[Narz]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/r ... hpt=op_mid

Interesting article by Rushkoff.

[Newfie]

It's really right out of the Atlas Shrugged playbook. The belief that you can just legislate jobs.

I freely admit it has been a very long time since I read Atlas Shrugged, but what you say above is completely opposite of what I got out of Rand. Her complaint was of excessive bureaucratic oversight creating meaningless jobs. And, in her definition, bureaucratic included the government AND the mindless overhead within business.

I mean, what do you think 'Atlas Shrugged' the phrase means? It is a story about the high producers stepping aside, withdrawing from society, so that the mindless mass collapses upon itself. In this sense 'Atlas' is the productive worker, the guy/gal who is 'doing' or 'making' something.

What I note is that the majority of jobs in the US are created by bureaucracy and contribute nothing to our health and welfare.

What I am commenting on is that this situation is so only because we, the people, go along or even encourage it to exist. It satisfies something within ourselves. It is a personal decision to continue this or to not.

I am trying to encourage some self reflection and values clarification.

[Newfie]

Sure, some get it right, others (self included) ?????

Should get it right, or figure out how to get it right. Doing the same dumb thing because you can't think of something better, remains dumb.

If one is unsatisfied doing X.
STOP DOING X.

Not sure how to interpret your comment. Sounds to me like we are pretty much in agreement.

My point was not to argue with you but to say that my comments were not pointed at you. If you 'get it', and it sounds like you surely do, then great. Personally I think that this put you in a small minority.

Let me ask you this, by your estimation how many, or what percentage of American's share your belief?

[MD]

A thirty hour work work would be even better. Six hour shifts with one break, five days per week. The day divides nicely into 4 shifts for manufacturing and 24 hour services.

Such a change would rock the economy if it weren't implemented with great care. I'm not convinced our government is capable of caring.

[Newfie]

Perhaps merge with the 35 hour work week thread??? Similar and relevant in some ways.

[AgentR11]

Let me ask you this, by your estimation how many, or what percentage of American's share your belief?

5%
Just a hunch though.

Rose of Lima is my favorite Saint. She knew what she intended to do, absolutely did not fit in with what folks wanted her to do, yet she pursued her intent to the fullest extent that she could drive her body and mind.

We don't all have to drive ourselves on our calling to the point that we keel over in our thirties, but I get so frustrated when people just do what they are doing because that's where they were pointed and can't be bothered to find something they are both good at, and are good enough at it to do for a living. Maybe they'd make a little less money, or something, but sheesh, the only time your body's any good for anything is between 20-60, if you're lucky, so make it count!

[Newfie]

Let me ask you this, by your estimation how many, or what percentage of American's share your belief?

5%
Just a hunch though.

............... but sheesh, the only time your body's any good for anything is between 20-60, if you're lucky, so make it count!

Yeah, OK, we are together on this. Just checking.

Thanks.

[Serial_Worrier]

What bunk. Go ahead- quit your job and see how long until you're on food stamps.

[ColossalContrarian]

This is very similar to the 35hr work week thread as noted above.

Maybe as a culture/society we focus too much on having a job because it’s a change from the old “hunter gatherer” way of working together and now we have an independence where we can sustain our lifestyle on our own, so some of us view the level of complacency some have in our society and view working hard as survival of the fittest (a rather extreme example) but in our world, nature doesn’t weed out the weak. You can be sick or weak in our society and still survive and live a fine life.

The way we live and survive has had a huge paradigm shift in the past hundred years that is so significant I don’t know how we can transcend to a society that shares the way we used to. Even though sharing is at the roots our survival. It’s become automated to the point that people believe the beef at the grocery store was never alive in the first place (for those who haven’t been to a slaughterhouse, it would disgust %99 of the population who buys butchered meat).
I don’t see the top %1 wanting to share with everyone else. Imagine even if all the people in the US were told to share food to alleviate the starvation in Somalia -"Fat" pun, intended "chance"!

[Ferretlover]

No, there will always be jobs to be done; however, compensation may not be what one might expect.

Merged similar threads.

[Newfie]

Let me ask you this, by your estimation how many, or what percentage of American's share your belief?

5%
Just a hunch though.

............... but sheesh, the only time your body's any good for anything is between 20-60, if you're lucky, so make it count!

Yeah, OK, we are together on this. Just checking.

Thanks.

I should have thrown in a caveat. I have been lucky enough to do well paid and interesting work. However there are many if not most who don't have this luxury. Yet they need to keep their job, no matter how mind numbing or dangerous, in order to keep a paycheck. They may not have the option of finding something that they "like" to do. For one thing, many "like" jobs are woefully under compensated, just look at what a Masters in Social Work, or Library Science, will get you.

Where we may have some room to maneuver is to cut back our consuming so that we don't need as much. If one can live on less then you have more freedom. Still, there are many that don't even meet this criteria and I feel for them.

[Expatriot]

you only need to understand evolution and a well-established phenomena of altruism acting through group-selection.

10 second search turns up this, which would seem to undercut your assertion:

Group selection was used as a popular explanation for adaptations, especially by V. C. Wynne-Edwards.[1][2] For several decades, however, critiques, particularly by George C. Williams,[3] John Maynard Smith[4] and C.M. Perrins (1964), cast serious doubt on group selection as a major mechanism of evolution, and though some scientists have pursued the idea over the last few decades, only recently have group selection models seen a minor resurgence.[5][6]

[Loki]

Re. the "Jobs are Obsolete" piece:

But there might still be another possibility -- something we couldn't really imagine for ourselves until the digital era. As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products.

We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This part really annoyed me. Strikes me as something someone who's never done an honest day's work in his life would write. How on earth do you grow food or build shelters by “exchanging information-based products”? I'd like the author to come out to the farm for a week and harvest tomatoes all day in 90+ degree heat, or build greenhouses in the winter cold, rain, and mud.

Aside from this “information age” silliness (real stuff still requires real work), how does the author propose we distribute these allegedly labor-free products? A beneficent technocratic committee? They decide who picks strawberries, who answers customer service calls, or who cleans up the overflow in the public toilet stall? I'm guessing the committee members won't be doing any of these things, nor will the author of this article.

It's a moot point anyway, the underlying premise of the piece is techno-utopian. We don't have a techno-utopia in our immediate future.

[Newfie]

Re. the "Jobs are Obsolete" piece:

It's a moot point anyway, the underlying premise of the piece is techno-utopian. We don't have a techno-utopia in our immediate future.

Loki, no matter how obvious your statement I suspect that many will not see your point.

It seems we have lost all sense of what is 'real' and what is not.

Anyone for a red pill?

[turner]

Slice and dice the jobs however you want but the simple fact is that production has been exported and there is no way in the long term any economy can keep consuming stuff that is made by another economy, unless your economy is providing something unique in abundance (eg oil) in exchange. It's simply not logical. Penalise the multinationals that offshore their production and introduce tariffs, or come up with something the rest of the world doesn't have that can keep millions employed.

[Newfie]

I read a few of Paul Farrell's commentaries over at MarketWatch. I think he is a guy who 'gets it.'

http://www.marketwatch.com/Journalists/Paul_B_Farrell

Kind of interesting that a quazi main-stream guy would be writing such stuff.

The herd stirs?????

[nobodypanic]

Slice and dice the jobs however you want but the simple fact is that production has been exported and there is no way in the long term any economy can keep consuming stuff that is made by another economy, unless your economy is providing something unique in abundance (eg oil) in exchange. It's simply not logical. Penalise the multinationals that offshore their production and introduce tariffs, or come up with something the rest of the world doesn't have that can keep millions employed.

then i'd say that 'other' economy will at some point run into serious trouble, for when this one can no longer serve to soak up its products, then off the cliff that other one will slide.

[turner]

That may well be true but it doesn't make your own position any better for a long time.Better to face and deal now.