Work for post-materialists
economist.com
economist.com
Unfortunately, it already is. Bureaucracy is essentially an approach where the 'server' (government/business/whatever) forces the 'clients' (individuals/employees) to change their behavior for the benefit of the 'server', with no clear benefit for the 'clients'. When considering it in these terms, words like 'oppressive' seem to have some significance. After all, the definition of the word is:
>Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
In the case of bureaucracy, the 'burdensome' and, arguably, 'unjust' components of the definition are fitting.
Either way, it's inspiring to see these issues finally being discussed in mainstream mediums.
There are some things I want the government to watch, at both a local and federal level. And keep in mind Oliver Wendell Holmes's Jr's adage about taxes: they help foot the bill for civilization.
As for bureaucracy: it's a burden, but the alternative in many societies is systematic corruption. The author writes:
Less obviously, but at least as importantly, we need to eliminate the insane patchwork of regulations that keep folks from legally cutting hair for money in a kitchen, or legally making a few bucks every now and then taxiing people around town in a 1988 Ford Escort.
If it's an insane patchwork, perhaps. But if it's a sensible patchwork that helps keep schools funded and slows society for a dispiriting race to the bottom, why the hell would we want to do this?
http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/18/lemonade-stand-crackdown-c...
There's something perverse about a government that cuts away people's autonomy and forces everyone to rely on its handouts. I'd rather live in a society of free people than a society that can't imagine life without the government telling them what to do. I could do with a little less "civilization" when it comes to closing down a 5 year old girl's lemonade stand because she didn't prepare her pitcher in a kitchen with a 3-basin sink.
Regulations aren't made with the good of society in mind. They're usually made by self-interested businessmen looking to keep out competition. When you realize this, you will reach political enlightenment.
They're usually made by self-interested businessmen looking to keep out competition
Is "regulatory capture" the latest buzz phrase from Frank Luntz? Powerful business interests are going to try to influence the regulatory process anyway, so let's just let them run amok.
Beats me. But you're delusional if you think regulations are created by disinterested people contemplating the public good.
We live in a world where Fannie and Freddie debt was regulated as Tier I capital, for goodness sake. We live in a world that requires (black) hair-braiders to pass a 400 hour course on cutting (white) people's hair to open up shop. We live in a world that caps San Francisco taxi cabs at approximately 1% of the number demanded. The evidence demands at least a slightly cynical evaluation of the regulatory state.
I don't think I've ever watched Fox News or listened to Limbaugh, by the way, at least not for more than 5 minutes in a waiting room. You can leave the ad hominem at home.
What concerns me is your ease in classifying a phrase as a Frank Luntz "buzz word" for the mere reason of disagreeing with it. It shows a deep lack of imagination, no different from those who hold delusional views about George Soros.
An obvious solution is to go around the mountain. If such large monolithic structures come with such a burden then why not decentralize and cut them down to a reasonable size that our hardware can better handle? This is, ofcourse, also a patch, which, personally, I think would address the effects more efficiently. To address the root causes, we would either need to modify our neurochemistry or DNA or provide education so that individuals can overcome Dunbar's number.
While I accept that a lot of the "less government" rhetoric around here, and even among many politicians, is motivated by sincere ideological conviction and a belief in the efficiency of decentralized organizations, the net effect of this ideological surge within the US over the last 30 years has been a redistribution of wealth and privilege that has sharpened the hierarchy.
I think this attitude explains why I loath the employee-employer fixed pay relationship so much. Selling your time, day-in, day-out, to write software, is antithetical to the very act of writing software, because, as the developer, you haven’t automated yourself out of any future work.
What? If a business gets paid $10 for something that costs them $9 to do, they have lots of profit incentive to automate the work. If they can make it cost $0.01 to do, they will be rolling in profit. Nearly every business understands this.
Maybe they don't want their clients to get this automation, but that's a different question.
Edit: Also, we might be talking about slightly different situations, I'm mainly referring to optimizations which require a time investment up front, not 'free' ones.
And how can you design "decent systems" that are adaptable to change? It's impossible to reliably predict what changes will be needed. Most software products evolve in entirely unpredictable ways. There are some general software engineering best practices for modularity and layering but beyond that you're getting into YAGNI territory.
Best practices are pretty much what I'm talking about. It may be impossible to predict what changes are needed but it's easy to predict that there will be changes.
Interestingly, the usual way to accomplish this is to become an employer.
It would be great if business and labor laws were streamlined to make this as easy as possible, but its disruptive to larger corporations and current stakeholders, so I suspect there's vested interest in trying to keep the status quo, unfortunately. But the success of AirBnb, etc is a great sign.
Certainly that's one part of the phenomenon. But keep in mind that regulations exist also because there are always people who want to take in as much money as possible while doing as little work as possible, leaving others---possibly meaning the public---to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.
(A recent example: Wall Street investment bankers, playing the heads-we-win, tails-the-public-loses game with bank bailouts. A recurring example: Polluters.)
Less snark version: who do you think writes regulation?
Conceder cap and trade which is clearly less efficient than simply taxing carbon. While it might seem like a terrible idea for anyone with a few lobbyists and the assumption that they can specify an exception for their industry it can become a huge boon at the cost of those with less influence.
I don't know if there have been any horror stories yet, but the reality is that in our society, you need those protections offered by registering as a business and dealing with the red tape.
Our laws are set up in such a way that the individual is at much greater personal risk when acting as an individual than as a business entity with the individual as its sole member.
However, the author misses an important link between job autonomy and the question posed, "What is the single best thing Washington can do to jumpstart job creation?"...
The fundamental reason that "job autonomy" is more viable today, is thanks to the internet and free-flowing information. If there is one thing the government could do to jumpstart job creation, it would be to improve the regulatory structure surrounding the internet, bust the monopolies that are gouging us for awful service and give incentives for startup ISP's to take their place.
http://blogs.forbes.com/markpmills/2011/07/05/manufacturing-...
Me too! (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1287346) I've never heard of David Ellerman. Anybody here read him?
If you achieve comfortable Western middle-class, what do you aspire to past that? A traditional and quite common aspiration is to move more into the upper class: to make enough money to regularly travel the world, buy a large house, buy a sports car, or perhaps even move into the higher tier of owning a beach home in Hawaii, yacht, private jet, etc.
"Post-materialists", on the other hand, tend to be satisfied with the Western-middle-class level of prosperity, and once they reach it start aspiring to things like greater autonomy, fewer working hours, greater proportion of time spent on creative endeavors, etc. I don't really like the phrase "post-materialist" (feels judgmental), and sort of prefer Tyler Cowen's phrase "threshold earners" (which this article also cites), as a more neutral description of people whose monetary aspirations are to reach a comfortable threshhold and stop there.
The article is a bit rambling, but what I take as the takeaway is that accounting for those kinds of aspirations requires something more than just "economic grwoth", since it's not really a linear scale of move up in the economy --> move up further in the economy. Instead it has more to do with flexibility of work arrangements, barriers to self-employment, etc.
What I am interested in primarily is maximizing the amount of time which I can spend on projects or collaborative efforts of my own choosing (the author references the importance of autonomy).
The problem is that the wealthy don't accumulated funds just to buy things. They use it for power. And increasingly in this country, money equals political power that affects all of us. In a weird way the "good guys" should become money hungry, but use that money in positive ways that benefit society.
Its easy to make yourself feel moral and just this way (and elitist and morally superior), but I think it can also be the beginning to an easy loophole around "money doesn't buy happiness." Once you've decided that more money will allow you to do others good, you're in the same structural problem that materialists are, which is that once you meet goal X, there goal Y will be, just out of reach, and with it, your happiness.
There have always been people who want more stuff and people who don't, and there always will be.
I agree that "threshold earners" is better. Another way of putting it is that some people place a higher dollar value on free time, autonomy, etc, so they aren't willing to trade as many hours for money as others are.
"If you had to choose among the following things, which are the two that seem the most desirable to you?
Maintaining order in the nation.
Giving people more say in important political decisions.
Fighting rising prices.
Protecting freedom of speech.
There was a longer test with more items in, I remember one was looking after the environment.
Inglehart claimed that a certain type of generous life could incubate people into his "post-materialist" mindset, and then they wouldn't change to "materialist" even if they were subsequently exposed to hardship.
Long time since I read any of it. This being one of those topics where I got to write an essay and then reuse it for another subject the next year. For shame! :)
It stuck with me partly because I found "Giving people more say in important political decisions." to be a very uncomfortable idea. I've changed position somewhat since I last thought about this.
"Giving people..." I do not think this is that important. The constitution, after all, was written behind closed doors because the writers feared what their constituencies might think.
"Fighting rising prices" - Good economics is vitally important, rising prices is a part of that.
"Protecting freedom of speech" - Important, not as important as economy.
"The harder we crowd business for time, the more efficient it becomes. The more well-paid leisure workmen get, the greater become their wants. These wants soon become needs. Well-managed business pays high wages and sells at low prices. Its workmen have the leisure to enjoy life and the wherewithal with which to finance that enjoyment.
"The industry of this country could not long exist if factories generally went back to the ten hour day, because the people would not have the time to consume the goods produced. For instance, a workman would have little use for an automobile if he had to be in the shops from dawn until dusk. And that would react in countless directions, for the automobile, by enabling people to get about quickly and easily, gives them a chance to find out what is going on in the world-which leads them to a larger life that requires more food, more and better goods, more books, more music -- more of everything. The benefits of travel are not confined to those who can take an expensive foreign trip. There is more to learn in this country than there is abroad."
http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/ford.htm
Henry Ford knew the answer 90 years ago, the key to keeping consumption up is to give people time to spend it. Think about it this way, a 5 day work week is 25% longer than a 4 day work week but most importantly gives people 50% more leisure time. During this leisure time people will consume more. Transitioning to a 4 day work week (with 5 days pay) would result in 50% more time to consume and would eliminate unemployment almost immediately.
The best thing the government could do to solve unemployment problems is to make a 4 day work week standard and institute overtime for the 5th day. The reality of the situation is that large numbers of unemployed people lead to instability in the political realm.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy options.
Most of the folks I know from my generation tend to spend almost all of their disposable income as soon as they obtain it. I have tried to explain to them that by doing so, they are selling their own freedom. You are forever at the yoke of he who employs you if you are living from paycheck to paycheck.
For the first three years of my career, I scrimped on almost all expenditures in order to accumulate a savings allowing me to be out of work for a period of at least one full year. I call it the FYF (the Fuck You Fund). I wouldn't trade it for anything but a true emergency.
Studies [0] have shown that, in essence, money and happiness correlate up to about $75k/year for a U.S. family of four. Above that level, money might open up options, but it doesn't seem to increase happiness as a whole. As others have noted, you can have a lot of financial freedom well below the million dollar mark, or be financially burdened above it.
It should come as no surprise that some people have come to that realization, and decided to simply meet the threshold, life a financially stable lifestyle at that level, and invest the rest of their energy in enjoying life.
[0] http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/09/study-says-$75,000-... describes one such study