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Efficiency kills jobs. But what people want is not jobs: they want revenue, then something giving them a sense of self-worth. The latter can be provided by bett
by fab13n 15y ago
Efficiency kills jobs. But what people want is not jobs: they want revenue, then something giving them a sense of self-worth. The latter can be provided by better means than through artificially wasteful jobs.
Moreover, as he notices, the balance of power is between the owners of the means of productions, and "normal people" who can decide to riot. This balance can be altered by changing people's willingness to riot, and/or by making their riotous actions more efficient.
Don't forget that value is created through the enjoyment of useful things: if you produce useful stuff, but for some reason nobody enjoys them, you have not created any wealth. So if you produce stuff to be enjoyed by the plebe, this plebe have as much power on it as you do, although they have a harder time organizing and exploiting their share of power.
I'd like to insist on the legitimacy of people's ability to revolt, or at least on why it's no less legitimate than shareholders' "property rights". Our social definition of property rights is arbitrary; according to "natural law", you're only the owner of what you can defend, by force if necessary. If your ownership is defended by the state's police, i.e. by the people, it is ultimately the people's property, and you have rights on it only because the people decided to grant you these rights.
- ippisl 15y ago>> Efficiency kills jobs. But what people want is not jobs: they want revenue They don't want revenue. they want decent housing, education, healthcare ,energy,transportation and food. Make those affordable to anyone , and there would be much less of a problem. And you would expect that the improving technology would enable this. but somehow the cost of those goods mostly hasn't declined in the US. Is there something to be done? Yes. if you look india and china, they are starting to offer those goods for much lower prices. the US should emulate them.
- ctdonath 15y agoThose ARE affordable to anyone. Without enumerating the solutions, I assure you it's all out there cheap or free to anyone willing to put in some effort to earn and adapt. The problem is so many want luxuries brought to them on a silver platter. Our biggest sociopolitical issue now is that it is illegal to be poor, that varoius regulations prohibit "functional poverty". Jobs below a certain wage are illegal, housing below high standards are prohibited, products & services must achieve lofty idealistic goals. I'm not saying low standards are desirable, but if you're not allowed to stand on the bottom rungs of the ladder you can't climb higher.
- ippisl 15y ago>> Those ARE affordable to anyone. >> jobs below a certain wage are illegal So everything is affordable to anyone , and jobs pay too much.Those lazy whining plebs! how dare they protest ?
- ctdonath 15y agoYou are willfully confusing need with want.
- Greedy_Fools 15y agoThat's why they hoard the land, people can't create wealth and move up and be more productive without standing on that bottom rung of the ladder, which must be on defensible land. The only solution is the exact same process that built the great American society, give people access to land and then leave them the hell alone. All it ever took to build it, all it will take to fix it. Nothing else will work because nothing has changed but our collective delusion about what is required to create.
- sanderjd 15y agoPlease do enumerate the solutions you are alluding to if you're willing - I'm sure I'm not the only person on here who is curious and has no idea what you're talking about or where to start looking.
- ctdonath 15y agoA few favorite starting points: Meals for $1: abuckaplate.blogspot.com (fair disclosure, it's my blog) Education curriculum, free: ocw.MIT.edu Housing, efficient: Tumbleweedhouses.com, TinyHouseBlog.com Cheap land: google "free land" Health care: look into "catastrophic coverage" Yeah, it takes effort. Ease has a price. The main issue, as another poster noted, is that most people are indoctrinated with consumerism from birth. Fact is you can live well, cheap; takes work, but it's not really that hard.
- JabavuAdams 15y ago> The problem is so many want luxuries brought to them on a silver platter. Yeah, but it's not like they just want these luxuries for no reason. In a consumerist society, we indoctrinate them from birth to want things. The "winners" in our society win in part because they are able to convince the "losers" to buy stuff that they don't really need. It's pretty awful and dishonest to then have the "winners" criticize the losers for the very actions / traits that enriched the "winners".
- aba_sababa 15y agoShirky's cognitive surplus comes to mind. In the context of #OWS, a lot of the youth are complaining that they don't have jobs. But then I remember that my generation wasn't raised to find a job - we were raised to "do what we loved". And after a while in the real world, we found that there weren't very many opportunities to actually do what we loved, and we're a bit upset about it.* The step FORWARD is to try to create an environment where ANYONE can create ANY kind of wealth they want. Companies like Etsy and Skillshare (both NYC babies!) are propelling us to this world. It's a world where we have projects instead of jobs. A place where you don't ask a man what he DOES for a living; instead, you ask him what he's WORKING on. Sounds nice, huh? And the wrong answer, obviously, is to "solve" it by making things more inefficient. Then we'll just stay in a world where jobs, you know, suck. *the royal we, of course. I'm a programmer, and I have a job, and I love it. yeeee :)
- sanderjd 15y agoKickstarter and development of affordable 3D printing are another two, just to lengthen the arrow pointing in the direction of the future you're imagining. Having said that, the transition from our current world to that world could be pretty darn rocky, if it's even possible.
- aba_sababa 15y agoalso New York companies :)
- zasz 15y agoOkay, so there's this problem with there not being enough work that people enjoy doing. I don't see why stuff like Etsy is going to be a solution to that. I don't want 99.9% of the stuff I've seen on Etsy. Most of it is crap. I don't think most people will be able to consistently make things that other people want. This does not seem like a solution either.