dagblog - Comments for "Does your job create real value?"

Graeber asked why we were

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 01:54:25 +0000

In reply to Does your job create real value?

Graeber asked why we were still working so hard, despite being so much richer than in ages past. Where was the utopia of leisure that we were promised?

I've ponder this myself. Remember the Jetsons? And all those documentaries about the future wherein machines were going to do all the work, and we'd have all the leisure?

The part that was left out was that only a few people own the machines, and they are basically the only ones enjoying the machine-made wealth.

The rest of us still have to work...and work harder to keep up with the machines that never tire. Email, for example, isn't a "time saver"; it merely allows you to cram more work into the same number of hours.

are you referring to

EmmaZahn — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 18:59:21 +0000

In reply to Is "atopian" a typo, or are

are you referring to something distinct from utopian and dystopian?

Yes. Not a heaven, not a hell. Simply a different way to organize society presented for consideration. I have put nothing online about it so I do not know what all that other google is about.

Is "atopian" a typo, or are

Verified Atheist — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 18:09:15 +0000

In reply to Thanks. I saw those along

Is "atopian" a typo, or are you referring to something distinct from utopian and dystopian? In trying to do a Google search on the topic (which is difficult because there is a presumably unrelated medical condition called atopy which relates to hyperallergic reactions), I ran across this article, but I'm still not certain what atopian means. These are some relevant excerpts I could find (from that article):

Rather than a timeless utopian ideal where history ends, rather than the allotted hour of the heterotopian, everyday life now pulses constantly with moments of unrealized atopian promise. Everywhere, all the time, the game confronts the rival impulses of chance and competition, intoxication and spectacle, as homeopathic antidotes to a boredom that challenges being from within.

Atopia has one quality in common with utopia—its aversion to ambiguity.

By excluding relations, utopia excludes violence; by privileging relations, atopia appears as nothing but violence, but only because it excludes instead any commitment to stable description.

If in utopia everything is subordinated to a rigorous description, a marking of space with signs, in atopia nothing matters but the transitive relations between variables.

Here is a literal definition:

It is not "nowhere" (utopia) or "elsewhere" (heterotopia), but "everywhere" (atopia). Far from being new-fangled neologism, "atopian" is a word Plato used to describe the philosophical cruising of his Socrates, passing in and out of various niches of Athenian life, playing illicit word-games with the champions of each.

There's more, for those who are interested.

Thanks. I saw those along

EmmaZahn — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:16:19 +0000

In reply to 1) Yglesias is pondering

Thanks. I saw those along with several others. It pleases me that the conversation on both seem to be expanding as both are subjects I have been pondering since I began planning an atopian novella a few years ago. It has been so educational doing that.

FWIW, here is a response to the NYT article that raises some interesting points about a basic income. One of them is that while it may reduce current poverty, it would raise prices and have minimal effect on inequality. Therefore, it would not be long before everything settles back to the status quo but with an upped ante aka where we are now or worse. At least that was my main take.

A government-guaranteed basic income: The cheque is in the mail | The Economist [free, but registration required]

1) Yglesias is pondering

artappraiser — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 01:57:53 +0000

In reply to Does your job create real value?

1) Yglesias is pondering whether some Americans might know, at least subconsciously, how dispensable their jobs are.

2) Just in case you missed it, I posted a piece on the Swiss basic income movement last week. I really like the way Schmidt argues for it, along the lines of how it would unleash creativity and enterpreneurism for some, not the standard socialist arguments.