Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 394-396

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
By JOHN MARKOFF
New York Times
Published: July 25, 2009




We're finally starting to hear a little discussion about the white underclass in this country. Mainly because so many middle class folks are terrified of falling into it. Frankly, I hope they do. We've got room for them. All the lousy, humiliating jobs have not yet been outsourced. The Devil still has plenty for them to do down here.
Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com.
Posted July 18, 2009.




And the treasure itself? It takes the playful children to get to it.
Arny Mindell,
Riding The Horse Backwards

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 391-393

"Full employment" is really another name for slavery.
Martin Hattersley

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Lord Acton

…an important and much needed wakeup call. Communities and their citizens have become so dependent upon business and industry to provide them with jobs that it has become a dysfunctional addiction-like co-dependence. This co-dependency has lead many communities to expect businesses and industries to maintain jobs regardless of the negative impact it can have on their own profit margins. This co-dependency for jobs has resulted in employers viewing employees more and more as liabilities and less and less as valuable assets. In essence, the employee/employer dichotomy has become such an increasingly dysfunctional economic relationship that in this 21st century fails to serve either party adequately. If, in fact, it ever did.
…
It is time to cut the umbilical cord that binds communities to employers for "jobs" while at the same time forcing many employees into the status of mere serfs and wage slaves. It is a relationship that is strangling the performance of far too many of the businesses and industries within those communities while at the same time robbing the people that live in those communities of the very freedoms of existence and choice we say we cherish so much. In essence, the time has come to put that freedom of choice rhetoric to the test and an annually guaranteed, basic, liveable income is an excellent method of promoting those freedoms. Of course, any annually provided and guaranteed, basic income must also be a liveable one in order to provide the ideal bridge between the competing economic needs of business, industry and the communities they operate in. The provision of such an income support means that many more people will be free to choose for themselves how they will occupy their time on this planet and what activities they will participate in during their lifetime. After all, there really is a rich and fascinating life to be found outside the workplace.…It is also quite possible that a nation's artistic community would explode in a modern day Renaissance when its fledgling artists are finally free to explore their passions and to share their vocations with their communities without the drudgery of first performing repetitive and ­ to many artists - meaningless tasks in the workplace in order to then be able to pursue their true callings. Local and amateur sports would also take off and the resulting increased health and wellness benefits that would occur are already acknowledged as important by products of regular exercise.

BASIC INCOME ­

Greater Freedom of Choice

Through Greater Economic Security of the Person
William D. Clegg, B.A. Phil

thanks to L.I.F.E.

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotation Of The Week 390

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance

Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

Ogden Nash

thanks to Deb Crawford-Howell

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 387-389

In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.

Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from.
When Will the Recovery Begin? Never
Robert Reich's Blog.
Posted July 10, 2009.

I'm reminded of the old rightwing cliche that you can't solve problems by throwing money at them. I tend to agree with writer Robert Anton Wilson, who says that this cliche is the most stupid, moronic thing he's ever heard from the right. The vast majority of problems in life get solved by throwing money at them. Nothing else but money will do, in social reality.

You pay your rent by throwing MONEY at your landlord. Your landlord won't accept philosophical speculation as payment. When you need food, you throw MONEY at a food retailer. They won't accept positive thinking as payment. You need water to bathe - you throw MONEY at the water company. They won't accept your insightful perceptions about not being a mental slave.)
Brian Dean
CLAWS Discussion
AAA

Harvard guessed… that five percent of the population is all it takes to produce everything that we consume. Five percent. Another fifteen percent, arguably, are involved in essential services. That leaves eight people out of ten….
John Taylor Gatto

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 384-386

There are now more than five unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States.
…
Economists are currently spreading the word that the recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will continue to climb.
No Recovery in Sight
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times.
Published: June 26, 2009





I
live in a major city and everyone I know or have met is too busy to organise anything. Getting people to come for dinner is next to impossible, a drink is always quick, and most people's lives are a grind of marching to work and then a long commute back to home. I once lived in the third world. A place where everyone was within walking distance of each other. It was amazing! Having somebody come round for dinner was easy and spontaneous, trysts with women were easy, conversation was more meaningfull and less peppered with what was on TV last night. People in cities are like on a drug: scatty, diverted by the pace, doped up on TV and media tabloid garbage. It is sad.
I agree: people need to learn how to chill
Comment
Posted by: Bobsays on Nov 16, 2006



In the late 1960's we had a society almost completely devoid of computers and automation. Virtually everything was done manually by hand. However, it became obvious that computers and automation were going to have an enormous effect. For example, instead of having thousands of clerks doing all the processes required of a large organisation to send out bills and collect payments - over 95% of them could be replaced by computers and automated systems. Many forecast that this should bring tremendous benefits to all of society. People could be freed from repetetive, boring manual tasks. Society would redistribute wealth to result in an enormous increase in leisure time. Instead of most working 5 days a week, it should only be necessary to work 2 or 3 days a month. All this was and is completely technically feasible. The jobs that most people do serve no useful purpose whatsoever, except that people have been conditioned to behave like rodents on a hamsterwheel. The only jobs that are really required are those concerned with the provision, distribution and maintenance of basic services, like food, water, energy, shelter and health.These are the jobs that require basic traditional human practical skills - the jobs that are least valued by society.Yet most people sit in offices at a desk feeding an enormous and completely unnecessary system of bureaucracy. Most people are simply talking about work, and less than 10% are actually doing anything useful. Even where people are building things that are useful, they are building them to fail in 3 years, rather than building them to last 100 years.
RE: why do we need jobs anyway?
CommentPosted by: tony_opmoc on Jul 1, 2009