RE: Defintion of exchange (was: [ox-en] RE: Open Money?)
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 18:46:49 -0500 (EST)
On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Kermit Snelson wrote:
Nor am I convinced by the "Selbstentfaltung" theory of political economy.
If I've understood correctly, the argument restates a platitude [Klischee]
that we sometimes encounter in English as "If you do what you love, you'll
have what you need." If that principle is to work as the basis of an entire
society, a lot of people will need to love jobs like garbage collection and
coal-mining [Abfallbeseitigung und Kohlenbergbau].
I can't imagine any society where people will love garbage collecting.
So people will have to organize it themselves, maybe take turns in doing
it for their area. Which will create a lot of pressure to reduce the
amount of garbage. Make as much as possible recycleable.
And that goes for any unpleasant job: if people don't want to do it, but
it needs doing, there'll be huge pressure to change the way it's done.
Which I guess will mainly come from automation: at the moment a lot
of shitty jobs which could be automated aren't, because as long as
everything is based on money and there are people who can be paid low
wages to do unpleasant jobs for less than it would cost to develop
the machines, there's no pressure to automate.
That's unlikely.
Sure it's unlikely. But possible. Whereas the present system of generating
huge amounts of garbage and paying people whose job is just to work with
it is (at least in the UK) becoming impossible: there just aren't the
sites left for landfill, it's creating problems with pollution, a lot
of it can't be disposed of safely in any way, etc.
As
they say in the movie business, what everyone really wants to do is direct
[Regisseur sein].
The proof will be in whether it works ;-)
Graham
Kermit Snelson
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