December 8, 2020 at 11:11 am
I don’t really have anything to say about this jumble of notes. I just wanted to make something and this is the result. There should probably be more thought to it; mindless productivity is the root of quite a few problems facing the world today. I guess tackling that existential crisis is next on the list.
December 7, 2020 at 12:10 pm
Which came first — the productive work or the payment? That depends greatly on the scenario. You reimburse the chef after they cook your meal. A home contractor might get half of the money before starting work and the other half upon completion. Hourly wages are for the time spent before the paycheck, not in advance.
Here’s an easier scenario. Which came first — the dollar or the income tax? The American dollar came into existence on April 2, 1792 with passage of the Coinage Act of 1792 by the 2nd United States Congress. A short lived income tax during the American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1872. Our modern incarnation of income taxes began in 1913 with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. Similar payroll taxes didn’t appear until 1934 with the creation of Social Security by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Modern Monetary Theory appears to be new economic thoughts grappling with a different answer to the fundamental nature of what comes first when talking money. The following podcast from Slate Money is a good wake up call for dispelling some of the fact-myths that have formed in our current economic systems.
Money has no value and whatever value we want all at the same time. We forget that because it has numbers printed on it. One dollar can get you a soda out of a vending machine or a tooth from under your kid’s pillow. No value and infinite value all at the same time. Money is just a medium of exchange and can be whatever we want it to be. If we can agree on some values.
November 30, 2020 at 3:45 pm
“Memaw” Ivey, as she has been affectionately — or derisively? — referred to, tweeted the other day. Maybe it’s the emphasis of this being a reiteration. Maybe it’s the conciseness. Something about it sounds more like an ultimatum than a life lesson, prescriptive rather than descriptive. Something about ‘cannot’ is so definitive in the statement.
“You cannot have a life without a livelihood.”
Why do I get the feeling that’s the polite Southern way of saying, “If you don’t have a job, you don’t deserve to live.”
It’s true that if you don’t get water, food, and shelter — at the bare minimum — then your life will end. There is a fundamental aspect to the statement that is understandable. It’s also false.
There are plenty of people rightfully exempt from such an expectation. Different levels of physical and mental ability might prevent someone from being able to take care of them self. We certainly don’t expect children to go it alone and secure their own necessities. On the other end of the age bracket, we believe the elderly have a right to life without continuing to work. So it is possible to have a life without a livelihood.
Of course, Twitter’s character limitations prevent nuance. Governor Ivey would never say people who can’t provide for themselves forfeit their life. That doesn’t sound as nice as, “You cannot have a life without a livelihood.”
November 24, 2020 at 3:20 pm
267 weeks. 61 months. 5 years. Those numbers all represent the same thing. How long it’s been since I last posted on this here blog thingy. That sure is a long time and begs the question — why now? That probably has to do with a string of things I’ve read recently.
Going further, the words that keep ringing in my ear — and I hope to exorcise through this little diatribe come from the following quote published fifty years ago.
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
“The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In” by Elizabeth Barlow in New York Magazine (30 March 1970), p. 30
A human being had that thought in 1970. Here it is the year 2020 and so many still think a person is only worth their productivity. That value is only measured in what you can create or do for others. That your efforts must be quantified through currency or comfort or convenience. That life is a zero-sum game. That progress requires growth and positive year-over-year balance sheets.
Why can’t progress simply be zero? You replace all the things you extract in order to live. You erase your impacts so they don’t continually build up as debt to future generations. Hell, you quit externalizing costs and transferring them to living, breathing people currently on the other side of the planet or even right down the road. Accept that more isn’t always the answer because sometimes it’s the problem.
Consider this a warning that more word vomit similar to the above might come spewing out. Or it might not. I’m still swirling in the do less/do more conundrum of justifying my existence by doing things vs. simply being.
August 21, 2014 at 1:34 pm
John Henry Müller has the right idea about getting motivated and being productive — one day at a time. Don’t get overwhelmed by massive to-do lists; keep it clear, concise, and simple.
(via Designer News)