The simplest decision making loop is “only do things you like.”
Sometimes getting something we want (presumably something which will let us do things we like) we must do something we dislike, or wouldn’t otherwise do.
So the next decision is “is what I get from doing something I don’t like worth doing this thing I don’t like?”
Close to the state of nature, this might include hunting, gathering, planting crops and so on. Without food, water and shelter we can’t do anything else, because we’re dead.
In modern societies this means finding a way to get money. Most of us probably wouldn’t do our current job if we didn’t need money.
But what I see is that many people hate their jobs, spend all their time working, and buy stuff they don’t have time use to do things they like.
That big house in the suburbs, with a 2 hour commute either way, so they’re hardly there and can’t enjoy it.
A spouse, who they never see, but who (let’s be honest) they make money so they can have.
Various toys they rarely actually use.
Children they never see. (Presumably you got children because you thought you’d like having children? I mean, clearly many parents don’t actually, but…)
The problem of subsistence is complicated by the fact that we live in capitalist societies. What capitalism means is that a few people own the means of production: land, machines, the right to create money out of thing air, etc… So most of us can only sell our labor. Yeah, a few people can get around this, but most people can’t, or our society would stop being capitalist, since capitalism requires this concentration.
Since someone else is taking most of the surplus we produce, we have to work longer than we otherwise would. (There’s a long argument here about whether capitalism leads to being more productive and therefore less labor, we’ll pass that by for now.)
Even if you want to bugger off and set up a little subsistence society, you usually can’t, both because you can’t just go take some land, even if it’s not being used by anyone, and because taxes will destroy you. (This is what taxes are for, to force you into the capitalist economy because you need money to pay them. This is why many wars were fought over the right to pay taxes with goods or labor, and not money, or vice versa.)
And then there is the question of coercion. Police, tax collectors, the military, private security like the Pinkertons.
People who are there to stop the hoi polloi from using force against people who have a lot of stuff, and got it without other people really approving of how they got it. Natural societies are egalitarian because there are no cops, armies or private retainers, so if other people don’t want you to have it, you don’t. (This isn’t always a good thing, but sometimes it is. It varies.)
Still, at the end of the day, the natural human impulse, which we have buried under a mountain of cultural conditioning about how wonderful work is, and to not be lazy and so on, is to work only to fill needs and to spend our time doing things we love.
Mind you, I know people who love hunting, fishing and farming (never got loving farming myself, but I’ve met ‘em.) It’s not like you can’t love doing what also gets you stuff.
But maybe you don’t. And I’m not sure that it’s wrong to not want to spend most of your life doing things you don’t want to do (and often evil things) to get stuff you may not even have time to enjoy much.
Just a thought.
So perhaps remember the basic loop. And ask why we’ve set up our society to spend tons of time doing work we hate, so a few people can be very rich and the rest of us can have stuff we don’t have time to enjoy.
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nihil obstet
A complicating factor is that people don’t just want things — we want respect. As you say,
The cultural conditioning leads us to judge each other by how hard we work, how much money we make, how many people we manage. A lot of the time it seems that people who claim they’re working harder than others because they need the money for their families or another good cause are really throwing themselves into it for the extra value they think it gives them.
We need a snappy motto to say, “Free time is good time.”
bruce wilder
Being highly specialized, the work we do is not for us. Yeah, sure for the wage. But, not the work itself or its produce.
Unless you eat your own dog food I see a problem.
Hugh
Capitalism is a cult in that it is considered heresy by its proponents to critically examine it even as these proponents have little or no idea what it is.
The first problem with capitalism is that it is an economic theory. This makes it a sub-theory of societal theory. First, you decide what kind of a society you want. Then you decide what kind of economy best serves the needs of that society. But in the real world we have given primacy to capitalism, or something we call capitalism, and this capitalism determines the society we have whether we want it or not. It may sound arcane but inverting a theoretical ordering has real consequences.
The second problem with capitalism is that the idea that the concentration of capital leads to greater productivity is fraught. In one way, this assertion sounds reasonable and uncontroversial. But the simplest question is increased productivity of what. Horse buggies? Terrible tasting gruel that almost everyone has to eat because there is nothing else available? Capitalism without a social theory to govern it, to direct and constraint it, can lead anywhere, except mostly where you and I would like it to.
A more complicated issue arises from what capital is. Capital is really resources. It can be land, a factory, or know-how. It can be but isn’t necessarily money. Money in this instance is a surrogate. It gives access to resources. The goal of this kind of “innocent” primordial capitalism is production. And I suppose that you could add in the “magic of markets” to regulate and direct this production. But in the real world, money has been substituted for capital, and the goal is not the production of things but the production of wealth. This was not an innocent mistake. Modern capitalism or rather moneyism makes money primary even when it doesn’t come from a productive source , and most of it isn’t (rents, speculative bubbles). So that rather than money being subservient to capital, capital has become subservient to money –and those who have it. And those who have it can create/accumulate more and more of it even though their wealth is either unproductive or destructive of our society.
Willy
And now for something completely different.
Quite likely, the system which human genes passed through was the one where tribal leader elites managed tribal workers, and vice versa, for a sort of best-survival symbiosis. Otherwise the human race might consist of something like ‘highly logical group minded thinkers’, and that’s obviously not the case.
It’s easy to assume that back in our genetic formative years, hunters and gatherers had a psychological component where they allowed tribal elites to have a greater share of the huntings and gatherings (or maybe just power) because they felt compelled to believe the elites would wisely manage that extra on behalf of the rest of the tribe. If the elites were bad at management, the suffering tribe would be less able to pass on their genes. If the elites were good at management, the prospering tribe would be more able to no pass on their genes.
There were of course those very few who spent their spare time imagining how wolves could be turned into dogs, sticks into fire, and teosinte into corn. I think most of the folks commenting here are more like that. But this isn’t about us. It’s about the vast majority.
Today we have temperamentally and mostly, leader genes and worker genes, in approximately the same proportions as was required for successful tribal management back in those primitive formative years. Sadly, as the size of tribes suddenly exploded the workers ability to manage dysfunctional elites suddenly diminished. It’s easy to club the bad clan chief in his sleep and get away with it. It’s hard to club the bad multinational CEO in his sleep and get away with it. But we still have all those genetics, which today’s bad chiefs will use for maximum personal advantage. Historically, goofy God-worship dynasties such as the pharaohs and the Kims have happened more often than the more logically egalitarian ones such as the Athenian democracy.
Makes one of the insightful few want to start a website called Firedogcorn or something. Assuming that the bad chiefs are incorrigible, I’m wondering what firedogcorn people could imagine that contains the bad chiefs.
Bill H
Doing work you hate? I worked for many years as a maintenance electrician/mechanic in a factory. One of those big capitalist factories. I made more money than I thought was reasonable. I actually thought I made too much money. I went home at night tired and dirty, and I got up the next morning eager to go to work. I loved the work. I felt every day like I was accomplishing something. I made machinery function properly. When a machine quit working I was “the man.”
Willy
When I went from “the man” to “scapegoat bitch”, the work I loved turned into something truly despicable.
The quality of the elites (management) made pretty much all the difference. The ‘fuel’ was the sudden large scale offshoring of jobs and technology which created a paranoid and highly politicized environment. The spark was a rival successfully tagging me a whistleblower/snitch, when I was nothing of the sort. But I wasn’t special. Others got it too, each in their own way. Machiavellianism provides many options.
Recently the primary outsourcer in that business, the one that started it all, tripped very badly over an poorly outsourced (and highly critical) item and may not recover. Sales are disastrously dismal compared to previous years, and with their primary rival. Maybe they can hire “reputation.com” to help get their reviews back up (actually they can’t, being a very famous international company).
There are many bosses there who in better managed times, would’ve been clubbed in their sleep.
Ten Bears
When I went from “the man” to “scapegoat bitch”, the work I loved turned truly despicable.
When at the onset of the oughts an old-testament thumping racial, religious and homophobic no doubt trumpsucking bigot sure as fuck looks like him with a third of my education and half experience who, hired to a position of middle administration at a secular, state funded educational organization, harassed a native employee ’till he quit, harassed a mexican employee ’till he quit, harassed a gay employee ’till he quit, harassed a woman ’till she died… who for six years harassed this old logger.hippie.biker (sic) ’till left with only the option of either reaching out and popping its head like the pimple it is… or walking away from a job I had worked fifteen years and invested over thirty grand in late life educational expense to have.
Good stuff Hugh, Willy … wheat. Something to consider: the assumption that corporate – capital – hierarchical, religiously imposed Republicanism is an imposition in and of itself; that hierarchical religiously imposed Republicanism is the natural order of things, that “elites” are necessary to ordering of society, be it hunter.gatherer or egalitarian, is the way of it… hasn’t turned out so well, History shows us again and again how nature proves out the folly of man (Godzilla!).
If we are to look to nature for an example how to marshall society on scale to ten.in.a.generation billion humans infesting a ball of mud that can barely sustain one the insect world would be apt. Totalitarian colonies, or perhaps a single colony, not unlike bees or ants though I suspect more like the hornet super-nests turning up down south, where the warming climate allows them to now survive through the winters and into a second year in Volkswagon sized nests of upwards of thirty thousand yellow-jackets. We are, afterall, planet lice.
With that, a concluding consideration… As this thin layer of gases we live in enveloping the only ball of mud we know of we can live on continue to grow ever more toxic, we’re gonna’ have to get off the surface of this planet. Though the pretty boys are all agog at Moonbases and Mars Bitches! we don’t have time to fuck around with all that bullshit. Maybe later. Maybe orbiting habitats. As a practical matter, in the short-term, we’re gonna’ have to go underground (maybe underwater). Quite probably in self-contained, environmentally sealed habitats not unlike orbiting habitats, or Moonbases and Mars Bitches! Caves of Stone and Steel. How do we marshall that?
Also have to accept that not all ten billion are gonna’ make it.
Bill H
Life is what we make of it for ourselves, and we create untold misery by focusing on what others are doing. Management may have been the “greedy evil capitalist pigs” that today’s workers complain of, but I wasn’t focused on what they were doing, I was focused on what I was doing. What others do is not my business.
I did stand at the gate of a steel plant with an axe handle in my hand demanding that management give me better wages, because when what others did impacted me I didn’t sit down at a keyboard and whine about it, and I didn’t demand that the government solve the problem for me. My union brothers and I took action to solve our own problems, and we solved them for ourselves.
And before you say that government permitted unions then and it doesn’t now, think again. Labor unionism was not created by government. It was created despite government’s efforts to prevent it, and when I was outside that gate I was facing armed police attempting to disband us. They did not succeed.
Today workers leave the job to walk with signs for ONE DAY, announcing in advance that it will only be for one day, and think that such a feeble and vacuous act is going to create change. Today we do not even talk about creating jobs with which one working person can support a family, we talk about the “minimum wage,” which create the need for at least two wage earners, each working two or three part time jobs eo eke out enough to keep food on the table.
We expect the government to solve problems for workers who are unwilling to solve for themselves, workers who abandoned a decades long history of solving problems for themselves. I am not sympathetic.
Herman
Work in modern society wouldn’t be as onerous if there was some stability and some dignity to it. This is one of the things that the old socialist systems got right. From what I have read, even though Soviet workers did not have much power in the political sphere they actually had a lot of power in the workplace because the system of full employment reduced the threat of the sack, which is the main disciplinary power that employers have. Soviet workers were known to tell off their bosses frequently and employers had to provide perks like childcare facilities, recreation rooms and hair salons to keep the best workers.
There is also some evidence that Chinese workers were happier under the “iron rice bowl” system of guaranteed employment in the public sector than in the private sector.
Feeling Good About the Iron Rice Bowl: Economic Sector and Happiness in Post-Reform Urban China
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592128/
China is facing a mysterious happiness crisis despite booming prosperity
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-happiness-hasnt-increased-2017-12
I have read that even today many Chinese graduates prefer jobs in the public sector where something like the iron rice bowl still exists.
Of course, the counter argument is that iron rice bowl systems are inefficient and produce less disciplined workers but there are at least two problems with that theory. First, not all state-owned enterprises perform poorly and some of the poor performance in cases like the Soviet Union were produced by factors such as rampant alcoholism which had economic (the cheap cost of alcohol) and cultural roots that were not necessarily inherent to the way Soviet enterprises operated. Also, there are ways to motivate workers that do not involve management by terror as is so common under capitalism.
Second, and more fundamentally, is it really a problem if people would prefer a more leisurely existence compared to one of endless growth, competition and constant demands for more efficiency? From what I understand, some young people in former socialist countries criticize older people for being nostalgic for the socialist past, calling them lazy, but is it wrong that some people want an easier life? Most people are not yuppie go-getters and I see no reason to structure society for the good of a minority of people who get off on working and competing and accumulating material goods.
Sadly, Great Power competition and the fact that go-getters often rise to power within groups seems to block any transition to a more humane system. It is said that we need the current system of capitalism because it produces the goods and services we want and is necessary to outcompete the Chinese/Russians/whoever. Also, it seems all too common for jerks to rise to the top of organizations due to charisma, greater motivation, intelligence, lack of scruples, etc. These are some of the things that ultimately destroyed the socialist experiments of the 20th century.
Willy
Bill H,
I really don’t think shaming the worker will work. In today’s culture, unions are considered wrong and bad. Ever wonder how that came to be?
I had lunch with somebody I hadn’t seen in decades. Conversation went to the inevitable ‘how things have changed’. He offered the unique insight: “Today everybody wants the fancy but nobody wants to pay for it” and I saw the truth in it. Grifting, scamming and passing along the costs to our children are cultural values now. Think of how ethically and rationally messed up that mindset is. Ever wonder what caused that?
nihil obstet
I’ve been watching this series — Plutocracy: Political Repression in the U.S.A.. It’s a decent history of labor activism and the violence the state mustered against workers.
If government won’t solve our problems, why have a government? When government itself is part of the problem, we need to change it. There will always be some corruption in government because some people are just jerks, but we should go after the corruption with at least as much enthusiasm as we lock up poor people. American government seemed reasonably clean from the New Deal through the sixties.
Then came the cultural change. The free market school of economists pretty much took over the expertise mantel, and greed was good. Reagan came in and presided over a thieves den, with influence peddling out in the open. The propaganda machine launched a tale of individuals too smart to be snookered into helping lazy undeserving people, like everybody else. And we got what we have now.
Nobody is born knowledgeable. We have to learn. If we give up our efforts to teach our neighbors how to stand together to solve problems because we lack sympathy for their ignorance, they will learn what the elites tell them.
bruce wilder
I saw the other day that Haim Saban, a stupid dick who made a billion from the cultural abomination, Power Rangers, despises only one Democratic Presidential candidate — that would be the one railing against “the billionaire class”.
He may be stupid and tasteless, but he knows who opposes his interests. Would that more ordinary people had such capacity for simple decision-making.
Bill H
“I really don’t think shaming the worker will work. In today’s culture, unions are considered wrong and bad. Ever wonder how that came to be?”
Today’s culture? There is no culture today.
Willy
There is no culture today.
Nor much rational thought. When I was a kid, unions were a fact of life, as natural and necessary as checks and balances for government.
Today I have a wingnut conservative in-law, member of the most powerful remaining union in the nation, who sees unions as a liberal scam which he’s gonna keep taking advantage of. Wrap your head around that.
nihil obstet
Haim Saban leads off Bernie Sanders’ page of anti-endorsements
Willy
1. Mandate that lobbyists cannot bribe political officials anymore. In other words, lobbyists will have to use actual verbal persuasion when presenting their economic case.
2. Mandate a large executive pay tax which mostly goes towards enforcing the above.
3. Use the rest of the executive pay tax proceeds to expose any media, donor astroturfing, and think tank attempts at public disinformation against 1, 2 and 3.
bruce wilder
Willy, i am pretty sure bribing public officials is at least theoretically illegal now.
A politics of purity of motives or intentions is not a good design either. The Catholic Church tries it with their priests and consider how that has worked out.
I think a mass democracy requires politicians to deliver the goods for large numbers and be seen to do so. And, people like politicians and pundits have to eat and have careers.
The U.S. is a mess because we let powerful people pay themselves fantastic sums and it distorts everything to have elites aspiring to such paydays. That part i agree with.
Andy Sprott
Went in just this morning and bought myself a piece of the means of production with the fruits of the labour I sold. Must have somehow missed the big fence around the TSX designed to keep me out.
Hugh
Re bribery, much of the conduct that constitutes modern bribery in Washington is legal although in theory almost all of it would be illegal if bribery as defined in the US Code were narrowly construed and strictly enforced. While a public (elected) official is in office, there are the perks and connections associated with lobbying, fundraising, and of course PACs. But there is a whole universe of post-government employment for those who played ball while in government, elected or not. There are lobbying jobs although these are supposed to be prohibited, lobbying by another name consultancy gigs, partnerships at law firms that do business with the government, professorships at universities and/or fellowships at their centers for whatever, made-up business positions, do-nothing, know-nothing positions on corporate boards of directors, and if nothing else “think” tanks. The “legalizing” trick is that the bribe payment is future and unstated. However, I would note that US Code says that a bribe can be indirect, and that’s what our modern system of graft is based on. Graft permeates our system but as long as everyone is doing it and nobody prosecutes it, it will remain standard operating procedure.
For those interested, this is the citation for bribery of a government official in the US Code: Title 18. CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE Part I. CRIMES Chapter 11. BRIBERY, GRAFT, AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Section 201. Bribery of public officials and witnesses:
(a) For the purpose of this section—
(1) the term “public official” means Member of Congress, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, either before or after such official has qualified, or an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia, in any official function, under or by authority of any such department, agency, or branch of Government, or a juror;
(2) the term “person who has been selected to be a public official” means any person who has been nominated or appointed to be a public official, or has been officially informed that such person will be so nominated or appointed; and
(3) the term “official act” means any decision or action on any question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy, which may at any time be pending, or which may by law be brought before any public official, in such official’s official capacity, or in such official’s place of trust or profit.
(b) Whoever—
(1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent—
(A) to influence any official act; or
(B) to influence such public official or person who has been selected to be a public official to commit or aid in committing, or collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or
(C) to induce such public official or such person who has been selected to be a public official to do or omit to do any act in violation of the lawful duty of such official or person;
(2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for:
(A) being influenced in the performance of any official act;
(B) being influenced to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or
(C) being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person;
(3) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, or offers or promises such person to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence the testimony under oath or affirmation of such first-mentioned person as a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding, before any court, any committee of either House or both Houses of Congress, or any agency, commission, or officer authorized by the laws of the United States to hear evidence or take testimony, or with intent to influence such person to absent himself therefrom;
(4) directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity in return for being influenced in testimony under oath or affirmation as a witness upon any such trial, hearing, or other proceeding, or in return for absenting himself therefrom;
shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
(c) Whoever—
(1) otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty—
(A) directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official; or
(B) being a public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty, directly or indirectly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such official or person;
(2) directly or indirectly, gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any person, for or because of the testimony under oath or affirmation given or to be given by such person as a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding, before any court, any committee of either House or both Houses of Congress, or any agency, commission, or officer authorized by the laws of the United States to hear evidence or take testimony, or for or because of such person’s absence therefrom;
(3) directly or indirectly, demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of the testimony under oath or affirmation given or to be given by such person as a witness upon any such trial, hearing, or other proceeding, or for or because of such person’s absence therefrom;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.
(d) Paragraphs (3) and (4) of subsection (b) and paragraphs (2) and (3) of subsection (c) shall not be construed to prohibit the payment or receipt of witness fees provided by law, or the payment, by the party upon whose behalf a witness is called and receipt by a witness, of the reasonable cost of travel and subsistence incurred and the reasonable value of time lost in attendance at any such trial, hearing, or proceeding, or in the case of expert witnesses, a reasonable fee for time spent in the preparation of such opinion, and in appearing and testifying.
(e) The offenses and penalties prescribed in this section are separate from and in addition to those prescribed in sections 1503, 1504, and 1505 of this title.
Hugh
Congratulations, Andy Sprott. With your purchase of stock, you have now entered that august company that Goldman Sachs calls muppets.
bruce wilder
You do not have to be a lawyer to read the statute law quoted by Hugh to see how “the best intentions” lead to completely impractical “remedies” in law. Read literally, these kinds of statutes make any sort of transactional politics at least suspect, which is ridiculous. What will happen is that any but itself a corrupt prosecution will focus on proving “corrupt intent” or some similar limiting concept. Unless you can nail the politician twirling his mustache like Snidely Whiplash and saying on tape that it was only because of the side payment that he did the evil deed against his own non-existent conviction that some other choice was right — only then could a conviction be secured.
Consider the case of New Jersey Senator Menendez and “his best friend” an illustration.
And, really the ultimate deficiency is not in the operation of law, but the lack of any moral instinct in the general population combined with very weak institutions for mobilizing public opinion let alone mass action. People can look at Hillary Clinton collecting $22 million in “speaking fees” from the likes of Goldman Sachs during her brief sojurn from office and campaigning for office and see nothing wrong.
Willy
Willy, i am pretty sure bribing public officials is at least theoretically illegal now.
You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Studies have been done proving that DC donor money talks, and whatever the majority wants is often irrelevant.
You don’t get out much do you?
Willy
A politics of purity of motives or intentions is not a good design either. The Catholic Church tries it with their priests and consider how that has worked out.
So all of the priests are still molesting all of their parishioners kids? I assume you’re taking about spin doctoring their image while actually doing little to reduce the problem?
I think a mass democracy requires politicians to deliver the goods for large numbers and be seen to do so. And, people like politicians and pundits have to eat and have careers.
What does that even mean? I recently severed ties with a company after they’d proven to me that they’ll frequently lie, cheat and steal. Yet they’re so skilled at working the system and spin doctoring their image that they get top reviews. With so many allies (unwitting and in their pocket), people they’ve screwed have an uphill battle trying to bring them to justice.
The U.S. is a mess because we let powerful people pay themselves fantastic sums and it distorts everything to have elites aspiring to such paydays. That part i agree with.
Do you actually know any powerful people? Or more to the point, ever been in the employ of one or been under their control or influence?
Willy
The finest lawyers in the land can come up with laws so gorgeously elegant that they’ll be fighting over who gets to have sex with them.
It helps to pass laws that mask the sponsors true intentions, but it doesn’t matter how sexy a law is if the enforcement sucks.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve worked in the corporate sector goddamn it! I’ve had it repeatedly rubbed in my face that the rules are for the wee folks, and that enforcement favors the gold (or fortune favors the bold or something).
Maybe some of us can be the guys having sex with the gorgeous ideas, while the rest of us try to figure out the enforcement end.