The reason the US's unemployment rate is so low, and standard of living so high is because of our high productivity.
No, the reason the US's unemployment rate is so low is because you have an economic situation where millions of people are forced to do shit jobs for shit money, due to government and corporate policies which allow a near-total lack of moral responsibility.
The reason the standard of living is so high is because you're talking about the average, in a country where 5% of the population holds 87% of the wealth...
I'd like to point out that everybody in Europe eats the stuff, and I thought Americans also had it - c'mon, the stuff's *definitely* ten times less gross than peanutbutter and jelly (yes, I tried it once).
Try this on for size : Peanut Butter and Jello (Jello - American for what the rest of the world calls jelly, the stuff that comes in crystals that you mix with hot water then stick in the fridge to set...)
Don't laught; it works! (and it's also 10x better than PB+"Jelly")
>You think that sitting around reading Slashdot is WORK? Try moonlighting as a railroad employee (brakeman or track worker) and see what real work is all about...
What Katz sees as evidence of Corporatism is nothing more than employee greed.
Bullshit. I work in a job that has me involved in everything from swinging a pick, right up to fault-location on electronic sub-assemblies. My employer expects overtime almost every day, almost every weekend - and when I'm not working overtime, expects me to be on unpaid standby. And when I refuse to do any of this, I'm accused of not being a "team player", with the strongly implied threat that if I don't pick up my act, I'm out. All this causes me to do is start work on the dot, finish work on the dot, and leave my laptop and mobile in the car when I get home.
I don't read/. at work -/. is my leisure time.
Corporate bullying? Yes. Third-world country? No. This is Australia...
I remember reading many years ago that this is a central tenet of shopping centre design - you can't escape the need to go into a shopping centre from time to time, so once you're in there they make it slightly difficult to get back to your car. The whole effect of this is to make you spend as much time as possible inside on each trip, spending money like a good little consumer...
Remember, they don't exist to be nice to you - they exist to make money. From you...
That's probably because it's more social-science fiction than pure science fiction - and a lot of people have a "If it don't have ray guns it ain't science fiction" attitude.
OTOH, you quote L. Ron and Clarke as being examples of "good" S-F writers - 1000's would disagree with you there on at least one of those 2:-). L. Ron's work is mostly rambling incoherency of thought surrounding a boring pinpoint of an idea. Clarke's early work is a bit too dry and involved with scientific cleverness, and his later work seems to try to hark back to his glory days - either way, most of it bores me.
Although I seem to remember a Clarke short story involving planetary colonists being poisoned by beryllium - can anybody point me to this?
I'm sorry, but I've seen this on smaller scales before, and I'm almost sure that it's nothing more than very cheap training for the company involved.
What it costs them is ~$1000 for a computer; what they get is an improved level of computer literacy (in general) without the costs of structured training, without the non-productive time involved in training, and without the ongoings required to monitor and follow up the training.
In fact, I'm surprised they haven't found a way of making their employees pay for the honour of being trained in this way! (Or am I mistaken, and the PCs are not 'free', but bought as part of a bargaining agreement?)
Oh yeah : I always read Katz. I don't often agree with his thinking, I do often think he's a pretentious prat, but his storys always provoke thought. If I didn't want to think, I'd go and read a Win98 manual...
My thoughts on this (as a 33 year old tech-man, working under a 48 yo ex-tech man turned manager)
Listen to him. He might be obnoxious, he might be offensive, he might be deliberately trying to upset you, but he almost certainly has something of value to say that you could learn from. And if he does, see that he gets at least part of the credit - genuinely.
You don't know as much as you think you do - that's for sure. Not to put you down, but I can tell you that there's a hell of a lot of learning that goes on between 20 and 40 (and I'm only a little over 1/2 way there!)
Asking him to 'present his concerns in a constructive manner' almost certainly will get anybody's back up. You might be genuinely receptive, but you've got to prove it to your employees. That particular phrase always comes across as obnoxious management-speak.
Hope this doesn't upset you. Not many people make good people managers. In my 15 years I've met maybe 3. Sometimes it's because they really don't want the job (hint: you can't be a manager and 'one of the boys' during work time. Outside, maybe, but not inside), but mostly it's because they don't _think_ about what they're doing - it's much easier to use the textbook skills than to spend time learning the job (as if you even had the time!).
If I could just get one thing across to most managers, it's this : Do unto others...
(I once worked for a manager who was straight out of the book, right down to the high desk for him, low chairs for subordinates cliche. Everybody else hated him. I thought he was terribly funny, 'cos my dealings with him were obviously so pre-planned and cliched that it was amusingly easy to divert him...)
Slashdot Mirror
No, the reason the US's unemployment rate is so low is because you have an economic situation where millions of people are forced to do shit jobs for shit money, due to government and corporate policies which allow a near-total lack of moral responsibility.
The reason the standard of living is so high is because you're talking about the average, in a country where 5% of the population holds 87% of the wealth...
Try this on for size : Peanut Butter and Jello (Jello - American for what the rest of the world calls jelly, the stuff that comes in crystals that you mix with hot water then stick in the fridge to set...)
Don't laught; it works! (and it's also 10x better than PB+"Jelly")
What Katz sees as evidence of Corporatism is nothing more than employee greed.
Bullshit. I work in a job that has me involved in everything from swinging a pick, right up to fault-location on electronic sub-assemblies. My employer expects overtime almost every day, almost every weekend - and when I'm not working overtime, expects me to be on unpaid standby. And when I refuse to do any of this, I'm accused of not being a "team player", with the strongly implied threat that if I don't pick up my act, I'm out. All this causes me to do is start work on the dot, finish work on the dot, and leave my laptop and mobile in the car when I get home.
I don't read /. at work - /. is my leisure time.
Corporate bullying? Yes. Third-world country? No. This is Australia...
Remember, they don't exist to be nice to you - they exist to make money. From you...
OTOH, you quote L. Ron and Clarke as being examples of "good" S-F writers - 1000's would disagree with you there on at least one of those 2 :-). L. Ron's work is mostly rambling incoherency of thought surrounding a boring pinpoint of an idea. Clarke's early work is a bit too dry and involved with scientific cleverness, and his later work seems to try to hark back to his glory days - either way, most of it bores me.
Although I seem to remember a Clarke short story involving planetary colonists being poisoned by beryllium - can anybody point me to this?
What it costs them is ~$1000 for a computer; what they get is an improved level of computer literacy (in general) without the costs of structured training, without the non-productive time involved in training, and without the ongoings required to monitor and follow up the training.
In fact, I'm surprised they haven't found a way of making their employees pay for the honour of being trained in this way! (Or am I mistaken, and the PCs are not 'free', but bought as part of a bargaining agreement?)
Oh yeah : I always read Katz. I don't often agree with his thinking, I do often think he's a pretentious prat, but his storys always provoke thought. If I didn't want to think, I'd go and read a Win98 manual...
Listen to him. He might be obnoxious, he might be offensive, he might be deliberately trying to upset you, but he almost certainly has something of value to say that you could learn from. And if he does, see that he gets at least part of the credit - genuinely.
You don't know as much as you think you do - that's for sure. Not to put you down, but I can tell you that there's a hell of a lot of learning that goes on between 20 and 40 (and I'm only a little over 1/2 way there!)
Asking him to 'present his concerns in a constructive manner' almost certainly will get anybody's back up. You might be genuinely receptive, but you've got to prove it to your employees. That particular phrase always comes across as obnoxious management-speak.
Hope this doesn't upset you. Not many people make good people managers. In my 15 years I've met maybe 3. Sometimes it's because they really don't want the job (hint: you can't be a manager and 'one of the boys' during work time. Outside, maybe, but not inside), but mostly it's because they don't _think_ about what they're doing - it's much easier to use the textbook skills than to spend time learning the job (as if you even had the time!).
If I could just get one thing across to most managers, it's this : Do unto others...
(I once worked for a manager who was straight out of the book, right down to the high desk for him, low chairs for subordinates cliche. Everybody else hated him. I thought he was terribly funny, 'cos my dealings with him were obviously so pre-planned and cliched that it was amusingly easy to divert him...)