Contributors to human advancement.

[The Dharma Bum]

[John Galt]

not to a point where they just get to do whatever and have all their 'needs' met, whatever that means, karl

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

There's no objective basis for the protestant work ethic. It's not even a very effective social protocol, given the current social context of advanced post industrial society. Since only a small fraction of the population can easily produce more than enough to sustain the needs of the entire population basing individual survival on whether or not someone produces products for sale 10 hours a day is counterproductive.

What you do for your living is make work. Basically useless activity meant only to facilitate the enrichment of someone who is already wealthy enough to pay for the living expenses for thousands of individuals. Wouldn't you be better off doing something that was actually productive? Activity that produced a product that YOU could keep? Surely if you were given time and resources you would produce something of value?

I think this holds true for the vast majority of the population. At least as such a large percentage that those who simply are not productive just wouldn't matter. There is a percentage of the population that is incapable or unwilling to be productive, however this segment of the population is quite large in the current milieu so "protestant work ethic" is clearly not a solution for the free rider problem.

Since the established system destroys an individual's capability to be self sufficient and all resources are now privately owned the capitalist system has created a large population of disenfranchised people. And a disenfranchised individual is an uncooperative individual. I think the percentage of unproductive individuals will be quite a bit smaller in a healthier society.

Our society is unhealthy so the people it damages just give up a lot of the time. There will be a lot less of that when we get this mess straightened out.

[John Galt]

[John Galt]

[spacemonkey]

The industrial revolution, and the apathy that the concept of finite would ever affect us. Now we're attempting to construct the largest public welfare program in our history because we were wrong.

[The Dharma Bum]

The world will continue to go around without wage slavery or commodity fetishism. What's wrong with canoeing all of the time?

Maybe you should be out doing that. At least it isn't contributing to the monster that is devouring the planet. You would be far more productive not producing carbon than you ever could be by avoiding your boss, ignoring your emails, and dicking around on the internet all day.

[spacemonkey]

I wish I could read a history book from the year 2050, just to see what did go down. Right now, our world is like a zit ready to pop.

[John Galt]

bullshit about carbon is bullshit and another thread. you're claiming i would contribute more to human advancement if magically all my needs were met and i didn't have to do anything, and i say no, i would just dick around. whereas currently i'm helping provide valuable services to people

of course, so would everyone else, so we need star trek replicators invented first