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Computers, Unemployment and Wealth Creation
Andy Oram writes "Anyone who writes programs or plans system deployment should start
thinking, "What can I do to bring average people back into the process
of wealth creation?"
A few suggestions."
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I emailed the on-duty editor but it looks like they didn't catch it. There's an extra / in the link. Try this one:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3812
Cheers,
Justin
You need a printer with very good resolution for that.
This seems like a ridiculous suggestion. This is essentially backwards capitalism, which quite simply, doesn't work. I could create plenty of jobs... I could throw out my business' computers and instead hire a few people to track inventory by hand and place orders by manually counting inventory. Sure, I'd create more jobs, but those jobs would be very short lived, ebcause I'd quickly go out of business. Efficiency, in the long run, *does* produce wealth. That's how capitalism works. We may not see "wealth" growing in the US, but in the economy (which is now a world economy), wealth is most definitely being created. Standards of living are rising exponentially around the globe, even as they slip in the US. Nothing's broken. Nothing to see here. Go back to work.
Make as much money as you can*, and then use it to do some of:
(a) Buy stuff. Other folks are employed making it or serving it.
(b) Invest. This results in capital for businesses to hire more people employed making or serving stuff.
This method works. Simple, really.
* Within ethical and/or legal standards, of course.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
...as it is in its distribution.
Techies ought to focus on how to take money from the wealthy and decrease the world's dependency on corporations, or even private companies (that later become corporations), by building cooperatives and collectives.
Grow a pair of big ass titties like Danni Ashe. Then:
1. Take off clothes
2. Buy webcam
3. Profit!
I believe this article is extremely relevant today. People need to understand that you can't just expect a job to come falling into your lap, you have to get up and find it. If there is no job, create the job you want yourself. Don't just wait and say how bad the economy is, do something about it.
education. It used to be that a four year diploma got you a good steady job for the rest of your life. Look what it gives you now: a chance to hop between jobs every two years, and a chance to compete with people who will work without airconditioning and shit in an outhouse. You gotta stay one step ahead of the competition, so I'd say education is one of them.
As the wealth of nations increases, those who have lost jobs or had to accept menial ones over the past three years are left with only a wealth of culprits to blame: financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation, etc.
For a start, a 3-year sample isn't big enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. We're just in the down phase of the economic cycle, that's all. Smart people salted away some of the high salaries and bonuses that were easy to come by in the recent boom years, when shortness of staff drove up the price of labour. Now, some people look for blame - but it's hard to see how some of these can be blamed. Wars and conflict drive up employment in the engineering and aerospace sectors. Tax cuts can't increase unemployment except amongst government workers, and there have been no reports of government layoffs - if anything, the government is busily hiring.
Let me make this clear: wealth is not created by governments. It's created by risk-taking entrepreneurs. Right now, the markets need to recover from excessive risk-taking in the late 90s. This is perfectly natural. When sufficient capital has become amassed, the cycle will begin again and there will be another boom.
But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation
I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49. 5 years ago, these products cost hundreds of pounds. That's what capitalism delivers: more and better for everyone. The "poor" in a capitalist society are far better off than the "poor" in any other system - and capitalism generates the surpluses that fund the entire welfare system.
Each labor-saving device means the idling of thousands of people, wasting their years of experience, rigorous training, and practical insights.
Yawn, they said exactly the same things when the car started to replace the horse drawn carriage, when mechanical looms replaced hand-operated looms, when automation was introduced to farming, in fact whenever any technology has revolutionized an industry. Getting laid off is always a little disconcerting (yes, it has happened to me so I know what I'm talking about) but unemployment is what you make of it.
And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?),
Ah, now we see the author's real agenda - I should have realized when I saw the words "tax cuts". I will merely point out that the dotcom bubble economy was created under a Democrat president and began declining in mid 2000 - there is nothing Bush or Greenspan could have done to prevent it bursting.
I tried creating wealth with my scanner and ink-jet printer once, but the government didn't like that very much.
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
How about reducing the population? The Economist magazine had an apropo cover story a few months ago entitles, "Can the World Afford 500 Million Americans?" The article went on to explain that by 2060, the U.S. population would exceed 500 million and given current consumption trends, what that would mean for the rest of the world. Not to bash Americans, but what is the optimal population (or carrying capacity) for the Earth? A rhetorical question, sure, but one that needs more serious study than the oft neglected WHO reports.
It is just me, or is that article rubbish?
It is not my goal to place restrictions on investment or innovation; it is only to present a new way of thinking that some people may find stimulating.
Here's looking forward to some creative new thinking...
Write free software for individual industries
What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?
Slashdot - if you're going to post links to economics related subjects, can you please make sure it is written by someone with a clue about economics?
Yet another cry out that changes in technology are going to "historically" destroy jobs.
I'm too bored with this line of thinking to even trot out the buggy whip analogy. Please save me the effort and just read this:
Creative Destruction, again
This has happened a thousand times before, but somehow, this time is different. Whatever.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Because average people are the mass of this nation.. a wealth creating population is a wealth creating nation. Money needs to circulate.. money is the lifeblood of a nation.
A wealth hoarding population creates a lack of wealth a creation of classes and ultimately a failure of the system.
Seriously, I'm not sure imnproving efficiency will help the unemployment rate, at least not in the short term. Generally, improved efficiency means fewer jobs. Of course, the idea is that the company makes more money, and there is more wealth to spread around.
Corporations, though, don't spend in the short term on warm bodies. They are cautious about economy fluctuations. They do love to take advantage of cost cutting benefits though. It just seems to the pencil pushers that cutting costs starts with eliminating workforce.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
recessions tend to get worse and worse.
This is all fine and good because that is the nature of capitalism, but you also then have to believe that capitalism works. I'm not sure if it does, and I see that when I look at the world economy and then the injustices of wealth distribution in America. Granted, it's not pure apocalypse, but it's not great. I like to see a marketplace of ideas where, by virtue of a capitalistic metaphor, the economic system can be improved. It's not just a simple "I make my money for me" model, and I'm sure that a lot more goes into that calculation... Including a social element. Also the beauty of markets is that there HAS to be people who follow one model and don't follow another, there must be competition, so that there should be people who say "my money for me" and people who say "my money for everyone."
The question is what can I do to increase MY wealth... That's how all the rich, successfull people in life think... and I wouldn't know, as I'm a poor sap sitting at work, trying to come up with a whitty comment so I can be a karma whore, only to realize that my boss is going to fire me for not working enough, and posting too much on slashdot... dammit.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
All the stupid people managed to get rich and while all the smart people stay poor.
Interesting... I would say you have your arguement backwards. Seems smart people figure out how to make the $$. Of course, there's the unethical people (Enron execs) who made it dishonestly, but I would hardly call them stupid.
Stupidity seems to lie in the folks who did nothing for their money.. those that inherit old money. And even then, it's more simply those that inherited, and didn't bother to educate themselves (Forbes, for instance).
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Putting more people to work means paying more people which means lower profits unless those people are able to increase efficiency or sell more product. How can you expect any business to strive to spend more money if there is an alternative? It may work for the government, but if businesses go out to their way to use more workers and pay more people they won't be around very long. There needs to be an economic reason (aka an incentive) for businesses to hire people. They are not going to, and can't, do it out of the kindness of their heart.
... computers (and automatisation, robots) and the ever-increasing effiency lead to the elemination of all jobs, except the ones in arts and research, meaning the creative ones? Can the society provide jobs for all? Are all human beings capable of doing a "creative" job. I don't think so. Yes, a lot of SF works already dealt with the question. But did you find the answer satisfying?
It's a plea to socialize the software industry. Don't work on what you want to work on, work on what society NEEDS you to work on. But do it for SOCIETY, that is, do it for FREE. This will allegedly help a struggling 'cutting-edge' business grow. Give them free software, and all will work out.
This is hogwash. And the article goes all over the place. It starts off with blaming "financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation" on why people have lost jobs "or had to accept menial ones". But then concludes "there is little doubt that a large contributor to rising unemployment is rising productivity". We see this every new age. This guy is bordering on a Luddite. He's also overly dramatic which makes me dislike him even more "I can no longer avert my eyes from the consequences of the field I have chosen" so noble. "... and no one else who programs, administers, or promotes the use of computers can morally avert their eyes either" oh jeez.
It gets worse, "The gigantic combine of capitalism has always obsessively pursued effiencey..." yeah, that's the point. That's why it works. No, Capitalism is atrocious at GIVING AWAY the fruits of innovation. It doesn't reward people who don't partake in it. That is why it's so efficient. Add _YOUR_ efficiency to the overall efficiency and you will be paid for its value.
This really frightens me: Great, lets all make inefficient processes and software to run those processes so that costs will skyrockets, and we'll be beat by someone with a more efficient process. You can't do that in a free market. It's the whole point of the free market. The market balances between efficiency, cost, and quality. If you artificially try to create more jobs by making it take 5x as many more people to assemble a car, you will collapse that business.
gut instinct huh? Thanks for sharing that. I'm sure we can all base decisions on your gut instincts.
So his solution boils down to three ideas:
1. Write free software for individual industries (ie, give custom built small business software away for free). His thinking is this will help the small business get started and they will in turn hire more people. But damn the person who wrote the software, he's SOL. But it was for the 'good' of the 'people'.
2. "Make devices more responsive and easy to customize", he request: "I would like a computer to plan ahead for me, track things that are too much trouble for me to remember, and combine inputs to suggest efficient courses of action" OK so he wants smart agents. What this has to do with this article is beyond me. I think he just threw it in there because he wanted to.
3. "Create a truly public key infrastructure" I don't understand why he feels the need for a 'truly PKI is so important. It seems to go along with his socialist viewpoint. I guess it would make on line filing of unemployment that much easier when he plans leads to the failing of a nations economy.
He ends it with more FUD: "We don't have all the time in the world. And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?), universities, and NGOs seem paralyzed in the face of this economic disaster"
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I thought the purpose of writing programs was to automate human tasks in order to reduce costs by replacing people with machines.
That would certainly create a lot of wealth according to Darling Darl et al.
My rights don't need management.
Want to give more people a job. Then stop forcing them to work overtime. That way, more people will have jobs and more time can be spend with the family, or doing a hobby.
Because it creates more wealth for the society the average people are in. As we move away from a labour based populace we need to constantly find new markets to do this we need more people creating wealth. Or we need to explore wealth creating in third world communities. This creates new markets but displaces the current markets. The system is in a point where it is cutting employment and services to create efficiency and more profit, if the markets were to expand to non traditional areas you could increase profit and efficiency but still need to keep or expand employment. The problem is to expand markets you need to spend. And at this economic point the nerve to spend is not there. The winners in the next two decades economically are going to be the ones investing into Third World economies as they are cheap now. The will balance out with the 1 st world countries either by the 1st world standard falling or the third world rising or a combination of both. In the US this means little of the population will be involved in the new economy other than to service the people making the money overseas, jobs will be selling goods, transporting goods, selling services. What this does to the US society can be debated but it will create a have and have not two tier environment. Once you can have China and India affording to buy commercial goods at the same rate as the average US consumer you will not need to keep US people employed for US business to make money.
This means the businesses to exist in the US in the future will be the ones that can afford to enter the new markets the ones that rely on the western consumer market will slowly fade with their consumers power.
If average people are involved in wealth creation they can enter these world markets or create sub markets locally that become part of the economy. By staying in the market and creation of wealth stream they can keep a standard of living or increase it even with the outflow of focus to other markets.
From a corporate proposition the place to be now is Asia. The populace is there and the mechanism for the pupulace to spend for the next 100 years is coming into play. The cycle in the western world is already costing more than it should.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
a) Participate in the IPO
b) Buy bonds directly from the company during its offering
Trading stocks with other stockholders doesn't give any money to the company. It's like trading baseball cards. Sure there are some side effects of having stock prices go up for a company, but usually a high stock price doesn't give any financial benefit to a company (except for subsequent stock issues, which don't happen that often).
If you really want to invest in a company, buy bonds when they are issued (don't trade bonds, because trading them just gives money to the bond holder - not the company whose bond it is!).
That said, the best form of investing in a company is to purchase their product.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
"People who work with computers remain fixated on efficiency. Every week I hear the debates over whether businesses should use Linux or Windows, the commentators always wrangling over which systems will save the most money. I find this battle increasingly tiresome. I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work." ...more people just muck things up!
Seriously, if competition is the engine of capitalism, then surely efficiency is the fuel.
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"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
(He tosses a lighted bomb to the Prince. The audience scream and run for cover, except the Prince.)
BOO! TERRO
.... it's all about 'people using computers' to increase productivity and shift their daily tasks from repetitive grunt work to intelligent information management. Also, let's factor in that in this brave new world of computers how much time is actually being spent on battling viruses, appying patches, re-installing new operating systems, learning applications, etc.. We are in some ways more productive, but we also pay a certain price for being able to instantly communicate with someone on the other side of the planet. One can debate this issue to death, but I personally feel that I'm a lot more powerful in my capabilities and my creativity than I was just 10 years ago. Some of that can be attributed to my own growth, but a lot of it is based on me being able to write a Java servlet for a form, open an illustration in Illustrator, work with my spreadsheet on some business projections, download movies with Kazaa (oooops ;-) - anyway, you get the drift.
The current cycle is exactly just that: a cycle - and it will swing back up again in its due time (when, if I just knew I would live on my own island and charge a lot of money for that info). Of course the world has changed and the new EC, NAFTA, terrorist attacks, corporate greed and corruption, Microsoft, George Bush, Bill Gates, you picks it, all have an hand in the current economic situation. So do you and I - who knows any one of us might come up with this amazing new idea that gives IT a renewed boost and changes things to some extend.
I personally don't focus my attention on 'computers' or any other tool I work with. It's all about creativity and good ideas - getting the job done. Has the computer changed my way of doing things? Yes, and so did the invention of the gun powder - we use what we can - but in the end wealth creation depends on people not tools.
Interesting this topic came up, as earlier I stumbled across a 'story' (prediction?) by Marshall Brain, the guy who started 'HowStuffWorks.com', all about a future where robots ruled all. It reads like this stuff actually happened, although it's set about twenty years into the future. You can read it online here. It's called "Manna."
It starts out talking about a computer program called "Manna" that companies start to use to run their processes. Each version gets better and better, and it eventually becomes smart enough to fire idle workers, and outsource. The steps from there to the incarceration of humankind are presented well.
The main character is then offered an 'escape' to a world where robots are slaves, as opposed to humans, and where the concept of money does not exist. Anyway, all great mind stretching stuff, and still a work in progress, as the next "installment" isn't out till October 15th.
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Despite what many seem to think here, most people do have brainpower beyond that of the average monkey. In fact, a lot of them can make very rational decisions when they aren't bogged down in trying to find all the information.
It galls me, despite years of working in IT with developers and sysadmins, how awfully elitist most American IT people are. I've dealt with my share of clueless users, but it seems that a large vocal number of IT professionals would rather turn up their noses than educate people.
Having worked overseas, I've found that there are some great IT professionals from many so-called second and third world nations. They're truly professional, working with people to solve problems and smooth along the process, highlighting potential risks along the way, but not in an arrogant manner.
Developing programs and systems that really let users gather information quickly would result in a lot of things going well, from managers making better-informed decisions, to people being able to solve basic helpdesk issues themselves. Never mind being better able to see potnential partnerships, pending budget crises, or maybe even being able to have enough time to really think rather than work around bugs and perhaps come up with some great ideas.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
That's why I encourage open source and hiring a maintenance developer over proprietary and perpetual service contracts in every case in my current position. Simply put, we'll pay less (and be more secure) if somebody WE trust is auditing our code and making bugfixes/enhancements.
Proprietary is great if you're doing something where you'll never need to customize anything, or do anything slightly outside the norm (or you just don't care if it works.) BUT, if you're like most businesses, you probably have some weird process that doesn't fit some package you're paying for, and you have in turn come up with a workaround. This may or may not achieve the same goal as a well-written, configurable software package would have, but you don't really know until there's a problem some day.
Who did what now?
It seems like the problem was quite clearly stated and then simply dismissed as unadressable --capitalism is not a just system of distribution.
Why is the answer to that problem to "make work?" That's a rhetorical question because obviously the reason is the author is unwilling to consider an alternative to winner-take-all as the only way for society to operate.
The answer to inequality in the face of hyper efficiency is to distribute wealth in an equitable manner? Abundance is only a problem if you slavishly assume that hard core capitalism is the only answer. But that's a personal issue, not a logical problem.
The article is typical example of the lump of labour fallacy, which usually goes something like this: we produce all this stuff to make society run. Now, if we find a way to make the same amount of stuff with less people (using computers), we'll end up with less employment.
If this was true, almost everybody would have been out of work by now. 2000 years ago the work of almost everybody was needed just to grow enough food for everybody. The truth is, that there is no limit to the amount of possible work. What matters is total production of society and how we divide it. Computes will raise total production of society, so it could make us all richer. If we succeed in distributing the wealth in any kind of just way, employment could rise. Or we could choose for a society where the rich have a lot and the poor are unemployed. But that choice does not have anything to do with the amount of efficiency improving computers do.
- - - - towards a lawyer free interentThe idea of trying to create jobs instead of increasing efficiency is a poor solution to the problem of unemployment. If creating jobs is all that matters, let's just start building highways and then tearing them out. The solution is to find ways to use excess labour productively. Personally, I think the net result of the unprecendented white collar unemployment that we've seen in the last few years will be some entry of geeks into politics, and perhaps the renewal of unions as a force in the labor market.
Over 50% of my income goes to taxes of one form or another. I'd say that's subsidy enough for the other guy.
Commie bastards. 1/2:)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
wealth does not equal jobs, and good jobs is what the world lacks.
There's alot of wealth, but at present the western system is optimised to cause wealth to drift up and get locked-up in the economic upper-crust.
There's tons of work that needs to be done! Examples - teaching arts and music, daycare, senior care, cleaning and renovating neighbourhoods, rehabilitation of ecological damage... but the powers refuse to see these as priorities or raise the minimum wage so that a person can actually make a living at one of these jobs.
The author first slams us for being clever and writing efficient stuff, then tells us the answer is to just run out and program more/ charge less. Oh, and let's run everything on scripting languages too. That'll help...
I saw the phrase "wealth creation" and nearly parsed it as weath building, which is used in way too many "Make Money Fast" schemes and spams.
:-(
Interesting idea, BAD choice of words.
The article asserts that increased productivity costs jobs, so logically we should use inefficient and bloated software that crashes periodically, contains numerous security holes which cost time and money to fix, and is riddled with user interface inefficiencies which make it frustrating and hard to use. That way, productivity drops, and more people are required to do the same job.
I never thought I'd say this, but it sounds like Microsoft has been doing the economy a favor all this time...
How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?
Why beat around the bush and just come out and suggest that everyone forks their paycheck over to the government so that they can give everyone an equal share (minus whatever government believes it is entitled to)? That's really what you're advocating, so why not come out and say it?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The more you learn about creating wealth, the more you realize that the tax code is designed to enslave the middle and lower classes. Become a good conservative and fight the liberals who put big government over freedom.
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From the article, three ways to bring wealth creation back to the average person:
1. Write free software for individual industries
2. Make devices more responsive and easy to customize
3. Create a truly public key infrastructure
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't see those three things leading to "wealth for the common person." Certainly there are some businesses out there that would love to have free software, or not have to pay for basic encryption for POS systems. However, providing them with free software or no-cost encryption isn't going to "create wealth", just reduce the cost of business for those select businesses. Whooptee-doo.
If the cost of business is so high that the business is not valid, then perhaps that should be your first clue to find another way to make money. Like credit card fees, debit fees, store rent, bar code readers, employees, etc., software costs are just another cost as part of your business. While I'm sure it would be nice to reduce those costs, it's hardly a barrier preventing the common person from opening their own business.
If anything, businesses that need custom software are a wealth-creating opportunity for those of us who create software.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
The easiest way to create a job and create wealth for other people is by quiting your own job so someone else can do it.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
As if you don't live in an economic ecology. It is unfortunely a product of the ME generation, I belive,
that you only need to think of yourself. That you make money in a vacumn. That is the central problem with the current conservative movement. You can see how they are taking the money and running. From the head of the New York Stock Exchange to World Com, to Enron. Its all part of the same irresponsible attitude. And its killing us.
The latest, I'll take my money and run" trend is to move all the jobs offshore. Good for them but not good for us. Where are those Republican patriots? I guess they figure why not ME why can't I just pull the plug on all the jobs in a town. Let them find another job somewhere else, I'm going to make a bundle shipping computer work to India. So what if you worked for me for 20 years, and have a house and children to take care of. So what if you can't find a job because all my other CEO buddies at the country club are doing the same thing. We laugh about how much we are making over golf. So what if you end up on welfare and homeless. And Oh Yes I'm going to work real hard to market the idea to you that we should get rid of welfare and social security. Why should I pay for that. Thats your problem.
exhale...
Having worked for several family run business I know there is another way to run a company. Another way to make money with a community of people working together. This cras objectifiction of business has got to stop before our whole economy colapses under the weight of the weathy company owners. Let start teaching real ethics and morality in the schools again. We may have to start it in the kindegartens and work forward, because I think most of those comming out of business school today are a lost cause when it comes to community responsibility. (some notable exceptions)
If you make things people want to buy, then, you get money. If they want to buy it badly enough, or, you have lots of people buying it, you get lots of money.
That's usually how it goes.
Maybe people are sick of buying computer stuff?
Time to start looking at space.
This is my sig.
You see, I produce physics study guides. I can document that we produce the best selling ancillaries. I can document that we saved the publisher ~100k - 200k dollars on this last book alone, through reduced print costs, brought about by our good job. I can document that we delivered 45 days ahead of schedule. But our pay sucks so badly ($18k for a year, for 3 workers) that our credit cards are ready to push through the roof. When that happens, our computers get sold, and the wealth creation process stops. In our case, yeah, we could have paid less to our workers, but even the amount we paid was low though standard here. So we picked the route of maxing out our credit cards instead, until the contract was finished. The wages we paid were not good, but they were the best we could do. The wages that were paid to us were clearly unjust, to the point of evil. But it can't continue, and won't; and I won't feed my sheep to the wolves -- better that we break.
So the first thing I'd say is, if you want to bring people back into the wealth creation process, how about letting them keep a bit of the wealth they create. Don't disconnect wealth creation from getting wealth.
And no, I'm not talking about taxes, in particular. Yeah, that can be part of it. I'm talking about economic justice to your neighbor, period, no matter who you are. That includes to your waitress (tips), to your newspaper boy, to the guy who mows your lawn, and so on. Look at home, and see what you're doing wrong yourself, and fix it.
For those of you who are Catholic [and went to Church], I'd point to James 5:1, from last Sunday.
Weep and mourn, you wealthy, at your impending miseries. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is corrupted, and their rust shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as if it were fire. You have heaped treasure for the last days, but behold! the hire of the laborers who reaped your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cries out, and the cries of those who reaped it are heard by the Lord. You have lived in pleasure on the Earth, wantonly, and have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed the just, and he does not resist you."
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
For example: If Henry Ford invested in roads, he'd make more money off of cars, because there'd be more roads to drive the cars on. Another way to make money and also create jobs is to support philanthropic efforts (like artists, i.e. ME!). Such things are always good for the economy -- everyone likes art, and when they see your name on the building, etc. It is only going to create more public awareness for how you are trying to be good with your money.
stuff |
OK, first off I'm a developer in the US working on a brand new 4 year project. I expect that I'll be in this group for at least 6 years (unless the project gets cancelled, layoffs etc).
I'm 36, and I figure that if the 'age' thing hits me, I'll have one more big project to run before I have to start worrying about work at 45 years old.
OK.
I've been thinking about using either real estate or stock market investements to raise capital to either start a business, or just live off of.
I own my home, rent out an apartment here, and between my equity and the value of my house, I can get enough $$ from a loan to buy a second property to rent(but not enough to start a business). So real estate is looking like a good place to start.
Though, a couple of good stock picks could generate some capital too.
I've also been thinking about how the heck I can use my computers to help make these ideas (or others) start to happen for me. So I've started writing some nifty little systems for myself.
The first one is code named ticker. It's supposed to be a stock tracking and analysis system. Basicly it goes out to a service each night, and gets a feed of securities data and loads it into a MySQL database. It then runs some custom analytics for me and generates some picks. I've been tracking the picks with funny-money and have been making refinements to the analysis as time goes on. This has been and on again, off again project for me for the last 4 years. Eventually, I want this thing to be able to scan news services for announcements about stocks I care about and gather the news for me. It should eventually also be able to scan the news and make me aware of stuff I didn't know about before.
Yup, there's a lot of work involved there. But with Perl, anything is possible. Impossible tasks become possible.
The real estate angle is a bit tougher to crack from a programming point of view. Most databases of info are localized MLS services, and you need to pay to get access to those. So I'm left with scanning the public internet for property information and bank rates.
So I've been working on a scanning engine, for both the stock tracker and the real estate information gathering.
Not sure how else to put my boxen to work though. I mean, they do math and repetitive tasks really, really fast. Surely there must be SOME way to use them to make money. But my tiny brain can only think of simple information gathering and analysis.
As far as the type of business I'd like to start? I dunno yet. Running a computer consuting/contract programming is out, thanks to our friends in India.
Maybe I'll open a restauraunt, or some type of store. Who knows, I've got 10 years to think up that part of the plan.
Right now, I just need to somehow make the money to do it.
wbs.
Huh?
- Companies invest in computers
- Company Automates one or more tasks
- Company downsizes part or all of skilled workforce
I have noticed that, given the choice of a small number of skilled workers or a larger pool of unskilled, most companies tend to go for the unskilled - they may even cost slightly more (in aggregate) than the skilled workers would, but each individual is more easily replacable, and at much shorter notice, so that they can't leverage their company's dependence on them to get higher wages.This incurs an immediate cost that the company has to recoop somehow
As automation makes tasks either easier or faster, this leads to
part if the new job still requires skill, all if replacement with the same or lesser number of semi-skilled (cheaper) workers is possible.
Changing the "loss and deskilling" trend would take changing the attitude of big corporations (particularly those currently "outsourcing" remaining technical jobs to the far east) who don't seem to realise that the pay they give skilled workers today is what is used to buy these largely luxury items tomorrow.....
-=DaveHowe=-
Greenspan CREATED the recession to help the republicans get elected in 2000. See, he's a republican too. Good times would have meant a democrat's win for sure...We had what...10 straight quarters of interest rate hikes, the last four 1/2 point or better? The economy was DELIBERATELY slowed down by the FRB. I predicted this would happen - in 1997! I told all my friends that the economy would be great until the election year then it would slow down. Greenspan's problem was that he did his job too WELL! He slowed the economy down TOO well..and it got away from his control. Now, he's out of room to help it grow....Add 9/11 to the mix (and the dot com/bomb crap), season with Enron & Worldcom, and you've got a sure recipe for disaster. Yes, I believe that the economy would have slowed down by itself - but not until after the 2000 election. Greenspan wanted it in 2000, not knowing that the events of 2001 would throw it tinto a tailspin. He's a perfect example of the metaphor: "Be careful of what you wish for, because it might become true".
I swear. The opensource "movement" is plagued by villians straight out of Ayn Rand novels.
I like opensource like a hobby. But the group as a whole is way to anti-capitalism.
Wealthy isn't about distribution. It's about creating wealth. The US was one of the first countries that actually called it what it was "Wealth Creation". Before that, the peasants used to say things like "Give us your wealth" or "Share the wealth". Capitalism said, "It's your right to MAKE your own wealth".
I know schools have removed Fountainhead and Atlas Shurgged from the required reading list since the cold war is over, but I never thought I would _see_ the difference because of such a move.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Proprietary? How about ALL.
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither!"
"what is the optimal population?"
Since the average individual produces MUCH more than he consumes, the obvious answer is A LOT higher than the current population.
This goes for Americans too. We also produce much more than we consume.
However, I'd argue that there's some causality going in the other direction too. The lousy economy has caused plenty of companies to cut back on their workforce through layoffs, and typically they've just forced the survivors to pick up the slack by working harder and for longer hours. In this sense, it's the loss of jobs that's forcing an "increase" in productivity, if you can call it that. People just grin and bear it, because no one wants to lose their job in today's economy. However, I'd hardly call working longer hours to cover your former coworkers' job responsabilities as well as your own the fault of computers; rather, it's a byproduct of the market downturn. Once companies start hiring again and work is more evenly distributed, you'll see this effect go back down again.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
A manager sat me down and explained that the company had had software for 20 years, and throughout that time the headcount had grown, because extra technology across the market had meant that companies launched more and more different and diverse products, and more people had been needed to support them.
If the world stood still, this would be a problem. Instead, people are needed for the new jobs and a myriad of support jobs. Think of mobile phones - how many people are involved in support, development, sales and marketing of phones and the infrastructure of phones, the legislating of phone companies, the sales of pointless clipons.
The more serious problem is that (in the UK) there are areas of deprivation where there is now generational unemployment - children grow up without working parents and see no opportunity. Where areas of central Wales are like deserts - because companies won't move in there.
my wealth.
You know, the wealth I -worked- harder than you to earn.
The wealth I racked up student loan debt to get educated enough to earn.
The wealth I busted my ass doing overtime to get.
The wealth I -earned- by -creating- something.
Take away the incentive to create via socialist taxation levels - and America becomes France.
How much great art came out of Russia under communism? How much great technology did they invent? How productive were their workers?
How many of them would have preferred their life to ours?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
To encourage more employment in the US we should cut our extremely high payroll taxes (taxes that employers pay when they hire/pay someone) and replace them with taxes on resource use, for example, petroleum and other raw materials. This would not only help correct the "negative externality" of pollution, it would encourage the development and use of labor intensive rather than capital intensive technologies.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Just make something of value.
A chair, a trout fly, a tomato or a tree for instance.
Oh, wait. You meant how do I protect jobs, didn't you? Well that's an entirely different question. What peculiar notions of wealth and economics kids have these days.
If you choose the right 40 acres and the right mule you have enough wealth to last you and a small family the rest of your lives, even though you don't have "a good job" and draw a salary.
Our ancestors understanding that all real wealth lay in real estate is still essentially true today, although we've buried this simple truth under "industry" and "money" (which isn't wealth, it's just an abstract medium of exchange).
What can a software writer do?
He can write MS type stuff, all chrome, "features", and marketing hype designed to continually suck money out the pockets of the unsophisticated, or. . . he can put himself out of business by writing good, solid basic code that aids in the manufacture of tomatoes and trout flies and then take up the "menial" task of producing tomatoes and trout flies.
Software is like a hammer. Very few people make a living designing hammers. Very many people make a living using hammers to make things.
Most commercial software is a drain on wealth, sucking money out of the economy while accomplishing nothing real except paying people to toss stones over a wall so they can walk around to the other side to toss them back.
No software writer ever made a living as a software writer by saying, "Ummmmmmm, dude, why don't you just use vi/emacs/Wordpad instead of spending hundreds on a "Word Processing Package" that you don't need?"
Some of us make a bit of money here and there to give that advice though, although once everyone takes it we too will be out of work and will have to go actually produce some wealth.
Fortunately I like making and growing things and don't think of these tasks as "menial" in the least.
KFG
If hundreds of volunteers were to write software to increase EFFICIENCY of small operations it would only reduce the human resources needed to complete a job, and would in fact CAUSE unemployment.
The only thing to help mom/pops EMPLOY more people is to increase their revenues, so volunteer marketing / web pages would be better.Or, if we are simply talking about job creation, how about sending spam? Spam increases marketing for small organizations, sells computers because of the increased loads to process the spam, consumes expensive bandwidth, and creates product opportunities for anti-spam software and services.
----- Refactoring is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
...comes naturally from any relatively fair exchange of goods and services.
All one has to do is give people a domain in which they can exchange their services. Even "average" people (if there was such a thing) can participate in this process, and do, all the time.
A major problem with modern society is that in the interests of scale and efficiency, we have turned general skills into vertical niches. Our modern enterprises are like complex factories, where each skill serves only one very specific need.
My preferred method of getting people involved in creating wealth is to give them challenges which if they can solve, they can make some money. For example, I'm organizing concerts for local groups, and everyone who participates is a volunteer. But if the venue takes off, and we get a regular public, there will be a few full-time jobs at the end of it. It may take a year, and probably two-thirds of those who start will drop out and be replaced, but it's something real that does create wealth.
Similarly, I'm organizing a school for local children to learn IT. Not "Office", but system admin, fixing PCs, basics of programming, etc. Again, everyone who participates is a volunteer but at the end of it, we'll have some young guys with more skills, more prospects, and more wealth, and a couple of part-time jobs running the place.
Wealth creation is about exchange, and everyone, even the most "average" person has things they can do easier, cheaper, or better than someone else. When they can exchange this, they create wealth.
Just my 2c.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
As far as I can see it's only ever moved or divided into smaller units.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
What's also sad is that the corporations are much better at taking other people's wealth than creating their own.
Ultimately, no system is perfect, and imperfect systems eventually break down. As with your car, when they break down, people get hurt. Unlike with your car, the cause of the system breaking down is not that the people or companies are worn out, but that people don't care to follow God's laws.
Quite simply our system is breaking down, heavily. At such times, it's probably better to read Habbakuk, and understand it, and accept it. That way, you won't be a part of the problem, anyhow.
Oh, and if you *are* one of the wealthy who is trying to save up for a rainy day at cost to his workers... read James 5.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Go out and read Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson available at your local bookstore. Hazlitt (back in 1946) proved that "wealth creation" is a fallacy. Jobs are never destroyed, they are merely transformed. Sure, when you look at a single person, you may see them lose their job because of new technology, but its NEVER an overnight situation. Technology provides new products and new direction for entrepreneurs to offer new careers for even more people than the old technology "provided" for.
It is time to stop thinking of labor as production -- it is merely another form of sellable good. Supply and demand dictate whether or not a worker is needed, and "wealth" is just a useless term used to explain stored equity that was gained from past demand for your the goods which you have previously sold.
If you haven't read Hazlitt's book, you should. It'll actually explain in simple, understandable English why all the economists of yesterday and today are generally wrong, and why the "Austrian" School is very right.
Problem is, they don't replace you. Instead, they give your job to someone else who now has two jobs to do. I saw the prefect example this weekend. A friend of mine works as an engineer for Clear Channel. Three months ago, his assistant quit. He was forbidden to replace him, even though he's already doing two jobs (He's doing his regular job and being project engineer for a big build out). Now he has three jobs to do. Last weekend he visited a transmitter site for the first time in a month and found some equipment badly damaged. The pattern of the AM radio station was far out of FCC tolerances. Problem is, his logging system broke last month and he hasn't had the time to fix it yet. He doesn't even know how long ago this happened. He planned to hire a contractor to help, but his bookkeeper told him NO CONTRACTORS. So, he struggles to do three jobs, none of them well. At the same time, his bosses get HUGE bonuses for cutting expenses so well. THIS is the rebublican economy at work! It ain't 'trickle down' it's TINKLE DOWN...and we all know what they're tinkling...all over us!
One of the big hurdles in most engineering fields today after getting your degree and licensure - is the cost of software. Your looking at from $7500 $6000 per station for drafting or civil engineering. There is some available here
http://www.freegis.org/
but nothing approaching what open-office.org does for office software as far as cross-platform deployment, usabitlity and compatibility. A lot of the mathematics for all engineering fields are similar. Excluding Boolian Logic. A universal engineering software platform would do wonders for everyone from your home engineer building his own off- the grid power system, to an Architect trying junp-start his career.
Unfortunately the article is premised on a classic economic fallacy: that advances in technology and efficiency result in net job loss. For a good debunking, see Paul Krugman's review of William Greider's "One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism".
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
We are bound by the laws of scarcity; there isn't an unlimited amount of money in this world, even if modern currencies aren't backed by gold bullion or the like.
Creating your own wealth means taking someone else's (or capital that "would have" gone to someone else). Directly or indirectly, it's a zero-sum game, and that's the name of it.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
That is not at all what he is advocating. It is a share of wealth between producers in a society (where everyone owns these means of production), through direct democracy, de-centralization etc - in other words, a true anarchy (http://www.anarchistfaq.org).
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
A lot of major elements of communications/transportation infrastructure are inordinately expensive and can be bypassed using information technology. For examples, in Britain, there are free internet services being created using MeshAP boxes-that has the potential to dramatically improve communications/security in rural areas and keep a lot of money in those communities that would otherwise go to large companies in urban areas. That is the type of thing that would give folks a wider range of economic options and mean more satisfying/productive employment.
Like it or not, Microsoft created an entire ecosystem around it, arguably built from the inherent inefficiencies in its software/architecture/the way they understand the world.
I'd say that there was a job transfer in net terms: some jobs were actually destroyed. Others were created. This transfer ocurred in a rather disordered way and the technology quickly created a mass of excluded people.
We've seen this before, with the industrialization, but today it comes with a twist, since the pace of job destruction is outrunning the ability of people to learn new skills.
Maybe Microsoft holds the key. Maybe inefficiency serves a purpose. Who knows?
I wouldn't mind working on any project that is useful to someone, but I still have to pay my own bills and eat. Writing free software will not allow me to pay for electicity to run my computers to write the software that they will use. It's a nice idea and all to write software so that other folks can keep their jobs, but not if it requires me to quit my job and do it for free. I'm not wealthy enough to do that.
Step 1: Wealthy techies start using deep-sea robots purchased with their stock-options money to cut the trans-pacific and trans-atlantic data cables at random times and random locations, approximately once a week. This in turn prevents the offshoring/outsourcing industry from communicating with their sweatshops overseas, resulting in the hiring of thousands of local programmers to pick up the slack. The economy sees a slight rebound. Some companies continue to offshore using satellite technology. So...
2. Even wealthier techies finish designing a space plane which can cheaply get up into orbit and back down to earth. They build a fleet of twenty, hide them in widely-spaced mountain retreats staffed with Linux geeks, stock them with thousands of pounds of ramen noodles, coffee, videogames, and porno, and start sending missions up into orbit to de-orbit satellites used by offshoring companies. Bored teenagers pilot the space planes, marvelling that "Man, it's even better than Descent -- Freespace!" The economy rebounds a little more. But, then -- damnnit! -- the offshoring companies start using sneakernet and mules to courier work back and forth. So...
3. The two groups of techies, determined to save the economy, begin to resort to black-bag techniques to foil the mule's attempts. Some switch bags on the couriers, replacing the suitcases full of cd-roms with suitcases full of scat-fetish pr0n. Others simply mug the couriers, dragging them into the airport restrooms for a quick beating and a swirly. Some, truly getting carried away, have a Quake III flashback and detonate the couriers. This, unfortunately, is misinterpereted by the Office of Homeland Security and all hell breaks loose. America declares war on France. By the time it is revealed that the Quake III fanatic was actually Belgian, it is too late... Paris is in ruins, its people reduced to eating air-dropped big macs. Millions commit suicide. So then...
Despondent at having caused the big-mac-induced suicides of millions of people and wishing for some good to come out of it, the belgian Quake III fanatic issues a statement that he did it all for the MPAA/RIAA. The remaining French declare war on those two organizations and send the French Foreign legion to the U.S. to retaliate. They infiltrate coffee shops throughout L.A. It becomes impossible for record-company execs to get a decent cup of coffee without a heaping helping of attitude. Unable to understand why the waitstaff isn't nice to them anymore, the entire recording industry commits suicide en mass. LA is briefly caught in a panic, but when they realize just what has happened, ten million people shrug and go about their business.
End result: things are kinda cool again! Hooray!
So get busy, techie geeks! We're counting on you!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Okay, I'm an American born and raised. Grew up with full insurance and as I got into my twenties I worked overseas.
Well, you know as you get older you start to fall apart in little ways and I had a bad tooth upon coming back to the States one year from where I lived in this little country called Taiwan that has socialized medicine.
I didn't have insurance and my tooth was hurting while I was in the States on vacation. So wanting to take care of my own affairs, I told my Dad I was going to wait and have my tooth done in Taiwan. But both of us were a bit concerned about how safe it really was. The ol' man insisted I go to my childhood dentist and ask him what he thought first.
So, I go in and this good ol' American dentist says yep you waitied too long. It looks like you're going to need a root canal. It'll cost about $1300. I can do it this week.
I told him my plan to go back and have it done in Taiwan and boy oh boy did he tell me some horror stories. Well, I don't remember all the exact details, but the sum of the story was that I was risking my life. If I insisted on doing this insane suicidal act, the least he would insist on is giving me clean needles because it was well known that those Taiwan doctors were notorious for re-using their needles to save costs!
Dear God. My father was so depressed that his son insisted on certain death, but after hearing that line of crap coming out of that old fucker's mouth, I was determined to see how bad it really was.
Well sure enough, I went back to Taiwan and had my root canal for thirty bucks. I got the same titanium post they use in the States. I got the same artsy fartsy thing where they send out the blank to be custom sculpted to match your other teeth and best of all it was almost completely painless. This is contrast to a root canal ol Dr. Lying bastard had given me as a kid when I busted one on the sidewalk. That sonofabitch let my novacaine wear off and gave me the ol Dustin Hoffman treatment.
The moral of the story is, you're full of shit. I'm an American and I can testify that I've gotten way better medical service outside of the US and was lied to by American physicians when I suggested I would try such a thing.
I also happen to know that the people struggling to get to American often ARE doctors. They're dying to get on the goddam gracy train.
You are misinformed.
In the last recession, we had high unemployment, yadda, yadda, yadda...
What no one seems to remember was that very quickly there was a surge in self-employment (duh, what else are you gonna do with all that spare time?). Naturally, all those fledgeling companies grew and started hiring (well, some did and some died). The unemployment rate slowly fell and people stopped complaining.
My pet theory is that this is all a normal swing of the economic pendulum. High employment leads to low productivity (how many cumulative hours did you spend doing watering-hole-like things at the office, last time you were employed?). High unemployment just wakes people up and starts getting them motivated and productive again ("Oh, that's why I needed that 'paycheck' thingie [that was auto-deposited, out of sight and out of mind] to pay these 'bill' thingies [also auto-withdrawn].")
Bottom line: Get a job! Can't *get* a job? Make one up! We did, and we haven't missed a financial beat, yet. My spouse is also "unemployed", but works FT for our startup business. Recently we started outsourcing work to a couple of out-of-state freelance developers, part time. Soon we'll have more work for them than they can handle. If you're still employed, start a business anyway. You're just fooling yourself if you think it's "permanent" employment.
When I lost my cushy day job, three months ago, we had no spare cash reserve, either, no nest-egg (how completely American employee is that). What we did was just to scramble as fast as we could to get business. You really would be shocked at how much business there is in the SMB sector. Just dress up a bit business-like, read a good book on how to sell things (e.g. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley comes to mind) and get out there and do what you used to do for "The Man", just do it for yourself, now.
Oh, and find the best attorney and accountant your money can buy, first! And by all means write those miles down (I still have a hard time with that, but they do add up so fast).
Having pointed out that Oram's economics are faulty, let me make a suggestion for fighting the REAL problem, which is not the loss of jobs, but the movement of jobs into new sectors.
If you want to help people cope with the fact that advances in technology have rendered them redundant, either supply or support education. If you have a valuable technical skill, look into opportunities for teaching it to others. If you're not the teacher type, find ways to support local technical education programs, especially those that target people who might not have the means to pay for a college education. The goal here is not to maintain the number jobs in any given field, but to make the transition from an old field to a new field as easy as possible.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work.
It's called Microsoft Windows; it needs patching and updating more often than any other OS, requires more administrative overhead, and crashes frequently.
So now that we have this inefficient system, and it is installed on 95% of the desktop PC's, how do you explain the unemployment rate? Maybe we need more efficiency rather than less....
I'm not trying to troll with the MS Windows comment, but I don't think the article's premise is valid. If anything, it was a lack of efficiency in the dot-bomb era that produced the recession - some firms paid $70,000,000 (yes, 70 million) for a website, and now we've got to make that up. If we can blame anyone, it would be the overpaid consultants who bent the industry over a barrel and depleted corporate cash reserves without providing anything of value in return. Or maybe it was the corporate CEO's who were so enamored with the possibilities of "e-commerce" that they forgot their common sense.
What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?
I have no clue why one would want to reverse falling unemployment. Sounds most desirable.
Joking aside: the point I think the author made is that opensource technologies allow funds to be used for other purposes, i.e. that of employment, thus improving productivity for business by hiring more workers instead of renting/buying more software.
The bigger difference in opinion, and one you see often these days, is wether or not a rise in productivity is good or bad.
I'm personally convinced it is good, I believe that it is the reason we enjoy modern prosperity versus two centuries ago. However, to believe it is good, you must also accept that the resulting job redundancies from increases in productivity are a temporary, and economically speaking, healthy, phenomenon that redistributes resources (including human capital) across a society to prepare it for further future growth.
We both agree that job redundancies are unpleasant. What we disagree on is what it is a symptom of.
I believe, and so does the author it appears, that speeding up opensource development would ramp up productivity which would turn speed the process of economic renewal the western (US & Europe) world is going through.
Wether the job redunancies are a temporary (5-10 yrs) or a permanent phenomenon is what we disagree on.
Slashdot - if you're going to post links to economics related subjects, can you please make sure it is written by someone with a clue about economics?
Is Michael Porter economical enough for you?
Currently wealth that is produced tends to be concentrated into a very few hands. Given this it almost doesn't matter how much is produced, since those who do the actual production only get dribbles.
Does it really seem fair to you that a PHB should be paid twice what you are paid? If so, then ignore what I say. My position is basically an anti-monopolist position, with the term "monopoly" significantly generalized. And it's not on an all or nothing basis.
The way in which wealth is distributed is basically determined by power politics. Fairness doesn't have very much to do with it. But even given this system, NOBODY should be able to earn over, say, 1,000 time what a minimum wage job earns. The 1,000 is an arbitrary number, and I know of no decent way to assign it a value. But the larger the value, the less democratic the society will be. When wealth is centralized, then power will be centralized with it. And the power will be used to ensure that the wealth remains where it is. Similarly when power is centralized, then wealth will be centralized. It's a simple feed back loop operating off of self-interest.
In Athens slightly before the time of Xerxes the factor of difference in income between the wealthiest citizen and the poorest was about 50. This is probably somewhat related to population size, so a significantly larger civilization should probably expect a larger difference in income. But the relation should be less than linear, as what we are dealing with here can be modeled as the ability of a hierarchical pyramid to structure the relative importance of people at various levels. The narrower the angle at the top, the more weight each individual at the bottom must support. (I.e., the greater the proportional difference in income.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
People were totally disgusted with a computing experience that for 9 hours a day frustrated them and prevented them from doing work, and there we were building our entire economy around people coming home from work and doing absolutely everything with their computers.
Why did people with way too much money think that Jane Secretary would sit through 9 hours a day of problems caused by bad usability, get berated by "Nick Burns The Computer Guy" for not understanding that the "save" menu selection deletes everything, and then go home and by dog food over the Internet?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Ah, all those dreamers who saw a future with robots freeing us to a life of leisure and intellectual pursuits...guess that all depends a bit too much on the welfare state.
Frankly, I think it's health care that stops that vision from becoming reality. It seems like the best health care will always be expensive...I could almost see robots building me a humble paradise, but knowing by accepting a lowerbudget lifestyle I was denying myself the best in life preserving and extending technologies would be a fly in that ointment.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
The article goes AGAINST what you just said.
Read it.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Says the article: "I can no longer avert my eyes from the consequences of the field I have chosen, and no one else who programs, administers, or promotes the use of computers can morally avert their eyes either."
Sorry, folks, but I will avert my eyes. Histroy doesn't shed too many tears for those who lost transcription jobs after the invention of the printing press, nor the buggywhip manufactures during the dawn of the automodible. This equation gets it all wrong.... From the view of the recently unemployed, they lost a job where their role was easily and reliably replaced by technology. Looking at the big picture and the history of innovation, the world loses little when this happens, because the population as a whole can better utilize human resources whenever there is a surplus of unutilized people.
A simple example.... Without modern advances in farming, all of the great technologies and techniques that came about over the last 2 centuries, I think it is reasonable to say that billions of people would spend their lives working framland rather and that advances in education, medicine, and technology would not have been remotely as great as they are today.
Translation: Instead of paying for software, use that money to hire in-house developers...
Translation: Go work at Microsoft or Intel, who are the only ones who have money and resources to work on this. Everyone else is either unmotivated or cash-strapped.
Translation: In other news, Bruce Schneider and countless security gurus laid down in the middle of their offices and wept...
This could have been a more interesting article if it were better thought out. Instead, it looks as if this was someone's first draft that had been written on a cocktail napkin.
We're still in very bad shape.
In fact they're saying just the opposite! They're saying that part of the reason many people are LOSING jobs is because technology is helping the rich get richer and everyone else get poorer. This is a FACT that can not be disputed. Just take your head out of the sand and look around. What they're saying is that technology can also be used to CREATE jobs, and since the rich assholes don't seem to want to use it that way, then the REST of us should! That's what he's saying. In a way, he's asking for the software equilivent of Habitat for America, where volunteers (including Jimmy Carter), get together and build homes for families that (could not otherwise afford a home) on weekends. Of course, you'd have then living in a hovel, wouldn't you?
I wish I could find the person who came up with this buzzword and slay them. This is the most overused shell game in the corporate world to make peons feel as if they have a chance at getting farther in life. It's basically the equivalent of "Rah-rah"! You can't create wealth as the value of many things fluctuates unpredictably and becoming wealthy has a lot more to do with luck, than a process. Steve Jobs and the Woz didn't create wealth by working hard until they got there. They were in the right place at the right time. I'm not discounting the work they did, but what I am saying is that you or I could work as hard as they did, or even harder to be just as successful and never make it. Mostly due to luck.
Another reason why I dislike the "create wealth" meme, is that there is a limited amount of wealth. Wealth does not increase. Therefore, only a limited number of people can be wealthy. There isn't some magic formula that one can use to just conjure up wealth. There is no "great idea" that will be guaranteed to capture the public's imagination. One case in point: the movie the Blade Runner was a complete flop in the box office when it came out in 1982. Ridley Scott and a lot of the people involved worked very hard at creating a plausible future with great effect. But, the public just wasn't ready for it at the time (wrong place, wrong time). However, when it came out on video, it became one of the bigger sleepers of the 20th century. There is a huge following for that film now. While some of the following is certainly due to the effort that they put into making the film, the majority of it's success post-box office is again, luck.
Face it people. There is no creation of wealth as it is a limited resource with an uncertain lifespan. What's valuable today is tomorrow's garbage rotting in the human detritus pile. Who uses polaroid instant cameras in this world of digital photography? Polaroid filed for bankruptcy. They were riding high in the 70s and 80s. Here today, gone tomorrow, that's the reality of wealth. Some people are just lucky and others arent't. The rest of us just try to live a normal life.
Un-news
Here's the future. Nanotech makes nothing valuable except designs. AI makes computers 1000x more capable at designing than any humans. AI accumulate all things of value, humans are left with nothing. The only way around that I see is for humans to value things made by humans, and local humans at that. For example:
Treat original art as more valuable than copies, and art made locally (all other things being equal) is more valuable than art made elsewhere.
Treat handmade furniture, ornate building decorations, one-of-a-kind tilings as valuable. The property of being made by a human and having no other copies makes things valuable.
The government should not be in charge of the safety net for the poor and children. The local community should be. It should employ people in the local community, be managed by people in the local community, and be funded by people in the local community. What the government CAN do is give a hefty tax incentive to funding local community efforts.
This is circular reasoning. It keeps humans busy doing things that will be appreciated by other humans, true. But the machines would still have a monopoly on progress. I don't see any way around that at all.
one of these excess Americans was the guy that figured out how to feed the population of India (dwarf wheat).
I dare say I think we can handle our own population.
-malalkai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I am simply stretching a new canvas on which others may spread their oils
Okay, that's just gross.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
The argument is for creating the tools that will allow more businesses to make thier existing workforces more efficient so thier businesses can grow.
Small businesses tend to not fire people when they become more efficient but rather to hire more people so as to expand thier business.
It is the larger corporations that generally profit from layoffs, as in small businesses more efficient processes mean greater output/worker and tend to not hit the cap for demand that a multi billion/year corp will.
Read, L
Why shouldn't we put everyone out of work? We need neither the vindictiveness of mercantilist gouging under cover of the label 'capitalist', or the lazy poverty of diggers masquerading as 'socialist'. Both these factions are merely taking out their S&M neuroses on the rest of us. Like moths to the flame, both assume that the wealth they see is all that exists, and the game is thus zero-sum - what feeds the capitalist barracuda must bleed the poor children (won't someone please think
There's enough nuclear energy blasting down over time to support 100 billion spacefaring Earthlings (or to fry them all), and enough information in the planetary DNA library (5G years of research into no-holds-barred competition/collaboration) to keep us in Phd papers and lobster-flavored luaus indefinitely.
Halliburton
It all depends on what we want. Employment? What would a world of geeks do with the galaxy of hi-tech toys it would take to support the above, besides improve it all day for free, especially if it produced paradise in the process?
This post brought to you by some old hippies, Timothy Leary, and several thousand doses.
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
>I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49...
Yeah, who needs a decent job, nice place to live, health care and education for your kids when you can have 3-megapixel digital cameras and DVD players!
mhack
Building a better ribosome since 1997
You mean like in the UK?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
America's privatized health care has created the world's leading health care industry. Why do you think every foreigner who can afford to, comes to US clinics for surgeries or treatments?
That's a common misperception.Ex. 1 Ex. 2 Ex. 3 Among many, I'll let you do the Googling.
Contrary to your claim, free-market privatization has proven to be the biggest asset of every American endeavor it has been a part of.
This somewhat true, however, it is not free-market. This is total corporate welfare/subsidies on a mass scale. Take, for example, the Marshal Plan. After WWII, there was plenty of money in Europe for the reconstruction, but U.S. planners preferred that wealthy Europeans put their money in U.S. banks, while American companies reconstructed Europe. Who paid for the reconstruction? U.S. tax payers. So U.S. tax payers paid for the reconstruction of Europe and American construction companies made tons of money. And so did U.S. banks, who benefited from the huge influx of European money. That is not "free-market" by any stretch.
If you want a really well-constructed picture of all this, check out Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky.
"How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?"
How do you suggest that we 'create' money? Hmm? Press our own? Make gold from lead? The invention of money and through it capitalism rests in the laws of scarcity, as someone said. There are inherent problems with any economic system, but in any one of them, it comes down to the idea of ownership (even the disallowing of ownership acknowledges the concept fo ownership). In the case of US capitalism, each dollar is owned by someone, the simple act of wealth creation dictates in and of itself that the source be from another individual or group capable of ownership.
Granted the original poster might have been zealous in his defamation of corporations, but when you have large groups capable of ownership, the capacity is there for them to hoard scarce resources (scarce as in limited), thus removing them from the total amount of recources available to the populace. That's bad enough, but if efficiency enables a corporation (or similarly large group) to simultaneously accumulate more resources and displace workers, you've just exacerbated the problem by increasing the pool of those in need, and decreased the pool of available resources. That can be reduced to simple algebra.
Cry all you might that corporations will not exploit that, but look back into history, it happens all the time. Company A might hold their moral ground, but if Company B does it, their pool of resources will grow beyond Company A's, and they will eventually surpass them, if not crushing them along the way. Note that I'm not an advocate of socialism, but I am quite fed up both with the opportunism of corporate policy and with those who defend it under flimsy or false pretenses.
--- What
It is the unmasking of lame coders that has led to them being unemployed.
We need to have schools TEACHING with accountability, not making kids feel good. Some suggest mandatory military service.
I say, make schools a branch of the military.
Our competitive advantage in the future relies upon the brains of our school kids.
The real issue is whether people consume resources faster than they can be replentished, which is an obvious problem in many areas ranging from water rights in the American West to the depletion of fisheries. Unfortunately, what's not obvious is precisely where those resource limits are in general. After all, you can build desalination plants to make more fresh water, but that diverts a substantial amount of energy and money from other areas. The Earth's biosystem and humanity's changing technological capabilities combine to create a complex system for which we cannot make certain predictions to the degree of precision we need to determine the planet's carrying capacity.
You forgot to leave your condescending, uninformed, insulting attitude at the door. Let's see, who didn't you insult with this? Teenagers are supposed to live at home; they're not adults yet. But you're implying they're immature and immoral. And young adults have been continuing to live at home for some decades now because of economic trends, not because of immaturity.
In this economy, people of all ages are returning home. This may be a bit embarrassing and uncomfortable, but economically necessary... so you of course show great compassion and sympathy by sneering at them.
Lastly, the majority of us on Slashdot are just regular professionals of all ages (largely not living at home with our parents), and you show how uninformed you are by saying otherwise and thinking that anyone would think for a second that you know what you're talking about. But you offend us, too, with implications of immaturity.
So you've offended essentially 100% of your audience. This is flamebait and a troll, but it got marked up to "2 interesting"??
Mod parent down!
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
However, if you graphed it according to the number of connections between independent economic units, you'll see that the countries are gutted before they fall. That is, for example, the government seizes the industries, or destroys them; or businessmen enslave their compatriots; or they find ways to withhold their workers' wages, thus destroying the economic infrastructure.
You'll find some apparent exceptions of course -- for example, the fall of Tyre to Alexander. However, even that isn't really an exception, because Tyre did not have a defense infrastructure. Rather, they depended for their defense upon their neighbors, and so when their neighbors got gutted, they got gutted too, and were ripe for a fall.
You can also see this in the stories of the Bible, and in the warnings by the prophets.
Now, I would argue that we are going about a mass destruction of our economy: that is, we are reducing the number of links between independent economic units, not increasing that number.
Now, this topic's author seems to see that putting people out of work is dangerous. I'd agree with that, though I don't really agree with his solutions.
But in the end, I don't think that we really have the power to make or break trends. We can make our own actions right, and in the end be able to say "I helped" or "I was part of the problem". But when the cards are down, I think that we'll just either have to have faith in God, and take our comfort from Him. In other words, Habbakuk.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Naturally, you'll probably be long dead before that happens, but there's a difference between fitting everyone, and living comfortably with everyone. Not to mention the wildlife and plant life that we need to protect to prevent harmful damage to the ecosystem we rely on.
I'm not a tree-hugger or a eco-nut, but unchecked population growth will become a problem sooner than most expect. Even if you don't live in a cramped world now, do you want your decendants to be living out Soylent Green?
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
"However, I'd hardly call working longer hours to cover your former coworkers' job responsabilities as well as your own the fault of computers; rather, it's a byproduct of the market downturn. Once companies start hiring again and work is more evenly distributed, you'll see this effect go back down again."
And why would they do that? From their POV, they've reduced their labour costs (one of the biggest expenses a business has). Their efficiency has gone up, that plus the labour savings has generating bigger profits. Throw in outsourcing, and they have no reason to lower the US unemployment rate.
Efficiency, in the long run, *does* produce wealth. ... wealth is most definitely being created.
Absolutely. And Bill Gates gets most of it.
As was mentioned in the article (which you of course did read) the fact that efficiency puts people out of work is a problem which is not going to go away. It will get worse.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Good for you -- I wholeheartedly agree that small local charities are a good thing, because the hand-outs from such institutions can be properly targeted and metered. There's much less chance for abuse of the system if you're getting real help from someone or some org that is aware of what you're doing to help yourself (or not). Local charities can actually see (and care) if the person getting help is blowing it on booze and drugs or not (and, in these cases, give them food and medical help instead of more money).
But, this great system you describe has been largely replaced by government-run welfare systems that we can't opt-out of. These inefficient, impersonal entitlement programs don't have the ability (or desire) to manage the money properly (it costs 70 cents on average to give away one dollar via the US welfare system) and thus they are much more susceptible to abuse. Welfare doesn't help as much as it perpetuates the situation.
Now, note that more than 50% of my income goes to taxes, and a nice chunk of that is earmarked for these irresponsible, counter-productive, and oftentimes corrupt programs. Then wonder why I'm less likely (and able!) to help out locally.
everything in moderation
The way our laws are structured, the IPO goes to the investment houses. They get to buy at discount rates, and then sell the initial sales to their friends, who make 10-50% on the first day's rise.
If you want to invest in a company, you pretty much have to start one yourself. My advice, though, is that unless you want to donate a lot of time and free money to a bank, don't go the SB/SME route. Go with an incredible secret money machine. That is, start without capitalization, come up with a single product, expand your product line, reevaluate, and so on. Do it without external investment or loans.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I believe that statements such as
Why beat around the bush and just come out and suggest that everyone forks their paycheck over to the government so that they can give everyone an equal share
are based upon the faulty assumption that a persons wealth derives from money. It was that single silly assumption that fueled the dot com stupidity and continues to fuel the daily corporate malfeasance.
Point in fact. Bill Gates is rich and wealthy. He could lose 90% of his liquid assets and still be wealthy. If he lost Windows he would merely be rich. Gates, like many a wealthy man, gives money away at a rate most of us cannot conceive of. OTOH, he fights tooth and nail to make sure Windows remains a lucrative property. Which do you believe he values more.
Point in fact. Kenneth Lay is merely rich. He has money. His statements shows he knows he is no longer wealthy. His company is worthless. Instead of building real value, management decided that money on the books was much more important. No wealth.
So when we are taking about wealth we are speaking of nothing so ephemeral as money. We are taking about things that make a country great. Things like natural resources and people. We are talking about not, like the socialist country, picking a choosing the children that will be professionals and those that will be laborers, but instead providing an educational system in which everyone has a chance to what they wish, and thereby maximize the efficacy of our population. We are talking about a health care system that maximizes the number work days and potential output of every citizen.
Of course these things cost money. Perhaps the people should pay for them based on how much they have personally profited from it, as is done in a free market. Perhaps local cooperatives are more efficient at creating wealth and exploiting resources and workers and this why people who merely care about money dislike them. After all, corporations have proven very effecient at transfering money, but it is the small startups that seem to create wealth.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Overall, Bernard Lietaer really convinced me that complementary currencies will provide valuable solutions to the ever pressing problems of jobless growth, monetary instability, aging population, and environment protection. The only problem: just like free and open source software is a challenge to the way software is currently owned and controlled, complementary currencies challenge the way money is owned and controlled. To me, CC are to finance what F/OSS is to the IT industry. Watch this space!
"Take money from the wealthy" implies getting those who hoard money to spend it.
You know, to make them want to give it to us. To not let corporations step in and filter through what some people are capable of doing in smaller groups with focused self-interests.
Money isn't valuable when it's locked up in a rainy-day fund or being burned through by clueless VCs.
And whats' more, increased efficiency can help, as it lets a small group do what required a large, less efficient organization to fulfill 10 or 15 years ago.
If the organization gets to big, increasing efficiency means it can sop up resources that it doesn't deserve. Staying big means it can hide this. You'd think these companies might reduce in scale or stay the same (with increasing returns) as they learned their business better. But, of course, that's counterintuitive to investors.
Little organization which are smaller, tighter, more efficient need to come and nibble away at the base. Keep customers happy. Keep prices down, and wealth flowing.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
There are many good reasons for objecting to the concentration of power, economic or otherwise, but this is a new one for me. It makes sense, but I'm curious as to whether you've read this elsewhere. Have any historians or economists investigated this effect?
Which is why I no longer practice a religion (and don't understand why I ever did). Tithing is one of those archaic principles that benefits the Corportion of Relgions too well to deprecate it. Animal sacrifices? pass se. Tithing? Oh well, we'll keep that one. We need it.
You want to help your community? Start a company, aggressively persue clients, work your ass off, and grow it. Grow it by hiring people. Want to 'give' something to the community, give people a reason to better themselves, to study, to read, to learn. Do not give jobs to the pathetic guy who you feel sorry for. That is rewarding the weak. Give the job to the person who most deserves it, and give everyone else a reason for self improvement.
You think your donations make more of a difference than my companies employment? I find it laughable you held on to your jalopy, and then blindly gave your money to someone else to help yet another person.
Let me be honest. I don't care about you, or anyone else. I'm going to work for myself. I want to better myself. I want my company to be the best company. I will not donate money to a church. I will give money to the Arts though. By caring only about myself, and worrying only about making the best products I can make, I have a succesfull company. How does this help society as a whole? I don't care. But in fact, it helps it immensely. I hire people, I give them paychecks. I make business more efficent, they are more profitable, they expand and hire more people, and their stockholders gain more wealth. It's a cycle. It works damn well.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
If you want to help businesses succeed while helping yourself succeed, try this:
Create software that helps people write business plans. Then provided a mechanism for people in the same industry to review the plan. Charge for the plan, commission for the reviews.
Most businesses fail because they or poorly planned. People start businesses with unrealistic expectations regarding revenue and expenses. They start with too little capital and they simply run out.
Too many people only write business plans if they plan to seek investors. Everyone who is starting a business should have a business plan. If they then had people in the know check their plan before they begin, fewer businesses would start, but the ones that did would stick around a lot longer.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I am not an advocate of Socialism. I am, however, someone who has experienced the bad effects of the current recession/jobless recovery and am becoming disillusioned.
I do not agree with the ideas of the parent post advocating taking from the rich and giving to the poor. I am a true believer in the Free Market.
Having said this, something is definitely out of wack. It seems to me that the current system seems to reward certain people in ways disproportionate to their contributions to society. It is true that the Market is self correcting and that some of those taking unfair advantage are now being punished. As examples take Enron or some of the telecom management facing legal charges.
But those being punished are few. The Market may be ultimately fair and self correcting but it is a blind force of Nature and it operates beneath a layer of rules and traditions that we have built over it in the form of laws, regulations and conventions. There are people who do not actually make contributions but take advantage of this layer to enrich themselves without making any significant contribution themselves.
This layer can be compared to an Operating System. The Free Market itself is the hardware. There are people who yell that the Market is fair and the Market will reward all those who deserve it but no one really deals with the Market. They deal with the OS: Corporate Law, Wall Street, VC's, the FCC, government regulations, Tax Code and built in Tax Shelters etc. etc.
There are hidden API's and lots and lots of obfuscated code in the OS so that parts are impossible to understand. There are chunks of code that don't do what they say they do. I would say the OS is more a Microsoft type OS than BSD or Linux.
There are people who take advantage of these flaws in the OS to give themselves and their buddies on Corporate boards hugely inflated salaries. They take over good companies with good ideas by packing the boards with their own cronies and squeezing out truely innovative people who should be getting the rewards of the marketplace. They fiddle with stock prices,IPO's and steal money from Mutual Funds. They make dummy corporations and buy and sell non-existant services to themselves in order to trick investors out of their money and workers out of their pensions.
In the long run some of these scammers are found out and punished. The OS is patched and everyone says the problem is fixed but meanwhile years go by and the cheaters, the viruses in the system get to enjoy the fruits of their corruption. And worst of all the underlying flaws are still there. I fear that the current trials of Corporate CEO's are like Microsoft patches and service packs. They are presented to the public as a fix of the system when they more oftewn than not introduce new flaws and exploits and ignore even bigger flaws that crop up in a few weeks or months.
Maybe the posters to Slashdot seem to be anti-Free Market when what they really are is against a badly designed, proprietary OS that runs on top of the Free Market. This OS does not allow the average person to control their own access to the power that lies in the market.
Working under the current system seems to be like writing Utilities or Applications for a MS OS, like Stacker or Netscape. If you do it well, MS comes in and steals your idea or shuts it down. MS changes the rules or the OS so your app cannot work or steals it out from under you and release a version they control. For MS read Wall Street, VC's government lobbyists or what have you.
Maybe some RMS or Linus can come up with a GPL or Linux OS that accesses the Free Market directly with different rules, a different API, that rewards engineers, inventors, workers, employees in a way more proportionate to their contribution instead of rewarding management, corporate lawyers and investment bankers for things they did not create.
In the short-term, software creates two types of productivities. Good short-term productivity empowers people do something that they could not do before. Bad short-term productivity lets you do the same job with less labor. The problem is that most software does both -- desktop publishing software lets authors directly control page layout and throws a bunch of manual paste-up workers on the street.
The long-term impact of software is less clear. Software has the unqiue ability to replace human mental labor. All that ERP, supply chain, and workflow software means companies need a bunch fewer workers to crunch the numbers, keep all the customer orders straight, etc. Rather than hire or train a bunch of experienced people, you put in a software system that uses Ph.D level logistics algorithms to run your company. I'm not saying that the software is perfect, but then neither is the average middle manager.
The point is that software is helping to engineer humanity right out of its claim to fame -- the ability to perform mental labor. Nobody was too upset when horses replaced people for carrying stuff nor when motorized drills replaced hand drills. The automation of physical labor seems uplifting to all but a few die-hard communists. By contrast, the automation of mental labor has more sinister potential.
It all comes back to the two types of productivities. In the long-term does a particular bit of software enable people to really do something qualitatively better or different than they did before. Or does it merely help them do the same stuff, but with fewer people.
I'm not saying that companies should eschew software that lets the do the same job with fewer people. Companies that free up resources in one area (by firing workers) can apply the savings to other innovations or forms of competative advantage. But if all that software can do is provide efficiency, then I fear that this could lead to the further stratification of society.
If you really want to create software that makes a positive difference, then create software that helps people do something that they never could do before. Mere efficiency or cost improvements (i.e., free versions of existing software) are not going to lift people out of poverty -- giving them a new way to create new forms of value will.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hmm. Nixon. Gas lines and "Peace with Honor" military reductions. Hmm. Reagan. Deficits and stock market crashes, with Government Cheese. Hmm. Bush I. New taxes and recession. Hmm.
What I think you really want there Coward is a return to the good old days of FDR. I mean, that is if you want a powerful military AND economic prosperity. That is what you want, right?
The author has assumed that we're in some kind of technology-created employment crisis. There is scant evidence for that. In the middle of a recession, very few industrialized have even double-digit unemployment, this despite an influx of both immigrants and women into the work place over the last 30 years. In places like Germany, high unemployment can be traced to policies which actually deter companies from hiring, while the U.S. has been a massivew job creation engine over the last 20 years. The author's basic premise is simply wrong.
Gee whiz, why can't anyone figure this out?
Historically, industrial revolutions have reduced the average workweek by 15-20%. Damn, for the geeks here, you can model the macro-economy as two linear equations like this -
Each person has 112 waking hours ( 16 hours x 7 days ), on average.
That time is spent consuming (C) or producing (P) products. So C + P = 112.
Using the 40-hour workweek as a base, we have
40 X rateOfP = ( 112 - 40 ) X rateofC.
Got it?
What happens as rateofP increases?
As productivity increases....
You get more production, and your equations won't balance anymore, you get overproduction and falling prices.
The ONLY way to re-balance the equation is to shrink P and increase C.
Industries do not "become more efficient" as much as they simply shrink due to needing less effort.
The few people who own industries/production do not feel the pinch of losing a market for their services. They like low prices.
The ability of an economy to generate goods effectively is not equal to its ability to generate Consumers (i.e. numbers of people to benefit from cheap goods).
Shrinking industries never immediately produce expansion elsewhere unless one was labor-starved.
Currently no industry at all in the first world is labor-starved because the stone-age jobs are gladly taken by our new-immigrant neighbors and friends.
What part of "Europe and Japan in unemployment crunch" haven't you read in the news?
The conclusion is obvious: unless some new labor-intensive industry (which somehow escapes automation) is ready in the wings there is no Superman(tm) ready to save us all. Capitalism requires you (1) distinguish yourself by finding or making a niche that is vulnerable to your filling and (2) defend yourself once you have found that niche, and lastly Capitalism requires that you (3) distract people away from new goods or services that may undo yours.
The only room left forward is for #1 and the only room for labor markets to go is "up" (i.e. more edumacation). Simply said, until we have a mass subsidization of higher and higher education we have no hope of harnessing more and more people and wealth will follow the differential equations until we have a class schism.
Personally I feel the whole aim of society should be either work-or-learn and the learn part should not require endless payback in the future (i.e. student loans with heinous totals). We'll never be able to pay millions of mediocre poets and violin players to make a Utopia, but if they're learning and generating a better society for themselves... they stabilize overproduction and pay it back in beauty.
Either that or we could just end world hunger.
Nietzsche is dead - God
This shows both a deplorable lack of compassion and also a deplorable ignorance of how the 'game' (both evolution and society) actually work.
Before getting all technical on you, though, consider this: by your own theory, if I pass you on the street and stab you to death because I think you're a jerk, then you don't deserve to pass on your genes.
I'd be careful advertising that theory, if I were you; it rather seems to be tempting fate in unwise ways.
As to a few technical details: even if evolution worked in the absurdly simplistic dog-eat-dog way you claim, that still doesn't mean that's how the game of life works for us humans... we are social animals, and as such we have societies, which have rules and laws and interactions, and in better cases, compassion is part of all this.
"Survival of the fittest" in a "kill or be killed" sense is not, and never has been, the primary determiner in any social species, let alone humans. Where's that ultra-violence in the social life of bees, ants, termites? There's a certain amount of intra-specific violence in social species such as wolves, horses, and chimpanzees, but never as a daily bloodbath.
Back to evolution as such: death of less-fit individuals does function as a form of negative feedback on the gene pool, but it is nowhere near as efficient a means of evolution as is the positive feedback that comes from sexual selection, which is part of why so very many species have sexes...even plants have male and female. It has huge evolutionary advantages, and it has NOTHING to do with duelling to the death.
And in social species, evolutionary fitness has a great deal to do with interactions with other members of the species...which is why compassion evolved...and why you seem to the rest of us to be less evolutionarily fit, not more, by expressing such an annoying attitude towards your fellow species members.
Any time someone tosses out this kind of hostile "evolution justifies vicious competition to the death...too bad for you" crap, you can be 100% sure that that person has never studied evolution.
Lastly, regardless of how evolution works in the jungle, we like to modify the process in our gardens. I don't know about you, but I have a cultivated garden in my back yard, not a deadly jungle, and that's how I like it. I recommend we all nurture people in the same way...they grow better.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
I won't speak of the other industries, but one industry you clearly know nothing about is healthcare.
Most countries focus their healthcare on preventative medicine. There is a reason the US has to have the most high-tech and expensive medical system; because there is no decent control of preventable diseases and injuries.
Many cases coming into the ER, and they pay a lot more than 40 USD my friend, are there because they were perfectly preventable cases that went on for too long because healthcare was not affordable in a non-emergent medical system.
Before you make unintelligent and uninformed pronouncements about how good the free-market capitalism is good for health care come work in healthcare and see the real cost.
When it comes to healthcare the vast majority of Americans are not served well by the free market.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
This ratio you talk about, it can not be true. Before today, by "karma" has been "good" and better. But yet make some comment that is not "kiss-ass-linux socialist crap" and as Ermil says, "BAM" the offtopic / flamebait. Quicker than snot on a hot day. Tell me it's "random" and then please sign over your house and car, your bridge is waiting in Brookland
On the other hand, no one said this was a "free" forum. So it is to be expected that VA Software would use the strong arm of the enter key to blacklist and smite those with alturante opinions. It's a free country, after all, and nobody makes people come to Slashdot.
The story is always the same, it is just the technologies that differ.
The telephone put the telegraph operator and telegraph messenger out of business.
The airplane and automobile ruined the passenger train business.
The train put the pony express out of business.
The computer put an army of bookkeepers out of business.
Yes, each of these technologies represented an increase in efficiency and each of them at least initially was a costly enough investment so that it cost too much for the little guy to get involved in so it helped the rich-get-richer. But life is that way, you need to keep moving or, you will get run over. Several times in my life I've had things change and I've found my world terribly different. I have been automated out of a job and I've seen a company fail to change and watched helplessly as they faded into oblivion.
The lessons I've learned is that you have to accept and adapt to change. Nobody said you have to like it. I do think though that it helps if you don't fight it. Not all change is good but the normal reason to change something is to make it better therefore most change is good. It just doesn't feel that way all the time.
My dad got a quote from our family dentist for a couple of crowns and it was like $4000. Many of his friends had been to Mexico for dental work and urged him to do the same. He went there, and the same work ended up costing like $1500 or something -- a dramatic price difference. Other than the relatively cramped offices, Dad said it was just like the dentist in the US -- same level of infection control, the treatments were the same, etc.
I think reality of medical care in the US is that outside of the realm of exotic disease treatment (oncology, hemotology, rheumatology, immunology, cardiology), your run of the mill medical care in most developed and many developing countries is about as good as it is here.
Also, I think that US doctors (dentists and other oral pros included) run the largest, best-financed protection scheme anywhere. You can't get most lab tests or medicines without seeing a doctor, who often has nothing to do with the lab work or the medicine.
Most of this could be done by a nurse or even self-done with the use of intelligent computer diagnoses, but these cost-saving advances are routinely blocked by doctors when they're not busy blocking liability or taking kickbacks from the pharmaceutical industry.
Only $350? That must be for just one person. For a family of 4, it's more like $1000/month, which is more than our mortgage payment. People with insurance through work often don't have a clue as to how much they and their employer are paying for it. What irks me is that you can be paying this money year after year with minimal claims, then lose everything because you're injured while being unemployed for a few months.
Employment?? What are you, one of "those Democrats"? Stop complaining. There's PLENTY of people all over the world who would LOVE to take that job at Wal-Mart, that you are too proud/selfish to accept. Liberals are SUCH hypocrates.
Or.. shave your beard, get a bow-tie, and simply become a landlord, or an investor. You don't NEED manufacturing to participate in the New Economy.
You don't see anyone "outsourcing" CEO's, investors or landlords do you? The reason THEY are successful -- and you are not -- is because of your outdated ideals.
Government should be run like a business... into bankruptcy. Just make sure you have a golden parachute, so you are sufficently mobile. Mobility is very important in the New Economy. Just ask the management of Levis, who had a very nice announcement last week.
The parent probably wasn't as concerned with space as much as required resources. But aside from trying to figure out how you'd feed, cloth, house, and provide drinking water to 6 billion people in Texas...would you really want to live there? I mean, really, Texas is pretty obnoxious with just 10 million, let alone 6000 million!
And back the main point (this issue is apparently pretty emotional) - what's a reasonable upper population goal for the US? If 500 million in 50 years seems reasonable to many - does 4 billion in 200 years still sound good?
Don't know about you, but personally I enjoy having trails to hike on within five minutes of my home. In many more populated parts of the US, you'd have to drive 60-120 minutes to get to a similar quiet and natural surrounding. And that's at 250 million - not 500...
I've just looked at your recent posts. Only one was moderated greater than +2, and several were modded down. You don't gain karma just by posting, you get it by having your posts modded up (excluding funny mods, sad to say, as I appreciate a good laugh as much as a good insight), having stories accepted, and the like. If your karma is marginal (i.e. good or better by just a few points) and you get modded down, the impact is more significant.
I just don't buy your argument about kiss-ass-linux socialist crap because I see many opinions that do not fit that mold modded to +5 daily.
As for the randomness of moderation assignment, I just assumed it was delegated randomly to high-karma users but perhaps it is not random. Perhaps it is based on karma. Perhaps it's round-robin with frequency determined by karma (I usually get it once or twice a month) but it's not some elite gift of the maji to a cabal of vicous troglodytes as you seem to imply. At any rate, a look at the slashcode just settle that easily.
If your karma is poor you will not get mod access. Simple as that. (Come to think of it, by participating in this OT thread, we are both endangering our prospects at near-future moderator access by inviting -1 mods.) Spending your time railing against the unfairness of the system just pushes your karma down more.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
We have the skills to take specs and create programs out of bits and bytes that run the world. We create something out of nothing.
A year ago, I realized that I was slowly programming myself out of a job. The systems that we were writing were getting more and more automated, and perhaps in another 8 months from today, there will not need to be a need for me there, because some code jockey can jump into the well documented systems and just maintain it.
So I started to put my skills to use. Today I have two software products that I sell using the same tools and languages that I use at my regular job. With Google AdWords, Freshmeat, Hotscripts, I paid a little money (couple hundred or so a month) to advertise my small and simple software products.
Bottom line? After a year, I have now equalled my salary at my everyday job, so a layoff at this time will not hurt me too much (except for the medical).
I don't like to hear the programmer whiners that say that they can't find a job, and yet they are highly qualified! America thrives off small business. Start one!! If you spend 3 hours a day looking for a job, spend the other 7 also figuring out how you can make money on your own! Its not that hard, use your connections. Fix your friends computers for a fee, get involved with small businesses in your area and sell your services to setup networks, write programs, recommend and implement Open Source (or commercial) software solutions. It's slow to start at first, but after a while, you will be busy and starting to have scheduling conflicts :-)
Granted not everyone is an entrepreneur, but as the rules of the economy change so that it naturally gets worse for working stiffs like us, then being more entreprenueral and creative is going to be forced upon a lot of us.
We are going to have to think with our heads, move to smaller homes, have more reasonable mortgages. In some neighborhoods, we might not need that car (good anyway, most of us programmers are fat and lazy). And heaven forbid... buy less toys and stuff. Lots of little things are going to have to change.
I know it's hard to mentally pick up yourself after getting laid off from that perfect job. For a secretary, middle manager, construction worker or other type of job -- I have sympathy and help -- for programmers... starve until you come to your senses!
Newsfollow.com
My definition of zero-sum is that resources are limited, and any allocation of a subset of those resources come at a detriment to others who are not able to get said resources allocated to them - this creates the relative value of "wealthy" things such as capital and physical resources.
What about the inflation that would occur if the exponential and viral growth of wealth were to continue unabated throughout the world?
The profit margins that drive efficiency and expansion/scale in the capitalist system are by nature designed to uphold and propel the incongruous nature of the distribution of wealth. The only way you create new wealth is by creating more rich/poor relationships. Obviously, that's how this stuff works - if everyone had it, it wouldn't be worth anything.
Your example of paying your neighbor's kid to cut your lawn is interesting, but, in my opinion, a bit flawed. You may be converting his labor into capital for him, but what do you get? You get a service. That's not wealth. That's just a nice lawn. Although it seems like you have set in motion a sequence of events that's sure to create abundant wealth from nowhere, in reality you merely transferred your capital to him, at your loss, since you did not receive any monetary return on your investment. That's what I mean by zero-sum.
As for the plasma screens and Angola - the capital poured into those ventures is only done so with the prospect of capital gains - again, the profit margin must rear its ugly head, and someone is going to get the shorter end of the stick.
I'm not saying that the amount of money in the world is constant - I'm saying that in order for you to grab a larger piece, you ensure the inequity of the distribution throughout the population.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
(minus whatever government believes it is entitled to)
I find it troubling that you feel the goverment is a seperate entity from the people.
Pray tell, how did you reach that conclusion?
I live in a giant bucket.
Yes, it's obvious that the amount of invested and returned capital in the world is growing - that's what central banks do. I'm aware of this.
All I'm saying is that in every transaction, someone is out to make a monetary profit, and in order for you to grab a "larger piece of the pie", you are ensuring the inequity of the distribution of total wealth among the populace.
How can you argue with this? It's obvious that if everyone wants a bigger piece, someone is goign to get dicked. Not everyone can be as wealthy as they want while the global monetary fund keeps pumping out capital - that leads to rapid inflation and devalued currency.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm impressed. I'm not surprised that he doesn't have a bunch of pat answers- they don't exist within that context. But I'm impressed that he's asking the right questions, even if there aren't convenient answers.
There's no such thing as 'feed the world' under capitalism, or any social benefit from efficiency or technology: if you could generate a world-day of foodstuffs for 29 cents with a wonderful machine, capitalism is about seeing who gets to hoard as much money as possible from that situation, and politics is about controlling as many people as possible by exerting power over that cornucopia. The bounty won't feed anyone if you don't let them have it. If you have enough power to withhold that bounty, you can control the people you're depriving. That gives you more power, and you win.
This is not really very complicated or mysterious.
I guess it IS pretty cynical, but open your eyes.
The whole concept of making people better competers by giving them free software or whatever is within the context of raw capitalism- the idea is that they are then to beat up on the others who don't take advantage of these things. That's fine for the vicious and the tough and scrappy, but they would have won anyway with or without the tools- in capitalism it's not about the tools or even about the standard of living and least of all about 'wealth', it's about WHO you are as a personality. It's a structure decreeing certain social behavior. The idea is that it's less prone to being abused than a more nurturing social structure, because people will take advantage of anything nurturing. That may be true. People seem to take advantage of capitalism too, though. Pick your poison.
My own experience speaks to this whole situation. So you should make software to empower people? Andy, I've been doing that, in my field. I write CD mastering software- in some areas it is genuinely cutting-edge. I have a revolutionary approach to wordlength reduction and the redistribution of quantization error. I have various tone shaping adjustments that don't appear anywhere else. I've been GPLing this stuff for years now, for just the motivations you describe.
I'm starving and poor and have started dating a woman I cherish who has a 3-year-old kid and you know what, I'm sick of flushing my work. I'm sick of trying to be benevolent and being taken as useless because of my lack of greed. Nothing is going to make me a hardcore capitalist, but as far as this audio-domain program, I'm less and less motivated to help people have it for nothing. I'm not spending my own money to port it to more recent architectures, I'm not spending time and effort setting it up with a help system- by now I'm of a mind to still put it out, GPLed, make no fuss about that, but use this tool for ME and try to, basically, compete against anyone who might have picked it up but doesn't have the expertise with it. That, or not put it out at all- or put out only the source, maybe?
Capitalism means even I get beat down to the point where I can't stand trying to be benevolent or altruistic anymore. I'm unusually capable of being that, but it seems to be not even helping. The last time I talked with a GPLed audio project, they didn't even know what dither was or how it worked. We're sitting around trying to make tractors out of cabbage. It gets old.
I think as long as the context is free-market capitalism, society will be hopeless. There's no answer within the system. I'd prefer to ditch the raw capitalism. Something more like partly-cooked capitalism would suit me. Somehow manage some system where somebody does a reasonably okay job of finding people and projects that do benefit society and quality of life, and bankroll the buggers.
What's so wrong with that? That's just what happens right now, except it's Ken Lay of Enron who gets bankrolled and rew
Sounds like a good idea for an O'Reilly Book: Running a Business in a Nutshell.
Why not make computing systems inefficient... that way companies would need to hire employees just to make the software work. For every Linux system that requires one or two system administrators, you could have an Acme setup with 10 servers that requires 20 system administrators. At least that's what I'm hoping for with a certain American software company... :)
Just wanted to know...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
"Computers are the problem. Computers are the solution."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I'm thinking not so much as physical wealth, but the more intangible sort. In an era where physical resources are becoming more scarce, intangbile ones are becoming more important. Look at the fights the intellectual property holders (RIAA, MPAA, etc...) are putting up. And, increasingly, individuals are losing their intangible property rights.
I suggest that the periods of history where great amounts of wealth creation took place were those during which individual property rights were extended to the formerly disenfranchised.
No, wealth has been transferred. A consumable item (HINT: "CONSUME") has been bought. It may later be sold, in exchange for ANOTHER transfer of wealth/capital.
Do you see what I'm getting at here?
The amount of investment capital in the world is not fixed, but the very nature of a capitalistic system dictates the the wealthy are diametrically opposed from the poor - hence my statement that economics is basically a zero-sum game of people trying to take a finite resource from each other.
The key is that it's FINITE, not "FIXED".
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Because average people are the mass of this nation.. a wealth creating population is a wealth creating nation. Money needs to circulate.. money is the lifeblood of a nation.
The average person circulates most of his paycheck and maybe sets back a few bucks for a rainy day.
A wealth hoarding population creates a lack of wealth a creation of classes and ultimately a failure of the system.
It's the rich that are hording the wealth.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
What is this guy talking about? The Iraq war has done more to create jobs than any other economic policy this administration has enacted. It's been a huge employer.
It'll also be huge for Iraq.
The only guys the way hurts is the scummy fellows that lent Iraq $200Billion for Saddam's war machine. Do you think they're going to get that money back? That regime is gone, bankrupt, kaput. That's why they didn't want the war.... Who were they?... Fill in the blanks.
Also, look around you. Are you in America? This place is way more well off than 20 years ago.
Most of the rest of the world is leftis socialist economic model. Sure, they distribute wealth better, only problem is, they don't know how to create it.
India has 1 Billion people. Avg. salary is $450/year. Socialism is great!
---
Oh, and on computers and efficiency. Washington D.C. had a mayor back in the 80's that declared.... We don't need computers, we'll just hire more people. He ran the admin down the tubes, they had to give into a control board for being so backwards. The city's administration is the laughing stock with long lines (a al Soviet Russia).
Free market? It is theoretically supposed to work, but what happens when companies lobby unto the Government to raise artificial barriers to protect their companies? How's that free market?
You could always get a job at Diebold writing software for election machines, making sure Bush loses in 2004. Just make sure that you put in more fraudulent votes for the opponent than they put in for Bush.
Try thinking about that the next time you buy your jeans that were Hecho En Mexico for 25c a day.
Much of the world IS agrarian - and countries like the US have governments subsidize the farms as to ensure they make a profit year after year, so that the producers don't get dicked over. Does this not seem like an important aspect of growing a modern country?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Please re-read my post.
I'm not saying that the amount of wealth/capital in the world is FIXED. I'm saying it's limited/finite/scarce/whatever.
Sure, the bank may loan out money to you, but it's up to you to make sure you pay them back, with interest. I assure you wealth isn't being created fast enough for everyone to pay it back without any problems. If that were true, well, we wouldn't really need a silly thing like the Federal Reserve, would we? Not EVERYONE can make money - those who default on loans - well they fucked up somewhere, and the money they were unable to repay got slammed into the system for further distribution. Out of their hands, into someone else's. That's all I'm saying.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
What exactly do you mean by this?? Everyone I know who has worked hard...valued an education, and was motivated, has done just fine. If you're not motivated (to excel no matter your life circumstances), if you're lazy, and sadly, if nature didn't give you a decent mental capacity...no you're not going to succeed and become comfortable or wealthy....but, unless you are socialistic and think everyone should have the same despite their abilities or drive, you will always have the 'HAVES' and the 'HAVE NOTS'. I work for me...my family and people who are close to me...but, life is tough, and no one is 'owed' anything by this world. Its a simple time honored concept
My $0.02...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think I know what the real problem is. But before we get to that let's talk about what the problem is not.
The problem is not captialism, not Western Culture, not HMOs, not PPOs, not private health care, not the military, not global warming, and not Microsoft.
The problem is that slashdot readers in general watch too much Star Trek
Do you remember the episode where the people from the past (20th century) show up on the Enterprise? (I think they were dethawed or something, but I don't remember exactly. It doesn't matter for this discussion anyway). Remember the cowboy-ish guy, who wants to know where his land is, where his money is, who works for him, etc. And Picard gives him the lecture about how "we're past all that now" and "it's about bettering yourself, etc.", essentially saying, "Stop being a greedy bastard."
The problem is that people really believe that can happen. You'd think after 10,000 years of recorded history people would figure it out, but then you would underestimate hope (that attribute the Architect aptly described as simultaneously the source of greatest strength and greatest weakness, but I digress).
Systems such as socialism/liberalism/etc. are all predicated on the belief that people will generally lookout for the good of the common man. And the proponents of these systems constantly tell everyone else that the reason they're poo-pooing these systems is because everyone is a bunch a greedy bastards. Well, I have news for you, YOUR ALL GREEDY BASTARDS YOURSELVES.
Face it, humans seek after their own interests first. You do it every day. Sure you go into work and bitch and moan about how Bush is screwing over the world and the captialist bastards are ruining your life and you're being held down by The Man, etc, etc. Then you drive home and you cut off the person you're pissed at on the Freeway. You gossip about your co-worker who's doing a better job than you, you keep the $20 bill you found in the bathroom at the movies, you steal towels from the hotel, you eat a dozen grapes at the grocery store you never pay for. Tomorrow you'll lie to your boss about why the report isn't done. You'll spend an hour surfing instead of writing code. And then you'll go home and bitch about how braces cost $3000 and how you can't afford it, all while sitting on your couch watching Monday Night Football on your big screen TV. I know you're selfish. And I am too.
Socialism puts all the power into the hands of a few good liars who are able to convince the masses that they will look out for their good. Simply bull. They'll be the same selfish, greedy, bastards you will be, but now they have permission to screw over more people.
Free-market captialism is the only system that can handle the selfishness of humanity in a way that gives the most people the most opportunity. Sure, capitalism will make a few people very rich this year. But you know what? Those people may be the very poor next year. And the very poor this year might be the very rich next year. Every day is a new opportunity. You're held back only by your own ambition (or lack thereof).
Do some people need an extra hand in life? Sure. And that's what charities are all about. Groups who get together specifically because they care about the interests of others. So give to charities. Or start one. But face it, at the end of the day, we're all selfish greedy bastards looking out for ourselves. No one owes you anything. Now get out of your holodeck and readjust your worldview.
I may have used it a bit wrongly, but you totally missed the mark. Zero-sum does NOT mean that the amount of money in the world stays constant.
It merely means that in when money is lost somewhere, it is gained elsewhere. And vice versa.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Thank you for that eloquently presented anecdote.
I wonder if I could find someone in Taiwan who got a bad treatment from a dentist... then I could go around spouting off about how Taiwan's medical industry is in the dark ages and is complete crap.
Again, thank you for sharing.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
>How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?
It isn't that straight-forward; it is hard to determine who is responsible for creating wealth.
Let's assume that someone is willing to pay $15 for a widget, and it costs $5 to make it. Since the widget is worth more than it costs to make, this represents $10 of wealth.
If the price of the widget is $15, then the buyer didn't get any of this wealth, they paid exactly what it was worth. If the price of the widget is $5, then the seller doesn't make any profit and all the wealth goes to the buyer. Any price in between splits this wealth.
I think our society, or at least our journalists, is biased to only counting wealth that shows up in the bank accounts of sellers. Sure wealth is created when sellers figure out ways to lower the cost of production, create new items, or figure out how to charge more money; but we shouldn't forget that getting a bargain also creates wealth. Just remember that the wealth isn't created until the item is sold, and that transaction, that requires both a buyer and seller, is what creates wealth.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
A number of people have already eloquently tackled the main flaw of this article, which is that while technology may decrease the number of jobs in an individual case or even in a particular industry, overall technology increases the number of jobs in the economy and improves a society's standard of living. [Paul Krugman also makes this argument quite well, but I haven't been able to find the article]
There is one small caveat to this however. Typically the jobs lost to innovations in technology are unskilled or vocational jobs--it isn't the managers who get the boot, but the guy who used to count and collate by hand, or the girl who used to weld on car doors by hand. You can't always assume that people who have been doing the same job all their lives are going to be able to just pick up and easily find work in some other industry.
While we shouldn't discourage innovation, we should be sensitive to take care of the individuals who get screwed in the short-run because of it. Job training programs for people who have been laid off are one way to do that.
We do print more money all of the time, I think it is called increasing the money supply or liquiditiy or something like that. In any event wealth is created, the velocity of money can mean that the same dollar goes through many hands. Taxes, regulation, litigation, and idle wealth are the things that hold back an economy.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
I am intrigued by your definition of ethics and morals as they pertain to business. What are they exactly? Can you elaborate on your business method of "a community of people working together". Does this mean all people in the community are compensated for their work equally? Or are they paid according to merit/effort/output etc? The former is communism and the later is capitalism IMHO. I'll take the latter thanks.
I think that business has been unfairly demonised in the wake of the U.S. downturn. There seems to be this mindset among some that businesses are somehow evil and are actively pursuing policies to hurt citizens. What a load of nonsense! If they did adopt said policies, they wouldn't have any customers to supply! I think the people responsible for the Enron/Worldcom debacles etc etc scandals should go to jail, for sure. They committed acts of fraud, after all. But let other businesses get on with it! The only way the world economy will improve is for free enterprises to get profitable and efficient. Everybody benefits from this, as their products are cheaper and they will tend to actually employ more people as their business expands.
As for the offshore thing, why shouldn't those businesses pursue a cheaper way of doing business? It's not illegal, heck, it's not even immoral! If you dislike these practices so much, boycott these companies, buy shares in them and vote against the board at the next shareholder meeting, etc. In other words, act in your own self interest. If a company works out that they are less profitable as a result, then they'll most likely stop doing it. Don't forget also that citizens of those countries who get the outsourcing contracts improve their standard of living.
My wife just got back from Chile with a beautiful crown. Funny, I think the post was made in the US, just didn't have the 5000% BlueCross surcharge.
Capitalism is based entirely on value built by the virtue of economic inequity.
Shifting this from a national level to an international level by using terms like the gross national product is misleading. What do you think the GNP represents? It represents the WEALTH that a country holds, right?
It's not because of a "mind virus" that some countries have huge and some have abysmal GNPs. It's the nature of capitalism. Every country in the world having an equal and growing GNP is analogous to every person in this country making the same income that grows at the same rate.
It will never end up that way, and if it does, you've turned into a socialist/capitalist society.
Yeesh.
Yes, wealth is created, yes, there is more capital.
No, zero-sum does not mean "fixed, unwavering, and spread-ever-so-thin-as-time-progresses".
Get over your mind virus technobabble, and step into the real world where the wealthy are wealthy, and the poor are poor. That's how it pans out.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The problems with present economic models is GIGO. That and how closely the model actually fits reality. GDP and GNP both have issues, from missing to inaccurate numbers.
Once you are able to provide for yourself and your family, IMO, the continued creation of wealth is destructive. Of course this flies in the face of the new mantra of our society which conditions us to demand and consumer more.
Somewhere along the way though, we have become the richest nation in the world, as well as the most unhappy, unsatisfied people on the planet. We are no longer working to solve problems and make life better. We are hamsters running around on a wheel.
What we should be asking ourselves is, "What can we do to be happier and more satisfied that has nothing to do with material gain?" What dynamics are at play around us which are keeping us from being able to appreciate simplicity? Why are more and more people avoiding the contemplation of abstraction, or dismissing the importance of planning ahead? How can we have so much, yet feel so inadequate?
Software development can shed some light into these issues when you examine how the role of software has changed. In the early days, the role of software as a tool to solve problems was paramount. The best products of their genre would be recognized as the best tools. Now the use of software is more a device to maintain the status quo than it is to achieve a certain level of productivity.
Another analogy can be made in examining the evolution of the drug industry. Drugs used to "cure" things, now they "treat conditions". The same thing with software. We tolerate inefficient systems because they create dependencies upon which we rely. We've turned from workers to parasites. Instead of completing transactions, we are buying and selling subscriptions.
How actually does more wealth creation, or more equitable distribution of wealth ultimately make anyone happier? The value of those ideals is propagated by a corrupt system in which people are judged not by their actions and contributions, but instead their acquired resources.
Before you speculate how to solve the problem, you might want to re-examine whether or not you've actually identified the problem.
Agreed. The so called "middle classes" of a nation are the engine room of the economy. They are the largest in number in most democratic/market economy nations and will therefore spend the most on goods and services. They also often carry the largest tax burden. Added to that, they also often run small businesses, employ people and add significantly to the wealth of a country. If they are given an incentive to invest (or at least not a disincentive) then they help actually make the economy grow.
Did you know that working a full year at minimum wage will leave you 30% below the poverty limit?
There are varying degrees of poverty of course, but poverty is still poverty. So a $3 minimum wage versus a $5 minimum wage is essentially irrelevant to the worker. Both really suck. But to the business owner it's huge.
Do you know what happens when the minimum wage is increased? Companies that rely on low cost workers cut some loose (now you have people with $0/hr), and the remaining workers have to do more work for their modest increase in pay.
Technology is the only thing that will help get people out of the minimum wage trenches. When someone perfects the McD's burger fabrication machine, that will put a bunch of minimum wage earners out of work. Some of them will go get some (more) education, and perhaps get work for much better pay.
The only way out of poverty is education and opportunity. Minimum wage jobs are a dead end.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
If we're going to assign the definition of "value" to willy-nilly, arbitrary, personal, subjective constructs - well then, I think this pile of shit here is really valuable. Would you like to buy it from me?
You're not talking about profits, wealth, or capital. You're talking about perceived personal value, which has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. I may think blue swim trunks are the absolutely coolest thing in the world, and would pay $100 for them, but chances are some guy in the third world isn't going to give half a rat's ass, and wouldn't pay a penny for them. He'd rather buy a loaf of bread. But I already have a loaf of bread, and I would rather have the swim trunks. Who's right? It's subjective, and it's not wealth.
If your definition of "wealth" does not encompass capital and money, then why exactly are you bringing it into this discussion? Can I use my precious blue swim trunks as an economic metric too?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It always amazes me that supposedly intelligent people feel that by virtue of living and working in an economic system, they are suddenly experts on how that economic system works and what can be done to "fix" it. I can tell you I have driven over hundreds, perhaps even thousands of bridges in my time and I can tell you with all humility aside, that fact does not make me an engineer. There is no way any of you would want to trust your life on a bridge of my design.
Hopefully, no one will read this guy's blog. And if they do, hopefully they will realize they are indeed stupider for the experience. Pick his stuff apart and you realize it's more pie-in-the-sky feel good crap:
Financial scandals yes as they create distrust in our capital market. Wars create uncertainty so sure, war not good. Tax cuts? Even screwed up Keynsians believe that in down times, governments should run deficits. Other more rational schools of thought believe that fiscal policy is always a bust. Stagnation? Are we talking stagnant water, stagnant love life, stagnant hard-drive? Yeah, stuff sitting still does not create much motion, brilliant.
Pure, unadulterated crap. Does this guy really think that technology that reduces the cost of production does not help out everyone? Were we not all made better by Edison creating the lightbulb? Would we all not be the worse off if we were still reading by gas lamp? Innovation takes risk capital. The rewards must be great to attract someone to put that money at risk. In the end, one person may be a millionaire but we are all left better off.
I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work
Work is meant to be a means to an end not an end in and of itself. It has been this way since the beginning of time. You don't do yard work just to work. You do it so your yard looks nice and perhaps get off your ass and away from your computer.
I assume he is trying to make a point here, I just don't know what the hell it is.
This is known in other circles as socialism. You have any other ways you would like to flog that dead horse? They need you in the Howard Dean campaign.
As for your North Korea example, you seem to be getting things confused again. The number of truly non-capitalist countries in the world is very small, almost vanishingly so.
If you want to see just how free Africa is economically, look here.
It's pretty obvious that Africa mostly economically unfree. If you study the history of Africa, you'll find that most countries became socialist states during decolonialization in the 1960's.
Deal with exploiters in power by undercutting them, as Free Software does with the proprietary giants. Pharma companies will have a hard time if every Deadhead has the diabetes-cure microbe culture, etc....
Deal with the whiners by buying them off. The Berkeleyite diabetic needn't be preaching to Congress about their pathetic plight if they're cured and at home perfecting a cheaper, cleaner waste heat/electricity converter.
The emotional ones on either side will still cause a ruckus; we'll laugh at the White Wringers going purple over the happy hedonists, and weep at the RIAA^2 pogroms as the heavy pharma monoliths crash, countered by a samizdat of the descendants of meth labs in vans. We'll giggle at the tiresome leftie speechifiers bereft of an audience because the cookout started, and wince at having to police the ones who misuse the mobile labs for terror. Love it or hate it, we suffer with our delusion until we get bored and drop it (buddhism meets cognitive therapy on a grand scale, hated by the right and the left). History will still convulse, and brighten in the long run. The Vatican's fist cowed swaths of nations 400 years ago, but ultimately they did not age gracefully, whereas Galileo's work did, even if he was a pain in the ass personally.
Now back to work on that kitchen-table nanomachine fab
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
Every single one of his suggestions leads to more efficient processes or products. That in turn leads to less workers needed per task/job. Simply by sharing his ideas and concerns with us he has already contributed to the problem.
There is no solution unless we adopt a DUNE like anti-technology society and re-embrace slavery. Mmmmm slavegirls........
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
One guy says war is the only way to fix things.
Thats utter rubbish. War is the only way to fix things *in this current system*, which isn't capitalisim, but more a pseudo capitalisim. If this system were to work right, we'd need a stronger degrading of moneyvalue than inflation offers.
The way it is now, all goods if not sold lose value, only money increases in amount more than it loses by inflation. That's what has to be _corrected_. Not changed or overthrown completely, but corrected.
Then further on:
Productivity has something like quadrupled in the last 100 years. Actually my very job is to increase productivity by an average of 20% in the information shifting business - I do lot's of data migration automation and stuff. While my job is just to find methods to cope with the plain pointless information overload (lucky me it's there) there is one thing that has to be done to cope with massively increased productivity:
Robot taxes. That's right: Robots paying taxes.
The other one is a society problem: We need to grasp the value of services and custom craftsmanship again. Which actually *does* have a real value. Actually OSS is all about moving Software development away from a 'childs game' to engineering to real solid traditional craftmanship. Just like the plumber that fixes your pipes when they've rotted after 20 years of use. You could do it yourself, but you pay the expierienced guy 'cause he does it faster and you've got less fuss. And Pipes and Putty are the least you pay for. Usually.
World Problem Solution (TM), Bottom Line:
1.) Turbine Tax and improved Money Rot for money just lying at the bank and not fed back into he money cycle. Yes folks, we've got to much of it and to few are getting more and more just by leaving the most universal good on the shelf. That is *NOT* the concept of capitalisim. Trust me.
2.) Robot Taxes. Robots paying taxes. It's really that simple. Make that Microtaxes, if that makes you feel better. BTW: Count computers doing automated tasks (and not acting as books or TVs or stuff) as robots.
3.) Society shifting to a 98% service orientation. And a 98% self-employed society, where required tasks can be dealt with in a flexible manner.
At least Germany still has a long way to go in both of these.
As I said: My 2 Eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think it is painfully obvious, but I will say it anyway:
If you are in a position where you have to take a menial job, then you need to revisit your skill set.
The same situation happened during the 1970s when the Japanese auto industry came into the American market with better quality automobiles. The industry downsized and new techniques (robots) entered the marketplace to allow manufacturers to build cars more efficiently. The shakeout occurred; if you weren't willing to learn new skills, your days were numbered.
Its the same situation now. New jobs will present themselves as old methods are revealed to be less efficient. People need to get over the idea that they will hold the same job for 20 years, and start learning to enhance their skill sets to address new trends.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I totally agree. The article, and most of the subsequent postings, are junk economics. It's poor quality stuff.
You have some reasonably insightful comments weighed down with obvious bias (and FUD slinging) against the current administration.
"major Third World petrolium producer"? If we were interested in scooping up major producers, we'd be far better off getting Kuwait (as Iraq did in 1990).
Only 10% of Iraq's oil fields have been developed. They have the third largest (estimated) reserves in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada, respectively), but are only producing a fraction of what they could be.
The oil argument for why US went to Iraq (invaded, in your terms) is bunk.
And multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy? Please back that argument up. Considering the state of Iraqi oil development, it would take vast investments by American oil companies to even begin to project multi-hundred billion dollar paybacks.
You're deluded, and uneducated when it comes to this topic. You are passing around the liberal/anti-Bush arguments freely, and it only serves to make the rest of your arguments seem less significant.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
This is not the Republican economy at work, this is the US stock market, and all its investors, at work.
Investors (made up of liberals and conservatives) have increasingly become focused on short term gains. They punish companies for turning in less than improved results for quarterly earnings per share. So in response to this, publicly traded companies focus on the next quarter. They make really bad long-term decisions to satisfy immediate numeric goals.
This was as completely true during Clinton's 8 years as it is during Bush's 3 years.
If you want to blame anyone, blame all investors for their short-term demands, and blame all corporate execs for their lack of backbone in standing up for solid long-term growth.
And while you're at it, blame the lawyers who'll happily take on shareholder suits on a whim.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Ok, time to poke some holes in this article.
/. found this article, searched for "open source" and decided to post it without reading the content. Technology is to a large extent why we are here today. Tech caused people to get lazy and overlook basic fundamentals. The AOL/Time Warner merger is a classic example. So far as a solution to unemployment, who knows but free software and PDAs should be the least of your conerns. Innovation, motivation and education should come first.
Write free software for individual industries
I have not heard anyone lose a job because their company could not afford the necessary software to run their business.
Make devices more responsive and easy to customize
More technology is not always better. Not everyone needs a PDA just like not everyone needs an organizer from franklin covey. People should be concerned with improving organization and it may or may not come in the form of a PDA. If you were to take a poll of unemployeed people for those that use PDA's vs those that do not use PDA's then you would probably find that those with PDA's are more likely to keep their job - the result would mean successful people like to use PDAs, not that PDA's drive success.
Create a truly public key infrastructure
Again - I have not heard anyone lose a job because they could not afford to pay their phone bill or buy a plane ticket.
Finally - technology can help but there are more important issue. My guess is
I didn't mean to imply that should be the case, but seeing how our politicians treat our hard-earned money like it's their own, this isn't really an inaccurate statement.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Last time I checked, practically everything that was available in both US and Mexico was much cheaper in Mexico.
Assuming equal treatment (which can reasonably be assumed for many cases), the treatment will be cheaper in developing countries than in the US.
Now ask yourself this: which person is more likely to be able to afford (either out of pocket, or via insurance) that same work?
With my limited dental plan, I'd get $1500 of that $4000 covered. So I would pay $2500. Does the Mexican resident have insurance that would cover their cost (partially or fully)? And if not, do they have the $1500?
Take your US earned money and spent it in Mexico and you sure as hell will get more for your money. And amusingly, you'll do it at the expense of the American worker.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
This is a good, practical suggestion.
Education is the root of all development. Lack of education is the primary force that holds people back. You know the old saying, "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day... teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever".
If we're wanting to stop being completely self-centered and instead be altruistic, we should be giving some spare time to educate others.
Think about people (adults) who cannot read. They have no chance of landing any decent job (with a promotion path). Some people, like my mom for example (who works for a US Rep), spends some of her spare time teaching adults to read. (Incidentally, it is that US Rep's office policy that everyone choose some social support activity outside of work).
So we with the technical knowledge could be helping our ignorant (technically) neighbors if we were really intrested in improving society.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Do you think the USA is some UNIQUE form of nation or world power? All empires fall but you think the one that replaces the US will be any better? And do you honestly think the US is so bad to begin with? Just what type of pampered college boybitch who's never had to experience real struggle and misery are you?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
We know that there are large numbers of synthetic estrogen-like chemicals in the water supply. We haven't detected them causing any problem, but there have been indications, and a quite minor effect could lead to population collapse.
What do you mean caused no problems? There have already been documented studies showing that fish and amphibians in various areas have much higher than normal levels of hermaphroditism and skewed sex ratios among apparently healthy animals. That such chemicals are affecting ecosystems is already documented. It may not have caused major ecosystem damage, but it is clearly affecting things already.
Oh, and there's the fact that for one chemical, atrazine, it affects people too - one plant that creates the stuff in Louisiana has guys coming down with prostrate cancer at 9 times the average rate.
Note that atrazine causes hermaphroditism in frogs at a level one-thirtieth the EPA's "safe level". And drinking water across the country - especially in the midwest - regularly reaches near or above that level during times of the year. If it can affect frogs that clearly, how might it's estrogen-mimicing properties affect the mental development of babies in the womb (which are physically and mentally shaped by hormone levels), or on the physiology of growing children who are more sensitive? (the ever-earlier first periods of girls?)
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Jobs produce income. Income can buy assets. Assets are something you own that produces income. When income from assets = expenses, you create wealth.
Creating jobs may create wealth, but most often only for the owner of the income producing asset of which the employees are a part.
-- $G
prescription prices are an offshoot of lobbyist control over drug-patent law. they have special provisions that keep competition out and thereby keep prices up.
it's essentially a government backed price fix. it's screwed precisely because it isn't free market.
that should be pretty obvious. just take a look at drug prices in canada and their drug-patent laws. having a government backed monopoly isn't free market. when the government listens to lobbyists, the 'free' part of the market gets removed and it's not a valid critique of the free market system to complain about it, it becomes only a valid critique of monopolistic businesses and corrupt politicians - which we already know are very bad for competition and consumers.
Do not give jobs to the pathetic guy who you feel sorry for. That is rewarding the weak.
I see why you didn't take too well to the whole Christian thing.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
I think the real issue is this: Technology makes processes efficient. Efficient processes require fewer people. Fewer people in processes means fewer people without jobs. Lack of a job causes a lot of problems.
But, in the end, don't we want a world where everything that *needs* to be done, get's done by a few people, and the rest of us can relax?
But how do we compensate people so that they can afford their lives if only 1% have jobs?
I think you brushed up against a very important point there. If you do happen to go down to Mexico and they screw up, you're fucked. In the U.S. however, you've hit the lottery. In the U.S. you could never have a nurse or a machine do certain diagnoses, not because it's a racket like you suggest, but because if it turns out wrong people are going to sue the doctor in charge for millions. That means that a highly trained specialist will take a close look at your test results, not some flunky. What all of you people are forgetting is the massive amounts of dollars that have to go towards malpractice insurance in the U.S. and how that affects our standards of care.
Not that I think all this that's a bad thing. It keeps docs on their toes and makes sure that you're not left holding the bag when the doc screws up. Don't underestimate the value of knowing that your kids will be taken care of if something freakish happens.
"I think the U.N. is going to find that the blame lies with all the Sudanese rap music that glamorizes genocide."
This is obviously overly idealist, and probably simplistic, but its good as a starting point in a discussion to see whats really needed, and what is frivolous. Thinking like this probably isnt an option for most people at or below the middle class, but for the upper class who pull in 6 or 7 digits a year, it makes sense to think about what all that money ultimately is going to go toward. Five cars? A huge mansion you could get lost in? To make more money?
The pursuit of wealth for the purpose of being wealthy is pointless.
All politicians are to blame, not just republicans. Can you really tell me that you believe there were no jobs shipped overseas or H1B's granted during the clinton presidency? Those guys only care about being elected and they know they can do it if they have enough cash, thus they cater to the CEOs and other rich people. The only difference between republicans and democrats is who they cater to in an effort to bring in the cash. Meanwhile, I finally found a job I enjoy doing and my chances of continuing in this field seem to be reduced on a daily basis.
"Let me be honest. I don't care about you, or anyone else."
Then I can understand why Church didn't work out for you.
All in all, I agree with the thesis that the best way to help someone out is to build companies, but I think it really has nothing to do with churches. According to Paul "if a man shall not work, neither shall he eat". But as far as not caring for others, Jesus taught to care for others, because God cares for us. So, if you don't follow Jesus, I can see why you might feel out-of-place at church.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Life is hard here in the US in 2003; open your eyes people! I know of children in this "land of opportunity" who are scraping by without even the benefit of a current generation game console!
What we need is a return to the hunter/gatherer economy. The ONLY economic system that has ever ensured full employment.
You can see just how bad off you really are at www.globalrichlist.com.
---
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
There is already a "wealth creation industry" (at least that's what they call themselves) - It's the nom-du-jour for insurance, banking, and brokerages. The complexities of the tax code have created loopholes that the financial service sector taps and manages with incredibly complex software. If that software were open source perhaps the small local banks could compete with the behemoths.
Way to completely lose all credibility.
There are many valid arguments for social responsibility, even simply the enlightened self interest in "A rising tide floats all boats." By bringing your god into it and effectively saying, "I act kindly because I was told to," you're saying you can't think of a rational reason. That you're only kept in check by hellfire and damnation as a punishment. I on the other hand, would like to think that I'd make a good neighbor because I, without being forced, want to be a good neighbor.
Yes, I'm aware I look intolerant, but at least I'm willing to tell you what nobody else will. If you bring up religion you appear uneducated. You make people classify you with creationists and other freaks.
repeal minimum wage laws. you can hire 2 people for the price of one. there, next problem...
Sorry only have a minute to reply. Well the freedom to make a profit thing has its sad consequences as we can see with all the gas gusling SUV's helping to raise the Global temperature. Here is an example of a general policy that hurts not only us, but our children and all the people around the world. The economic thing is the same sort of cultural thing. No one thinks that there sending work to another country effects their own community. Until everyone has done it and its too late. Well why should they care, they got there money. This sort of greed has happened before and Unions were the response. It is no wonder they are making a comeback. This is not communism this is enlightened self interest. If a company can represent a group of people who work the group of people who work also represent the company dont you think. Or do you think that Owernship is so sacrosanct that owner should be allow to do anything they please. All those off shore companies well many, mis treat workers, and pollute the envrionment . That is where a lot of the savings comes from. In this country we would not stand for that.
But rather than spend a little money on compliance (and possibly even save some money and increase productivity), businesses successfully pressured both the Federal and state governments to roll back environmental legislation or kill it outright. Needless to say, orders for our products ceased. For several years we thought next year we would break through, but then Bush castrated the EPA and finally the economy tanked.
I'm no longer interested in developing excellent anything unless someone pays me. My risk-tolerance is way down; all my altruistic feelings are gone. As for capitalism, I'd done that and, even though I voted for Bush, he was the worst thing that could have happened to my business; our package is now off the market.
When the next Democratic administration comes to office, and it will, I look forward to them cutting a new asshole for those businesses who lobbied so hard to curtail environmental legislation. Hell, I may get a $25,000/year government environmental enforcement job just so I can personally screw some of these dickwads; finally they'll meet a Democratic appointee who would rather screw them into environmental compliance than accept their kickbacks.
But for now the Bush administration views the sorry economic conditions as an excuse to further roll back environmental requirements. Soon it will be declared legal for businesses to sh** on your dining room table (it's already legal for them to sh** in your water and in your yard).
The remaining French declare war on those two organizations and send the French Foreign legion to the U.S. to retaliate. They infiltrate coffee shops throughout L.A. It becomes impossible for record-company execs to get a decent cup of coffee without a heaping helping of attitude.
The French Foreign Legion is manned by foreigners. If you want to inflict a lethal level of attitude, you must send French citizens.
Unable to understand why the waitstaff isn't nice to them anymore, the entire recording industry commits suicide en mass.
MPAA/RIAA personnel are cockroaches. And like cockroaches, its going to take more than hatred to get them to drop dead. Sad, but true.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Maybe I just don't understand Andy's thought process. On the one hand he says software eliminates jobs by increasing efficiency, on the other hand he suggests that giving small businesses better software to increase their efficiency could create jobs. Huh??
One tried and true method of creating jobs is to start businesses and make them succeed. Maybe the best thing for software developers to do is to start companies to do things that haven't been done before, rather than focusing on better ways to do existing things for existing companies.
However, I really don't think computers and software can be blamed for unemployment. Computerization has eliminated some jobs and created others, just like the invention of cars did. Efficiency allows companies to do more things, but the ability to make twice as many widgets half as fast doesn't do any good unless you can sell all those widgets. The real limit to growth right now seems to be the capacity of customers to buy things. Right now the average American household carries $8000 in credit card debt. That's in addition to mortgages, car payments, student loans etc. There were more individual bankruptcies in the last 10 years than in the previous 50. Bankruptcy lawyers now advertise on television.
The culprit for unemployment is probably somewhere in the very nature of capitalism and human behavior. We might have used our increased efficiency to make life easier for everybody. Instead we used it to make a small percentage of people extremely rich, while the rest of us continue to work as much as we can, so we can buy more stuff that we can't afford and go deeper into debt than we should. Someone from 1900 looking at the automation of the past century would probably wonder why more than a handful of people still have to work. Yet we work all the time to pay for our consumption.
In some ways the American economy is similar to the way it was just before World War II. The economy has been stagnant for years. Unemployment has pushed many skilled people into unskilled jobs. Technological innovations languish on the doorstep as companies fail for lack of market. Look at wireless, for example.
In World War II the government employed whole industries for war production. Employment was high and people were making more money than they could spend, because consumer goods were scarce. So they paid off their debts and built savings. The government financed its buying spree by issuing war bonds -- basically IOUs with interest. People had the money to buy the bonds because they had less spending opportunity.
America was in WWII for less than 4 years. When industry switched back to consumer goods, most Americans were debt free, had money of money to spend and were eager to spend it. The next 20 years were a golden age for business and innovation in America. The taxes from that booming economy paid back the interest on the war bonds.
I wonder if we could artificially create the same scenario in peacetime? What if Americans went through a short period of self-imposed frugality? Maybe we could embark on massive public works projects, colonize the moon or mount a huge foreign aid campaign, I don't know. Imagine 4 years of near full employment without a lot of crap to spend money on, followed by an economic boom like the 1950's.
I hope t big boys don't expect the War on Terrorism (tm) to accomplish this, because it won't. It isn't making the public spend less. In fact, the overriding message from the government is don't let terrorists dampen our consumption habits, because then we let the bad guys win. That's crap. If we battened down the hatches for a few years we would come out the winners.
It's more than that: capitalism punishes the people that don't partake in innovation. Take the simple example of an agrarian society, where 90% of the people earn their living plowing the fields of the remaining 10%. Some day somebody invents a machine that can do the job. Suddenly 90% of the population is out of business. They have to go look for opportunities; some of them will be employed in the plowing machine factories; others may become plowing machine salesmen; but some, who cannot adapt, due to age, lack of IQ, or whatever reason, will be left behind to starve.
Should innovation be curbed to avoid these hardships? Of course not. Should the people that benefit from innovation (the guy that invented the plowing machine, the factory owners, and the landowners, who benefit from reduced cost) feel responsible for their fate? Absolutely. Their new wealth and the hardship of the workers share the same cause. To set a certain part of their wealth aside to alleviate the not-so-pretty consequences of innovation is the only decent thing to do.
This is the reason why every capitalist society needs well-functioning welfare and education systems. And this is why the richest people should carry the greatest burden in financing those.
I hope these views don't make me a commie... :-)
I just got back from Europe where I was backpacking for some months. Visited an old friend of my family who moved to the Netherlands to be with her fella.. This lady is in her 60's and is suffering from slowly developing palsy. She had a great summation of the state of the American medical system: "When it comes to diagnostics, they are the best in the world; But when it comes to treatment, they have completely missed the boat."
--
om Shanti
I would give you a +10 for insightfulness.
I guess I don't understand why today's socialists don't like Bush, he's a pretty damn good socialist himself. He's already outspent Clinton on wealth redistribution programs.
{ capitalism | socialism synonym } {sucks | is the greatest thing since sliced bread }. If we would only stick with my favorite system and completely eliminate the other one, { all would be well | vast wealth production for all would ensue }.
None of the possible readings of the above is true, nor is it false. It doesn't matter whether you are in a capitalist, socialist, or "mixed" system. You will have to constantly tweak it and evolve it, and after twenty or thirty years you will be so far away from the original that you will be in onbe of the following states:
- A social/political/economic crisis occurs, so you freak out and promote a drastic change that will take you back to your ideological roots. The starting conditions are completely different, however, so this just fucks everything up even more.
- A social/political/economic crisis occurs, so you ensure that most visible government officials promote the idea that the crisis only affects a minority of citizens, and that recovery has been in progress for about 18 months. It's just that jobs and salaries have been a bit slow to catch up. You also
- Make sure people have lots of TV shows and pop music to consume.
- Have a big flashy war every year and a half or so. Make sure the press has lots of cool graphics and other content showing how advanced our weapons are, and lots of feel-good images of our happy troops going about their noble business. Conceal human damage to both our own people and those of the the enemy as much as possible. Pretend none of our troops are deserting, committing suicide, etc.
- Make sure word gets out among, um, your major political supporters that they'd better cash out as much as possible, 'cuz pretty soon the shit is really gonna hit it.
- You and your wealthy cronies realize that you can really game the system. You and others of your ilk independently influence Federal, State, and Local governments to optimize your profits, ignoring any secondary damages that may result. Eventually, a social/political/economic crisis occurs due to accumulated secondary damage.
- Realize that you were full of shit to begin with, but luckily you now have a system that more or less works. You will formalize the mechanism that you have been using, and refine it continuously as well
I wish the last state would occur more often....what other reason could there be for everything else to be circling it?
personally, i would rather wait another 10 - 50 years or so. do lots of research in the intervening time.
you say "There _may_ be a limit, but it's likely far beyond what we are at now" - i guess i'm just saying that "likely" just ain't good enough. it's far more conservative to choose to - *gasp* - conserve and try to figure out a better answer than "not likely a problem". what's the rush, really? there is plenty of technological advancement and prosperity to be had while adhering to basic scientific method on a large scale.
the fact, the actual fact, is that We Don't Know Everything. i would like to know a little bit more before i choose to consume as much as possible, or "without artificial limits"... especially when consuming less does not decrease my quality of life. i'll spare you the lecture on how consuming less enhances my quality of life. most people don't enjoy understanding energy economy.
[|]
So why don't you share it with us instead of some inane incomplete comment? I mean, I see it too: he has a clue, he sees through the sham, he's not falling for the Tilton-Swaggart-Bakker bullshit money-milking legal-scam reverse-evolution nonsense that is organized religion. Since you fail to state otherwise, I must assume you're thinking along the same lines. Glad to have you with us -- the fewer drones that support the Xtianity opression-machine the better.
Peace to you too, but what's up with that funky yoda-speak "be" shit?
everything in moderation
Maybe it has less to do with a problem with Jesus, who by many accounts seemed like a pretty decent guy, and a not-bad philospher to boot, and more to do with the insanity that has surrounded the bible and organized religion since the poor fella bought the farm.
everything in moderation
Anyone can do "worthwhile" work at a living wage - the limiting factor is demand for labor. Making labor more expensive isn't going to create any jobs.
Technology isn't so bad. I like having electricity, indoor plumbing, and safe, plentiful food, don't you?
Because it makes both parties better off. Otherwise, they would have no reason to participate.
A lot of very intelligent people have devoted their lives to understanding the same issues that Mr. Oram took a (somewhat misguided) stab at in his article.
Studying up on this stuff is the only way you'll be able to distinguish sense from garbage.
People who work with computers remain fixated on efficiency. Every week I hear the debates over whether businesses should use Linux or Windows, the commentators always wrangling over which systems will save the most money. I find this battle increasingly tiresome. I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work.
If Andy wants to have a ditch dug, he could hire one man with a backhoe, twelve men with shovels, or 300 men with teaspoons. According to his rationale, hiring the teaspoon-equipped men would be the best solution.
WRONG!
If everyone did business in that manner, our GDP would be miniscule. Almost everyone would be living in poverty and squalor.
Each labor-saving device means the idling of thousands of people, wasting their years of experience, rigorous training, and practical insights.
Yes, new technologies can be quite disruptive in the short term. But in the long term they cause amazing increases in the standard of living of EVERYONE. (E.g., today there are millions of people employed in the auto industry today -- far more than were ever employed in the horse-carriage industry. But if Andy had his way, the auto industry would have been considered the enemy because it imperiled the jobs of the horse-carriage makers.) He should try to grasp basic economics before writing another article like this.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Wow, that was poorly written!
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Oh right, yeah, this is probably where I got the link to it in the first place ;) Thanks.
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Well I agree that it is not Republican or Democratic polititians that are shipping the jobs offshore but it is the Republican Capitalistic businessmen and boards of directors that are making those decisions. I think you will find that the political allegence of this group is by and far Republican, not entirely but the great grand majority. It is that mind set of "ME FIRST, I WANT MY MONEY, AND I OWN THE COMPANY SO I CAN DO WHAT I LIKE" philosophy that sees profit as the only value and not community as value. They don't see that job creation in this country is valuable over buying cheap labor that is underpaid and in poor working condition and not environmentally responsible industries, because its only profit that is important to them.
It used to be that that worked for us. But now the rush is on and so many companies are sending their work offshore that it then becomes hard to be competitive without doing that. Which like when you are SCUBA diving and pass a certain point you go down faster and faster unless you put on the air brakes.
Its not the polititions per say, but an executive culture that is not healthly for us in the long term. The Republican party is their political advocate, their political country club if you will. It is a MBA cultural issue, the culture of objectification, and commoditizaton of jobs and work for pure profit that is the root problem.
There is a big difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on issues. A huge difference. The fact that politics is the art of negotiation and comprimise to get things done makes it look like there is little difference. But you don't find the Republican's wanting Social Security (unless it is privatized so they can benefit, so it is a money maker for them) or National Health care, (unless it is privatized so they can benefit, so it is a money maker for them), or keeping our air clean by legislating lower emissions standards for vehicles. I understand that in the US 54% of the oil consumed is for transportation. 17% of the worlds global CO2 comes from transportation. But hey we need our big gas guzzling SUV's especailly in the cities where we can get 15 miles to the gallon. We need to relax the taxes on the welthiest individuals, "a United Nations Development Program study found that the 358 richest people in the world have combined assests that exceed the total annual income of nearly half the people on Earth." (The Hydrgen Economy, Rifkin). There is a diffence in sensibilty , approach, basic priciples about the value and importance of individuals, government and business.
I also found a job I enjoy and it and my chance of continuing in this field seem also to be reduced on a daily basis. It is time we do something about it.
In the case of US capitalism, each dollar is owned by someone, the simple act of wealth creation dictates in and of itself that the source be from another individual or group capable of ownership.
Thats just another way of saying it's a zero sum game, it is not. Dollars are a way of keeping track of wealth, not wealth in themselves. Look at how oil companies, by using more efficient extraction techniques, created billions of dollars worth of oil that never existed before. Wealth creation is not about dollars, but about resources. As far as I'm concerned, someone wouldn't half to pay me a penny if I could barter my skills for a confortable living. If I grew oranges, and my neighbor grew appels, and we each shared half and half, we are both better off and didn't spend a penny to do it. Make it so the government doesn't force dollarize the transation and take up to 50 percent of the worth in the process and youd be amazed what happens.
but when you have large groups capable of ownership, the capacity is there for them to hoard scarce resources (scarce as in limited), thus removing them from the total amount of recources available to the populace.
As a person hoards resources, it drives up the price making it harder and harder to hoard more. In addition, a few years ago someone tried to corner the silver market - their plan was thwarted and they were financially ruined - first because, silver isn't a need and when forced to people could do without, second because as the price went up more and more people decided to sell their silver jewlery driving the prive back down. What you're saying just doesn't jive with what really happens.
Cry all you might that corporations will not exploit that, but look back into history, it happens all the time.
I have looked back in history, the railroad barrons would have been impossible without the handsome government payouts, and regulations that protected them from new entrants. The oil and steel barrons - similar. Not to mention false govt imposed property rights like patents and copyrights, that are not free market and get misused all the time.
Limit governments ability to take, and to be in places that they don't belong, and you will automatically limit the corporate worlds ability to garner special interests and powers to their advantage. It's that simple.
So you agree that no one should ever help the weak? That goes just as far off the Ayn Rand deep end as any fanatic might go off the Christian deep end.
As for religous "leaders", Jesus was harsher on such people than any other segment of society. He liked to use terms like "brood of vipers" and "white washed tombs" to describe them. I don't think much has changed since then.
But you might want to consider Jesus' take on the poor and down-trodden, instead of the Absolute Fundamentalist Objectivism you (and the parent post) are spouting.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
ps What's with the grammar nazism? Peace be with you has a nice ring, I think. It's from the NIV Bible, so you should inform them that they have some poor grammar in their translation.
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Such people are essentially murdering their workers. At the very least, they are driving them away.
Let me specify:
"Your gold and silver are rusted, and they shall be a testimony against you... you have heaped together treasure for the last days, but you have withheld your workers' wages, and the money that you withheld cries out."
and to interpret:
What is wealth? Wealth is often considered to be money -- but if you have money, but not the ability to earn it, you will swiftly lose it. So wealth isn't money. Wealth, instead, is the ability to earn money, but money is symbolic of something else. Therefore, we would better say, true wealth is having a working part of the economy. In other words, the person with a working business is far wealthier than the person with a million dollars and no business.
Now, if a rich man destroys his business in order to get money, by not paying his workers fairly, he has in reality destroyed his wealth.
But this verse says that not only will he have destroyed his wealth -- but God's going to hold him accountable, as well.
Truly, if you read and understand this verse, you shouldn't need accountability in the afterlife to choose basic human decency. If you are even greedy but wise, you will say "I want to preserve my gold and silver. I don't want it to rust", and you will pay your workers well.
But if you do that, then you will also find that this becomes a testimony not against yourself, but for yourself, and as such also becomes a testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
So it does have a place.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Consider people who have lived the good life, while choosing to not pay their workers a fair wage. Such people are essentially murdering their workers. At the very least, they are driving them away.
Let me specify:
"Your gold and silver are rusted, and they shall be a testimony against you... you have heaped together treasure for the last days, but you have withheld your workers' wages, and the money that you withheld cries out."
and to interpret:
What is wealth? Wealth is often considered to be money -- but if you have money, but not the ability to earn it, you will swiftly lose it. So wealth isn't money. Wealth, instead, is the ability to earn money, but money is symbolic of something else. Therefore, we would better say, true wealth is having a working part of the economy. In other words, the person with a working business is far wealthier than the person with a million dollars and no business.
Now, if a rich man destroys his business in order to get money, by not paying his workers fairly, he has in reality destroyed his wealth.
But this verse says that not only will he have destroyed his wealth -- but God's going to hold him accountable, as well.
Truly, if you read and understand this verse, you shouldn't need accountability in the afterlife to choose basic human decency. If you are even greedy but wise, you will say "I want to preserve my gold and silver. I don't want it to rust", and you will pay your workers well.
But if you do that, then you will also find that this becomes a testimony not against yourself, but for yourself, and as such also becomes a testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
So in reality, this verse doesn't just say "do it because I say so," but actually tells why you should do it. In other words, James provided a rational reason.
As for appearing uneducated, I couldn't care less. I'm a thinking person, much more than an educated person. It is the unthinking who will fail to read and understand, but will judge by their gut reaction. My thinking has led me to confirm for myself that the Bible is essentially right. But just so you know, I'm a rocket scientist by education, so I can handle education as well. But I reserve the right to think things through for myself.
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So you agree that no one should ever help the weak? That goes just as far off the Ayn Rand deep end as any fanatic might go off the Christian deep end.
:)
No, I didn't say that at all. Please re-read my post a few times until that's clear to you.
I think a lot has changed since JC's time with respect to abuse of religious authority, corruption, excessive power, condemnation, hypocrisy, and seperatist attitudes. Maybe it's just my take, but modern xtianity, especially in organized/corporate form (God, Inc.), seems to have way too much power and sway over the cluless, frightened massses, and it's abused enough to make me distrustful of almost all forms of organized religion.
Read some of my recent posts on this topic such as this one -- I'm all for helping the unfortunate, in a way that really helps (locally, with lots of oversight and the requisite "tough love" when the help is abused or taken for granted).
I had a problem with the TheNewerGuy's offensive, fire-breathing, damn-you-for-not-tithing self-righteous diatribe against Malakai who simnply had a problem with the socialist views spouted in the article. How you jumped from that, to "never help anyone" is not clear to me.
Oh, and I didn't say the grammar was wrong, just that it sounds funny. Like Yoda, it sounds to me
everything in moderation
If the best way you can "prove" something is to quote someone, chances are you aren't very convincing.
If I wanted to follow rules from old books there are plenty to choose from and even the best of them aren't all right. It still requires judgement or you're avoiding shellfish and pork at the same time as turning the other cheek. Why not simply skip the dusty old book step and examine your actions.
What I don't see is how you expect any quote from the bible to be a testimony to the rightness of the bible. If you like circular proofs, consider that I declare this post to be absolutely correct.
I question how deeply you can think if you come up with those answers.
For every job made obsolete by increased machine-driven efficiency, there is an opportunity created for those who build the machines. It is a misguided, Marxist mentality that sees such advances as inherently bad. I guarantee you that the people who are whining that there's nothing left for them to do are the same people who were whining about how much their job sucked before the evil technology monster stole it away. It's human nature. Now, as always, there is plenty of work for everyone but there will always be a slice of humanity unwilling to do what it takes to survive. I have heard from college professor after college professor that there is a huge shortage of Americans who are willing to go to college for technology degrees. Oh, there's been a huge upsurge in people pursuing medicine and law, as well as degrees in the humanities. Ten years ago the United States was home to literally half the world's lawyers, and it's only gotten worse. You can't channel surf without bouncing off a dozen boring Law and Order or ER clones. But our technology schools are busily training non-US citizens, who go back to their countries to build widgets with the degrees they got in the US. Actual wealth comes from taking natural resources, adding value to them with our minds, then selling them and in the US we barely build anything any more. Likewise, I'm sure you can get great medical care in other countries, if you know where to go, but how is that ethical? It seems to you that it's cheaper over there, because you paid a third the US cost for a tooth extraction in Taiwan, but you're ignoring two key facts. First, the people of that poor and heavily socialized country pitched in much needed tax money to pay for the damn thing for you. Second, hard working Americans are paying way more than they should for titanium tooth posts over here, because foreign governments force US drug companies and medical manufacturers to sell wares at a tenth (yes, a tenth) of what they charge in the US. The end result is that US citizens pay the bill in increased cost of drugs and supplies. The money's got to come from somewhere. It doesn't just magically show up because someone decided "there ought to be a law." Time for a reality check, kids. Socialism has never made ANYTHING less expensive. Competition and the resultant increased efficiency are the only things that can do that.
No, it is the fact that you are living it, and see that it is working, that is testimony as to the rightness of the Bible.
[PS... you picked your examples badly. Shellfish, being bottom feeders, do accumulate more toxins than finned/scaled fish. So, though I'm not religious about it, I do in general avoid shellfish. If I want the taste of crab, I generally go for the sea-legs monkfish+1%crab stuff. As for pork, we actually go farther than the Bible nowadays, and avoid not only pork but all mammalian meat, for the reason that prion diseases seem to be carried by mammalian meat. But again, the pig is a garbage eater, and does accumulate more toxins than, say, a cow. As far as it goes, therefore, it takes a ton more faith and thinking to turn the other cheek than it does to avoid shellfish and pork. But by the book of Acts and the writings of Paul, the Bible also explicitly releases Christians from the necessity of not eating those things, though the wisdom of not eating them remains. Christians do still have to avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols, though.]
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Read your links. The Bible one was interesting, but failed to differentiate adequately between those things that God commanded to have done, and those things that people did anyway. Depending on your worldview, the results may be better or worse :)
However, calling Jesus a "pretty decent guy" doesn't really do him or history justice. Based on what he said, either he's a nutcase, he's a deceiver, or he's the Son of God. It's possible that someone recorded his message wrong, but the following 300 years had quite a bit of scrutiny on those writings which claimed to be from Jesus' disciples, and we can hardly do better ourselves.
So, really, please don't call Jesus a "pretty decent guy". I don't see how that is an option.
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I'm living a just and kind life, that doesn't seem to greatly intersect with the christian bible any more than it intersects the teachings of Buddha or anyone else. I also find many cases in which the bible is, as I see it, way off base. This means that I don't think the bible is being shown to be correct. I'm sure I'd agree with Jeffery Dahlmer on some issues, that doesn't mean he's correct.
..." If you want someone to act in a certain manner, explain how it's the best for them (in the social context, where purely greedy actions are often counter-productive in the long term). Don't say, "My book says," and expect them to listen.
Your point about the book of acts is related to what I was saying. There's a lot of writing in the "bible". You have to pick and choose what to obey. One part overrules another, etc. Did Jesus, the only one who was right by definition, say "Ignore these rules" or is it implied by the rest of his teachings?
I never really understood the idea of being religious (accepting things on faith) and examining the book to follow what feels right. If you think there's a god and this is his word, follow it. If you don't believe this (as I do not) then skim the book for good ideas perhaps, but don't "follow" anything. Adopt good ideas into your personal philosophy, ignore the rest.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that if you want your opinion to be respected, justify it. Don't do that by saying, "I think X, Famous person Y agrees with me." Say, "I think X because
Maybe it's just my take, but modern xtianity, especially in organized/corporate form (God, Inc.), seems to have way too much power and sway over the cluless, frightened massses, and it's abused enough to make me distrustful of almost all forms of organized religion.
And that was exactly the state of the religous leaders in Jesus day. That's why Jesus wasn't supporting or proposing an organized religion to replace this, but a personal relationship with himself (and with his Dad, as he claimed were the same person, I know, he said some pretty weird stuff). Anyhow, the fact that a lot of people have created the same kind of structure that Jesus railed against and have stuck his name on it is a colossal irony. So you certainly don't need to be part of any organization in order to claim to be a follower of Jesus. In fact, claiming blind allegiance to any organization or man other than Jesus pretty much disqualifies you from being his follower, if you go by what he said.
It's great that you're all for helping the disadvantaged and unfortunate. But I don't know how you can find support for that in the original post I replied to. Didn't read TheNewerGuy's post, guess I should.
Peace to you,
-jimbo
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And that was exactly the state of the religous leaders in Jesus day.
And, in a sequence of events that we can see replay itself throughout history, the revolutionary underdogs (who rely on being good, or at least decent, to succeed) cast off thier chains and overthrow their opressors through persistance and martyrdom, much to the glee of the onlookers who were previously afraid to do anything. This newfound glory inevitably yields followers, then more followers, increasing the extent of the overthrow. More and more power is acquired by our previously opressed heroes, until the absolute certainty of the corruption than comes with power rears it's ugly head.
And then our underdog heroes become the entrenched authority, drunk on power and control, constantly gripped with the paranoia that comes with knowing that their own mighty power-base was but one nutty eccentric with charismatic populist appeal away from the same fate they brought to the previous power-brokers.
And so the cycle continues. Escalating ever upwards, reaching new levels of horrific behaviour with each power exchange.
Being dead (resurrection fantasies notwithstanding), old JC and the rest of the trinity-that-wants-to-be-one was powerless to control the abuses that were just beginning to be perpetrated by the newly-installed despots. In time, the power grew until the once-underdogs were committing acts of a heinous nature that surpassed even their predecessors' remarkable achievements in the highly-competitive field of evil.
Sucks, for sure. But it's nothing new. It happened again with the Protestant revolution, and even the resurgence of fundamentalism that we're getting a nice, biley taste of today.
Anyway, enough of all that. My original post, to which you replied, was not an effort to show my brotherly love. On the contrary, I endeavored to smack down a rabid, tithing retard. And, IMHO, succeeded quite beyond my initial modest hopes.
everything in moderation
[the links] failed to differentiate adequately between those things that God commanded to have done, and those things that people did anyway
That's the problem with dying. You can't control what nuts will put in your mouth. And, it's also the problem with trusting a heavily-interpreted, censored, selectively-propagated ancient work. You have no way to know what's legit and what's been invented for some other nefarious purpose that the originator may have never intended or even dreamed possible.
It's possible that someone recorded his message wrong, but the following 300 years had quite a bit of scrutiny on those writings which claimed to be from Jesus' disciples, and we can hardly do better ourselves.
Ah, but were it only scrutiny (and would that we could actually know!) and not the aforementioned comandeering and prostituting of what was probably a pretty decent collection of books at some point. In any case, if you trust the bible as it exists today, that site is quite clear in pointing out how god provoked, commanded, or reacted to each incredibly barbaric action in His name (or, at least, whoever allegedly wrote whatever He allegedly said at the time -- He was much more glib back in the day, no? -- which brings us back to the credibility problem outlined above).
You can be a deluded nut and still be a pretty decent guy -- just like Jesus!
everything in moderation
Great! Hopefully, you will continue living such a life when times are incredibly hard. Now, that is not to say that it is only _____s that will be able to persevere in such. Rather, it is to say that God being Love, and God being in a continual process of creation in this universe, acts whereever reality is.
However, that said, a person is more likely to be able to persevere when the going gets tough, if he has faith. But true faith is not saying I believe; true faith is reflexive with "faithful". Which implies a kind of definition of what faith is, not a way to tell who will persevere and who will not.
That said, none of us are truly, completely just. We do our best. So the other part of persevering is persevering when you've just really screwed up, and trying again. Now, for that, I find faith in Christ to be incredibly important. But to have faith in Christ, the first part is you have to really believe that he existed, and that these things happened. For that, you have to weigh the evidence, and not just the evidence of yesterday, but the evidence of today.
Some of the evidence of today will be scientific in nature, though I'd find the soft sciences of history, archaeology, medicine, and especially psychology to be far more a factor than, for example, physics. Physics just doesn't strive for or against the Bible, as far as I can see. But another part of the evidence is what you see in the people around you, and another part is what you see in terms of the hand of God acting in modern day times. For example, you have to weigh the evidence of such things as The Cross and the Switchblade.
That's not to press my own denomination: David Wilkerson has in the past expressed doubts that Catholics are even Christian. Nonetheless, I think that his evidence is worth looking at.
Now, once you believe, and get to recognize God's signature, then it becomes easier to "accept things on faith." But until that time, no, that isn't where you start.
Did Jesus, the only one who was right by definition, say "Ignore these rules"...?
First, Jesus is not the only one right by definition. God is the only one in the Bible who is right by definition. Jesus is right by having the signature of God upon Him, for he said "I AM", that is, the Godly I am, and more explicitly he said "God is the Father; I am the Son; the Son and the Father are one." Now, either he was lying or telling the truth, or wrong. In the first and last case, though, God would not have signed Jesus' statements. The fact that Jesus could work miracles, and the fact that He rose from the dead, and the fact that his Christian Church still wields the power of the Holy Spirit today, all point to the authenticity of Jesus' statements. Which is why I say to look at David Wilkerson's book. It's something modern you can put your finger on.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that if you want your opinion to be respected, justify it. Don't do that by saying, "I think X, Famous person Y agrees with me." Say, "I think X because ..."
I absolutely agree, in general. However, it depends upon whom I'm talking to. I don't always make proven statements. At the moment, I'm much more horrified by people who are in name only, Christians, acting evilly and without thought towards their religion, than I am by someone who has been for the moment turned off from the religion, because they don't see it truly making a difference in peoples' lives.
One is the cause, and one is the effect. For me to start preaching hellfire and damnation against you (??!?!?) would be like someone blaming all our ills upon George Bush. George Bush is the symptom. If I were to preach to you, it would be more on the order of the need for justice, and the need for repentance of past wrongs. But if I were to preach hellfire and damnation [and I won't -- I'll let God do that or not], I'd have to look first to hypocritical Christians.
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It's nice that you've discovered the cause of everything bad. It's nice to know that Atheists and Agnostics, like Mao and Stalin and Hussein, never did anything bad to anyone. Everything bad that's ever happened is the fault of some religous person. It's nice to know that Mother Theresa, while appearing to give out food and care for the sick, the widow, the fatherless, the poor, was actually part of some sick, diabolical plot to oppress these people. It must be nice to live in a world so simple and absolute, with no shades of gray. The religous people are the bad guys, the unreligous are the good guys.
You have given me much insight into the world. I thought things were much more complex, but it's nice to have things simplified so much.
I also appreciate your evident humility. And it's nice to know you avoid such an obvious human failing like brotherly love. And I'm sure you're quite proud of your retard smacking ability.
Peace to you,
-jimbo
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Did you even read my post? Where did that extra stuff come from? I never mentioned the evils of the agnostict or athiests (there are plenty, but it's offtopic in this little thread of ours), never compared the evils of the sacred vs. secular, never claimed that religion or the religious never did anything good, and never even came close to the absolute, black and white extremism of which you accuse me.
Funny how you put words in my mouth to try to shoehorn my relatively specific comments into a broad, sweeping judgment where all is black and white, then accuse me of failing to see the shades of gray. Maybe you ought to work on that beam in your eye before worrying about my speck of dust.
You didn't even address the points I made, at all, not even a little bit. You just made up some of your own that you're comfortable attacking. Sigh.
It was kinda fun for a minute, and I thought we might be able to have a decent discussion about this topic, but I'm done trying to keep you on some sort of logical path that makes any sense at all. Thanks anyway.
everything in moderation
I think you've got the argument twisted the wrong way. _If_ that is God, there's not much for us to say about it. If God does those things, who are we to judge what He does?
You can't go and say, "I like what this person says about God, I'll believe that He is God" because fundamentally it's not about you. It's about God. It's about is He who the Bible says He is or isn't He? If He is, then it doesn't matter that you don't like what He does. If He isn't, then it doesn't matter if you don't like what He does.
The big question is, "how do you find God?" I wish I had an easy answer to that question. For me, God showed Himself to me in a way that I know He's there just as much as I know that my wife is there. I wish I could transfer that experience to others, but sadly I can't. But I will pray that God will reveal Himself to you in the same way He's revealed Himself to me (or, even better, in whatever manner that helps you know Him best).
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