MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Back in August, the anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber wrote an article for Strike! Magazine entitled "Bullshit Jobs." 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? He concluded that our economic system has invented pointless make-work jobs that keep us busy and distract us from overthrowing the ruling class. [...] Our jobs are probably not make-work handed to us by crafty overlords. But they may be something more insidious — an elaborate kind of wealth redistribution system, masquerading as value-creating economic activity, sustained and powered by all the economy's loopholes and flaws that Econ 101 barely mentions. If that's the case, then we really ought to ask ourselves: Why are we working so hard, instead of collecting checks to sit on a beach?
Comments
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.
by artappraiser on Wed, 11/20/2013 - 8:57pm
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]
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 11/21/2013 - 12:16pm
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):
Here is a literal definition:
There's more, for those who are interested.
by Verified Atheist on Thu, 11/21/2013 - 1:09pm
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.
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 11/21/2013 - 1:59pm
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.
by Peter Schwartz on Thu, 11/21/2013 - 8:54pm