I love it when I stumble on independent corroberation of ideas that I developed.
What, me? Is Gegner a closet egomaniac, claiming credit for an idea that has surely been around for…decades at best.
No, good citizen, I wasn’t the ‘first’ to champion a reduced workweek, the ‘futurists’ who enthused that automation would ‘liberate the common man from drudgery’ were the first to, er, ‘envision’ a time where automation would eliminate the need for labor and the reduction of the workday would be a ‘natural outcome’.
Unfortunately, modern workday/week advocates only provide us with a ‘half a loaf’:
a world in which jobs take up much less of our time may seem utopian, especially now, when a scarcity mentality dominates the economic conversation. People who are employed often find it difficult to scale back their jobs. Costs of medical care, education, and child care are rising. It may be hard to find new sources of income when U.S. companies have been laying people off at a dizzying rate.
But fewer work hours for people with jobs is a key step toward solving the unemployment crisis— while giving Americans healthier lives. Fewer hours means more jobs are available to people who need them. Living on less pay usually means consuming less, making more of the things one needs at home, and living lighter, whether by design or by accident. [is this idiot on drugs?]
Today, driven both by necessity and the deliberate choice to live simply, more Americans are shifting toward fewer work hours. It’s a trend that, if done correctly, could get us out of our current economic crisis and away from unsustainable economic growth.
It’s tripe like this that makes me suspect the loyalties of the so-called ‘progressive movement’.
For a ‘reality based’ community, they sure don’t have much courage.
Nor a lot of ‘outside the box' thinking.
A reduced workday-week ISN’T POSSIBLE without significant DEBT REDUCTION.
The ‘worse’ behind this one is a real doozy, capitalism itself cannot survive the necessary reductions/offsets. As I have explained before, A Simple Plan is ‘holistic’, not only money changes, life itself starts afresh with a whole new set of rules (and NO RULERS!)
I will digress for a moment and explain that there will be ‘leaders’ but leaders will be unable to make/alter the ‘rules’.
Back to the ONLY (humane) solution to the unemployment crisis (again I will digress again for a moment to point out that there is an inhumane solution to what some call the ‘surplus labor problem’ and that solution is the one we appear headed toward, a ‘kill-off’.)
Understand that the goal of a reduced work day/week is 100% employment.
Notice how the authors of this article leave the solution as ‘voluntary’, employers would hire replacement workers at their ‘OPTION’ (if they decided to keep operations local at all after sufficient ‘attrition’ had taken place.)
Here we have with yet another ‘jobs Americans don’t want’ situation in the making.
Or another rousing jeer of ‘Americans don’t want to work’…
Which is another way of pointing out that the only way ‘work-sharing’ is EVER going to enjoy widespread acceptance is after (more for me) capitalism chokes to death on its own ashes.
BUT, if we ‘assume’ capitalism has died and a ‘new regime’ has taken its place then yes, a radically reduced workday (without the need to ‘make up the difference’ via increased self-sufficiency, hell, we have hundreds of millions of willing and able workers to keep busy!
But there is a flipside to this ideal arrangement, that is the impact of a severely reduced energy picture. Alternative energy can take up the slack here but the conversion period will be a bit, er, ‘ticklish’.
Oh, and don’t for a moment think that the abandonment of capitalism will be an ‘isolated event’. It will be abandoned ‘en-masse’ and, believe it or not, a new age of global cooperation will be born, especially after the Human anti-exploitation law achieves universal acceptance!
There’s a lot to look forward to once the ‘I own it’ crowd swings from the gallows. (Not how it’s going to happen, it won’t be ‘quick and clean’, it will be ‘lingering and educational.’
Although if this article is accurate the education part will probably be lost on the ‘perps’.
Estimated levels of social psychosis vary but even Jesse speculates that most of the mainstream ones are too low.
Conservatism is one such ’yardstick’ that tells us there could be as much as 20% of the population that is, er, ‘wired differently’.
And again, by degrees.
Like the ’fair days wages’ issue, it is nearly impossible to gauge with any accuracy how much psychosis is, er, ‘harmless.’
Does society itself provide the answer?
Just look at the ‘top 1%’ More money than they can possibly spend and they still relentlessly pursue ’more’.
If that isn’t sick I don’t know what is…except that we let them get away with it.
That, good citizen, is ‘sicker’…but you can’t really go by me, I think of all sorts of weird stuff.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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