Gabor Maté, Our Freedoms

57 seconds of Gabor Maté

Out Of The Cave

29 seconds of Russell Brand

Inconvenient Narrative

Eve Ensler, Russell Brand, 47 sec

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1054-1057

The standard by which the theory must judge the
democratic quality of any society, and by which its claim that any
particular society is democratic must be tested, is how nearly it
attains the presently attainable maximum - i.e. the maximum level
of abilities to use and develop human capacities, given the
presently possible human command over external nature.
C.B. Macpherson,
Democratic Theory
 [emphasis js]

It amazes me when people complain that this NSA monitoring of communications is such a colossal waste of money.

Why is it a waste of money? How else will these people be employed? What other industry there is to employ these highly trained brilliant individuals? Can they be hired to repair our crumbling roads?
Dreamer
Comment Section
Anger Growing Among Allies on U.S. Spying
By ALISON SMALE
New York Times
Published: October 23, 2013

The international test scores are poor economic barometers.

What matters most in the decades ahead is the extent to which we cultivate creativity, ingenuity, curiosity, innovation, and thinking differently. These qualities have been the genius of American culture. These traits are not measured by standardized tests.

The students who learn to select the correct box on a multiple-choice question are not the inventors and innovators of the future. They are the clerks of the future.

International Test Scores Predict Nothing
Diane Ravitch, Historian, NYU professor

Posted: 10/24/2013

HuffPost Politics

Big Jobs Program

Jesse Ventura 46 sec

Asskisser's Tenure Track

Jeff Schmidt, 2 min 4 sec

Fighting For Crumbs

The Great Cornel West, 22 sec

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1051-1053

In June 2011, Zhang and his teenage classmates were taken out of their family homes and dispatched to a factory making electronic gadgets. The pupils were away for a six-month internship at a giant Foxconn plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, a 20-hour train ride from their home in central China. He had no say in the matter, he told researchers. "Unless we could present a medical report certified by the city hospital that we were very ill, we had to go immediately."
...
Incredible as it sounds, Zhang's story is actually typical. As the number one supplier to Apple and manufacturer for a host of other consumer-electronics firms, Foxconn is one of the largest employers in China – and among the biggest users of student labour. In October 2010, the company estimated that, at times, up to 15% – or 150,000 – of its million-strong workforce were students. More than 28,000 were estimated to be interning for Apple alone. Last year, academics reported that 70% of the staff at a Honda gearbox factory were from secondary schools

Nor is such exploitation merely the stuff of recent history: just last week, Foxconn admitted that it had broken the law by making schoolchildren work overtime and night shifts. More than a thousand of them had reportedly been building the soon-to-be released PlayStation 4 games consoles.
Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle
Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian, Monday 14 October 2013

According to economic logic, wage growth should reflect productivity growth. This was the case until the late 1970s. Since then, however, wage growth has fallen far short of productivity growth, and that’s true for workers regardless of education, occupation, gender or race.

...

...technological change and the globalization it has enabled have played major roles...

The Quality of Jobs: The New Normal and the Old Normal

By LAURA D'ANDREA TYSON

New York Times

September 20, 2013
[emphasis JS]

Workers just aren't as important as you think, and they are worth less and less to a company. As a Union strives to increase their pay beyond efficiency merit, the company will work to eliminate employees through computerization and automation. You can generally assume that management will work as hard as possible to eliminate every job they can. It is always preferable to have machines working for you instead of people. And more profitable. What we'll do with all the unemployed, I don't know, but this is a huge structural change that can't be ignored and can't be stopped. The harder you work to unionize and the louder you scream, the faster the jobs will disappear.

Sept. 22, 2013 

ToldLikeItIs

Ibid, comment section
[emphasis JS]

Wise Old Man on The Big Answer

Wendell Berry, 1 min 24 sec

Wise Old Man, Enough Is Enough

Wendell Berry, Enough, 16 sec

Wise Old Man On The Sacred

Wendell Berry, Sacred and Desecrated, 37 sec

Wise Old Man, Unemployment

Wendell Berry, Unemployment, 32 sec

Wise Old Man Against The Grain

Wendell Berry, Contrarian, 31 sec

Jeff Schmidt on Academic Freedom

Jeff Schmidt on Academic Freedom, 2 min 12 sec

Paul Hellyer, Toto In A Suit

Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of National Defense,
5 min 38 sec


This was way out marginal stuff recently. He also speaks about aliens.

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1048-1050

I have many times talked to teachers who wanted to teach in alternative schools, or I'd meet some young guy who'd say, "I want to work with kids," so I say, well, what do you know that is so interesting that kids of their own free will will come up to you to learn how to do it. Usually they don't have any answer at all. My reply is, you don't want to work with kids, you want to work on kids, do things to them or make them do things that you think would be good for them.
John Holt

                               Jeff Schmidt, 16 sec


The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues (Jeff) Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations, and even democracy.
Jeff Schmidt,
Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes their Lives

In America, by the time of the Civil War, slaves were the country's most valuable capital asset. In a nation with an annual federal budget of only $50 million, slaves had a market value of $2 billion, or more than twice that of all the country's railroads.

Sam Smith,

FALSE PROFITS

An excerpt from "Why Bother?"

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom #Quotations Of The Week 1045-1047

With New York City’s homeless population in shelters at a record high of 50,000, a growing number of New Yorkers punch out of work and then sign in to a shelter, city officials and advocates for the homeless say. More than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult, city figures show, and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs.

Mostly female, they are engaged in a variety of low-wage jobs....
...
Now the number of shelter residents hovers around 50,000, according to the city’s Department of Homeless Services. More than 9,000 are single adults and more than 40,000 other residents are in families, including 21,600 children. The average monthly cost for the government to shelter a family is more than $3,000; the cost for a single person is more than $2,300.
..
…unable to afford more than $1,000 for rent, she has not been able to land an apartment.
In New York, Having a Job, or 2, Doesn’t Mean Having a Home
By MIREYA NAVARRO
New York Times
Published: September 17, 2013
[emphasis JS]


Duh!
-Jack

But in your mind all I do
Is keep wandering and gathering, spear chucking and dancing
You imply I must prove to you that I deserve freedom
Well I deserve freedom
Freedom Suite,
Young Disciples 


Thanks to perched in London @cityeyrie

A MILLION YOUNG WORKMEN, 1915


A MILLION young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war.
I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson … and yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.
Carl Sandburg

{emphasis JS]

Stefan Molyneux on Academic Credentials vs Amateurs

Stefan Molyneux 49 seconds