teachers vs diy
everyone knows there's a robot god who creates the robots, that's just common sense.Chris, "creating jobs" is better than just letting people rot, I agree. But reducing the work week while keeping the same total hours worked (thus employing more people) is better.
It's better because history is a movement, a flow, and simply "creating jobs", like bailing out the "too big to fail" financial institutions like we did a few years back rather than addressing directly the problems and opportunities of our system-wide problems, is not going to shift our direction, it's just going to buy some time before the next point the system rumbles and shakes, and more people's lives are wrecked. This is going to keep happening without a fundamental shift, and I'm saying that shift is perhaps best modeled as a cultural adaptation to already happening social and economic and technological changes. This adaptation is not necessarily passive either by the way-- it can be as creative and vibrant as we want it to be.
Creating just any jobs is ok I guess in that it will move some
individuals from unemployment to steady paychecks, and that's real in a
boots-on-the-ground sense. Problem is, without discernment in the jobs
created and the ways they're created, those boots-on-the-ground will
still be marching towards a cliff. That's why I'm critiquing the common
sense buzzword notion "creating jobs"--- because it's mostly used to
distract from the fact of system-wide problems by patching some failing
component of the system. You see, the real issue simply isn't "creating jobs": it's incentivizing a shift in attitudes and practices which results in a more equitable participation of all in the transition to a world where less "work" (in the sense of labor and management) is necessary. This also has to involve a shift in culture to a more engaged, apreciative way of living life in which humans encourage each other to cultivate themselves in the direction of greater happiness, kindness, fullfilment and so on.
When the people and our government and industry leaders get on board with the cultural changes which are responsive to these objective changes in society, technology and the environment, then things will change. In the meantime I place a a higher value on real solutions reflecting real intelligence rather than the patchwork responses we've been seeing in recent decades. I think States and corporations and ngo's will and already are beginning to experiment with alternative approaches to many of these issues. I place no faith in short term winners like "creating jobs" because it's beside the point, since the way that's done and the specific jobs created (and the vision that reflects) is more important IMO.
Maybe it would be more useful to speak of prioritizing work that needs doing, matching it with workers willing and able to do it, and getting it done, than to go with this silly politician's metaphor about whether 'the private sector' or the 'government' is better at being the deity of 'jobs creation.' I say silly because once upon a time, 'jobs creation' was denigrated as 'make-work.'
There is no end of work needing to be done-- especially right now in the Northeast!-- and likely no shortage of people able to do it. We somehow have let large, impersonal institutions get in the way with their rationales for paying far too much of the currency to a few people who are doing counterproductive things that are most certainly NOT 'work that needs to be done.' Like gaming financial markets and holding the other 90% of us hostage so they don't tank the whole system. And the 'experts' get paid to think of ingenious little tweaks to the whole thing that don't threaten to change things; and the politicians have their 'jobs' making good or bad or sensible or inane public remarks while likewise not changing things.
Maybe one day soon we will be discovering that community, starting with the basics required for human life, is the first and last DIY+with friends, family, neighbors, spiritual practice. The authorities wouldn't be giving that to us, even if they could. They would stop being authorities and be down here in the trenches with the rest of us friends, family, neighbors.
[while I'm tearing off down this tangent, might as well do it with a bang, not a whimper!]
-kategowen
nice!
that's what I'm talkin' bout
[...] for that matter why do they chuck my packages on the ground by the road, while UPS will walk them to my back door and knock? In other words, those little "Mailboxes, etc." places, FedEx, etc. ran right over the Post Office and squashed it flat. And the Post Office was so hampered by bureaucracy and regulation it couldn't move to try to keep up. And now they're going to bail it out so I can keep receiving 3 pounds of catalogs and junk mail a week? I literally get nothing else by mail anymore.
-ona
hahahaha
The barons of Wall Street are indeed gaming the rest of us. It's shameful that the game has been allowed to go on this long even after they almost brought the nation to ruin a few years ago.
So there.
I'm not into science fiction.
-michaelmonson:
Oh, you will be
-cmarti
Right, Chris, as we all will be!
I wasn't suggesting that anyone create useless, worthless jobs. I was suggesting we spend our collective money to have people do very useful, productive things. Hoover Dam was created that way. So was the interstate highway system. I wouldn't want people to feel, or be, worthless. I want the proper allocation of resources so that everyone gets a share of the pie.
The barons of Wall Street are indeed gaming the rest of us. It's shameful that the game has been allowed to go on this long even after they almost brought the nation to ruin a few years ago.
So there.
[image]
-cmarti
hahaha
yeah, we definitely need some kind of contemporary equivalent of the WPA. High speed rail, universal high speed internet, better funding for public education, shoring up physical infrastructure.
imagine where we'd be right now if during the past decade we'd wracked up the same amount of debt (as a nation)--- but spending it on this sort of thing rather than several wars?