| > If the only retaliation someone has to 'we should start to think about how to consciously engineer our society such that we don't all have to work 40 hours a week for 40 years' with 'I don't want to spend two hours every 6 months moving composted poo around' ... then that person has missed the point. That is not the author's thesis. His thesis is that having to trade your time for money is wrong. If what you've said above is what you took away from the linked writing, I think you're projecting your own beliefs onto the author position, and we should stop this argument because I'm not against changing our relation with work. I just think this author is a bit of a nutter. > As you get older you realise the imperative to be (exclusively, solely) more productive is somewhat misguided. Economic productivity is what allows us to increase the quality of life and standard of living in a community. Reducing economic productivity reduces, eliminates or reverses those improvements. > This does not devalue the proposition - it merely puts it into context. Given that the author's proposition is to dismantle a system that for millennia bore specialists who make possible technological advance, and replace it with a system that rears general hobbyists, yes I believe it does devalue the proposition. > You're doing that thing again. I quote myself, from the message that you responded to: [...] That quote doesn't actually contribute to either your position or the discussion. You say 2bb people don't have plumbing, then say you don't think we shouldn't have plumbing, then go onto something else. Or is your alternative that we should all have pit toilets? We should be discussing the broken alternative proposition of the author, but: those 2 billion folks that don't have sanitation and plumbing would likely choose sanitation and plumbing if they could. They obviously live in areas where pit toilets and outhouses aren't enough to deal with the human waste they produce, or they'd just be digging latrines and outhouses and using those. So, if your position is that we can get by without professional sanitation and pluming industries, they would seem to be the counterpoint. Fundamentally, do you really agree we'll get more scientists, engineers, professional specialists, innovating and advancing our society and the same or greater pace, if everyone just stops working and "pursues their passions"? |