41–50 of 92 posts
Mediocre people are getting pushed out. This is a good thing for the efficiency of the economy.
By definition, "mediocre people" make up approx. 66% of the workforce. We are supposed to celebrate their inability to make a living?
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In the online dictionary I consulted, dignity is defined as "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect." I think productive work is one means by which individuals can become more worthy of honor and respect. Thoughts?
Are you saying that work, not people, is what is worthy of honor and respect?
For example, let's say you have two individuals. One gets married, fathers some children, and then decides that rather than supporting his family, he's going to sit around and play video games while his wife works 24x7 to try to take care of the family.
Another man, in the same circumstances, gets a job, works hard every day, studies things that he finds interesting, and eventually works himself into a job where he can easily support his family, to the point where the members of his family can engage in things that interest them.
Which man is more worthy of honor and respect? I would say the man in the second example.
Do you see it differently?
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Any successful scam is very productive in the economic sense. Does that make the scammer worthy of honor and respect? If Bill Gates gives away a billion meals to starving African children then he is 0% productive (no revenue!). Does that make Bill Gates unworthy of honor and respect? Ken Levine (of BioShock fame) calls this the "circus of value." The disparity between economic terms and their moral/intuitive counterp…
I have a different view on scams. I don't think they are productive, even in an economic sense, if one takes the long view. A person who tries to succeed in life by scamming other people enters a war with reality. He may fool some people, for a certain period of time, but he is forced to constantly be looking over his shoulder. One lie leads to the need for additional lies. Some people think this is fine, or that it'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a different view on scams. I don't think they are productive, even in an economic sense, if one takes the long view. A person who tries to succeed in life by scamming other people enters a war with reality. He may fool some people, for a certain period of time, but he is forced to constantly be looking over his shoulder. One lie leads to the need for additional lies. Some people think this is fine, or that it'…
I think you need to be more precise about what you mean by "productive" before I can reply. Clearly you don't mean it in the economic sense (productivity is revenue/X where X is some measure of input, e.g. workers or hours). So what do you mean?
Mediocre people are getting pushed out. This is a good thing for the efficiency of the economy.
Where are they getting pushed out to? If you can't vaporize them (and you can't) what happens? The failure of hubris isn't necessarily in obnoxiousness. It's in shortsightedness.
Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.
"Along with more workers clocking just below 30 hours in their primary jobs, CPS data show the number working 20-29 hours in secondary jobs rose 105,000, or 7.6%, from a year ago. Other Labor Department data also suggest an ObamaCare effect. The average retail workweek for nonsupervisors shrank to a three-year low of 30 hours in July, down from a post-recession peak of 30.8 hours in January 2012. That's the sharpest decline in the retail workweek since the early 1980s."
http://news.investors.com/080513-666340-obamacare-cuts-part-...
Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.
In the online dictionary I consulted, dignity is defined as "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect." I think productive work is one means by which individuals can become more worthy of honor and respect. Thoughts?
I realize that sounds pretty dismissive, that isn't what I'm getting at. I'm asking a serious question about why you are framing the discussion in that way.
Mediocre people are getting pushed out. This is a good thing for the efficiency of the economy.
If "the efficiency of the economy" really demands that an increasing number of people be unable to support themselves, that would mean that it's time to tear down the existing economy and replace it with something that works properly. is that what you want?
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Serious question: what's special about now, as opposed to 10 years ago or 10 years from now?
I can't think of anything special about this instant, but look at prevailing conditions: the employment-to-population rate has plummeted in recent years [1]. The number of zero-margin-product people on disability has skyrocketed [2]. Income inequality has increased markedly [3]. Yet our GDP has increased tremendously during that time [4]. We just don't need as many person-hours as we used to need. The trend is only g…
I think one of the expected outcomes of ACA was that people who could afford to retire, but were too constrained to buy their own health insurance, would leave the workforce.