(no subject)
Jul. 7th, 2011 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI went to another of freeradical42's Immodest Proposals salons last night. This one was the awkward futurists discuss socialist theory without ever using the S-word hour. My favorite moment was when one of the other participants started ranting about the damned Republicans and I piped up with "I should mention that I'm a Republican." There was the other lovely moment where we went around the circle and asked if we were in favor of raising taxes at the moment, and I was the only person who thought that would be a bad idea in the middle of an economic recovery. There are times when I adore having almost no conservative friends. :P
Nah, in all seriousness the topic of conversation was a Mother Jones article suggesting that the American response to this recession- cutting back on workers and demanding greater and greater productivity from those workers who remained- was problematic and the result of American values about work that might be out of proportion. Certainly a topic presented with a deep socialist bias, but an interesting topic of conversation nonetheless because it gave us a lot of opportunities to put our specific work experiences in a broader American context, escape the tunnel vision that can often afflict us when thinking about something that directly affects us, and wonder as always about what the future might look like.
We discussed the way the movement of the economy has demanded workers whose skillsets are more generalized- hypothesizing that both trained welders on one side and Ph.Ds with highly specialized areas of interest were ill-suited to an economy where a worker needs to be able to not only do their job but also handle numerous other subjobs that had once been given to others. One person said that their boss, who supervised 200 people, had no secretary and was expected to do his own word processing, scheduling, etc...
We spent a considerable amount of time debating the dynamics of the 'American work ethic', contrasting it to European labor standards that feature more vacation and discussing anecdotal evidence like the fact that it is apparently rude in France to ask what someone does at work. I took the lead in arguing that much of this idea is American exceptionalism, citing counterexamples like the trope of the Ugly American abroad to show that the idea that some sort of (Possibly Protestant) work ethic makes Americans value high productivity more than other countries is perhaps wishful thinking on our part. But others did make a strong case. I do think that some mixture of Protestant ideology, frontier ethos, constant influx of immigrants, the dynamics of the American labor movement, America's rapid move in the post-War era to the forefront of the world economic system, and other factors can be said to have shaped America's general cultural approach to work ethic, but I'm skeptical that it's really that different from our Western neighbors.
And then the conversation took a predictable futurist turn as we contemplated technological change and its influence on productivity. We discussed sociological advances designed to make the workplace a more satisfying environment, like a theory that making work seem more like a video game would reward the worker for completing tasks. And we discussed the omnipresent possibility that computers and robots could take all our jobs away, and what that might look like. Honestly, I didn't take much out of this part of the conversation but ideas for science fiction stories. In particular, I pondered the notion of an inflection point on the path between our present economic system and a system where money has been completely reshaped in its meaning by the fact that valuing money based on labor performed has been obviated by a universal robot labor pool. That transitional moment seems really interesting to me and I haven't really seen it explored much in SF. Except for that awful Harry Keeler short story I posted about using compound interest to crash the financial system. Taking us back, in the end of this post, to socialist propaganda. :P
Anyway, I had a nice drive home from Brooklyn listening to variations on a Middle Eastern scale on New Sounds. But I need to get better at navigating Brooklyn streets, because I screwed up two opportunities to take the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and avoid the exorbitant Verrazano toll. I did save a little money by taking 9 South instead of the Turnpike, but that was more a moral victory than anything. I only saved about 50 cents by doing that.
freeradical42's Immodest Proposals salons last night. This one was the awkward futurists discuss socialist theory without ever using the S-word hour. My favorite moment was when one of the other participants started ranting about the damned Republicans and I piped up with "I should mention that I'm a Republican." There was the other lovely moment where we went around the circle and asked if we were in favor of raising taxes at the moment, and I was the only person who thought that would be a bad idea in the middle of an economic recovery. There are times when I adore having almost no conservative friends. :PNah, in all seriousness the topic of conversation was a Mother Jones article suggesting that the American response to this recession- cutting back on workers and demanding greater and greater productivity from those workers who remained- was problematic and the result of American values about work that might be out of proportion. Certainly a topic presented with a deep socialist bias, but an interesting topic of conversation nonetheless because it gave us a lot of opportunities to put our specific work experiences in a broader American context, escape the tunnel vision that can often afflict us when thinking about something that directly affects us, and wonder as always about what the future might look like.
We discussed the way the movement of the economy has demanded workers whose skillsets are more generalized- hypothesizing that both trained welders on one side and Ph.Ds with highly specialized areas of interest were ill-suited to an economy where a worker needs to be able to not only do their job but also handle numerous other subjobs that had once been given to others. One person said that their boss, who supervised 200 people, had no secretary and was expected to do his own word processing, scheduling, etc...
We spent a considerable amount of time debating the dynamics of the 'American work ethic', contrasting it to European labor standards that feature more vacation and discussing anecdotal evidence like the fact that it is apparently rude in France to ask what someone does at work. I took the lead in arguing that much of this idea is American exceptionalism, citing counterexamples like the trope of the Ugly American abroad to show that the idea that some sort of (Possibly Protestant) work ethic makes Americans value high productivity more than other countries is perhaps wishful thinking on our part. But others did make a strong case. I do think that some mixture of Protestant ideology, frontier ethos, constant influx of immigrants, the dynamics of the American labor movement, America's rapid move in the post-War era to the forefront of the world economic system, and other factors can be said to have shaped America's general cultural approach to work ethic, but I'm skeptical that it's really that different from our Western neighbors.
And then the conversation took a predictable futurist turn as we contemplated technological change and its influence on productivity. We discussed sociological advances designed to make the workplace a more satisfying environment, like a theory that making work seem more like a video game would reward the worker for completing tasks. And we discussed the omnipresent possibility that computers and robots could take all our jobs away, and what that might look like. Honestly, I didn't take much out of this part of the conversation but ideas for science fiction stories. In particular, I pondered the notion of an inflection point on the path between our present economic system and a system where money has been completely reshaped in its meaning by the fact that valuing money based on labor performed has been obviated by a universal robot labor pool. That transitional moment seems really interesting to me and I haven't really seen it explored much in SF. Except for that awful Harry Keeler short story I posted about using compound interest to crash the financial system. Taking us back, in the end of this post, to socialist propaganda. :P
Anyway, I had a nice drive home from Brooklyn listening to variations on a Middle Eastern scale on New Sounds. But I need to get better at navigating Brooklyn streets, because I screwed up two opportunities to take the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and avoid the exorbitant Verrazano toll. I did save a little money by taking 9 South instead of the Turnpike, but that was more a moral victory than anything. I only saved about 50 cents by doing that.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-07 02:25 pm (UTC)I would have loved to go, and so would Puel and Linden, but I didn't get your message until I actually checked Dreamwidth! That sounded like a lot of fun, though. Keep me posted on the next one.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-07 02:39 pm (UTC)