51–60 of 66 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Suzman
Being the head apologist for a company that generally does bad things in the world, I guess that convinced him after a while that the very concept of work was flawed. Maybe he would be more excited about the idea of work if he had worked for less evil companies.
The article talks about Communism, but fails to mention that the USSR did not consider itself to be Communist. Rather, all the inhabitants were working on "building Communism" and once achieved everyone in the world would enjoy a post-scarcity society. Surely such a grand goal justified poor living condition - that are temporary anyway? Don't you believe in the vision of the party?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a point where all nuance and complexity is lost such that the model becomes useless. IOW this is, besides being incorrect, over-simplified. Your assumptions, especially for the future, are completely unjustified in this format. As far as its incorrectness, this model implies both that this history of work is a progression, which it's not, and that each stage succeeds the previous, which it does not. Many of t…
You clearly invented the second paragraph: I can point out that gig worker and WFH employees coexist presently, and they are on different levels in the "model". I'm imagining that it has to be viewed through a sliding window. In any case, it's cute. Lighten up a bit.
The notion of surplus is very interesting. I have no opinions, no hot takes. Just questions.
The very first facet I'd like explained is the observation that a surplus in one area creates a deficit elsewhere. I'm sure both author and reviewer touch on this.
Reviewer also makes a connection to Graeber's Bullshit Jobs thesis, how finance begets bureaucracy. Now I want to know if there's some kind of connection between surplus, inequity, finance, and bureaucracy. Perhaps repelling appeals to fairness, defending the hierarchy, what we now call Public Relations, begets more "justification work". (In contrast to productive work and caring work.)
This quote popped out:
"Suzman essentially argues that nature has programmed us, just as it has every other creature, to deal with surpluses of energy by working those surpluses out of our systems. With lots of available energy but little to do, we make work to release the tensions building up inside of us."
This has to be a nod towards Jeremy England's work, right?
"A New Physics Theory of Life"
A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-the...
I also want to contrast Suzman's Work thesis with Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus [2011]. https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Technology-Consumer... It's been too long, so I'll have to actually reread.
Meanwhile...
Shirky's observation about widespread drunkenness in the 1700s really stuck with me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze All that extra gin and idle labor with nothing to do. Of course everyone got drunk. Eventually, new demand for labor, the industrial revolution, absorbed all that supply. Problem solved. Begetting new problems, of course.
At the time, I saw the similarity between gin and online gaming. Today it'd be doom scrolling.
Any way. Great review. Exciting ideas. Will definitely lean into this topic.
Personally, I hope we can shift the overtime bar from 40 hours to 32 hours in the near future, because if I understand my history, setting it to 40 is what hastened the work week we’ve considered normal for a century.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you assume that dental hygiene wouldn't exist in a foraging society with primitive tools? People were using things akin to toothbrushes as far back as 3000BCE and, as I understand it, a lot of modern man's issues with dental health are due to our high grain diets anyway.
> People were using things akin to toothbrushes as far back as 3000BCE So? They were using clothing as well, doesn't mean they weren't transmitting infections to one another willy-nilly. > as I understand it, a lot of modern man's issues with dental health are due to our grain righ diets anyway. Maybe. I never heard of that theory myself. Bu regardless of diet, foragers still eat a lot of fruit with sugar. That's bad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world still has some hunter gatherer societies living today, so studying them could give us some insight into how many hours our hunter gatherer ancestors worked.
The article makes a point that contemporary hunter gatherers are not living the life like their ancestors. "Modern" cultures displaced them into much less favorable environments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The counter perspective is that some amount of degrowth will happen eventually. And in the west, decades of austerity have led to oppressive working conditions to the point people aren’t having children. We’re already seeing this effect on the workforce; my hypothesis is that much of the worker shortage is due to older workers dying from Covid or simply retiring and there aren’t enough millennials and Gen Z to fill t…
Anyone interested in declining birth rates, just take a look at the statistics in South Korea. 42% of the women in their 30s are unmarried ( https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pxotg9/over_42_o... ). That's almost half! Our infinite growth systems will collapse, unless countries make it easier for women to raise a family.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone interested in declining birth rates, just take a look at the statistics in South Korea. 42% of the women in their 30s are unmarried ( https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pxotg9/over_42_o... ). That's almost half! Our infinite growth systems will collapse, unless countries make it easier for women to raise a family.
Its even worse in the US where over 50% of adults are single.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone interested in declining birth rates, just take a look at the statistics in South Korea. 42% of the women in their 30s are unmarried ( https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pxotg9/over_42_o... ). That's almost half! Our infinite growth systems will collapse, unless countries make it easier for women to raise a family.
Its even worse in the US where over 50% of adults are single.