Ed Goertzen wrote:
>
> X-Envelope-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> X-Envelope-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 05:45:23 -0500
> From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Brad said:
> Well, it *is* the "oldest profession" (probably pimping
> antedates it?), and this mailing list is about the
> future of *work*.... What's one big difference between
> a non-working wife and a prostitute? The duration of the
> work contract.
>
> Ed said:
> Hey Brad, I looked in vain for a smile following your comment.
No smile[y]. I was simply working out some of the logic
of capitalism.
I received one [at least one -- I haven't finished today's new mail yet!]
strongly irate response to my posting. Perhaps I should
have made clearer the context: I interpreted that the
thread-inaugurating unsolicited email was some kind of
sexual solicitation which somebody sent out in hopes of
making some money. Perhaps that assumption was false; I
certainly did not research the "problem space" in depth.
The connection between that assumption and my posting
was that our list is about the future of *work*, and
here *is* an example of a kind of sexually-oriented work
which is part of today's "economic scene", and will likely remain so,
or even grow on the near future. So I offered some [admittedly
elliptical and oblique] thoughts about "the cash nexus".
I had second thoughts in the light of the
irate response, of saying that of course not all non-working wives
are nothing but long-term contract sexual workers. This
is obvious -- just like it's obvious that not all
capitalists are always nothing-but extractors of
surplus value (else the word "paternalistic" would
never have been paired with the word "corporation", e.g.).
But I thought better of that, and want to say that I
do not believe that all "prostitution" is unalloyedly
bad.
Obviously our mailing list was intruded upon by
unsolicited spam email. But, if that is the case,
what is offensive about it is not its nominal
subject matter but the fact that it is an
intrusion. I would hope that everyone would have
been equally exercised over an unsolicited spam
from a "respectable" source -- say, someone
spamming us to contribute to Oxfam or whatever.
I was genuinely surprised that anyone got
*very* upset about the intrusive spam email. This
is part of the real workings of the Internet. If
multinational corporations get their secure
ebusiness servers penetrated more than seldom,
and thousands of their clients credit cards
get posted on the Internet,
what should one expect might happen to a
plain-text mailing list that probably runs
on a low-security server?
Obviously, this incident should be reported to
the list's server institution, where *hopefully*, there is
staff to track down intrusions and try to do something
about them (my ISP asks users to send them
any spam the user receives -- please include
*full headers*, or else there is no hope of
tracking the stuff down...).
>
> The absence of the smile implies that the monetary accounting system has
> completed the intrusion into the family and underlies relationships in the
> nuclear family. Sad.
Capitalism is, in a perverse way, what Edmund Husserl called:
"an infinite task". The process of monetarization of the Lifeworld
cannot, on principle, be completed, for any number of
reasons, including that monetarization of any component of the
Lifeworld generates new social structures which themselves are
not *yet* monetarized. Then there are the aspects of auditing,
efficiency and cash flow analysis, etc. which can open-endedly
be "refined". Also, there is what one might
call the "microscope" angle: Any aspect of the Lifeworld which
has been "thoroughly" monetarized can always be broken down
into component parts each of which is not yet individually
monetarized.... Etc. --Monetarization without end, Amen. (And,
with computers, the day when the "overhead" of all this
accountancy overwhelms the ability to process it so that the
system collapses under its own weight can indefinitely be
postponed.)
>
> Perhaps the difference between a couple each contributing 50% to the
> marriage in order to make one?
Again, I failed to contextualize my posting. Certainly
I was not talking about, e.g., farmer's wives. But I live
in Westchester County New York / Fairfield Connecticut,
and I have seen some of the
women drop their husbands off at the train station for
a long train commute into "the city" -- before the poor guy
even *starts* his work day! --, and then they drive
off in their BMW (Volvo, etc.) to have a day of fun -- and
even sometimes brag about how their husband loves to lavish
them with all nice things. (Heck! Lucky the
"commuter" whose wife drives him to and picks him up from
the train, instead of even making him get there and
back on his own steam!) No, not every Westchester wife is
this (there are women along with the men waiting on the train
platform before 7AM to reenter the daily fray!).
Why don't the non-working wives say: "Honey,
I'm going to go get a job, so you can take an easier job yourself
instead of wearing yourself down on that horrible commute every
day! -- I love you too much to see you suffer like that, even
if you don't show it to me and maybe have even denied admitting how taxing
it is, to yourself."
>
> My view has always been that each contributes 100% effort, neither keeping
> track of the contributions of the other. The surplus being vested in each
> other, the marriiage, and the offspring.
"Offspring", for middle class Americans, are generally debit,
not credit items (unlike was very correctly pointed out recently, that,
in un[der]developed countries, children are poor persons' only
"social security" and "retirement account"). There are, of course,
exceptions, such as when an inheritance "skips a generation", and
the child who has the most children gets the
most inheritance.... Do these things not happen, or
happen so infrequently as to be like the diseases which
only *sub*-specialist doctors ever see more than one of in a
lifetime, if even that many?
I certainly will try to more clearly contextualize
my postings in future, so that anyone who disagrees
will have a better chance of at least disagreeing with
what I really meant to say.
For those whom my initial posting caused to
lose all respect for me, I hope this will clarify things
at least a bit -- and, finally, for those who like them, here's
a smiley :-)
\brad mccormick
>
> I think I may have misunderstood.
>
> Ed G
> ===================
>
> Fidel Castro, in the early days of the Cuban Revolution,
> planned to legalize prostitution but do away with the
> pimps. Wouldn't that be like legalizing free enterprise
> but doing away with the extractors of surplus value
> (aka: "Captains of Industry", etc.)?
>
> \brad mccormick
>
> Jack Cole wrote:
> >
> > I agree with Sabita. Can't this person's address be blocked from
> > posting here?
> >
> > On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Sabita Ramlal wrote:
> >
> > > Dear Futurework
> > >
> > > What is this message. I was not aware that by subscribing to the list
> > > weirdos would be contacing me and other subcribers apparently. Please
> > > rectify this matter.
> > >
> > > Thank you
> > > S. Ramlal
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: toby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > Sent: Friday, January 21, 2000 11:09 PM
> > > Subject: hello beautiful!
> > >
> > >
> > > > HELLO GIRL WITH THE BEAUTIFUL NAME! Yes I really like it alot!! *bashful
> > > smile*
> > > > Although your icq profile reveals little about you it reminds me of
> > > someone I used to
> > > > know!!! Maybe we can be friends Lol :)
> > > > Pleeeeasse write me!
> > > > Toby icq#29583436
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Jack
> >
> > Onward and upward!!!
> >
> > Jack Cole
> > Community Learning Information Network
> > Princeton Center
> > 24 Hour (443) 226.1005 (cell phone,
> > pager, voice mail)
>
> --
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
> -------------------------------------------------------
> <![%THINK;[XML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
>
> Peace and goodwill
>
> Ed Goertzen,
> Oshawa
