I think it is gas.
Gene Coyloe
It was those beans again. Speaking of beans and inevitably of bean counting,
what seems important to me is the transition from a regime of calculation to
first a regime of automated calculation and ultimately to a regime where the
instruments of measurement construct the things being measured. This doesn't
work for physical commodities like gas (the fuel) or water or sealing wax,
but it does for derived categories like unemployment/employment, inflation,
public opinion, entertainment, gross domestic product and . . . the wage.
Wage labour is presumably something that can or could crop up ephemerally
anywhere at any time historically for any number of locally significant
reasons. But wage labour as we know it is something historically specific
and, *whatever its origins*, it is something that is becoming increasingly
incompatible with the continuation of social life. All puns aside, the meter
has become the message.
As Doug has correctly (if perhaps only kiddingly) perceived, this does have
something to do with the length of the workday although it doesn't have to
do exclusively with the length of the workday. More broadly, it has to do
with the whole spectrum (or is it a lump?) of social statistics with which
we intellectuals and ideologists entertain ourselves. However, the
quantification of labour power in units of labour time is the point at which
all this socially calculated rubber hits the road. It is consequently the
point at which one may well expect the metered shit to hit the fan.
Something about all that is solid melts into air; gas again -- greenhouse or
beanhouse.
The METER is running but the cab is parked at the curb with the engine
idling. The meter is RUNNING but does it really count?
Tom Walker wrote:
A meter is an instrument for measuring and recording the quantity of
something, as of gas, water, miles, or time. Take your pick.
Doug Henwood asked,
Does this have something to do with the length of the workday, or the
lump of entertainment fallacy?
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213
