Musings Report #8 2-20-16 Control = Work
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Control = Work
Let's imagine two individuals: one lives in an apartment subsidized by the government or a family trust fund, and buys all the packaged food he can eat with food stamps or the trust funds.
This individual doesn't have to maintain anything in his flat or the building; the property managers do all that. He doesn't have to cook, since all the packaged food he buys can be microwaved or eaten straight out of the package.
The second individual lives on an off-the-grid homestead and is committed to growing some of his food and cooking all of his meals himself.
This individual is responsible for everything in his dwelling and on his land; whatever breaks, he must fix it: water pumps, PV panels, plumbing clogs, etc.
Growing at least part of one's own food takes a lot of work. Rather than run to the supermarket for a bag of packaged meals, tending a garden and animals requires daily care and attention.
Cooking real food takes time and effort, too. Rather than microwave a packaged meal for a minute, it takes a minimum of 20 minutes to prep and cook a decent home-cooked meal.
What is the big difference between the two individual's daily lives? The first individual has essentially zero work: he doesn't have to work for money to pay for shelter or food, and he has essentially zero work maintaining his dwelling or preparing his meals.
The second individual has a steady flow of work maintaining, harvesting, improving, cooking, etc. His work is essentially never-ending.
The other big difference is less visible: the first individual has very little control over his environment and diet. he can hang a new poster on a wall or switch brands of packaged food, but these are cosmetic, trivial changes.
The second individual controls quite a lot in his environment and diet. The spectrum of possibilities on what he can do on his plot of land is only limited by the cash cost of tools and materials needed to make improvements.
My point here is control requires work, and work delivers control. This is an ontological feature of work--it is inextricably bound with control.
Yes, a wealthy individual can pay people to maintain his property and prepare his meals; but this control still requires work: the work of supervising the workers and deciding what work will get done.
Our culture worships convenience and leisure, i.e. the eradication of work. But when you eliminate work, you also eliminate control. The notion that a guaranteed income is the solution to automation strips people of control by stripping away the possibility of work.
The people who have the most control over their lives have the heaviest workloads, and those with no work control essentially nothing: Work = control = work.
This is why I see work as the essential resource that must be made available to all: it is only through work that we gain control of our lives.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
Think Another Crash Is "Impossible"? Think Again 2/19/16
Why the Chinese Yuan Will Lose 30% of its Value 2/18/16
If Zero Interest Rates Fixed What's Broken, We'd Be in Paradise 2/17/16
2016: The Year Wishful Thinking Fails 2/16/16
Is the Supreme Court Irrelevant? 2/15/16
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Signed an agreement securing a German language edition of "A Radically Beneficial World."
Market Musings: The Era of Diminishing Returns
Now that the global engine of rapid growth in credit, trade and asset valuations—China—has ceased to expand, the global economy is mired in a Great Stagnation. For many regions, the Great Stagnation started in 2008 and has never really ended.
The problem is governments and central banks attempted to force an exit from the Great Stagnation by inflating asset bubbles—bubbles that were intended to restore confidence and the “animal spirits” that fuel more borrowing, investing and spending.
But these asset bubbles failed to lift household incomes or generate employment; as a result, the asset bubbles are teetering precariously on more promises of fiscal and monetary stimulus.
Unfortunately for those who own these bubble-assets, the returns on fiscal and monetary stimulus have rapidly diminished: China, for example, has created a stupendous $1 trillion in new credit in the past two months, and has very little in sustainable income/employment growth to show for this explosive expansion of debt.
Attempts to boost stocks with QE4 or other stimulus programs will also fail due to diminishing returns: each round of QE yielded a smaller rise in stock valuations.
The goal of boosting "aggregate demand" via asset bubbles has failed, and so now central banks are resorting to the desperate measure of negative interest rates, a form of financial repression designed to force people to spend their capital rather than "hoard" it.
This too will fail, as rather than boosting confidence in the central bank and the economy, it reveals the sweaty desperation of central banks and the downward path of the economy.
Though the mainstream evinces confidence in more central bank intervention and financial repression, the returns on these desperate measures is rapidly approaching zero. When the returns sink to less than zero, the entire central bank edifice of omnipotence will be repudiated.
From Left Field
"SIGNAL STRENGTH" the first NYC wifi orchestra (3:07) (via Lew G.)
Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs (via Lew G.)
How America Is Putting Itself Back Together -- cheery review of local efforts; classic MSM avoidance of the dead weight of centralized systems that are broken....
For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications -- outsiders are mistreated, group-think rewarded...
Why Elite-College Admissions Need an Overhaul: The current system for gaining entry to elite colleges discourages unique passions and deems many talented students ineligible. -- rewarding group-think...
Who Killed Nokia? Nokia Did -- excellent study of the collapse of a flawed corporate culture...rule by fear failed miserably...
The Sexual Misery of the Arab World
The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think -- Dougy all but forgotten...
We Now Join the U.S. Class War Already in Progress (via Mark G.) thought-provoking analysis of the new class divisions and conflicts....
Why I don't like smartphones (via Maoxian) -- not the usual reasons...
The Golden Generation: Why China’s super-rich send their children abroad -- nobody trusts the status quo -- as for those at the pinnacle of power -- even their kids go to Harvard.... this is essential reading...
You can learn more about innovation from Renaissance Florence than from Silicon Valley (via Joel M.) -- I disagree-- Silicon Valley is the new Medici....
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Tacitus
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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