Tom posted a link over in Flame to this CNN opinion piece by Douglas Rushkoff. It (Tom’s choice of venue) struck me as a somewhat underhanded tactic to preclude serious discussion of the essay, and it didn’t work very well–ER and Eri started discussing it seriously.
I want to comment on it, but Flame is inappropriate. I think it’s important because Rushkoff isn’t original, and in one form or another the debate about the insane mismatch between a jobs-oriented economy and an obsession with technology that eliminates jobs has been around much longer than I have. But I will give Rushkoff credit for writing a particularly clear and accessible explanation of the problem.
Which is, basically, that our present predicament isn’t that we’re any poorer than we used to be, but that the mechanism for distributing the abundance has seized up.
We’re living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That’s because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that’s even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings Video to get the empty houses off their books.
Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.
When you get right down to it, an economic system that fails not to produce but to distribute is serving us poorly. We’ve got the production part down pat, but it seems our ideological blinders cause us to suck at the distribution part.
I can see how the economic equivalent of “The Emperor has no clothes!” would threaten a Conservative like Tom, but instead of flaming the piece,Tom, I really want you to explain where Rushkoff got it wrong. Did I miss al Qaeda blowing up half the factories in America? Did American farmers forget how to grow their crops? Or is there some good explanation why productive capacity and wealth and empty homes are piling up to one side, while millions of Americans are begging for subsistence?
Please convince me that we’re living in the best of all possible worlds under capitalism.
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This concludes this test of the system.
We now return you to your original programming.
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I imagine Tom originally posted the Rushkoff essay in some forlorn hope that all the lefties here would read it ...
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No, I posted it to display a "media analyst" who floated the idea that a large portion of the population ...
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TB, we have always lived in a society where not working was not only allowed, it was a sign of ...
- Ten foot pole. You know damn well the author was not talking about dependents. Or successful investors.
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TB, we have always lived in a society where not working was not only allowed, it was a sign of ...
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No, I posted it to display a "media analyst" who floated the idea that a large portion of the population ...
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Heading down to the Art and Wine festival.
Later!
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This guy goes in a different direction with Rushkoff's essay:
Increasingly, perhaps, a job is something that we each have to ...
- The man makes some good points, although I have difficulty seeing how they can actually be realized in practice. ...
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One of the problems with the essay is it makes the mistake, common nowadays, of thinking of a "job" as ...
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Moved to Flame.
- Why thank you ER...I was a candy striper...do you need to use the bedpan? ...there is more to the concept of ...
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I simply can not wrap my brain around work not being jobs...and jobs not being work.
They are one in the ...
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That's because you think of work as wage slavery: Something unpleasant you begrudgingly do because you have to eat, ...
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Not all jobs are drudgery, although some always will be.
Craftsmen still earn their way in many, many fields. Heck, ...
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EDITED:So why aren't you working for Google, or starting your own Google?
C'mon Tom. If making sandals and running a ...
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The system will work again when we no longer have a government in power that believes that the private sector ...
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Conservative freedom rhetoric doesn't fool anyone. Every single policy consideration they propose is one that will benefit them immediately, and ...
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My statement still stands, a simple one that had no outrage in it.
People are learning who the thugs are.
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My statement still stands, a simple one that had no outrage in it.
People are learning who the thugs are.
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Conservative freedom rhetoric doesn't fool anyone. Every single policy consideration they propose is one that will benefit them immediately, and ...
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I tried. Several times. I didn't make it. That's called "reality."
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The system will work again when we no longer have a government in power that believes that the private sector ...
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EDITED:So why aren't you working for Google, or starting your own Google?
C'mon Tom. If making sandals and running a ...
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Not all jobs are drudgery, although some always will be.
Craftsmen still earn their way in many, many fields. Heck, ...
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That's because you think of work as wage slavery: Something unpleasant you begrudgingly do because you have to eat, ...
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"Please convince me that we’re living in the best of all possible worlds under capitalism."
I can't. The responses to ...
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Define "impossible".
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Rushkoff is wrong. Dead wrong. I won't even mention his ignorance of history.
There is no "America" producing goods ...
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I don't understand Rushkoff. He wrote a book "Program or be Programmed". To me I took this as being pro ...
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I wouldn't infer acquiescence from somebody speaking up about a problem. And I don't really see how reexamining the structure ...
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I haven't read all the background comprising this thread but I will say that the idea of food and shelter ...
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Believe it or not, I have some sympathy for the argument, but it's mostly left wing Utopian baloney.
This guy makes ...
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You forgot the one about liberals eating their children.
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No, that's not how you respond to a "smear." Your response should be "no, Jody, the Left is very ...
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No, that is exactly how I respond to a smear.
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I am sorry you are disappointed in what I said Robert.
I am not. It feels strangely cathartic.
- "Cathartic" means using other people as punching bags. That's really nothing to be proud of.
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In short, you got nothing. Want to go into a tally of smears and empty insults?
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I am sorry you are disappointed in what I said Robert.
I am not. It feels strangely cathartic.
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No, that is exactly how I respond to a smear.
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No, that's not how you respond to a "smear." Your response should be "no, Jody, the Left is very ...
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You forgot the one about liberals eating their children.
- Which "better one" would that be? And how have identical ideas worked in the past?
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I haven't read all the background comprising this thread but I will say that the idea of food and shelter ...
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I wouldn't infer acquiescence from somebody speaking up about a problem. And I don't really see how reexamining the structure ...
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Rushkoff is wrong. Dead wrong. I won't even mention his ignorance of history.
There is no "America" producing goods ...
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You don't need proof because you have already decided on the truth.
You're just wrong Tom. Your beliefs are more ...
- This from the guy who constantly lectures my on my "arrogance." Two points: A definition that can mean anything you ...
- Some jobs are becoming obsolete, to be sure. But my thought is that because of technology, jobs are being created. Hasn't ...
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Define "impossible".