New Civilization News: People no longer work for a living    
 People no longer work for a living7 comments
picture 21 Dec 2002 @ 23:59, by Flemming Funch

While discussing xpertweb, an interesting system for connecting people with experts through a peer economy, Britt Blaser mentions, amongst several problems with real-world reputation systems:
"People no longer work for a living. They hold jobs for a living, which pays better.
..which sort of got me thinking. That isn't just a flippant thing to say. I have a hard time thinking of anybody who really works for a living. When I have work that needs doing, I have a hard time finding anybody who would like to do it, even for money. And, I must admit, I don't really have time to work either. There's nothing I'm available for that you can just come and pay me for and I'll do it. And, looking around me, a lot of people seem to work that way. OK, I can still go and get a haircut and pay for it, and I pretty much know what I'll get. But that kind of thing is becoming more rare.

The times I have been employed by corporations I was always puzzled by the fact that most people weren't really doing anything terribly productive, and it made relatively little difference what amount of work people actually were putting out. I several times had the task of making a computer system that would automate what a certain company was doing, so I specifically had to study what it was that actually took place. And along the way I noticed how rather little it had to do with doing work and accomplishing finished work. For example, it is with some embarrassment I note that I once hired a guy to document a program I had written. He had an impressive resume, and the company had to pay above the norm to acquire him. After a year he left to join a big consulting company, and everybody shook his hand and congratulated him on his great career move and his excellent service to the company. I and everybody else knew, at least via our peripheral vision, that the tangible product of his 1 year of work was 1/2 written page of a suggested outline for the manual. We're talking about an expense of maybe $70K for 1/2 page of writing, which I could just as well have jotted down in five minutes instead of hiring him. But nobody cared, because none of it really matters that much. The company was busy and the organizational chart looked good and the money flowed somehow. And this guy had great relationships with everybody. He was very supportive. I enjoyed working with him.

It is not all crazy. The point is that it is relationships people want, rather than giving or receiving quantities of work. And in some mysterious way, that's actually working. With the people I work for today, I'm an independent contractor, but I've insisted on arrangements where I get paid fixed amounts of dollars per month, but I don't promise any hours of work, and there are no deadlines or anything like it. If they or I are unhappy, we'll change the amount or stop the agreement. But it is not about work. It is about paying attention. It is about being present for whatever comes along in a certain area.

I have not yet myself learned to be comfortable with that in situations where I'm the person who's needs some work done. I can see how it ought to work, but it just hasn't become intuitive yet for me. The point is of course that it needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship. I pay attention to these things, and you pay attention to those things, and together we're better off somehow. It is not about me forcing you to deliver certain goods at a certain price. The world is changing rapidly and the future is uncertain, so maybe the relationship model is more viable than a transaction model. But, of course, it needs to be a good relationship, not a bad one.


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7 comments

22 Dec 2002 @ 19:34 by cho : Work vs. Holding a job
You've hit a nail on the head here ... I am psychologically incapable of holding a job. /Work/, on the other hand ... I do a tremendous amount of work.
Over a decade ago I finished my last big job: one of the products was a MIL-SPEC quality document set for a system that would land aircraft in a white-out blizzard if need be; three volumes ... one of them 750 pages ... hundreds of illustrations and figures, many hundreds of complex tables. What I'm proud of is the fact that the project was completed on budget and just slightly late, even though it was severely in the ditch when I took it over.
What traumatised me so deeply was that the corporate culture I encountered had nothing to do with doing the work and everything to do with co-conspiring to keep pulling pay-cheques.

Hundreds of thousands, indeed, perhaps millions of well-educated, highly skilled, highly paid individuals basically playing a Ponzi scheme: that's the fabric of our society.

Whether it's the cliche $20K dinner for 5, or the cliche $8k brooch purchased on a whim, the extravagance of corporate executives floats on an ocean of petty larceny; our society is managed in large part by individuals whose personal lives are bankrupt on the level of integrity (and of course personal debt is astronomical). Coincident with this is a booming market for quick-fix spirituality.

I have for years asked "how do the psychopaths recruit us to serving their agendas"; the question has always been rhetorical. The psychopaths enlist those whose ethics include contempt for fundamentals.

{link:http://chebucto.ns.ca/~ab006/fallen_angels.html|"Fallen Angels", my rather dusty page on psychopaty}  

22 Dec 2002 @ 20:05 by istvan : The path of the Psychopath
is lad out for that mental illness by those who allow the trickter,the charmer to sway to his or her magic. So the people who lack self knowledge become slaves to anythi impressive act or words,so theu pecome pcychoslaves. Both conditios lead to annihilation.  

22 Dec 2002 @ 23:31 by ming : Jobs
There seems to be both a scenario of an insane corporate world where millions of people are just moving paper around and trying to look good and show up on time, while other millions who work much harder and do real work get much less money for it. And there's also a switch towards a new kind of economy where it really isn't the exact amount of work done for what price that is so important. More of a community or family thing. I really don't care a whole lot how cost effective my wife is, but it means a lot to me that she's always there.  

23 Dec 2002 @ 16:06 by sharie : Paying Attention to Relationships
It's been my experience too, Ming. I've worked for the phone company, the electric company (two public utilities), for a trucking company, for lawyers, for Judges, as a Psychologist, and as a Professor... the corporate write-offs and criminal acts are unbelievable... and nobody really does anything useful. It is a Ponzi scheme and petty larceny like cho says. And yes, it's just the relationships people want to have... the name-dropping... the Degree on the wall. And yes, like Zendancer says, the slaves are so enchanted by words and credentials... so enchanted that mutual annihilation is the result.

This is because neither group is ever satisfied with the deceit. They're constantly driven for more.

When the truth of life is your goal, and you know the source is your self, it's a whole other world.  

18 Jul 2003 @ 23:35 by Harold @142.154.192.110 : Its All about Guns and Butter
The question is who does work for those who hold jobs but do not produce? The answer third world workers in manufacturing sweat shops and illegal aliens picking produce, save the bacon of those who hold jobs and get paid for nothing. What would happen in the USA if all the millions of white collar workers working for the Government, in HR departments of Fortune 500 corporations, in QC focus groups and all the other bureaucratic nonsensical tail chasing ponzi schemed departments that exist all lost their jobs tomorrow? They produce and do absolutely nothing don't they? Ah but what if we sent back the illegals and nuked China? Well I do believe that we would not exist. We are beholding to them and we con them every day.

So why does this inequity exist? It is just global feudalism and us useless white collar workers in the West are the new lords of the global manor. We own the guns and produce the butter and it is purely an extorsion game that we control.

Getting back to Xpertweb, we only have the expertise in the west to avoid both responsibility and work. I should think that the real Xpertweb would have to be written in Spanish and Mandarin.  

9 Aug 2011 @ 23:33 by steve willis @98.86.158.58 : work
Let's face it. When you work for someone who takes your product and gives you as little as possible, and can fire you, and, if the job you have been doing is at all valuable, can prevent you from ever working again, you are worse than a wage slave. You are a hostage.

Since virtually everyone in the United States falls into this category, we don't like to talk about it. We should. We are not only loosing our political power (we don't have time, energy or money to participate in politics, and, if we did, and we worked to pass laws favorable to us, our bosses wouldn't like it. They wouldn't promote us and might fire us. We are hostages, remember?) What we are loosing is our lives, our dignity and our community, our culture, our meaning in life. We have no capacity to stand together, and apart we are absolutely powerless.

The only thing between us and complete disaster is our boss's whim.

And if you are crushed by the system, don't look to me. I know you would never, ever have stuck your neck out for me or anyone else. You are an American. You pretend to your boss (and yourself) that you actually LIKE being a wage slave, a hostage. You can't get enough kissing up, grovveling, and screwing each other. Survivor Island, the culture.  

29 Apr 2016 @ 04:58 by Latoya @188.143.232.32 : BQqJidZvnLNCZRSYOa
zajimave, podle toho co tady panove pisou mi to v mnohem pripomina vyvoj systemu na jedne nejmenovane prazske VS, kde zrovna konecne napodruhe zavadeji jednotny IS :-) btw pokud vim tak mnohe mestske casti vymeni HW i treba 2x do roka a rozdavaji urednikum 19" LCD.PS k tomu exivopmentreani s  

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