even stay in the red
My credit score's a joke, my savings account is dead
And they wonder why we angry, why we tired, why we stressed

Working harder, getting less
Numbers going up but they ain't ours
Working harder, getting less  
Tell me where the money goes
Working harder, getting less
They keep saying it gets better
Working harder, getting less
When?

My mama bought her first house when she turned twenty-nine
I'm thirty-five, still renting, moving every time they raise the line
My father's generation, one job could raise three kids
Now both parents working full-time, still can't pay the bills
They said go to college, get your degree
Now I got the paper and the debt but no security
Same job my pops did pays less in real money
Inflation's going up but wages staying funny
Productivity is rising, that's what the charts all say
So where's my piece? Where's my raise? Where's my pay?

Working harder, getting less
Numbers going up but they ain't ours
Working harder, getting less
Tell me where the money goes
Working harder, getting less
They keep saying it gets better
Working harder, getting less
When? When? When?

Let me break it down, see where the money went
CEO makes 400 times what I pay in rent
Stock buybacks in the billions while we counting every cent
Profit margins record high, my bank account is spent
They said the system's working, just gotta play your part
But the game is rigged from the very start
Can't save, can't invest, can't get ahead
Just working till I'm broken, working till I'm dead
And I ain't the only one, this ain't just my story
Millions of us grinding while they swimming in the glory
Something's gotta give, something's gotta change
'Cause working harder, getting less ain't a sustainable game

Working harder, getting less
Numbers going up but they ain't ours
Working harder, getting less
Tell me where the money goes
Working harder, getting less
Productivity is rising
Working harder, getting less
Where's mine? Where's mine? Where's mine?

Working harder...
Getting less...
When does it change?

WORKING HARDER

Turn on the news, same story every night
They talking about the border, talking about the "crisis" right
Boats coming over, people trying to survive
While rent goes up another hundred, and I'm working two jobs just to stay alive

They say "those people taking what's yours"
But last I checked, immigrants ain't the landlords
They ain't the ones raising prices at the store
They ain't the CEOs cutting wages to boost the score

Look at the numbers, see where the money went
Not to the people crossing, desperate and spent
It went up, way up, to the one percent
While they got us looking down, got us pointing at the tent

They point away, they point away
While they take everything
They point away, they point away
Look at the boats, not the yachts
They point away, they point away
Got us fighting each other
They point away, they point away
While they rob us all

My neighbor's from Honduras, working harder than I ever seen
Two jobs like me, barely making it, caught in between
Gets blamed for the system, gets blamed for the scheme
But we both broke, we both struggling, living the same dream

Who owns the building that we can't afford?
Who's raising the rent while we both get ignored?
Who's cutting our hours, who's cutting our pay?
It ain't the immigrants - they pointing the wrong way

Divide and conquer, oldest trick in the book
Got us blaming each other while they rob us and cook
The numbers in their favor, moving wealth like a crook
But if we both look up, we'd see who really took

They point away, they point away
While they take everything
They point away, they point away
Look at the boats, not the yachts
They point away, they point away
Got us fighting each other
They point away, they point away
While they rob us all

Three billionaires got more than half the country combined
But they want me angry at the person in line
At the grocery store, at the hospital, at the school
Using fear like a weapon, treating us like fools

Immigration ain't the reason I can't pay my bills
Corporate greed is, stock buybacks, tax evasion, all the thrills
They make billions while we're fighting for the crumbs
Pointing at each other like we're enemies, like we're dumb

Wake up, look up, see who's really winning
It ain't the people coming, it ain't the people beginning
It's the ones at the top with the power and the grinning
While we fight each other, they're robbing us and spinning

They point away, they point away
While they take everything
They point away, they point away
Look at the boats, not the yachts
They point away, they point away
Got us fighting each other
They point away, they point away

But I see through it now
I see through it now
I see where the money goes
I see who really took it
Look up, not down
Look up, not down

They point away
But I'm looking up
They point away
But I see you now

THEY POINT AWAY

I voted twice for change, they ran on reform
Said they'd rearrange, fight for the norm
Election night we celebrated, thought we won
New laws written, regulations begun

But six months later nothing moved
A year gone by, nothing improved
Laws got written, sure enough
But riddled with loopholes and stuff

The watchers bought
One by one turned around
The watchers bought
Supposed to protect us
The watchers bought
Who watches the watchers
When they're all for sale?

Banking reform, they called it historic
But banks wrote the rules, it's metaphoric
How you regulate when they write the test?
FDA, EPA, corporate-blessed

Revolving door, government to corporate
Regulate the industry then work for it
Campaign donations, millions pour in
Can't bite the hand that lets you win

The watchers bought
One by one turned around
The watchers bought
Supposed to protect us
The watchers bought

Not corruption old-school sense
It's legal, systemic, whole pretense
One watcher, one board, one oversight
Too easy to capture, too easy to buy outright

You need many hands, independent and real
Not one that's for sale, that's the deal
Now I understand why single watchers fail
Now I understand the design flaw
Time for something different
Something they can't all buy at once

The watchers bought
But I see it now
The watchers bought
I understand the flaw
Time for many hands
Time for many hands

Who watches the watchers?
Each other
That's who

THE WATCHERS BOUGHT

The school where I learned to read
Falling apart, paint peeling, roof leaking
Forty kids in a class, books ten years old
Teachers buying supplies from their own paychecks, I'm told

The hospital where I was born
Closed last year, couldn't afford to keep the lights on
Now it's forty miles to the nearest ER
Hope you don't have an emergency in your car

The bridge we crossed every day
Condemned now, unsafe they say
Take the long way around, adds an hour to the drive
These were things we built, kept us alive

The commons crumbling
What we all stood on
The commons crumbling
Schools, hospitals, roads
The commons crumbling
These were ours, together
The commons crumbling
Who let this happen?

Public library cut its hours down to three days a week
Parks unmowed, bathrooms broken, infrastructure weak
Water mains bursting, been that way for years
City says no budget, while the rich got tax breaks, cheers

Post office closing branches in the neighborhoods that need them most
Transit system breaking down, buses like ghosts
Showing up late or not at all
While the stadiums get funded, while the corporate towers stand tall

These weren't luxuries, these were basics
Things that held us all, things that made us
A community, a society that worked
Now we watch it crumble, feeling jerked

The commons crumbling
What we all stood on
The commons crumbling
Water, transit, light
The commons crumbling
These were ours, together
The commons crumbling
Where'd the money go?

And here's the thing about shared substrate
You don't notice when it's working right
But when it fails, when it breaks down
Everybody feels it, all around

Rich people got their private schools
Private healthcare, private pools
But even they need roads that work
Need water clean, need a system that doesn't shirk

You can't privatize everything
Some things we need to share to bring
A functioning society, a place to live
You take from the commons, something's gotta give

My grandma helped build that library
My father fixed those roads
My mother taught in those schools
We built this together
With our taxes, our labor, our care
And now it's falling apart
While someone's yacht gets bigger
While someone's third house gets built
The commons crumbling

The commons crumbling
What we all stood on
The commons crumbling
Everything we shared
The commons crumbling
This wasn't an accident
The commons crumbling
This was extraction
This was the plan

These were ours
Together
Crumbling

THE COMMONS FAILING

Let me break it down, show you how it works
Not about being evil, not about being jerks
It's a pattern, it's a system, it's a way of taking
That looks like profit but it's really just breaking

Take from the ground what won't grow back
Take from the forest till there's nothing intact
Take from the ocean till the fish are gone
Then move to the next one, keep moving on

Short-term thinking, quarterly gains
Maximize profit, externalize pains
Someone else's problem when the well runs dry
By then you're gone with your piece of the pie

This is extraction, not creation
Taking value, leaving degradation
This is extraction, you can see it clear
Eating the soil your own food grows in here

Take from the workers what they need to live
Pay them just enough so they can give
Another day, another shift, another year
While productivity rises, wages disappear

Stock buybacks, billions to the shareholders
While the people who built it can't pay for their healthcare
Squeeze every penny from the labor force
Then wonder why the system's getting coarse

It's not sustainable, anyone can see
You're degrading the substrate of your own company
Workers burn out, can't afford to stay
But the quarterly numbers look good today

This is extraction, not creation
Taking value, leaving degradation
This is extraction, you can see it clear
Eating the soil your own food grows in here

Here's the thing about extraction vs creation
One makes more, one's just migration
Of wealth from many to the few at top
Taking from the future till the future stops

You can't extract forever from a finite base
Eventually you run out, empty the place
Whether it's forests, workers, or community trust
It all collapses when you take too much

Reciprocal would mean when you take, you give
Sustainable, cyclical, everyone can live
But extraction? That's parasitic
Takes from the host till the host gets sick

And here's the deepest irony
The ones extracting can't see
They're destroying what they need
To keep extracting, to succeed

You need workers to exploit
You need resources to destroy
You need a system that survives
While you're ending all our lives

This is extraction, not creation
Taking value, leaving degradation
This is extraction, economic law
You're eating the substrate, the foundation
This is extraction, watch it fall
When nothing's left to take at all

Extraction
Not creation
Parasitic
Not reciprocal
Can you see it?
Can you see it now?

EXTRACTION

This is a collection of my ideas articulated by AI. Workflow: all music by Riffusion/Producer.ai. Most lyrics ChatGPT various versions.

Besides these songs there is a thinking/science project I started early 2025. I have been documenting this project online: https://github.com/albertjanvanhoek/Evolution-by-Emergence 

### License
These tracks (both music and lyrics) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

🆓 You are free to:
• Copy & distribute  
• Remix & adapt  
• Use the track in commercial and non-commercial projects  

📋 Conditions of use:
1. Give proper credit:  
   “Song Title – Emergence – https://soundcloud.com/emergence-223803727/<relevent link> – CC BY 4.0”
2. Add a link to the license text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
3. State whether you made any changes.  
4. Do not imply that I endorse your work.

Enjoy!

THE COMMONS FAILING

Emergence 🐠