Laugh laugh.

So that took a month for you to write? I regurgitated nothing. It’s that our society is presently built on that. And only through hegemony could we change our behaviour. The hippies were a huge movement to act that way but it did ultimately change much. Either good luck with your degree smart guy.

What I resent is the opposing energies that first of all, push to increase the price of everything, and second to cut wages and benefits. To illustrate, at 17 years of age, my first real job paid $8.00/hour, I had no work experience, just a high school diploma, and the job I was hired for (reading gas meters) required about 5 minutes training. My major expense was rent for a one bedroom apartment, $60.00/month.  Gas was around 14 cents per litre.

Now, over 30 years later, rent for that same suite is between $600 and $1000 per month, depending on location, and the minimum wage is still under $8.00/hour. I have estimated that to have the disposable income now compared to back then I would have to be making at least $80/hour.  The best I have ever managed, with a Master’s Degree is $35/hour but that job was only part-time.

If you ask most people they will tell you they hate their jobs, so what would life be like (ala Star Trek) if the daily grind for the basics, ( food and shelter) were eliminated, and everyone had the opportunity to seek a vocation that maximized their contribution to society?  Don’t you think that if people were doing what they truly love productivity would go through the roof!

Frankly the uneven distribution of wealth is the only thing that prevents this from happening, because 2% control +90% of the wealth and plan on getting the rest.  It is 30 years or more since Buckminster Fuller said, if we could retool industry we could ALL be millionaires, and he meant every living soul on the planet! But that top 2% works hard to keep us locked in as wage-slaves, and even try to convince us that that is where we belong, because “that’s just the way society works”.

So the life of a hunter/gatherer (I have taken plenty of Anthro courses) looks pretty damn sweet, and the future as presented by Star Trek looks damn good too, but to be stuck where we are now really sucks!

And don’t forget how, when you’re over 45 years old in the work place, it becomes increasingly clear that the employer prefers younger workers. They are less prone to work related injuries and health issues, they cost less to hire, all this even though the company looses on experience from the worker.

Not so with the hunter/gatherer tribes, they value wisdom and experience in the elders.

And big companies using outsourcing or again manufacturing parts overseas in poor countries, not only do they save on salaries and the workers working conditions, they have less of a hassle environmentally as well. Those countries usually have close to non-existent environmental laws to protect their soil, air, water.

I find it a sad and scary affair that the majority of people in “developped” countries asks no questions, can’t think for themselves and believe what they are being fed in the media and what they are being told.

And getting back to Micro$oft, maybe you forgot all the dirty stuff that was unearthed in the late 90s when they were in court against the DOJ for unlawful tactics? Like how they rigged Windoze 95 so RealPlayer and QuickTime wouldn’t work? Or how they planted some code in the operating system so Netscape would continuously crash so PeeCee users would adopt IE instead?

That wouldn’t be a company I would admire at all.

triadone - Dec 06, 2005 04:59pm

well said, though in larger “wal-mart” markets the push is for things to be cheaper, which leads to its own problems as well. that 2% is also in control of decisions like corporate globalization. in theory they say they are investing in local communities in malaysia, yet it’s quite obvious that the entire goal of such moves is to get more for less. in other words these companies are invested in having developing contries remain underdeveloped. if they did develop and for example, have currency and wage rates equal to the U.S. there would be no incentive to go overseas. they’d be stuck having to make and sell products based on a level playing field.

Exactly! In order to bring in the lowest price Wal-Mart and their ilk push down wages and benefits and outsource overseas.  Meanwhile the energy section is artificially inflating the value of their product feeding us propaganda that there isn’t enough “refining capacity” not that we are running out of oil, because we aren’t. Look at this site:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold_pr.html

So we are squeezed on both sides, and the average person just cannot make ends meet anymore. Families need two incomes to survive and kids end up in deep trouble because they have distracted, overstressed, absentee parents.