$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'Y')eah, I have problems with all this "productivity" crap.
If we are so damn "productive" why are we working 50+ hours a week?
PeakOil is You
Total Self-Sufficiency is a Misguided Ideal
Re: Total Self-Sufficiency is a Misguided Ideal
by Narz » Thu 13 Mar 2014, 04:52:48
How hard to the Amish work?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I') know we share different view points, so if you can share mine for a bit.....
Think of a farmer with a wife and two kids. He needs to produce something on the order of 7,000 calories of edible food, plus wood to heat his house, plus maintenance on the house. If he has draft animals then he needs to produce their intake also. This is productivity. Ditto for a fisherman. When they have enough surplus they can sell or trade.
It's basic survival. I think alot of people on peakoil glamorize it. And yet they stay online & don't go off & join the Amish so what gives?
If you're holding your breathe waiting for people to voluntarily go back to the 1800's you may want to reconsider.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'A') cobbler needs to produce enough value added that the farmers in his vicinity will "pay" him in gold, dollars, or wheat, for his services.
I personally like being able to trade for books, clothing, etc. with people I've never met. I like playing board games made in German. Perhaps they could've been designed & sold in ancient times but I never would've heard of them.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I')Now think of a city dweller who is working at a health insurance company filing forms or administering contracts. Or think of a DHS worker scanning you at the airport, or a lawyer prosecuting a libel case, or etc. Their "productivity" is greatly removed from the daily needs. That kind of work can only exist in highly organized cultures. You don't find a lot of health care program administrators in the bush.
I agree most jobs & most "productivity" is neutral at best & toxic for both worker, client & world. I also agree they wouldn't be needed in "the bush" but who wants to live in the bush. Noone posting here to be sure.
But not all jobs are shit. Games, movies, books, art. These things may not be necessities like food & water but they do help make life tolerable.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I') work a lot with bureaucratic organizations and have had the opportunity to do maintenance audits on their productivity. The audits were done against an established industrial scoring mechanism to evaluate the organizations efficiency. The score ranges from something like 20% productive (even a broke clock is right twice a day) to 65% productive (gotta take brakes, fill out forms, do training.) It's been a long time ago so those are rough numbers. My clients inevitably came up at the 20% figure. What's more, despite much chest beating and ballyhooing, NOTHING CHANGED.
At least one chap who worked on these audits with me is now in charge of one of these organizations. He is a good and honorable man, very energetic....and NOTHING CHANGED.
The point of work in our society has nothing to do with productivity, it is all about finding a way to keep people occupied in something that they think is meaningful, even if it is not.
I agree with most of that. Same reason kiddies are in school, kept out of the way so they can become good worker bees.
That said, this is all the more reason I'm not as worrying about peakoil as I used to be. Society is so wasteful, people are so busy on frivolous & useless stuff. Trillions of killowatts are being burned right now keeping offices lit up, furnaces burns out of control in some buildings, leaving tenants to leave the windows cracked even in the dead of winter, people leave their cars & trucks idling. There's so much waste. Even if fossil fuel supplies dropped 20% we could just reduce half our waste & putter forward... maybe with a little more motivation.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I')Our culture has no rational response to our already extraordinary productive (brought to you through the use of non-renewable fossil fuels.) On the one hand we whine "there are too few jobs." But then we complain about government spending and fuss that we need to both be more "productive" and that we need to raise the retirement age. Really? Raise the retirement age? Wouldn't that just make the unemployment situation worse? Of course it would, our response is not rational. In the end it really doesn't matter, the fossil fuel glut will eventually come to an end, and with it our ludicrous life style.
Once in a while I'd like to hear someone say "We don't have too few jobs, we have too many people."
I agree, overpopulation is the real problem.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I')f one chases this line of investigation far enough you eventually come to ask the question Why do we NEED people? What is humanity trying to accomplish? That leads us to another place of inquiry altogether which has been discussed here....
the-entropy-thread-merged-t19059-400.html
I don't think humanity is thinking about it. People eat, they screw carelessly, making babies. Some of them climb up into mountains & renounce it all & become monks. Not a day goes by that I don't envy monks in their hermitages, away from the maddening world, noise, unconsciousness, crazy women, crazy friends, needy people everywhere, hungry ghosts.
Yet here I am, here we are. Cities could be so much greater if anyone gave a damn. Humanity could be.
So unlike many I'm not praying for the dieoff, for nature to hit the reset button & the homesteaders will survive & dance on the graves of the sheeple by candlelight. Not necessarily saying this is you... shoot I might dance on certain graves by candlelight & don't think I haven't romanticized the past either. Medieval carnivals/fairs always seemed so fun, the hustle & bustle & aliveness of the streets. But it was an ugly, ignorant world as well. I certainly wouldn't trade my life for one in any other time, though I'd certainly visit.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'M')y apologies if I come across as obtuse. I have some ideas that are far from mainstream and which challenge our basic principles. While I think they are correct, they are very difficult to describe in such an abbreviated venue. And I'm not about to write a book even I would not read.
Best wishes.
