RE: [Futurework] An imminent American invasion of Saudi Arabia?
Ray, You said: I realize this is dangerously close to Harry's privilege laws but I argue with him over sloppiness, and an over generalization that is too diffuse to be practical, not over the underlying problem. What on earth do you mean? Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 9:03 AM To: Keith Hudson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] An imminent American invasion of Saudi Arabia? Well done Keith, The one thing you have not mentioned is the cultural mentality in America that is totally against planning and pre-emption as Bush has stated it. Pre-emption is a form of trying to control the results of an obvious event through careful planning and pre-emptive action. One of the things that America is dealing with is the implications of pre-emption for economic policy. The invisible hand is the opposite of pre-emption and as Americans tend to take Jesus' sermon on the mount at its word that thinking something is the same as if you have done it in your heart they are not very good at even thinking about future planning.i.e. they can't conceive of limited action. If you do it a little then you may as well go all the way. There only protection is a metaphor called Apples and Oranges. It means that a bad idea in one area can be a good idea in another because the end product is an Apple rather than an Orange. It doesn't matter that the whole concept is a fruity idea in the first place. Laissez Faire in environmentalism creates a garden gone to seed but in economics it represents God's saving grace for the wealthy because one is and Apple and the other is an Orange. Preventitive long term planning in government is considered bureaucratic and anything longer than four years is government intervention in the private marketplace, while relatively impoverished and resource limited nations like Russia, China, Korea and even Japan are able to compete with the world's most resource rich nation because their systems allow for continuity and long term planning. I don't advocate those systems as they screw the individual but one should be truthful about the strengths of your enemies and plan for them.Every system sacrifices something for survival and yet America trys to survive with as little sacrifice as possible and squanders her wealth on individuals and families that then move it off shore to other places. The metaphor for action in foreign policy in America is Allopathic Medicine. We use terms like surgical strike and others. The doctrine of pre-emption is a bastard version of planning from a surgical medical model. Cut out the cancer!Shock and Awe is really a post operative model when the system is shocked back into life or dies.These models interact in the unconscious and create unconcious metaphorical connections that come out as common sense in a world that does not share the same stories. Its all a part of the conflict in America built into the system. We are forced to deal with the real world so we dabble in planning, poorly, and still try to preserve individual wealth at all costs. I realize this is dangerously close to Harry's privilege laws but I argue with him over sloppiness, and an over generalization that is too diffuse to be practical, not over the underlying problem. Until all Americans give up a little of their stories for the common good and try to preserve sensibly the concept of private property within a civic responsibility then America is in great danger for we become to inflexible to survive. Dogmatic doctinaire political and economic thinking that screws a large portion of the population, even if it is less than half, is not a civilization but a civil war.Getting the whole population involved in market speculation is not the answer anymore than making every banker into an artist to save complex cultural. But a little information in both catagories is necessary to responsible citizenship in a Democracy.Simply buying the government and avoiding the vote is no answer. Doing the proper amount of analysis of a problem and long term planning for a goal without jumping ship at the next negative election is the problem of Democracy. Our form of Congressional government is not a parliamentary form that benefits from a single party government. Single parties always must have too broad a reach to be politically efficient in their future planning with fixed elections.For example, the problem for me with Swarzenegger is because it seems too much like mutiny on a ship when the current captain had made too many deals with the opposition and thus created a way for the opposition to replace
RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Charles, I didnt exactly say that. (he suggests that in order to get what we need and want we will need to work for ten thousand years.) I said the possibility of machines doing all our work for us is a fantasy that wont take place for a thousand or ten thousand years. I know people dont want to work because they stop working at every opportunity. Even if they are doing something they like doing they try to get it accomplished with the least exertion. In that way, they can accomplish more of what they like to do. Mental and physical exertion is all we have. If we dont husband it, we will become fatigued, or sleep. Then we cant do anything. So, it is quite sensible to learn how to use less exertion to do things. There is the influence of the Protestant Ethic that makes us feel uncomfortable if we get something worthwhile for nothing. We feel we aught to earn it. But, essentially, we try to avoid exertion if we can. Look around, observe, but also check yourself. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charles Brass Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 11:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Harry Pollard said: People don't want to work. They want the results of working. Until all of us have everything we want, there will be a need for production and service - and satiety is a long time away. Service provision is the hallmark of an advanced economy. We are a long way from finding the services we would like. There should be a constant demand for people to work - a demand that is never satisfied. The idea of machines taking over requiring us to sit with folded hands is fantasy - and will be for a thousand or ten thousand years. This is a somewhat confused and contradictory position. On one hand Harry asserts that people don't want to work, then he suggests that in order to get what we need and want we will need to work for ten thousand years. I suggest people do want to work. They want to make a contribution, to be busy, to feel that they are engaged in something meaningful and useful. The problem is that most of what the Industrial Revolution provided under the name 'work' was meaningless, or dehumanising. We have come a long way, however, since the invention of the steam engine (though you might not know it they way much of the discourse happens today) - and we can now provide people with all the meaning and purpose they require, and all the goods and services they require. All we have to do is think a bit laterally, and stop believing that 'the marketplace' (and the institutions which flow from the marketplace) create wealth and value - and believing that the best people can do is capture some of this value for themselves by 'working' in the marketplace. Now, I know that there is much debate about the meaning and nature of 'the marketplace' on this list (yes I read it all even if I only comment occasionally). So I must say I have no problem with the notion of markets as places where prices are cleared - but I certainly do have a problem with our (mostly implicit) belief that marketplaces are critical to the wealth and value in the world in the twentyfirst century. Work is getting something done. A job is getting done what someone else wants. We could now organise ourselves to get done what we want, in ways we want - but we find it hard to confront the thinking errors we have made in the past. Charles Brass --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Ray, You believe we like to work, but when we don't like to work, you call it drudgery. If we liked work, we would be doing things the same way we have always done them. We avoid work (actually exertion) and thereby get more done with less time and energy and then have time for music and suchlike. Ask the peasant who toils from dawn to dusk whether he likes work. He'll tell you. We like to satisfy our desires and that is why we work - because we must. If our work coincides with what we like doing then we get a greater reward from what we do. If we can be happy at what we do, that is good too. But, tell someone they can choose to get the same salary but have every afternoon off do you really think they will say no? Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 8:02 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Arthur, I believe this post makes clear the division between what Harry has been saying and what I believe so if I may simply say. I believe that people do want to work from childhood up. That the results of work are often a surprise, like Mountain climbing.That the problem is to plan for the human drive to work and to use it wisely and balance it with the other elements of life as well. But my daughter taught me that people love to work at what they want to work at. But wanting to work is instinctual. Wise work is grown.The work will tell you what the result will be as you do the work. Real significant work is usually a surprise and mistakes often open doorways into success.Drudgery is the pollution of the drive to work and we struggle to escape it but real work. We all love that unless we have been ruined by the world. REH --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] Are they going mad?
Ray, If something illegal happened in Florida (other than that practiced by the Florida Supreme Court) then it should be prosecuted and the miscreants should My interest is what might be called professional environmentalism goes back a long way to a radio show I did on DDT where I found the chemical to be most effective, the safest, and the cheapest (most important) pesticide we had invented. This roused such unscientific and somewhat paranoid criticism that I really examined the whole thing - including all the proceedings of the panel that eventually banned it. This led to a paper I did in 1973. It didnt harm birds, raptors, and animals. It saved umpteen million lives. Yet, environmental fanatics got it banned which antic provided the large chemical companies with huge profits. Since then, there have been a continuing series of scares, most based on nothing much. You mustnt accept so easily the so-called dangers that accompany Global Warming. If you are worried about the increase in disease and the heat as well as the problem that we can't help with the magnetic poles effect on the Ozone perhaps you will tell us how we are going to tackle them. I should say that those bloody GW computers come up with every kind of dire future one could wish for including drought and torrential rain storms. So, whatever happens can be blamed on GW. If we were to adopt Kyoto completely, it would make little difference. However, the increase in atmospheric CO2 can make a difference in growing things. They do much better in carbon dioxide rich atmospheres. Much more important is are your projects going well? Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 7:45 PM To: Harry Pollard; 'Keith Hudson'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Are they going mad? Harry, I think both sides blew itin Florida but I don't think the votes were counted and the thousands who were illegally removed from the roles could have voted either way but it was a Republican administration that accomplished it and so I think they should pay. As for Iraq. If someone breaks into your house and then uses the excuse that they are already there as a reason for staying...well it is a very old American game that goes back to the beginning of the Republic. I think the only thing that GWB might avoid in all this is a trial for war crimes. I'm not sure that I want to collaborate in that. I don't have enough information. Maybe this new Special Prosecutor will break something loose. You said nothing about the appalling environmental policies. I hope we agree that policies that were carefully worked out over years with plenty of public airing should not be simply revoked. I have said nothing about the end of Clinton environmental fiats. That wasn't good either. But the clean air and water statutes and allowing old plants to not upgrade to the newest pollution standards is disgusting. And as for global warming? I'm a genuine environmental conservative. Science may prove that we have nothing to do with it but if we might, I would want to err on the prudent and try to take care of both the weather, the increase in disease and the heat as well as the problem that we can't help with the magnetic poles effect on the Ozone. Prepare and plan. That is my answer for what you can't solve and also my answer for a market that is brutal and barbaric at best. Arnold? He doesn't look so happy these days. There are those who were happy that Bush inherited the burst bubble. He gets the credit for all of that joblessness. Also you should talk to the employees who have had their salaries cut by 1/5th just so the company won't hire a cheap incompetent youngster. Down here in the ranks they are not complaining about powerful unions but impotent ones who don't have the power to make difference. As for anyone fixing it? Expedience is a powerful tool. I remember when Reagan's tax program hurt so many of us. He blamed it on the Democrats letting him do it. That is some way to govern. There is not easy way. There is just integrity and it is in short supply. If you don't have that then vote intelligence. If you don't have that you are in trouble. REH --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL
RE: [Futurework] Future of our Species
Ray, Then you believe in Laissez-faire. Come to market. I would certainly let you go about your lawful business without interference. Would you let me go about my lawful business without interference? If you would, then you are a free trader. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 7:27 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Future of our Species No Harry, I believe in being responsible for my products, negotiating with people, demanding a level playing field and being moral about the future generations and the environment. There are those who would not agree that they do not own the land as you advocate. Rent is a term that you have given to them and you are telling them what they can and cannot do with what they consider property. Its a speciour circular argument Harry. To claim that I am interfering is beneath your position. Its too easy and is inaccurate. REH - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ray Evans Harrell' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 10:05 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Future of our Species Ray, As you dont believe in leaving people alone, you must believe in interfering with them. Do you not see a little arrogance in adopting a stance that demands that others must fall in lockstep with you because you are so right. Just leave people alone to go about their lawful business without interference. Harry --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade
Title: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade Ray, I cant even remember the names of the music or artists who are long time favorites. Harry put on the Brahms Violin the other day. I came in and said Isnt that the Brahms? Ive loved that old warhorse for decades, but I still had to check it with Harry. So, my knowledge is minuscule, but my enjoyment of music is great. And its peculiar. I like La Boheme because it is so tuneful, Yet, Ive liked Falstaff for more years than I can remember yet there is only one selection of notes in the whole opera that might perhaps be called a tune. Cheez, keep your music course. (I can always ask questions of you.) Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 7:23 PM To: Harry Pollard; 'Ed Weick'; 'Robert E. Bowd'; 'Thomas Lunde'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade Harry said: Ray called it aleatory and we havent corrected him. Chance is part of life, but the winners and those who have done well have depended on anything but chance. The business of survival in the show takes a lot of thinking and needs some careful choosing of directions. Answer: The initial stages of aleatory music was chance as worked out by John Cage and Merce Cunningham but then the form evolved to a group of individuals being given a verbal or word written score which the individuals then improvised. It was the same form as a game although it may or may not include a winner based upon what the purpose of the score was. Aleatory was the general form and style given to that music which grew out of our improvisations in Soho in the 1970s. I did many of the initial explorations in aleatory forms which eventually evolved into the highly structured forms of minimalism. One of the big points about aleatory forms was that they did not include the normal musical or dance training and so had a great number of amateur volunteers involved. I ended up teaching a lot of non-singers who hurt their voices because they didn't know how to protect their vocal healthsince they were untrained. That made the forms economically viable in a system that would not pay for professionals to do the more complicated scores that never got performed because they were too expensive and even sold out houses couldn't support the costs. Productivity lag, Cheez, take a music course Harry. REH --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] Future of our Species
Ray, What does that mean? Who needs an attitude of planning and responsibility? Lets not talk in riddles, neither us is an oracle. At least Im not. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 7:12 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Future of our Species An attitude of planning and responsibility. REH - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ray Evans Harrell' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 10:05 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Future of our Species Ray, You said: I do not have a Laissez-faire attitude towards the marketplace . . . . What do you have? Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 7:53 PM To: Harry Pollard; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Future of our Species Harry, I must admit that the specificity of what you say for example leave them alone as in Leave as to go away, pronoun them (whomever) alone, solitary, singular etc. is an interesting choice. But of course you were being idiomatic as so much of English is otherwise why would fanny mean a woman'svagina in England and herbackside in America? Why would public schools be private in England and private schools be public? I don't know what all this means to a Brit from California. But the process of not intruding is still, as I said, the same process as the radical environmentalists use in the forest and it doesn't work. Eventually the forest decays, changes and its neither better nor worse but just is, however for we humans it is often considerably worse. Radical environmentalism is not prefirable to good forestry and I question whether the same process, no matter what you call it, works anywhere. Otherwise you are definitely better if you are eaten when you get older by predators, it strengthens your children and living indoors does nothing for your muscles, stamina, etc. and watching TV instead of creating your own art is just lousy for the human mind and its development. But I have a very Laissez-faire attitude about such things as old age, houses and aleatory TV game shows and Pavarotti's little capital investment in three tenors although I don't frequent them. I do not have a Laissez-faire attitude towards the marketplace nor do I have such an attitude towards the forest. I believe that it should be negotiated wisely in a Democratic fashion with as egalitarian values as we have the ability to create. I believe in Democracy, gardens, forestry and the cultivation of wild intelligence for food and relationships. I believe inart, law, the Great Mystery and in the need of every human being to work towards their own enlightenment free from meddling. That does not mean that being a free rider is necessarily good for anyone, and besides it isn't an even playing field, for I also believe that there are game like qualities to life and that the rules should be balanced for everyone through the governing principle. Elected by the people. I don't believe in progress, I believe in change. I believe in foolishness and the need to guard against it as well even though fools have just as much a right to vote as anyone else. I don't believe inpoliticians who have conflicts of interest controlling the voting booths either. So God allowed light to become in the Hebrew creation. That is the way it is with creativity. The biggest allow is the permission one gives one's mind to go beyond your second assumption and grow. But you were probably talking business. I think it is wrong to mix up business with creativity. Also, I take insult at your putting this into the catagory of wanting something for nothing or wanting a Great White Father to take care of me. That was the way the English raped my people. It is the N word to me and your using it is beneath your
[Futurework] the future of work (supplementary)
What are Australias problems with work? 1. An unemployment problem there are not enough jobs? 2. An overwork problem those with jobs working longer and harder? 3. A spirit/soul problem work fails to provide meaning inpeople's lives? 4. An international competitiveness problem Australia is tooisolated to be a real playerin the international economy? 5. An economic growthproblem we cant get our economy moving asfast as we need to? 6. A gender problem work and its structures and processes aretoo male dominated? 7. An attitude problem Australians are too lazy or apathetic towork as hard as we need to if we are tobe competitive? 8. A management problem the Karpin Report (for example) identifiedserious deficiencies in our managerialskills? 9. A population problem we are too small to have a viable domesticeconomy, or to create a meaningful exporteconomy? 10. A measurement problem our current measurement systems are toonarrrowly focused and need to be broadenedto include social capital and household andvolunteer work? 11. A vision problem our leaders arent providing the visionaryleadership which would identify emergingmarkets, products or processes? 12. A conceptual problem we simply dont understand the true natureof the changes which are taking place in theworld of work? 13. A timing problem there is no crisis, just some temporary blipswhich time will correct? Solutions to Australias problems with work 1. Increase economic growth growth will create jobs growth will create wealth growth will allow a better social security safety net chief proponents: politicians and economists 2. Increase the scope of the marketplace outsourcing of domestic activity has created every industry which exists at the moment, there are still 40% of household activities to outsource so the solution is to outsource these as well most visible proponent: Phil Ruthven of IBIS Business Services 3. Mandate a shorter working week the available work could be apportioned morefairly if some people didnt take more thantheir fair share chief proponents:The Shorter Working Time Network French and Canadian Governments Trades Unions 4. Increase Australias commitment to training and development if Australian workers were better educated they would be better able to compete for the highest paid jobs (and Australian industry would be more internationally competitive) chief proponents: ANTA, ITABS and the billion dollar trainingindustry 5. Deregulate the labour market remove restrictions on labour flexibility andindustywill invest in Australia chief proponents: multi national corporations Charles Brass ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance
Ed and Harry, I hope you both realise that the young boy and girl factory workers (that is, under 10 or 11) were a very small minority all the way through the 19th century? Most of the children were at school -- and at fee-paying school, too! The poorest went to charity schools. There's a good example of this at a local mine at around 1820 when a cable snapped and a whole cageful of workers were killed -- about 30+ of them. There was one family of a father and three boys. But there were no other duplicate names on the fatalities list -- that is, all the rest were fathers working alone or single men. Keith of At 08:03 06/01/2004 -0500, you wrote: urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml xmlns:o = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office xmlns:w = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word xmlns:st1 = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags Harry, my reference applied most essentially to England, which not only led the industrial revolution but also led industrial reform. Do you really mean that five year olds were working in the mines now? Ed - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ed Weick' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 7:54 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Ed, The same happened in England. I particularly noted the Factory Act that raised the minimum work age for children from 10 to 11. However, in Wales this year, I found that children of 5 were working in the mines. You may remember my post of the 5 year olds who pulled open the gates to let the coal trolleys through. They spent 12 hours in complete darkness with no companions but the rats. However, the miners worked in the mines to earn higher wages than they could get in the fields. Many farm workers were dispossessed from their village lives and fled to the cities for work. Landowners found they good make more from sheep and one shepherd than from a village full of people. One might recall Goldsmiths The Deserted Village with the silent blacksmiths forge, the empty pulpit where once sermons were delivered. The social legislation was the palliative to avoid thinking about why these things were possible. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 6:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Doesn't the trade union movement off-set Ricardo's Iron Law? It certainly has been one of the most important factors. However, from my dim remembrances of things I once read it was enabled by a lot of pressure on governments and social legislation that moved through various legislatures in the 19th Century in reaction to the apalling degradation that accompanied the industrial revolution. Ed --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.552 / Virus Database: 344 - Release Date: 12/15/2003 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Bath, England, www.evolutionary-economics.org ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] the future of work
Charles, I think the problem with your approach --well-intentioned though it is -- is that I think you are assuming that the work/employment situation is a somehow permanent condition that can be understood in a fundamental way (and, as a corollary, I guess, that deficiencies can be compensated for by legislation). Now when I started the Job Society -- at roughly the same time as you started your initiative, and at the same time we both joined FW -- I thought the same. Where I've changed is that I believe now that, ever since about 1750 onwards, the job structure (in England at least) has been changing significantly all the time. There's been an almost distinctly new job structure from one decade to the next, certainly from from 20-year period to the next. The two chief factors have been education and an ever-growing (and cheaper) energy use. All this is now about to change. Energy will start to become increasingly expensive (I think the present high price will be maintained as a new base from now onwards), as sources become harder (if not impossible) to find and as political instabilities intervene. There has only been one absolutely clear job structure trend in the whole 1750-2003 period in my view. Most jobs have become increasingly de-skilled*, while a steadily growing minority of jobs need much higher skills. (*Not necessarily the job itself, but also ancillary skills. For example, a farmyard driver of a horse and cart had to know a great deal about horses and animal husbandry, and be a harness maker as well as being a driver. He would probably have to do some pot-holing from time to time and running repairs to his cart. He was a far more well-rounded, competent person than the average long-distance lorry driver of today.) On your list you talk about long working weeks. The average working week of the normal male worker is about the same as it's been for almost a century -- probably about 20% less. It's the meritocracy which works long hours today. 20-30 hours a week a century ago, 55+hours a week today. It is this 30% or so of the population who are carrying the rest now -- and paying much more than half of the tax that's distributed to the rest in one form or another (in England anyway). In my opinion there is no solution to the employment 'problem' (even if you can state it clearly, except as a current snapshot). But there are some very powerful trends going on and my approach is to try and understand those first. Once we understand those then we can derive particular consequences. Otherwise it's a case of the tail wagging the dog. Best wishes, Keith At 21:01 06/01/2004 +1100, you wrote: Over the years since this list was created I have made a number of attempts to begin a discourse on the difference between the future of work and the future of employment, and of the implications of an understanding of this difference for the future of humanity.?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office / On each occasion, the conversation has petered out rather quickly. Arthur Cordell and Ray Harrell have encouraged me to make another attempt. Perhaps I might begin this time by saying why I believe this conversation is so important, though I would hope this was self-evident to those who subscribe to a list called futurework. The fundamental reason the futurework list exists is because many people believe there are problems in the world of work today. These problems are articulated in a number of different ways. Common complaints include: . too many people cant get the work they want . too many people are working too hard . too much work is demeaning, dangerous or just plain boring . too many recently created jobs have been insecure and contingent. . too much of what needs doing to improve our quality of life just doesnt seem to be getting done We have, in fact, produced a list of 13 commonly ascribed problems with the current world of work which in the interests of space I will post in a separate message to this list. Perhaps because there are so many apparent problems, and perhaps because each individual problem analysed alone suggests particular solutions, there are equally many suggested solutions to our current problems with work. Again, we have produced a list of five such commonly proposed solutions which I will attach to my next posting. Taken individually, each of these proposed solutions seems attractive and many times over the years on this list someone or other has suggested that if only enough will and endeavour were applied to following through on one of these solutions, all the problems would be fixed. I am convinced that the problems are more systemic, and more endemic, than any of these individual solutions can encompass. Not that I dont believe these solutions have value in the short term many of them would help considerably. But in the long term the only way out of our current dilemmas is to think differently about the problems we face. Over
Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance
Keith: I hope you both realise that the young boy and girl factory workers (that is, under 10 or 11) were a very small minority all the way through the 19th century? Most of the children were at school -- and at fee-paying school, too! The poorest went to charity schools. Keith, I find this very hard to accept without looking into it further. The industrialization of England and indeed all of Europe was a very turbulent time, with people moving off the land and into cities, or moving to another area where things might be better. My father, born in Poland, had one year of schooling before he was off to the nearby weaving mill where small boys were needed to crawl through machinery and fix things so that the machines would not have to be shut down. Nothing he ever said about his childhood suggested that he was part of a "very small minority." Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Ed Weick Cc: Harry Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 9:30 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Ed and Harry,I hope you both realise that the young boy and girl factory workers (that is, under 10 or 11) were a very small minority all the way through the 19th century? Most of the children were at school -- and at fee-paying school, too! The poorest went to charity schools.There's a good example of this at a local mine at around 1820 when a cable snapped and a whole cageful of workers were killed -- about 30+ of them. There was one family of a father and three boys. But there were no other duplicate names on the fatalities list -- that is, all the rest were fathers working alone or single men.Keithof At 08:03 06/01/2004 -0500, you wrote: "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:st1 = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" Harry, my reference applied most essentially to England, which not only led the industrial revolution but also led industrial reform. Do you really mean that five year olds were working in the mines now?Ed - Original Message - From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ed Weick' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 7:54 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Ed, The same happened in England. I particularly noted the Factory Act that raised the minimum work age for children from 10 to 11. However, in Wales this year, I found that children of 5 were working in the mines. You may remember my post of the 5 year olds who pulled open the gates to let the coal trolleys through. They spent 12 hours in complete darkness with no companions but the rats. However, the miners worked in the mines to earn higher wages than they could get in the fields. Many farm workers were dispossessed from their village lives and fled to the cities for work. Landowners found they good make more from sheep and one shepherd than from a village full of people. One might recall Goldsmiths The Deserted Village with the silent blacksmiths forge, the empty pulpit where once sermons were delivered. The social legislation was the palliative to avoid thinking about why these things were possible. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 6:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Doesn't the trade union movement off-set Ricardo's Iron Law? It certainly has been one of the most important factors. However, from my dim remembrances of things I once read it was enabled by a lot of pressure on governments and social legislation that moved through various legislatures in the 19th Century in reaction to the apalling degradation that accompanied the industrial revolution. Ed --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.552 / Virus Database: 344 - Release
RE: [Futurework] Selective breeding?
I believe in a justice system that reflects some degree of equity. Call it morality if you wish. OK with me. -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 5, 2004 4:55 PM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Selective breeding? Morality is the efficiency that stops massive self interest and psychopathic chaos. It is an issue of symmetry. There must be a balance in everything. The problem is in knowing the elements to be balanced. The beginning of that balance is aesthetics. People who are poor perceptually are poorly prepared to deal with it. That is why good perceptual and analytic education in a Democracy is so crucial. If I just do what I can get away with then I can count the odds on lawlessness and do what I wish when away from the police. That includes killing whomever in the woods. Sounds like the morality of the werewolf or the pioneers in Indian country. Even animals are more true than that. REH - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 12:11 PM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Selective breeding? I do believe in community. In social order and social cohesion. And in law and order too. So crimes should be punished. No need to bring in morality. On Bill Moyers' NOW the other night there was a discussion of Evil. When asked to define evil the author suggested that the opposite of good is not evil, but rather the opposite of good is good intentions. arthur -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 5, 2004 12:05 PM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Selective breeding? Good and evil are just words. But if I steal your home or shot a friend what would you call that?If I create a situation in which you are able to prosper, what would you call that? And if I do it without taking away from anyone else or the environment in the process what would you call that? If a man rapes a woman or deliberately kills a child what would you call that? If a man enslaves another man and keeps him in a cage for his entire life, what would you call that? What are the classes of actions that achieve one end that is the opposite of the other in those types of manipulative actions? REH - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 11:24 AM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Selective breeding? I really don't believe in good or evil arthur -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 5, 2004 11:18 AM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Selective breeding? Because there are villains in every culture and often they are the one's who survive.The only moral way out of that dilemma is to admit and struggle for one's ideals. Otherwise righteous ideas are polluted by self-righteousness and decline begins. REH - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 10:06 AM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Selective breeding? How so? What do you mean? -Original Message- From: Ray Evans Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, January 4, 2004 2:19 PM To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Selective breeding? I don't agree with Chris on his blatent prejudice on this but I don't think your statement is true either. You paint yourself into an unteneable corner. IMHO REH - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 10:59 AM Subject: RE: [Futurework] Selective breeding? The statement that one could escape a pogrom or a planned extermination is just that: A statement. Nothing negative, nothing positive. Neither a good act or a bad act. An act. That's all. arthur -Original Message- From: mcandreb [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 5:38 AM To: Keith Hudson; Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Selective breeding? Victor Frankel said in his book Man's Search For Meaning that the 'best' human beings did not survive the concentration camps because they freely gave their lives so that others might live. Tis a far far better thing I do than I've ever done before.. Brian McAndrews
RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Harry, When you teach, is it work? Or play? Or both? Would you engage in that activity if you were not paid? arthur -Original Message- From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 5, 2004 7:54 PM To: 'Thomas Lunde'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Tom, You said: Though I applaud your stated goal, it sounds like the old survival of the fittest argument to me with slightly different rules. In other words, if a person produces nothing of value according the current market, or if for a year or two he is unemployed due to circumstances beyond his control - well, no bounties for you my friend - please go die somewhere If a person produces nothing of value, why should he able to claim anything from me. I would be happy (say) to provide him with food if he provides me with clothes. But, if he cannot produce anything I want, why should I give him anything of mine? Well, it might be charitable for me to work an extra few hours a week and give the result to him, but this has nothing to do with justice. It is perhaps charity. But, charity has nothing to do with justice. However, perhaps I won't give him anything (because I don't want to). He needn't worry. You will give him food, clothing and shelter. Won't you? If a person is unable to work because he is ill, or something, then that's all right because you will support him. If, however, he cannot find work because the economic system makes it impossible, I suggest we get to work to find out why work (which is always needed because there is so much to so) doesn't seem to be available. Of course if we spend all our time slapping palliatives on the problems, we won't have time to think about why some people are in trouble. Anyway, giving charity does give us a certain sense of well-being and perhaps even a trace of superiority. If you do nothing to find out why such societal problems occur, you are certainly maintaining injustice. If you force me to contribute to the unfortunate people in your examples you are also committing an injustice. Incidentally, the Basic Income as it is offered is an obvious palliative. It does nothing to lessen the injustice that spurs support for it, but worse, it diverts attention to the real causes of poverty and deprivation. Of course, there is no God of Work. However, nothing can be produced by us without exertion (or Labor, or Work). We don't like to exert and do so only because we must - if we are to get the things we want. That may be the psychological pressure for us to think longingly of machines doing all the work for us, or a Basic Income that will give us what we need without working. But, I'll leave the psychological analysis to those who love to do it. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Lunde Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 2:45 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Tom, As you have probably gathered, I have been working for most of the last 50 years to obtain justice for all. Justice doesn't mean a chicken in every pot, or a BI. IT means no more than that a person will keep what he produces and shares equally the bounties of nature. Thomas: Though I applaud your stated goal, it sounds like the ol survival of the fittest argument to me with slightly different rules. In other words, if a person produces nothing of value according the current market, or if for a year or two he is unemployed due to circumstances beyond his control - well, no bounties for you my friend - please go die somewhere. So, the problem with some of your remarks is that there are consequences. Such as the threshold, something that occurs often in economics but is given a variety of names. If one gets $900 for no work - but $1,100 (net after taxes $800) if you work - why should you work? I might choose unemployment plus welfare as a preferred alternative (perhaps with some off-tax work under the counter). This is done everywhere now. Thomas: Ah, the God of Work, how will we ever dethrone him. I would work because I had aspirations to have more than the Basic Income. snip --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts (was Re: Survivor -- FT PR vs. Human Nature)
Now, now. Swiss law was such that good people really couldn't help the refugees. In fact Swiss law was aimed against granting asylum. (OK to trade with the Germans, however) Read on. Interesting. Schizophrenic, perhaps?? == New Swiss Law Pardons Those Who Aided Jews Agence France-Presse 2 January 2004 The New York Times GENEVA, Jan. 1 -- A new law took effect on Thursday pardoning Swiss citizens who were penalized -- even jailed -- for helping Jews escape from Nazi Germany, nearly six decades after the fact and too late for many who died with the burden of misplaced shame. Their crime was considered a violation of the neutrality of this land-locked, mountainous country bordering Germany -- a stance that disclosures over the last decade have shown was not so sacrosanct as once thought. The new law acknowledges that these so-called offenders ''acted out of altruism'' and many ''fell into total misery after their condemnation,'' according to comments by the Swiss Federal Council, or government. As of Thursday, those sentenced for having helped victims of the Nazi government can now ask to have the judgment annulled, the Swiss Justice Ministry said. They or their surviving relatives have five years to do so, for any judgment involving the period from 1933 -- when Hitler took power in Germany -- until the end of World War II in 1945. Though the aggrieved parties' court records will be cleared, they will have no claim to any financial compensation, the ministry said. According to historians, several hundred Swiss citizens lost their jobs and were fined and some were sent to prison for helping victims of Nazi oppression flee Germany or for offering them shelter in Switzerland. During World War II, Switzerland officially took in about 300,000 refugees but it turned away at least 20,000 others, most of them Jewish. Switzerland's president apologized for the country's wartime refugee policy in 1994, before the extent of its impact was fully acknowledged. A subsequent five-year inquiry into concessions that Switzerland made to survive as a neighbor of Nazi Germany showed that the government preached a form of neutrality that it did not always practice. The 600-page report, released in March, revealed that Switzerland's political and economic establishment contributed to the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine. ''The refugee policy of our authorities contributed to the most atrocious of Nazi objectives -- the Holocaust,'' said a Swiss historian, Jean-Francois Bergier, who led the inquiry. = -Original Message- From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 5, 2004 7:54 PM To: 'Christoph Reuss'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts (was Re: Survivor -- FT PR vs. Human Nature) Chris, You are too young to remember, but in the thirties lots of people were pro Nazi, because Germany seemed to be doing so well in a world racked by depression. Germans overseas were particularly supportive of Hitler. I would have expect you to have a flourishing 5th Column in Switzerland. Some 65% of the population were of German extraction. I don't think that most people were aware of the dark underside of Nazism, but the propaganda that showed Germany arising from the depression with low (no) unemployment, and all those suntanned blonde Aryans working out at every opportunity went over well in the international depression years. Of course, Jesse Owens messed up the picture a bit. So, we faced a Europe that was completely Nazi or Fascist except for Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. And we survived - barely - with the help of the English Channel. But, Hitler wanted the British Navy so he had a reason after Russia not to attack us - particularly after losing some 1,300 planes and a lot of aircrews in the Battle of Britain. Fortunately, none of it happened. Britain held on, the US entered the war and all was lost for Hitler. Hitler became President of Germany in 1934. The war started 5 years later. Unlike armed to the teeth Switzerland, Britain and the rest of Europe didn't want war and weren't prepared for it, so they tried to make treaties of peace. Had we and the French had leaders of the caliber of George Bush, we would have stopped Hitler at the Rhineland in 1936 - but we didn't and Hitler's march began. You accuse me of historical ignorance but I wonder what on earth they teach you in Swiss schools. You said: The USA escaped fighting Hitler for 3 years after he invaded Poland, even waited for Hitler to declare war to them, and only entered troops after watching Russia sacrifice almost 20 million of its people, when it started to look like Russia could win the war and march on to the Atlantic -- can't allow that to the evil commies! Unbelievable nonsense - Poland was invaded in 1939. Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 about 6 months after the invasion of Russia. That's 2
[Futurework] Extent of Free Trade (was Re: Future of our Species / Georgist Environmentalism)
Harry Pollard wrote: Free trade merely means allowing goods to enter a country without hindrance from tariffs, quotas, and anti-dumping duties. That may be your romantic perception (or distortion) of what Free Trade means, but the reality is that Free Trade means trade that is free of hindrances (barriers to trade), and --like it or not-- _any_ labor or environmental regulation can be seen as a barrier to trade by the FT fanatics. Even if it is not formally defined as a trade barrier, it will be seen as one in practice, i.e. the corporations will vote with their feet by moving factories to the countries with the lowest regulations. This is the transnational rat race to the bottom, and this is what FT is about. Anyone who denies this is fooling himself or those who are gullible enough to believe him. And no amount of splitting hairs and misrepresenting me (as below) will change that, Harry. Chris wrote Harry Pollard wrote: You said: It would be a big interference to abolish any and all regulations . . You mean that in our 75,000 pages of the Federal Register you cannot imagine abolishing one regulation? CHRIS: Another strawman. FT is not just about abolishing _one_ regulation in 75,000 pages, or is it ? Rather, it is about abolishing as many as possible, because any regulation is a trade barrier... HARRY: As usual absolute nonsense. Abolish any means abolish any one. I wrote abolish any and all. So, you say it would be a big interference to abolish one regulation in those 75,000 pages. No that's not what I said, and that's not what FT is content with. Chris Here I go again, showing my infinite patience in the face of deliberate ignorance. SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts
Arthur Cordell wrote: Now, now. Swiss law was such that good people really couldn't help the refugees. In fact Swiss law was aimed against granting asylum. If that was true, then I wonder why... During World War II, Switzerland officially took in about 300,000 refugees but it turned away at least 20,000 others, most of them Jewish. ...as your forwarded NYT article says. Indeed, on a per-capita basis, Switzerland took in many more Jewish refugees than the USA (which rejected them by the shipload) did, although the USA was in a much better position (more food and space, and not stuck in between the Axis powers) to take them in, and although the Jewish community of Zurich _asked_ the Swiss gov't to _reject_ Jewish refugees !! (better give them only the choice between Palestine and death, to achieve the zionist goals, you know..) While most other European countries were busy denouncing their Jews or even persecuting them and helping the occupiers to deport them to the concentration camps, Switzerland not only gave a safe haven to its residing Jews, but also took in several tens of thousands of foreign Jews, despite extreme shortages of food and other basic necessities, and although doing so was a provocation to the neighboring Axis powers. But the thanks we get is petty libel about anti-Semitism. With so much ungratefulness, maybe at some point these injust allegations might become a self-fulfilling prophecy? ''The refugee policy of our authorities contributed to the most atrocious of Nazi objectives -- the Holocaust,'' said a Swiss historian, Jean-Francois Bergier, who led the inquiry. Bergier is a bad joke of a historian. When Bergier was confronted with two substantial lies found in the preliminary reports, he replied in an interview that he can't say anything about this because he doesn't have sufficient knowledge about these claims. So much for the scientific quality of this leading historian! He doesn't even know the bases of his own reports. The facts don't matter for him anyway because his verdict was made in advance. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance
Mike Hollinshead wrote a book about this. His contention was that the Englishknitting factories were actually built too small for normal sized people and so they hired children to work within the machines because of their size. Those were the Arkwright mills. It was Gregg who was a Quaker non-conformist who invented another machine because of his faith and the valuing of the children that accommodated adults and that put the children to work in school instead of the factory. The founder of the Salvation Army,William Booth did the same for the toxic match factories which only changedbecause of religious reasons valuing the worker rather than pure profit. Some of the greatest advances infactories in the 19th century were done for non-conformist religious reasons having nothing to do with economicseven though the practices ultimately proved more profitable in the long run. Also there is writing by Edward Hall that indicates that whole families were initially hired in Industrial England because the fathers were not willing to work day after day. They would work until they had enough money then go home to their families. The answer was to hire the families. The children grew up in the factory and imprinted on the factory whistle which then represented family to them for the rest of their lives. T hat psychological issue is one of the areas that economists don't understand, or care about, when they see people shooting their employers who fire them. They feel abandoned by their "family." This family image in the factory and company was propagated during my growing years and only recently has been replaced with a different image. It is not surprising that people who uprooted themselves to move to the US or elsewhere don't share in such feelings since they already gave up their families to begin with. Gypsies don't share the factory work connection to familyeither and Jews carry their community in the synagogue rather than the work. Some peopleeven call the "family" image of work "mafialike" and relate it to Italian crime families. Baptists are tending to do the sameas the Jewscarrying their community in a "letter" that transfers from church to church so in effect they too have a continuous community based on a profession of faith rather than birth. These issues are complicated and to simply considerworkers as cogs in a wheel or replaceable digits is psychologically unsophisticated and insensitive to say the least. Something deserving of the name economic Darwinism. That is what makes the "free market" ideal such a silly simplistic statement. When some of us speak of simple trade, they jump up and say that we are using their "ideal" but in fact most of us use every one of the simple models espoused by both right and left. It is simple minded to claim territory that in reality doesn't exist. One of the interesting things is how much good information has come out of this list in the past and how much of it has been ignored just to come round again. A good search engine on the archive would help raise these posts from the past but you have to be able to search by word as well as date and author. Arthur, Sally, can we do that or arrange to do it? Ray Evans Harrell - Original Message - From: Ed Weick To: Keith Hudson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Harry Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 11:10 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Keith: I hope you both realise that the young boy and girl factory workers (that is, under 10 or 11) were a very small minority all the way through the 19th century? Most of the children were at school -- and at fee-paying school, too! The poorest went to charity schools. Keith, I find this very hard to accept without looking into it further. The industrialization of England and indeed all of Europe was a very turbulent time, with people moving off the land and into cities, or moving to another area where things might be better. My father, born in Poland, had one year of schooling before he was off to the nearby weaving mill where small boys were needed to crawl through machinery and fix things so that the machines would not have to be shut down. Nothing he ever said about his childhood suggested that he was part of a "very small minority." Ed - Original Message - From: Keith Hudson To: Ed Weick Cc: Harry Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 9:30 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Ed and Harry,I hope you both realise that the young boy and girl factory workers (that is, under 10 or 11) were a very small minority all the way through the 19th century? Most of the children were at school -- and at fee-paying
[Futurework] Where has music gone?
246. Where has music gone? And, come to think of it, where has art gone, or poetry, or philosophy, or architecture? Apart from also getting into a real mess. The new book, Music Healing the Rift, by Ivan Hewett and as summarised by Michael Church in a recent review in the Independent, describes my own feelings about modern music -- popular or 'art/serious' -- exactly. I didn't discover choral singing until I was in my early 50s, but the first day I attended a rehearsal with an invisible sign saying Imposter above my head, and heard the first notes of Mozart's Requiem rising around me from the basses and tenors, tentatively at first and then more firmly, the tears flowed down my cheeks. And the tears flow now as I write, remembering that wonderful occasion. Since that day, I have sung in many choral works, long and short -- though never very competently -- and I've also enjoyed the conviviality and comradeship of being in a choir. Which brings me immediately to something else that we have lost in the course of the past century. Community. I've experienced brief glimpses of community in my life -- sitting in an air-raid shelter during WWII as the bombs fell around us during the Coventry Blitz, and all the street sitting there, neighbourly animosities put on one side for the moment, singing the latest pop songs. And a few other occasions. But not a great many. In the last century, the consumer society has torn the family away from the community, has torn the young and the old of the family apart, has torn sex away from love and is even now tearing away at natural partnerships, producing increasingly larger numbers of isolated individuals with all sorts of fetishes. I believe, however, that the instincts of community are still deep and strong within us and must necessarily re-emerge. I think that the new managed communities in America are an early sign of this, even though they are not everybody's cultural cup of tea at present. I think that a necessary cluster of economic and technological factors must yet become more focussed before communities can become widespread again, but I think they'll return. We have lost too much. I think I might re-read News from Nowhere (William Morris) which I first read 45 years ago but is still a precious book on my shelves. Morris was hopelessly idealistic and unrealistic about human nature, but at least he tapped into something very profound in that book. When the time is ripe and the customer demands it from the multinational CEO and the politician alike (or perhaps invalidates them both) then we could recreate An Epoch of Rest, as Morris subtitled it. Keith Hudson THE WESTERN WORLD MUST LEARN TO SING AGAIN Micahel Church Review of: Music Healing the Rift by Ivan Hewett (Continuum, 2003) Until recent times, says Ivan Hewett, music was everywhere, and always an authentic expression of the social situation that called it forth. The idyll was shattered, in the developed West, by the notion that music could be transportable a mass could be taken out of church and performed in a concert hall. Then music began its long retreat from the public domain. It turned into something made en famille, then something listened to in the privacy of a room, until finally the Walkman reduced its operative space to six inches between the ears. Hewett's book is fruitfully complex I could have extracted several other narratives which would have summarised music's trajectory just as well. The rift in his title denotes nothing so banal as that between classicists and modernists. His big theme is the falling-apart of the laboriously-constructed musical realm of the early 20th century, and the perennial desire, among composers, to make it whole again. As he makes clear, that crisis reflects a falling-apart in our entire culture. Putting it together again - if such a thing is possible - would benefit us all. His focus is on composers past and present. Deploying the expertise which made him the ideal anchorman for Radio 3's Music Matters, Hewett writes with easy authority. He has interviewed widely, read deeply, listened at length his nine short chapters ripple with provocative insights. Sometimes the writing is too densely philosophical for the argument to be immediately grasped, but that only puts it on a level with its subject-matter. One of Hewett's many sub-plots follows the rise of the programme note, starting with Berlioz's instructions on how to listen to the Symphonie Fantastique, and culminating in the current situation where it's unthinkable for a new work to be presented without copious verbal explication. Herein lies the misery of the modernist composer obliged to teach the audience a new language, but inevitably doomed to fail. Hewett writes so illuminatingly about Birtwistle, Boulez, Cage and Carter that one feels impelled to listen again. Though sympathetic, he admits that that their invented private languages don't
Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance
Interesting stuff, Ray. When I was teenager and young adult, I called Ocean Falls, a pulp and paper town on the Canadian west coast, home. It was a company townthat had about 4,000 people at the time. Everybody that lived in the town depended on the mill in some way. The company did a lot for the people - cheap but good housing, fair prices at the company store, good union-management relations, and several sports and recreation programs. The town regularly sent swimmers to the British Empire (now Commonwealth) Games and even the Olympics. Students from the local high school that went on to university were guaranteed summer jobs. Except for the incessant rain, which the company could do nothing about, it was a good place to live and raise kids. Then, well after I'd left, the company sold out to a much larger pulp and paper company and shortly after, that company shut the mill down and people had to leave. Some were lucky and got jobs with the new company at a new mill on Vancouver Island, but many just had to find their way. Many had lived there most and, in some cases, all of their lives. You can imagine the trauma! Ed - Original Message - From: Ray Evans Harrell To: Ed Weick ; Keith Hudson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Harry Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 3:28 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Basic Income as a form of Economic Governance Mike Hollinshead wrote a book about this. His contention was that the Englishknitting factories were actually built too small for normal sized people and so they hired children to work within the machines because of their size. Those were the Arkwright mills. It was Gregg who was a Quaker non-conformist who invented another machine because of his faith and the valuing of the children that accommodated adults and that put the children to work in school instead of the factory. The founder of the Salvation Army,William Booth did the same for the toxic match factories which only changedbecause of religious reasons valuing the worker rather than pure profit. Some of the greatest advances infactories in the 19th century were done for non-conformist religious reasons having nothing to do with economicseven though the practices ultimately proved more profitable in the long run. Also there is writing by Edward Hall that indicates that whole families were initially hired in Industrial England because the fathers were not willing to work day after day. They would work until they had enough money then go home to their families. The answer was to hire the families. The children grew up in the factory and imprinted on the factory whistle which then represented family to them for the rest of their lives. T hat psychological issue is one of the areas that economists don't understand, or care about, when they see people shooting their employers who fire them. They feel abandoned by their "family." This family image in the factory and company was propagated during my growing years and only recently has been replaced with a different image. It is not surprising that people who uprooted themselves to move to the US or elsewhere don't share in such feelings since they already gave up their families to begin with. Gypsies don't share the factory work connection to familyeither and Jews carry their community in the synagogue rather than the work. Some peopleeven call the "family" image of work "mafialike" and relate it to Italian crime families. Baptists are tending to do the sameas the Jewscarrying their community in a "letter" that transfers from church to church so in effect they too have a continuous community based on a profession of faith rather than birth. These issues are complicated and to simply considerworkers as cogs in a wheel or replaceable digits is psychologically unsophisticated and insensitive to say the least. Something deserving of the name economic Darwinism. That is what makes the "free market" ideal such a silly simplistic statement. When some of us speak of simple trade, they jump up and say that we are using their "ideal" but in fact most of us use every one of the simple models espoused by both right and left. It is simple minded to claim territory that in reality doesn't exist. One of the interesting things is how much good information has come out of this list in the past and how much of it has been ignored just to come round again. A good search engine on the archive would help raise these posts from the past but you have to be able to search by word as well as date and author. Arthur, Sally, can we do that or arrange to do it? Ray Evans Harrell - Original Message - From: Ed Weick To: Keith Hudson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Harry Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent:
RE: [Futurework] FT PR vs. Historical Facts
Harry Pollard wrote: You said: The USA escaped fighting Hitler for 3 years after he invaded Poland, even waited for Hitler to declare war to them, and only entered troops after watching Russia sacrifice almost 20 million of its people, when it started to look like Russia could win the war and march on to the Atlantic -- can't allow that to the evil commies! Unbelievable nonsense - Poland was invaded in 1939. Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 about 6 months after the invasion of Russia. That's 2 years after Poland, 6 months after Russia, but maybe you can't count. The US troops landed on European beaches (Italy) only in July 1943. That's _3_ years (and 10 months) after Hitler invaded Poland (and 4.5 years after he occupied Czechoslovakia). The Brits and French tried to pacify Hitler because they didn't want war. If they didn't want war, then why did they make the Versailles treaty? Marshal Foch told his fellow Frenchmen in 1919 that this treaty would be the sure recipe for war, and Lloyd George told the Brits the same in advance (before Versailles was signed). Alas, in your Hollywood version of history, the war began in 1939 so Versailles doesn't exist. From 1934 to war in 1939, there wasn't much time for Hitler to be a bulwark against communism. You must have added propaganda to your history books, His domestic cleanups and corporate policies clearly showed he was one. [...lots of silly old stereotypes clipped...] while American sailors in the Pacific were being eaten by sharks in feeding frenzy, you were busy making watches for the Russian Front. I wasn't aware that watches are mission-critical weapons, certainly not as much as Swedish steel and Czech-made tanks... Yet, you were quick to blame Sweden and Czecho for helping the Nazis. Well, they were trying to save their necks - something that you didn't need to do with your 600,000 army. We just can't do it right for you. First you objected that Hitler could have rolled over Switzerland in 15 minutes, and after I debunked that, now you object to our 600,000 army. Czechoslovakia had a larger army (and 2.5 times more people than CH), but didn't dare to use it for defense, thus inviting Hitler to occupy the country and take their tanks and tank factories to use them for other invasions. According to Churchill, from August 1938 to September 1939 the Czech factories produced almost as much as the whole British arms industry -- but for Hitler! And you complain about Swiss watches and chocolate bars. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] BSE = Free Trade in Prions
Harry Pollard downplayed: The danger was less than minimal. Even now, no connection has been established between Mad Cow and any human problems. And the rise in nv-CJD is pure coincidence, of course, and DDT is perfectly safe, etc. yada yada... The shoppers thought the cheap beef was a good deal. It was. How lucky they were not to have Chris telling them what to do. Those who eat at McDeath's think cheap hamburgers are a good deal, and oh how lucky they are not to have nutritionists telling them what would be healthier than greasy salty sugary junk. You protect the unethical anti-social profits of fat cats, no matter how much you deny it and cover it up under let people do what they want hypocrisy. Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
Arthur, Change that to evidence and commonsense suggest that machines taking over requiring us to sit with folded hands is fantasy. Where is your evidence that something different may occur? Of course you can conjecture, But then you can conjecture about God. Where did I say organized work will last a thousand years? I think you are the theologian calling the non-theologian black. Harry Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818 352-4141--Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 7:55 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Bravo Charles. Harry's theology is that organized work will last a thousand years, maybe 10 thousand. A belief system. We have to begin the transition of society from one of full employment to one of full engagement (and this would include all sorts of work --including the arts) arthur -Original Message- From: Charles Brass [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 2:08 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income sites Harry Pollard said: People don't want to work. They want the results of working. Until all of us have everything we want, there will be a need for production and service - and satiety is a long time away. Service provision is the hallmark of an advanced economy. We are a long way from finding the services we would like. There should be a constant demand for people to work - a demand that is never satisfied. The idea of machines taking over requiring us to sit with folded hands is fantasy - and will be for a thousand or ten thousand years. This is a somewhat confused and contradictory position. On one hand Harry asserts that people don't want to work, then he suggests that in order to get what we need and want we will need to work for ten thousand years. I suggest people do want to work. They want to make a contribution, to be busy, to feel that they are engaged in something meaningful and useful. The problem is that most of what the Industrial Revolution provided under the name 'work' was meaningless, or dehumanising. We have come a long way, however, since the invention of the steam engine (though you might not know it they way much of the discourse happens today) - and we can now provide people with all the meaning and purpose they require, and all the goods and services they require. All we have to do is think a bit laterally, and stop believing that 'the marketplace' (and the institutions which flow from the marketplace) create wealth and value - and believing that the best people can do is capture some of this value for themselves by 'working' in the marketplace. Now, I know that there is much debate about the meaning and nature of 'the marketplace' on this list (yes I read it all even if I only comment occasionally). So I must say I have no problem with the notion of markets as places where prices are cleared - but I certainly do have a problem with our (mostly implicit) belief that marketplaces are critical to the wealth and value in the world in the twentyfirst century. Work is getting something done. A job is getting done what someone else wants. We could now organise ourselves to get done what we want, in ways we want - but we find it hard to confront the thinking errors we have made in the past. Charles Brass Chairman futures foundation phone:1300 727328 (International 61 3 9459 0244) fax: 61 3 9459 0344 PO Box 122 Fairfield 3078 www.futurists.net.au the mission of the futures foundation is: ...to engage all Australians in creating a better future... --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.558 / Virus Database: 350 - Release Date: 1/2/2004 ___ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
