Slashdot Mirror

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic

See also a longer written history that goes back farther (to Plato):
"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and ... Resistance"
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

However, redistributing wealth towards families with kids is still a good idea IMHO, or in more general, a basic income:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

So, I part company with Propertarian-libertarians on that (many of whom would just eliminate schools as well as the wealth redistribution aspects, leaving families with children with no formal social support in an industrialized society now in the midst of "The Two Income Trap").
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap

The makers of that video:
    http://www.freedomofeducation.net/

The more general issue:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
   

Although it is tempting to say that in a perfect world without greed much more would be accomplished, one has to consider what the incentives are. In theory, capitalism encourages innovation by providing rewards for it. In a system where no one has to work, many won't. Of course, it is unclear this is a bad thing: many people unable to do what they want in a capitalistic system may decide to be artists or scientists if they do not have to worry about making money.

Just looking at the computer field, it seems like things would be better for everyone if all the software around were available for free, but it is not clear it would have been written in the first place. It is sometimes argued that a lot of the popular Linux programs and desktop environments do a lot of copying from Windows/Mac. If there were not people needing to make a living working on these UI projects, would they have ever gotten done? Microsoft and Apple had strong incentives to bring the personal computer to the masses. Would an alternative economic system offer the same incentives? Should it?

As for alternative systems, you may be interested to read about Social Credit which I first saw discussed in Robert Heinlein's series of essays^W^W^Wutopian novel For Us, The Living. Another alternative system is discussed in Marshall Brain's work Manna (available online) where abundance (and robot laborers) organized by a company founded for social good creates a utopia where each person gets a daily allowance of production credits.

On the more realistic and immediately implementable end of things, there's Why Work? ("CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery"), a website dedicated to not having a job [that you don't like].

http://www.whywork.org/

Yeah, we've heard all this before. I am reminded of the SUmmer of Love in '67, when hippies would take the discarded food from the big produce market in San Francisco and make gallons of soups and stews in the park and distribute it to anyone who wanted it. "Free Clothing" shops opened to distribute all kinds of clothes that regular folks had discarded. A quote from one of them was "with all that free food and stuff around, we wondered why all these people were driving through traffic to their stupid jobs, when the necessities of life were just there for the having. The sad fact of the matter is, all that surplus was the result of those people working their asses off every day. If everyone quit their job and hung out at the park, only working a little when they felt like it, we'd all starve or freeze to death.

I understand the idea that one shouldn't have to hate their work and the puritan work ethic is just ridiculous, but the fact remains that most of the work that needs to be done is unpleasant: that's why they have to *pay* people to do it. Saying we should all find jobs that make us happy is like saying we should all live in mansions in Beverly Hills. It's a nice notion, but there's just not enough mansions for everyone. Some of us will end up living in Watts.

http://www.whywork.org/

See especially:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By "play" I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act."

See also:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

On the other hand:
"Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled"
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118358476840657463.html
And, extending that theme:
"Blame the Bailouts on Mister Rogers?"
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/12/12/blame-the-crisis-on-mister-rogers/

Maybe there are deeper issues here on all sides? From:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/72330a22bcae8928?

Consider who could pay for food or water (or copyrighted content or patented
processes) in thirty years, if robotics continues to develop just at the
current rate over the last thirty years.

Check out clerks?
"Your supermarket cashier may not know a kiwano from a tamarillo, but
Veggie Vision does."
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/machin...

Cab drivers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Heart Surgeons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Surgical

Airline pilots?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

Nurses?
"Robot nurse escorts and schmoozes the elderly"

http://www.whywork.org/

See especially:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By "play" I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act."

See also:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

On the other hand:
"Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled"
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118358476840657463.html
And, extending that theme:
"Blame the Bailouts on Mister Rogers?"
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/12/12/blame-the-crisis-on-mister-rogers/

Maybe there are deeper issues here on all sides? From:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/72330a22bcae8928?

Consider who could pay for food or water (or copyrighted content or patented
processes) in thirty years, if robotics continues to develop just at the
current rate over the last thirty years.

Check out clerks?
"Your supermarket cashier may not know a kiwano from a tamarillo, but
Veggie Vision does."
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/machin...

Cab drivers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Heart Surgeons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Surgical

Airline pilots?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

Nurses?
"Robot nurse escorts and schmoozes the elderly"

http://breakingranks.net/
"The purpose of this web site is to discuss the social cost of rankism and to develop a grassroots capacity to defend and protect dignity in everyday life. We hope you will join us in planning and building a world without rankism!"

http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

http://www.reprap.org/
"[RepRap] has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment..."

http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people's rights as consumers. Up to this time economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings. As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated government measures--unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the U.S."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

I used to hang out at the robot labs at CMU in the 1980s. What frightened me most about the whole thing of military robotics (as well as mind children) was a combination of arrogance and incompetence (not that I haven't been guilty of both at times myself), which in this area is likely as not to lead to robotic cockroaches that take over the earth (exterminating humankind incidentally) and which then all die off. :-)

If robots that kill autonomously is the answer, you're asking the wrong question.

Check out "Voluntary Simplicity":
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Voluntary+Simplicity
Example:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living
"Simple living (or voluntary simplicity) is a lifestyle in which individuals consciously choose to minimize the 'more-is-better' pursuit of wealth and consumption. Adherents choose simple living for a variety of reasons, including spirituality, health, increase in 'quality time' for family and friends, stress reduction, conservation, social justice or anti-consumerism, while others choose to live more simply for reasons of personal taste or personal economy. Simple living as a concept is distinguished from those living in forced poverty, as it is a voluntary lifestyle choice. Although asceticism may resemble voluntary simplicity, proponents of simple living are not all ascetics. The term "downshifting" is often used to describe the act of moving from a lifestyle of greater consumption towards a lifestyle based on voluntary simplicity."

Frugality gives you a lot of options. And it isn't about paying the least you can for everything. It is about spending money on what you really need or want in proportion to your true needs and wants (as you consciously define them). For example, if free time to play and record music is important, then don't waste your time making money to rent a bigger apartment than you really need, or buy more gear than you really need, etc.. Frugal living is ultimately about priorities. Ultimately this may culminate in rethinking "work" itself:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Twenty years ago [in 1965], Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."

"Free" may be the only thing that "works" in the the long term, check out:

    "Why work"
    http://www.whywork.org/

    "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

    "A critique of a neo-futurist's vision of the decline of work" by Bob Black
    http://www.t0.or.at/bobblack/futuwork.htm

    "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine."
    http://www.reprap.org/

    "The Triple Revolution" letter to the president sent in 1964
    http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

"Free" used to work in the past in America:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Let's hope "free" works again in the future, or we may get this:
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
"In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable."

A sci-fi novel about a clash of old and new ways of thinking:
    _Voyage from Yesteryear" by James P. Hogan
      http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=29

"Free" may be the only thing that "works" in the the long term, check out:

    "Why work"
    http://www.whywork.org/

    "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

    "A critique of a neo-futurist's vision of the decline of work" by Bob Black
    http://www.t0.or.at/bobblack/futuwork.htm

    "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine."
    http://www.reprap.org/

    "The Triple Revolution" letter to the president sent in 1964
    http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

"Free" used to work in the past in America:
    http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Let's hope "free" works again in the future, or we may get this:
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
"In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable."

A sci-fi novel about a clash of old and new ways of thinking:
    _Voyage from Yesteryear" by James P. Hogan
      http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=29

In theory, government has other ways of raising funds than taxing and confiscation of physical property. Import and export duties, for example. Or renting the public airwaves. Or charging an annual fee for keeping copyrighted world out of the public domain (the rights holder can self-assess what the fee would be, and anyone who can pay, say, 100x that to the rights holder could buy it out into the public domain). Or charging admission to national parks. Or renting public land. Probably lots more ways as well.

Governments can do lots of things well. Though ultimately we need to move beyond an economy based on a scarcity-oriented world view to one with an abundance-oriented world view.
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes, so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

"If we ever get to the point where less than 20% or so of the population is required to work in order to support the rest of the population then people really wouldn't have to work anymore because let's be honest, not everyone works just because they want money, there are lots of people who would continue working because they were passionate about their jobs. What we need to do is get rid of the boring mundane jobs that no one wants."

Insightful, but we reached that point decades ago.

See:
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."

And:
"The Triple Revolution: Cybernation, Weaponry, Human Rights" sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson in March 1964
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

Of course, we actually had such a life as hunter/gatherers (ignoring some of the downsides there). Essentially, when there was a small human population relative to the size fo the planet., food was abundant relative to the number of people, so it was very easy to acquire.
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

And here is the great tragedy of the Americas:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Thankfully via the GPL and some inspiration (RepRap), those abundant days may come again:
http://reprap.org/
"RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer

Nothing was meant to suggest your particular non-profit was in any way unethical; just that the term "non-profit" doesn't mean much anymore. The only really formal definition of "non-profit" or "not for profit" is a corporation whose profits are not given to owners (like the board) -- the profits are just spent in other ways -- given to employees as salaries or to users in terms of lower fees or invested in new ventures or given to other non-profits (or sometimes unrelated individuals).

Top lawyers are now billing $1000 or more an hour:
http://www.abajournal.com/news/top_lawyers_bill_10 00_an_hour/
The formal results of their work (funded mostly by private clients) are almost all publicly available as the records of court proceedings. The law itself is almost entirely in the public domain. So, lawyers get paid vast amounts of money for helping clients craft client-specific solutions using their knowledge of the public domain. Why aren't more programmers doing this in terms of code?
And then most lawyers will turn around to those same clients and say everything related to code needs to be kept secret or proprietary. There is a ironical double-standard here isn't there?

Why then should programmers or their products be kept in (legal) chains, regardless of who pays for them?
But it is exceptionally more ironic when the money is public dollars -- it is a bad bargain for the public.

Ultimately it has to do with "power". And that balance is changing. It's one thing to have to deal with the system as it is to survive in it; it's another thing to like it and promote it as you seemeed to me to be doing here. Contrasting viewpoints:
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Buddhist Economics" by E. F. Schumacher
http://www.schumachersociety.org/buddhist_economic s/english.html

Here is one lawyer who has gone rogue and is giving out the legal profession's deepest secrets: :-)
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"Property and money are as mythological as Zeus. The first thing they teach you in law school - and I mean the first thing - is that "property" is a collection of legal rights. They are mental abstractions. They were created in more or less their present form in the middle ages by common law judges. They include things like "alienability" or the right to sell your rights, "inheritability" or the right to pass your rights to your heirs. They include the right to exclude other people from a defined section of planet earth. They include the right to subdivide or alienate less than all of your rights. For example, a person who holds "title" to a house, can "lease" it - that is he can convey the right to "possess" the land for a defined period of time, while he retains his rights that last "forever". He only has that right, because the law gives it to him. ... So, how are these "property rights" created? That's easy. They are created the same way all mythological realities are created - with a little "mumbo jumbo". ... It's all incantation and ritual that creates, transfers, modifies and extinguishes "rights". These rights are created by words uttered by the priests of the law. In fact there is an entire structure and system of pieces of paper with "magic words" written on them that create, transfer, modify and extinguish these rights. There is a hierarchy of these rights. Contracts rights are "private" rights created by individuals. Property rights are rights to the exclusive control

John Taylor Gatto explains in his book (online) why putting more money into the system will not change things:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m

One of the most important things Gatto does is to distinguish between
"Education" and "Schooling".

The hardest thing to understand about schooling, Gatto suggests, is that
schools are not *failing* at their original purpose but are actually
*succeeding* at creating dumbed down and easily "class"-ified people.
So, for example, when people note that more money spent on schools does not
produce smarter kids, the issue isn't that schools are not working, but
instead it is that schools are actually working all the better for the more
money. It just isn't the point of schools to produce "educated" people (even
if that is what school administrators or school teachers might claim is the
point of schooling, and perhaps even genuinely believe themselves).
The big issue is just that the original purpose of schools, intended to
produce an industrial utopia by turning children into the adult robots 19th
century industry needed, is no longer very relevant to the information age
or a world where universal abundance is possible (say, via *real* robots
automating away those assembly line jobs) or even moving beyond the notion
of "work" altogether.
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html

Gatto maintains that public (and most private) school as we know it
is a state-oriented social institution originating in Prussia
designed specifically to produce mainly uncritical
consumers, compliant workers, and obedient soldiers, and that it is out of
step with the needs of an information age society which thrives on diversity
and creativity (as well as out-of-step with the needs of the individual).

See, for example:
"A Conspiracy Against Ourselves"
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc5.ht m
"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this school thing as a
conspiracy, even though the project is indeed riddled with petty
conspirators. It was and is a fully rational transaction in which all of us
play a part. We trade the liberty of our kids and our free will for a secure
social order and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain in which most of
us agree to become as children ourselves, under the same tutelage which
holds the young, in exchange for food, entertainment, and safety. The
difficulty is that the contract fixes the goal of human life so low that
students go mad trying to escape it."

This idea that schools need a complete overhaul is now becoming somewhat
mainstream, see for example the title of this article:
"To fix US schools, panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.htm l
but unfortunately the solutions proposed (like longer universal
kindergarten) are still coming from those with industrial power (the
"captains" of industry again, but now the IT industry :-) and wanting cheap
laborers (but now, cheap and compliant intellectual laborers).

Another take on this issue from a different perspective:
"Sustainable Education" By Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?newsl etterid=21&articleid=195
"Nevertheless, there is an education revolution going on, and it is long
overdue. It is moving in the

Sahlins argues that hunter/gathers only spend a few hours per day on finding food and the rest in socializing. Just think about lions -- how much time to they spend hunting as opposed to lying around or taking care of cubs? Or horses or cows -- do they seem to be unhappily "working" when they are grazing?
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html

You also left out people who are hungry because of the intervention of capitalist societies now (Iraq) or in the past (much of Africa, also much of North America).

I used to think this. As I said in another comment, the reason there is so much starvation in, say, Africa has to do more with the legacy of European colonization destroying a hunter/gatherer and substance agriculture lifestyles (including by head taxers -- pay the tax or they'll kill or enslave you basically, and the only way to get money to pay the tax is to work all year on some European plantation).

Also, food aid via imported food destroys indigenous agricultural systems economically -- an Ethiopian example:
    "Does International Food Aid Harm the Poor?"
    http://www.nber.org/digest/mar05/w11048.html
"To carry out their study, Levinsohn and McMillan merge data from two nationally representative surveys and create a data set of 8,212 urban and 8,308 rural Ethiopian households. ... Levinsohn and McMillan estimate that, in the absence of food aid, the price of wheat in Ethiopia would be $295 per metric ton, compared to an actual price of $193 per metric ton in 1999. On average, the authors conclude, "the loss in consumer surplus works out to roughly 37 US dollars per household per year for households that consume wheat and the gain in producer surplus works out to roughly 157 US dollars per household per year for households that sell wheat." In a nation such as Ethiopia, where the poverty line is about $132 per year, the impact is therefore substantial."

You're right through that changes in population technology have big effects -- including driving people to change their lifestyles to continue to produce enough food for everyone. I hope that as we continue to invent cheaper solar panels and cheaper and more versatile 3D printers that we'll be able to eliminate a lot of "work"
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
and have a lifestyle which uses technology but feels a lot more like the best of hunter/gatherer society. See the ending of this story called "Manna":
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Also, we could support trillions of people in space habitats built out of asteroidal ore and powered by sunlight.
    http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm

The Arctic is one of the most difficult climates to survive in -- life is much easier in the tropics or near the sea because those areas produce a lot more food and require less shelter from cold (though one must also consider relative population presure on resources). And even then, ignoring the last half of the movie -- Nanook shows people who had a meaningful life and seemed masters of their environment, harsh as it was.

And, yes, easily satisfied with fairly little time. How much time do people in the Western world spend just preparing meals, shopping in stores, and even just going to the fridge for beers? Probably about the same amount of time as people 10000 years ago spent on finding food -- the rest was spent socializing or taking care of young kids. And the activities related to hunting and gathering were not at all "work" as in the present sense -- they were more like fun -- know anyone who loves to garden or likes to hunt? We will have such a life again someday, but via high-tech, see: http://www.whywork.org/

You make an insightful point that the overall problems is not just schools -- it is a whole system of interlinked institutions and related assumptions of which school is just a part. One of the reason many parents can't do a great job raising kids is simply that they work really long hours in the USA -- more than just about any other industrialized country and have very little vacation time. That is one of the reasons for this recent UN report suggesting "US and UK worst places in developed world to be a child":
      http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/unic-f16 .shtml

The best way forward may well be to rethink the whole notion of work, perhaps by transcending it altogether:
    "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes, so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

You're probably right as far as you go.

What's the next step? It really is a choice ultimatly between police state enforced copyrights or a gift economy where you can compose as much as you want and that (among other things perhaps) is the gift you give to the world, while other things you need to feed and clothe and house yourself and your family are otherwise free to you (being gifts from others). It helps if people diminish their desires somewhat too -- and pursue a life of voluntary simplicity. Neolithic hunter/gatherers had lots of time for music, apparently:
    "The Original Affluent Society" -by Marshall Sahlins
    http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times."

Using modern technology, see Bob Black's essay here on "The Abolition of Work":
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes. ... I haven't as yet even mentioned the possibility of cutting way down on the little work that remains by automating and cybernizing it. All the scientists and engineers and technicians freed from bothering with war research and planned obsolescence should have a good time devising means to eliminate fatigue and tedium and danger from activities like mining. Undoubtedly they'll find other projects to amuse themselves with. Perhaps they'll set up world-wide all-inclusive multi-media communications systems or found space colonies. ... What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their air-conditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them."

That's the bigger picture IMHO.

It is part of propaganda (and perhaps many religions, of which schooling is a secular one), to hide the alternatives, label them evil, or make them into strawman shadows.

So, some class in a compulsory school program taught you something about C++. A technical skill. Is that all "education" (as distinct from "schooling")is supposed to be about? Skills?

Consider:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life. ... Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time
left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a
combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or
single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family
time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-
soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture
which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material
experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we
follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These
lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like
starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the
only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it.
I should know. "

Granted it lead you to appreciate some things like some literature. And you are saying it was worth twelve to thirteen years of your early life to do this? Compared to what alternatives? Home schooling? Unschooling?
http://www.unschooling.com/
Free schooling?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_school
Learning on your own in the library?
http://www.unconventionalideas.com/educatn.html
"Could college attendance be a form of cowardice?"
http://www.unconventionalideas.com/wizard.html

At what cost? Would you not perhaps rather have learned to love literature on your own, but instead have the $200K or so (principal of $10K per year plus compound interest over a dozen years) invested in your compulsory schooling upon reaching age 18 so you could live off the interest or buy a house with it to live rent free?

Consider the alternatives to labeling and dividing people and which have been hidden from your view. And then think about how people you trusted did this to you. They took money on your behalf. And left you with a lifetime of industrialized work ahead of you. Consider:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to hig

Consider what Gatto writes here:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"The first lesson I teach is confusion."
"The second lesson I teach is your class position."
"The third lesson I teach kids is indifference."
"The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency."
"The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency."
"The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem."
"The seventh lesson I teach is that you can't hide."
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life."

It may be a long journey before you are willing to admit you have been bamboozled by the very people who proclaimed to be your salvation. It was for me. :-)

As I said in the title, the Gifted label is used to control. If you are a standard product of school, even of a "gifted program", you have been controlled -- neutralized -- domesticated. You have been shaped to fit into a 19th century Brave New World industrial model of how society should be. OK, so you were tracked as an Alpha, so what? You were still controlled -- and limited -- against your wishes. Those very wishes were shaped to fit the perceived needs of that industrial order.

It does not matter if many or most teachers are caring individuals -- they remain the agents and prison wardens of this system; their range of behavior is limited by the system they are embedded in. That is one reason so many of the most caring ones burn out early.

I have no doubt that people vary in interests, experiences, or potential. Consider Howard Gardener's work Frames of Mind. The theory of multiple intelligences: __
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm
"In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings - initially a blank slate - could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories or that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)"

There may well be people who excel at everything. You may be one of them. But so what? How does that justify "compulsory schooling" of anyone? Except to control them. To neutralize any potential benefit of that intelligence on social structure. Even if kids need to be in day prisons because their parents are forced to work to survive (even in this age of abundance):
http://www.whywork.org/
why not "Free schools"?
http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/overview.shtml

On conspiracy, if you read the rest of that online book, you will see that Gatto does not believe in "conspiracy" in a large sense. As he says here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/

The deeper issue:
    http://www.whywork.org/
    "We actively promote alternatives to the wage slavery mindset and what we call "The Cult of the Job" which automatically equates having a job with making a living."

And from an essay there by Bob Black:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes, so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

And further:

"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing. ... And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents and teachers who work? "

The deeper issue:
    http://www.whywork.org/
    "We actively promote alternatives to the wage slavery mindset and what we call "The Cult of the Job" which automatically equates having a job with making a living."

And from an essay there by Bob Black:
    http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes, so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

And further:

"Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing. ... And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. Without necessarily endorsing it for them either, it is noteworthy that children at home and in school receive much the same treatment, justified in their case by their supposed immaturity. What does this say about their parents and teachers who work? "

Gatto suggests there is a lot more uniformity of soul-breaking methods (see his six or seven lesson schoolteacher essay, linked by a previous poster) http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt and he suggest that in the face of such conformity of methods any diversity of content is mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately, those who have most bought into the system are busy shaping it for the next generation. What matters to many in control is to see their kid be broken the same way they were broken, so the kid will do well enough in school to move into a conformist slot in society. However, they do not see this as "breaking" a kid -- they see this as "making" them. There is a tension here between forcing a child to become part of a hierarchical and corrupt and bullying rank-oriented "society" versus helping them find their niche in a free expressive artistic "culture". One path seeks to make children all the same -- a standardized commodity; the other to amplify their differences to help them be the best they can be. Consider novel after novel where the aristocratic executive is trying to break their child to take on the family business which the child abhors. Granted, the schooling system tracks a few percent to be elite managers, but even they are often just as trapped in the system and the mythology that drives it as everyone else (the myth of scarcity and need for conformity to keep the industrial machinery running smoothly). This site: http://www.whywork.org/ is about the future -- and it is not the one compulsory schooling prepares people for.

I appreciate the reply.

We can quibble over specifics, especially the issue of who pays the costs versus who gets the benefits, e.g.:
      Banking: The gold standard (gold dinar and islamic banking vs. fiat dollars and usury):
          http://www.moneyfiles.org/goldwar.html
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_gold_dinar
          http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/wi zzoz.html
    Health: "Has Canada Got The Cure?"
        http://www.alternet.org/story/40951/
    Empire: "War is a Racket"
          http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracke t.htm
but thanks for the comment about being a good start -- we sure need to start somewhere. :-)

Another excerpt from the essay:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingASt arTrekSociety.html
"A common denominator in just about each of these areas is the domination
by out-of-date ideologies based on scarcity perspectives and/or the
capture of the government regulatory and funding bodies by narrow
interests who are afraid of losing out by progressive post-scarcity
change (which they fear will leave them impoverished). There is also the
issue of some people desiring to continue to have lots of raw power over
other people's lives (like that of a master over slaves); frankly I
can't address that character flaw other than to point at religious and
humanistic traditions of enlarging one's sense of self to include
community and world responsibilities (including finding joy in helping
the growth of others to be independent decision makers), so I restrict
what follows to monetary aspects of the problem. Ultimately though, raw
power lust has to be dealt with -- and dealing with that I freely admit
will be tougher than the economic aspects of making the case for a
post-scarcity worldview."

That is really where the core of the problem is. We can always argue about specifics in any one area -- but that is the big picture as we transition to a world where kids realize the schools they are forced to be in have little relation to an emerging post-scarcity reality made possible by automation and the internet:
    http://www.whywork.org/

Except the real solution is to get rid of compulsory schooling entirely and get people doing "unschooling",
    http://www.unschooling.com/
and upgrade libraries and turn school buildings into learning centers (or democratically run "free schools"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_school
for those children whose parents cannot afford to supervise their children during the day directly).

See for example John Holt's writings:
    http://www.holtgws.com/index.html
or John Taylor Gatto's:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
or any of many other radical school reformers.

All your suggestions sound good on paper but miss the point that people have tried for decades to reform schools incrementally and they are still broken -- or rather, they actually are still performing the mission they were designed for, which is dumbing kids down into compliant workers, obedient soldiers, and gullible consumers so they will fit well into a well ordered industrial economy, a mission now obsolete in a post-industrial and post-scarcity information age.

The future is not to still idealize Prussia and even earlier empire building aspirations back to Plato
    http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20 031028151034651
which developed these techniques of "education" but instead to look into the future, where people start asking questions like "why work?"
    http://www.whywork.org/
and how to structure an economy when "Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator: Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain":
    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

(Sorry to read about your loss, and it sounds like you were doing a lot of great things together, just needed more time to go even further.)

Sounds like he's just discovered what Langdon Winner has been saying since the 1970s, and others since before then. Slashdot frequently sees posts like "a razor blade can be used for good or evil" implying technology is value neutral -- but it isn't. Technology embodies our values, especially when looked at as a system including favorite economic stories at the time -- including a decision to invest in, say, designing nuclear weapons design or marketing larger SUVs instead of say, curing river blindness or designing electric cars -- decisions driven by values.

Contrast, say, Disney's investments in controlling media with DRM versus the RepRap project to make a free 3D printer. Winner goes further in his book _Autonomous Technology_ and suggests large bureaucracies "reverse adapt", changing their environment to perpetuate themselves, including the legal environment. So, if you can't make or share your own media or 3D models, then you are dependent on Disney or whoever. Consider the kind of technology to sustain the values described here: CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery and how it might differ from the politics and policies and technologies and infrastructure of today. Or from this essay The Abolition of Work: "Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working. ... Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control."

Sounds like he's just discovered what Langdon Winner has been saying since the 1970s, and others since before then. Slashdot frequently sees posts like "a razor blade can be used for good or evil" implying technology is value neutral -- but it isn't. Technology embodies our values, especially when looked at as a system including favorite economic stories at the time -- including a decision to invest in, say, designing nuclear weapons design or marketing larger SUVs instead of say, curing river blindness or designing electric cars -- decisions driven by values.

Contrast, say, Disney's investments in controlling media with DRM versus the RepRap project to make a free 3D printer. Winner goes further in his book _Autonomous Technology_ and suggests large bureaucracies "reverse adapt", changing their environment to perpetuate themselves, including the legal environment. So, if you can't make or share your own media or 3D models, then you are dependent on Disney or whoever. Consider the kind of technology to sustain the values described here: CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery and how it might differ from the politics and policies and technologies and infrastructure of today. Or from this essay The Abolition of Work: "Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working. ... Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control."

For more on your point, see:
    "The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
    http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
    "Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times."
and:
    "CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery"
    http://www.whywork.org/
    "If you start asking yourself "why work?" you may see a connection between wage slavery, misunderstandings of leisure, lifestyles based on consumption, corporate welfare, education that often amounts to little more than conditioning, and the global social, environmental, and economic crises we are now facing. We hope that the materials we feature here will encourage critical thinking about such things. This site is primarily about ideas and encouragement, so our focus is more philosophical than practical. However, ideas and action go hand-in-hand, so we're currently expanding the "practicality" sections."
and:
    "THE ABOLITION OF WORK" by Bob Black
    http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
    "Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."
or:
      _The End of Work_
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874778247/002-64 49219-7760050?v=glance&n=283155
  "Global unemployment is now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. Rifkin (Biosphere Politics, LJ 5/15/91) argues that the Information Age is the third great Industrial Revolution. A consequence of these technological advances is the rapid decline in employment and purchasing power that could lead to a worldwide economic collapse. Rifkin foresees two possible outcomes: a near workerless world in which people are free, for the first time in history, to pursue a utopian life of leisure; or a world in which unemployment leads to an even further polarization of the economic classes and a decline in living conditions for millions of people."

James P. Hogan has several sci-fi novels envisioning an alternative positive future (e.g. _Voyage from Yesteryear_)

In an individualist way, Paul Graham is ignoring the bigger picture, and just advising individuals on how to have a better life in a failing society. There is nothing wrong with that kind of good advice by itself, and it is good advice, but it lacks social context, lacks long term planning, and lacks a way to make things permanently better for people without a lot of social advantages needed to follow that advice (let alone have time to read it).

From:
http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."

Bob Black then goes on to say most work is unneeded, most of the rest can be made into fun, and the small remaining amount no one wants to do can be automated.

We have the system of "work" we do as a holdover from an agricultural feudal mindset coupled with a scarcity driven ideology (where dollars are really "ration units"). Compare this with, for example the better parts of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, see: "The Original Affluent Society -- by Marshall Sahlins"
http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
for a description of life in a world where there is abundance for all with only a limited need for other-directed "work", where the productivity of the surrounding (living) system far exceeds that of collective human needs.

I don't see we have much of a good alternative to a post-work "utopia" for all;
"Utopia or Oblivian -- by Buckminster Fuller"
http://www.bfi.org/node/17
we either build the world Bob Black envisions (or something like it, whether Bucky Fuller's ideas, or see James P. Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_ novel for a related perspective,
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/voyage/baen99/tit lepage.shtml )
with abundance for all people, or, alternatively, by following the status quo off the cliffs of either pollution or warfare, humanity (though probably neither life nor intelligence nor humans) will perish in a world driven to destruction by putting abstractions like profits or nationalism ahead of basic human needs (including the basic human need not to be bored or demeaned eight hours a day). Does it all have to change in one day? No. You can build a better world bit by bit -- and that's one thi

Humans have lived most of their lives living off of the land and their labor. You may have heard of a little thing called farming.

"Saving the family farm" is another one of the popular themes from the left nowadays. What condescending, leftist, urbanites (who have no idea what an actual farm is like) fail to realize is that almost everyone who has grown up on a farm (which is a life filled with endless toil) have done everything to get away from it and toward a life of convenience and leisure (the life that most urbanite leftists ignorantly enjoy). It is that not humans that have lived most of their lives as farmers (which you seem to allege), but rather humanity which has spent most of its existence living in lives of toil and misery. The technology that I can "progress" and you call "unsustainable" has given us humans better lives with more leisure time. My guess is that you wouldn't last 5 minutes doing farm work. The left has rarely championed work anyways! Go look at http://www.whywork.org/ to see what some other leftists think about the issue of work. Do you think those leftists want to spend one millisecond of time doing work on a farm?

I know this goes against your globalist/economic paradise line of thinking . . . but this has nothing to do with politics. You are the one who is injecting politics in here.

This notion of a "globalist/economic paradise line of thinking" is the way you slander me, but does not represent what I think at all. Nor am I the one "injecting politics"; rather, I am responding to what was from the onset a political issue. The "sustainable" movement is intrinsically linked with the environmental movement which has *always* been a political issue. To claim that your argument is beyond politics is deceitful of you. It is a failed attempt to paint your subjective point of view as "fact" rather than a value-based viewpoint.

The Chinese are simply trying to make an investment in something that will hopefully reap a gain in effecincy by promoting self-sufficency of these people.

And yet my valid criticism was not of the Chinese, but rather of the sanctimonious leftists who claim to be "for the poor" while simultaneously championing products that are "good for everyone" yet too expensive for the poor. You have failed to respond to this hypocrisy. Instead, you have chosen to attack me personally which speaks volumes about your character (not ot mention your argument). Granted, there are other aspects of the "sustainable" movmement which do NOT fall under this hypocrital umbrella, and I do not necessarily object to those.

The only class warfare rhetoric, ironically, is yours.

You make this claim shortly after you uttered the "gobalist" rhetoric and attempted to smear me with it. You look like you're not putting a lot of thought into your argument. Furthermore, what, specifically, did I state that you would consider class warfare rhetoric? I notice you cite no examples.

On the particular part you quoted, check out the writings by John Taylor Gatto (a New York State Teacher of the Year) on all the things schools and prisons share in common, and how much damage conventional age segregated schooling with a fixed curriculum and standardized testing does to developing minds. You can find a book he wrote online here: The Underground History of American Education.

By the way, I agree with you some on the sweeping generalization on feminism (which in some variants is more liberational) but I think his point still stands -- that reconstructing the nature of work is to my (perhaps incomplete) understanding not typically an aspect of mainstream feminism -- especially when that was written (1985?) -- just deciding who does the work or who supervises it or who benefits from it monetarily or otherwise. But as a piece of rhetoric, I still think that paragraph is compelling in showing how people refuse to think systematically about what work needs to be done in society and how best to do it from various points of view.

E.F. Schumacher made similar points in his essay on Buddhist Economics if you want to read an author who is more well known.

On the particular part you quoted, check out the writings by John Taylor Gatto (a New York State Teacher of the Year) on all the things schools and prisons share in common, and how much damage conventional age segregated schooling with a fixed curriculum and standardized testing does to developing minds. You can find a book he wrote online here: The Underground History of American Education.

By the way, I agree with you some on the sweeping generalization on feminism (which in some variants is more liberational) but I think his point still stands -- that reconstructing the nature of work is to my (perhaps incomplete) understanding not typically an aspect of mainstream feminism -- especially when that was written (1985?) -- just deciding who does the work or who supervises it or who benefits from it monetarily or otherwise. But as a piece of rhetoric, I still think that paragraph is compelling in showing how people refuse to think systematically about what work needs to be done in society and how best to do it from various points of view.

E.F. Schumacher made similar points in his essay on Buddhist Economics if you want to read an author who is more well known.

The Idler magazine
The Idler's Companion
How To be Idle
Why work? Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
What is a Wage Slave?
The Right To Be Lazy
In praise of Idleness
Historical Context of the Work Ethic
Anxiety Culture
Importance of Living

The Idler magazine
The Idler's Companion
How To be Idle
Why work? Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
What is a Wage Slave?
The Right To Be Lazy
In praise of Idleness
Historical Context of the Work Ethic
Anxiety Culture
Importance of Living

The Idler magazine
The Idler's Companion
How To be Idle
Why work? Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
What is a Wage Slave?
The Right To Be Lazy
In praise of Idleness
Historical Context of the Work Ethic
Anxiety Culture
Importance of Living

People working 8-12 hours a day have very little time to be creative. But how many people get to make a living from their creative endeavors? Not many. It would be more fair and beneficial if everyone worked less and the fruits of our creative endeavors were available to all. That's a better trade-off than what we have now where only a select few are able to be creative, and those select few are not even necessarily the most creative. Betrand Russell talks about this very idea in his essay "In Praise of Idleness" http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/leisure/russell. html

And being creative is its own reward. It's very beneficial to your life. Everyone should have the opportunity, but sadly they don't, because creating something new takes a lot of effort and time, time that and is not guaranteed to be lucrative. You would do better in terms of security to work at McDonald's than to try to get a record deal.

Also, if people are given money for being creative, you have the situation that the current music industry has, where "what sells" and "what's creative" are not the same, so creative activity isn't rewarded. This significantly distorts things so most of the successful musicians end up being people like Britney Spears.

Then, read James Lowen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Texbook Got Wrong_ to see how your mind has unknowingly been filled with nationalist and consumer crap (despite your technical proclivities). Also check out Howard Zinn. Learn to live simply and frugally so you have more options:

If you have started doing all that, by now you are primed to begin to question what education really means.

And further, to even question why people need to work and what it should mean to do useful things.

You'll have time to read great minds like Bertrand Russel and Freeman Dyson.

Then you can accept you are still stuck in a stupid system.

But you'll be positioned to make the best of it and yet still see how the world can be a made better place to for the bulk of humanity and other creatures.

Always remember in your darker hours to at least ask yourself the question, "Can life be made worth living?" And in your brighter hours, remember to ask yourself if you are playing a finite (to win) game or an infinite (to play) game?

And, finally, for continual inspiration, read _Voyage From Yesteryear_ by James P. Hogan.

Now go out and take some educated risks to try to make life worth living -- despite your future happiness possibilities already almost being ruined by being convinced you that you are "bright" just because you know some technical things (same thing almost happened to me).

"It pisses me off every time I think about anybody thinking that work will liberate." --bell hooks
See also Bob Black's "The Abolition of Work"
You can find more here:The Zero Work Movement

...has some good thinking on the reality of jobs in America.

CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery