111–120 of 226 posts
The USA are abolishing themselves... > In Germany, an economic powerhouse, workers rank second to last in number of hours worked. Despite more time off, German workers are the eighth most productive in Europe, while the long-toiling Greeks rank 24 out of 25 in productivity. Work smart, not hard.
And working in Germany, I can say that productivity!= quality
Ugh. The paper reeks of political agenda. The very first sentence is: > One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. What about the Communism? Why would they spread this durable myth? Because I remember hearing the same story in the Soviet school. The paper does not make a real effort trying to consider different evidence and honestly investigate the subject. Most of the sources are relat…
Here's some food for thought: If you don't work an additional hour, because the economic environment you are in has provided you no meaningful economic task that would be worth doing in that hour, are you better off than someone who does have that opportunity and works for benefit in that time?
It's difficult to compare across such time spans meaningfully. I've often thought if we could bring someone forward in time from, say, a thousand years ago and give them a tour of your local 7-11 that it would re-align a lot of people's perspectives on our modern societies. (I'm not even picking that for the cold drinks or snacks, either; it's things like "here's a tube of cream that you can buy for roughly 10 minutes labor, tops, that when you smear it on a cut makes it so the cut won't kill you anymore". Or, "condoms", that work reliably. I'd expect tears from our visitor and a high likelihood of violent resistence if you try to send them back.)
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National productivity numbers aren't using a mathematical gimmick though, they hold up if you look at yearly output/hours per year. One of the reasons for Germany's high productivity is that manufacturing is a large sector there.
The problem is with productivity is that its that counter-intuitively, it might only be a measure of efficiency in absolute terms. For example consider a family that owns a plantation powered by slave labour. If you look at their gdp/work its close to infinity. Then you go to the plantation and measure the productivity ratio of this as an economy and it would be very low. So it depends a lot who captures the value of…
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It never makes sense for the worker. But most of the time is more profitable for the one squishing the work out of the people if people are cheap enough. [edit] Parasites are always the most productive if you don't measure in absolute terms. The same happens among countries.
I never understood this. Pay people half the wage for half their time, hire twice the staff. Get a significant increase in value produced for the same money. I, for one, would accept half pay for half work. And I suspect others too.
That is if you work more and earn less then whoever captures the difference in value produced would have augmented their productivity. It all depends where you measure the ratio and in which terms.
Parasites are always the most productive if you don't measure in absolute terms. The same happens among countries.
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Different ages and cultures will give different spins to the same old human needs and inclinations.
I don't think it's a "different spin to the same old human need;" I think it's a phenomenon entirely different in kind. This is, I think, as clearly as I can possibly state my argument.
Going to music festivals is sort of like pilgrimage as well. But I definitely count it as vacation. People do classic pilgrimages and call that hiking vacation nowadays. Amateur sports events, especially multi-day stage ones, are totally like pilgrimage. You get together with people with common goal, do shit and hang out. I sure as hell count that as vacation.
Ugh. The paper reeks of political agenda. The very first sentence is: > One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. What about the Communism? Why would they spread this durable myth? Because I remember hearing the same story in the Soviet school. The paper does not make a real effort trying to consider different evidence and honestly investigate the subject. Most of the sources are relat…
The argument is not capitalism vs state socialism ("communism"). That you seem to think it is, shows exactly how well propaganda has worked on you, from both of those sources.
Ugh. The paper reeks of political agenda. The very first sentence is: > One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. What about the Communism? Why would they spread this durable myth? Because I remember hearing the same story in the Soviet school. The paper does not make a real effort trying to consider different evidence and honestly investigate the subject. Most of the sources are relat…
"The paper does not make a real effort trying to consider different evidence and honestly investigate the subject." Here's some food for thought: If you don't work an additional hour, because the economic environment you are in has provided you no meaningful economic task that would be worth doing in that hour, are you better off than someone who does have that opportunity and works for benefit in that time? It's dif…
Plus, the meaningfulness of the task sometimes is beyond economic; many people code in crazy hours because they love the job. I doubt it was the same with miners 500 years ago.
But all these nuances aren't even looked at in the paper.
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The argument is not capitalism vs state socialism ("communism"). That you seem to think it is, shows exactly how well propaganda has worked on you, from both of those sources.
The word 'capitalism' was invented by communists, so the moment that someone uses the word in a disparaging sense it makes conjure up the 'capitalism vs state socialism' debate. Even if that weren't the case, the GP's point would still stand. Bringing up 'capitalism' in this manner reeks of political agenda. Whether that agenda is communism is irrelevant.
I don't think that is true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word 'capitalism' was invented by communists, so the moment that someone uses the word in a disparaging sense it makes conjure up the 'capitalism vs state socialism' debate. Even if that weren't the case, the GP's point would still stand. Bringing up 'capitalism' in this manner reeks of political agenda. Whether that agenda is communism is irrelevant.
> The word 'capitalism' was invented by communists I don't think that is true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Etymology
"The initial usage of the term "capitalism" in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 ("What I call 'capitalism' that is to say the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others") and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861 ("Economic and social regime in which capital, the source of income, does not generally belong to those who make it work through their labour").[22]:237 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to the "capitalistic system"[29][30] and to the "capitalist mode of production" in Capital (1867).[31] The use of the word "capitalism" in reference to an economic system appears twice in Volume I of Capital, p. 124 (German edition) and in Theories of Surplus Value, tome II, p. 493 (German edition). Marx did not extensively use the form capitalism, but instead those of capitalist and capitalist mode of production, which appear more than 2,600 times in the trilogy The Capital."