The Future

[Nefertiti2]

reading this extract from EP Thompson and remembering the future we were promised

https://twitter.com/gem_ste/status/1642163585546682378?s=20

And instead of this we've ushered in new robber barons who have looted the digital commons and imposed unblievable austerity on the working and middle classes

Homelessness is increasing, life expectancy is falling. Our drinking water is getting filthy again.

how the fuck did it happen- and what are we doing about it?

[Nefertiti2]

this might as well go here

Man responsible for making Americans very much poorer now worried about effects off his policies

https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1641831721178939392?s=20

"One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated" — Larry Summers

[Hot Pepsi]

reading this extract from EP Thompson and remembering the future we were promised

https://twitter.com/gem_ste/status/1642163585546682378?s=20

And instead of this we've ushered in new robber barons who have looted the digital commons and imposed unblievable austerity on the working and middle classes

Homelessness is increasing, life expectancy is falling. Our drinking water is getting filthy again.

how the fuck did it happen- and what are we doing about it?

Keynes said something similar.

I’m doing my part to not work too hard.

[Nefertiti2]

Why would anyone do this-

https://twitter.com/AjaSaysHello/status/1642137726144192512?s=20

Let's take down the planet to piss off the left?

Glad that Hot Pepsi's not working too hard. )though I'd be disappointed if that were the only response to the thread

[dddd]

One thing that's happened is that 'democratic' institutions turned out to have little defence against people taking control to deliberately run them down. They operated on the Tomorrow's World assumption mentioned above.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don’t know what else to say. Our species is a cancer.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That big spiel about puritanism is just nonsense isn't it? There were very few puritans in the venetian arsenal, and they basically invented the assembly line. Also they do rather gloss over that industrial employment has always only ever been a small proportion of most economies. With most people working in services..(beyond a certain point in time) It does also show a lack of insight into what agriculture is actually like, and what women do. Also all of those views of the future do rather rest on the rather que"onable assumptions that britain and america would maintain a monopoly on industry, (would retain their exclusive imperial markets)

I mean it's a nice story, but it does look like just another manifestation of the extraordinary complacency you get in people who grow up in a world hegemon. I'd view it as less of a promised future, and more "There'll be pie in the sky before you die" that early atheists were into.

[dddd]

It isn't nonsense, the work ethic is an implement of social and psychological coercion. And people who work in service professions are subjected to it as much as industrial workers, even if such symbolic factors as clocking on are absent.

It does also show a lack of insight into what agriculture is actually like, and what women do.

Fair comment on the extract, but Puritan work and virtue ethics are absolutely weaponised against women in all spheres, especially the family.

[dddd]

This thread seems apposite.

https://twitter.com/NateB_Panic/status/1640667533207384064

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It isn't nonsense, the work ethic is an implement of social and psychological coercion. And people who work in service professions are subjected to it as much as industrial workers, even if such symbolic factors as clocking on are absent.

Well yes it is an implement of social and psychological coercion, but it's something that predates the industrialisation of america, and it predates Puritanism. It absolutely operated in agriculture at key times of the year, all the way back to neolithic times, and existed in the services industry ever since agriculture allowed there to be people to weren't primarily concerned with the gathering of food. It also existed across a wide range of pre-industrial societies depending on how developed they were. It's ultimately a function of how much work there is to do at certain times, and how many people there are available to do it. The Puritans may have banged on about work ethic in the USA, but it's massively less important than the crippling shortages of labour that characterized the USA for the majority of its existence. (There are reasons they had so many slaves, that extend beyond man's inhumanity to man) I suppose the point here is that the idea of 'work ethic' wasn't as 24/7/365 for as many people before the industrial revolution, but there were periods of time where it applied to everyone, and many people for whom it applied like in modern times. I can't help feeling that people would view the industrial revolution

Also it's not just a function of capitalism. I refer to this guy as often as I think I can get away with it (which is not very often) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Stakhanov

Fair comment on the extract, but Puritan work and virtue ethics are absolutely weaponised against women in all spheres, especially the family.

definitely, but that sort of thing long predates the late sixteenth century attempts to cleanse the church of england of Catholic impurities, and it exists in catholic countries too, and it existed there long before the Church of england existed.(It also exists in non-christian cultures) And it existed in pre-industrial, Pre-famine subsistence farming ireland, though it was not as pronounced as it would later become. Given that the author was the child of Methodist missionaries, I can't help feeling that the central position of Puritanism in his article tells us more about the author and his upbringing than it does about the topic at hand. That extract would look very different if it was written by say someone from a catholic background. I also find myself feeling that people would idealize aspects of the preindustrial world less if we had any idea how those people lived. All of our writings from those times concern the upper tiers of society, and are essentially the Succession, and Gossip girl of their day.

But generally there's something that is missed from these predictions that "Automation will lead to leisure for all in the future" that doesn't sit right with me, and that is that every instance of automation leading up to that point didn't lead to a reduction in activity. but rather the opposite. but it was a less awful form of job, and people found employment in newer industries that developed alongside this, or in the expansion of older industries. The mechanization of looms didn't mean that people spent less time working, it was more. Employment in the making of textiles skyrocketed, and more people had access to clothes. The biggest single killer of industrial jobs was the forklift. Millions of people whose jobs were to simply carry things from point A to point B lost their jobs. But those were terrible life crushing jobs of badly paid, relentless physical toil. But those weren't really industrial jobs, they were carrying jobs. I think there's something inherent to a lot of 'futurology' and that it's either a case of "The wish is the father to the thought", or "The fear is father to the thought", and once again the predictions wind up telling us more about the person making the prediction, than anything that is likely, or possible to happen in the future, and they're more often than not explicitily trying to sell you some political vision.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This thread seems apposite.

https://twitter.com/NateB_Panic/status/1640667533207384064

This is a very interesting thread. I find myself thinking about this quite a lot. This sort of thing is super obvious if you think for any length of time about how people talk and think about football. But you can't look for too long at the politics and history of any country without running into it.

[ad hoc]

There is a growing movement to try and get companies to work on a 4 day week. One organisation in the UK I am familiar with took part in a trial of this last year and found the results so positive (in all ways - employee wellbeing and productivity) that they've made it permanent policy. Belgium (I think) is working on a similar national policy. I think there will be a critical mass when enough people are doing 4 days a week that most companies will have to make the change (or their staff will simply leave and work for one of their competitors)

Until that happens unions and workers need to push for it and news about it needs to be spread

[Sporting]

https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dwpilotresults/