Hello again. I sent the following off to Futurework a little while ago and am not sure it made it. If it did, you can either ignore this message or you can read what I wrote twice. It's up to you. And Ed Davey, after I wrote my email, I noted that you already told us who the Massey of the lectures was -- I write but tend not to read. Bad habit.
Ed Weick ----- Original Message ----- From: Ed Weick To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 4:16 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means Ray, I too exchanged emails with Theobald and have a copy of the Massey lecture he never gave somewhere on my hardrive. I'm afraid I'd tend to side with Theobald on the "Hunter/Gatherer" thing. I spent much of my working life on issues that involved northern Canada, and the people I knew and worked with prided themselves on being hunters, gatherers and trappers. I'm not saying that the people you come from weren't farmers and foresters, but the ones I knew most certainly were not. The Massey that the lectures are named for was not the actor, Raymond, but his brother Vincent who was Canada's Governor General in the 1950s. He came from a wealthy family that built farm implements. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Harrell To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 3:08 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means I remember when Theobald had the problem. We spoke a few times via e-mail. As I remember the issue with the Massey lectures was a problem of systems. In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that Theobald and I had some issues on the "Hunter/Gatherer" thing. He insisted that we were and I insisted that we were forest farmers and master foresters and hadn't been Hunter Gatherers for thousands of years. History has proven that my teachers were correct and Theobald, (although admirable in his impulses), was not. Arthur would know more about the Massey controversy than I do. I just watched from the sidelines as it crashed and burned. My impression was that Theobald was a little too unconventional for the powers in control and so they shut it down but that was just my impression. I've run that problem many times when people asked for something but they didn't know who they were asking and their image of what they wanted had little to do with who they were asking. I'm persona non grata at several prominent organizations because they wanted a predictability rather than an exploration of an issue. When I gave them the exploration they contracted for, they paid me and I never saw them again. It obviously didn't fit the niche they thought they could fill by hiring me. Often it had to do with something akin to a Cigar store Indian stereotype which I'm not. Neither were or are any of my teachers. The Massey Lectures at Harvard are in the History of American Civilization and are in honor of a wealthy coal mining executive from West Virginia. I like that the CBC lectures are for the brother of an Actor. That's much more satisfying than the people who are tearing up the Appalachian mountains. Thanks for the URL. I'll look it up. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Davey Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 1:24 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means Hi again, The Canadian Massey Lectures are sponsored by the CBC as part of their Ideas series, every year around November. Wade Davis was last year's lecturer and his topic was The Wayfinders, subtitled why aboriginal cultures matter in the current world. He takes great issue with the predominant European thought that native populations were undeveloped Europeans who had underutilized the resources available. The lectures explored the cultural wisdom of the Polynesians, the Bushmen of the Kalahiri, the Penan of Malaysia, the civilization that the Spanish saw but didn't believe in the Amazon basin, and other cultures that we are prepared to lose in the endless toing and froing of progress. A podcast of the lectures is available at: http://castroller.com/podcasts/CbcRadiosMassey/1302930-2009%20Massey%20Lectures%20The%20Wayfinders%20Why%20Ancient%20Wisdom%20Matters%20in%20the%20Modern%20World%20-%20Part%201. The Canadian Massey lectures were established to honour a former Governor General, Vincent Massey, brother to the actor Raymond. The reason I am subscribed to Futurework is that I came across the group as a result of Robert Theobald's attempt to do a collaborative effort on Futurework, for his Massey Lecture. Due to deadline problems and I suppose, ideological differences, the lectures were cancelled pretty close to the deadline. Regards, Ed From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 11:49 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means Osiyo Ed, Good to hear from you. I'm not familiar with the Canadian Massey Lectures. These were at Harvard and I guess were subsidized by the same man or in honor of the same man. Tell me about the Wade Davis. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Davey Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 11:06 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means Hi Ray, Since you mention here the Massey Lectures, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Wade Davis' 2009 lectures, published in 'The Wayfinders'? Regards and thanks for all your insights, they've been an ongoing revelation and inspiration. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 10:19 AM To: 'Keith Hudson'; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means You guys should start by contacting Mike Hollingshead and reading his unpublished manuscript on the Myth of Canada. Then you should read Lawrence Levine's Massey Lectures at Harvard on "Highbrow/Lowbrow The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America" and then go to "The Winner Take All Society by Frank and Cook for the economic history. There were 66,000 opera houses in America at the end of the 19th century. 1,300 in the farm state of Iowa alone. The economic histories about agrarianism and the highly trained peasants who came to America from just about everyplace except for England who kept their serfs almost as slaves. There were Dutch opera houses in Iowa, Middle European opera houses in Kansas and Missouri and even Oklahoma had Indian Opera houses where the wealthy Indians, before they were disenfranchised and even murdered for their money by the Sooners. The pisspoor gold miners of Colorado rioted when they were cheated out of a few bars of La Sonnambula by a traveling troupe at the Teller Opera House in Central City. My point is simple. If those opera houses gave one performance a year by their local company, there were jobs for 66,000 tenors in late 19th century America. But of course there were many more than "one" performances by local repertory companies and they also built the sets, constructed the technology and worked in the local hardware stores. Everyone did service jobs. Everyone had been, within one or two generations, trained servants. That's why even the trained, literate, house slaves in New Orleans had tickets alongside the lower classes in the opera capital of America in the 19th century. New Orleans. Not counting bassos, sopranos, Mezzos, etc. As culture was absorbed by the wealthy, who themselves had been pisspoor, in a massive takeover of both time and space with the advent the railroad and the second industrial revolution, those service jobs were absorbed by two things. First all complex culture in the lower classes went into the churches and thus America is culturally fundamentalist, radical right wing religion down to the present while the wealthy absconded with the high class European secular culture. But America before 1880 was founded on a secular covenant. You can see it in the village architecture of every village in New England with the secular Common, like the Common in Boston and all over New England. Secondly, the rise of electronics made the poor able to become consumers without bothering the wealthy in their live performance opera and concert halls. The wealthy called that "the cultured class" and their economist whores even came up with an official name for it. "Productivity." As for complex culture and "service" (servants) the wealthy today consider themselves to be the "owners" of American Complex Culture while the poor are religious. But t'was not always so, if you knew anything about American history. (These folks that I listed were on my board of advisors and we did quite a lot of research about it at the highest levels. The best one could call the assumptions about history here is encased in the word duplicitous. Keith is understandable, Harry is California. Too much sun and easy living:>))) The point is simple. Americans have always done everything. The breakdown into simple jobs is 1880s second Industrial Revolution stuff with primarily the ignorant Irish immigrants who were agrarian and Catholic. They imprinted on the factory whistle but American resisted standard time down to 1918. They were proud of their culture. They were not Renaissance Men ala Europe but "Jacks of all Trades" and inventive. Yes they were also farmers but not very good at that. They destroyed the prairie and created the dustbowl as a result. They were much better at doing almost anything including inventing new factory ideas and singing opera. They still do in my home state of Oklahoma where Dame Eva Turner said she heard the greatest voices on the planet. Service jobs aren't new. Until Henry Ford and John Rockefeller, we had always done everything. The concept of "wealth production" is, however, strictly for the useless class. I've come to believe from Harry that Henry George should have studied C.S. Pierce more seriously. Pierce was the great philosopher with an Andalusian gypsy wife who saved his writings when Harvard would have consigned them to the garbage can. Everyone, who was a real person, knew that concept of "wealth creation" as value was meshugina when it was proposed. Now we are in a time of mad hatters and white rabbits and tea parties who make up anything and the dummies believe it. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 2:01 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Harry Pollard Subject: Re: [Futurework] The only exception -- was Living within our means At 15:43 07/10/2010 -0700, Harry wrote: There is a big argument among Georgist teachers about including service givers in our course. The difference is of course that after Labor has labored there is more wealth. After a service giver has labored, there is less wealth (unless he doesn't eat). We are teaching a science that deals with the production of wealth. Well, if Georgists are to be relevant in the modern world then I think that it's about time that they turned their attention to the services which hardly existed in Henry George's time when 80-90% of the population were either agricultural or industrial workers. We now have vast government services, plus sizeable professional services (with a large chunk of financial services within it), plus an increasing make-work sector which is rotating services among itself in what is essentially a surplus part of the population which is not adding economic value. My thinking is that once we [Georgists] have satisfactorily dealt with production we can turn our attention to services. But you haven't dealt satisfactorily with production yet! You are still thinking in terms of Land+Labour+Capital as its exclusive factors. Although people were, and are, obviously involved in Production, it was and is only their muscular (or mental) energy that is involved in routinized tasks that can also be done by machines. The advent of the automated factory for agricultural and industrial production is essentially Land+Energy+Capital, just as it is in the natural world -- Land+Solar energy (directly or indirectly) + DNA. But both are static systems, as it were. To have movement and change a fourth factor needs to be added in both cases: Land+Energy+Capital+Innovation in economics, Land+Solar energy+DNA+Mutations in nature. Once you have taken people, as people, out of the production formula (using robots instead) you can then consider them as real people in the services/consumption sector where people act fully in the round as people and transact with one another and will always be required. The Services/Consumption side of the Production-Consumption equation (a completely balanced one in normal times) is to do with the way that the production-made profit is subsequently distributed. Once you can see my point then we can argue productively! Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
