On Sun, 7 Feb 1999, Sally Lerner wrote:
> Ray - You've just summarized what I'm working on, which is how to
> re-arrange society, via a Basic Income, so that when 'jobs' fade away, the
> transition to what James Robertson calls 'ownwork' can be as painless as
> possible. To me, the end of 'wage slavery' is a cause for
> celebration--there will always be good work (arts and other) to do and most
> jobs just get in the way. The Baptists probably sold the model of human
> beings that holds us to be inately lazy and evil, only whipped into shape
> by fear of god and coercion by our betters. I never bought.
Yeah, we creative types really dream of the end of 'wage slavery' !
I could spend years and years only with creative hobbies, NGO volunteering
and the Net, but alas, the 'job' work gets in the way most of the time.
However, in a part of the NGO work I got to know a different kind of
persons: When I created a social programme for unemployed people, I naively
thought they could be put to a (low-level, low-intensity) task and simply do
the work all day, or even find own ideas to work something useful. Wrong.
90% of them did nothing (except reading the newspaper, chatting/arguing,
and other nonsense), unless someone advised them "every move" all the time.
I offered them a variety of opportunities, even a computer system to work
with, and individual courses on it. But they ended up with playing computer
games. They didn't ask me for new projects, but for new games after they
got bored of the old ones. You may say: "See, you're not a social worker..".
But the 'managers' of other similar programmes confirmed the attitude of
the participants. Note: The official purpose of those programmes is to
give the unemployed a structure to increase their chances to get back into
the working mill err process.
Now, I don't put the blame on those individuals. Rather, I think it was
"the system" that made them like that. Actually, at least in 'lower'
positions, corporations don't seem to want employees with "own brains", but
they want "wage slaves". It will take huge educational and psycho-social
efforts to prepare these people for the Basic Income society, or they will
end up in even more boredom, despair and drugs.
Greetings,
Chris
