My apologies.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 8:30 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Skilled Work, Without the Worker Ray, You ARE being too pugnacious. You are picking a fight with ideas that Dean Baker doesn't have and didn't express. You are putting words in his mouth and mine that aren't ours and then shadow-boxing with your misconstrued opponent. On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: Just because there is an art to all of the other domains doesn't mean that they ARE Art. Economics is also a part of all of the Domains of society and so is generic science and systems structures but that doesn't mean that Musical Form and Analysis IS Science nor is the Agricultural Technology or the Technology of the Sacred adequately described as reverse engineering. People just seem to wander into each other's homes, go to the refrigerator and take what they want with impunity Tom, I hope I'm not being to pugnacious about this but I'm really tired of being pushed around by politicians and economists who just don't seem to care about what the results of their advocacy does to the person laboring in the field. In the army they used to call it "having each other's back." Now I see people who are willing to elect uncultivated slobs because they are mad at the choice they have. That's the way we went to war and I see them having hurt feelings rather than going to the practice range and working on their markmanship. When someone is afraid things change. If someone hurts the people I love or my art, they will have to deal with me. And as I get older I get much less patient. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 6:32 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Skilled Work, Without the Worker What I mean is one needs to distinguish between a technology and the appropriation of that technology by people or organizations whose sole interest is accumulating wealth for themselves. Pianos built by expert craftsmen still employ technology. "Skill" and "craft" are elements of technology. On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: What is you argument about the piano? I have a lot of information about how capitalism was just pulled up short of ruining America's premiere piano, the Steinway and I have another personal story about that as well. Pianos were, until the last generation, built by expert craftsmen who owned their own formulas for the pianos. In the last generation the companies took control and made them write everything down in a Manuel. It took almost fifty years to settle that in such a way the quality was restored. There were many big mistakes along the way because of the complexity involved in making musical instruments. But I'm guessing what you mean. What do you mean? REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 6:03 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Skilled Work, Without the Worker So, you're against the piano? On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: Actually Tom you didn't understand what I said. I spoke not only to the heading which I disagree with but to the argument about "productivity" and could have spoken to the disaster of the rise of the middle class for both the complex cultural products, families and personal competence arising out of Technical Rationalism and the rise of the "Professions." What I'm saying is that "scalable" systems like "economie of scale" "education of scale" etc. are built around a core value that is the opposite of "Leave no one behind" and the value of each and every individual. That may not be just humans as well. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christof-koch/consciousness-is-everywhere_b_17 84047.html?utm_hp_ref=science When you have winners and losers rather than potentialities, systemic growth and the value of the individual, constituting the success of the system, it will always be narrow self interest rather than reaching beyond one's self to a greater potential. In other words the problem is the goals of the capitalist system itself. We could call it the garden versus the wilderness, [Laissez Faire] or we could call it the individual craftsmen versus the assembly line, etc. etc. What to an Englishman was a typical uncontrolled English forest was to an Iroquois a controlled and tended garden fired twice a year and planted over fifteen year cycles for the good of all of the nations, including humans. See Chapter 9 and 10 of Charles Mann's book 1491. I contend that the "self interest" winner/loser model is inept and doomed to chaos and licentious non discipline. The only thing that makes the individual seek beyond the banal is intrinsic motivation based in growth and the passion for discovery. Have you read George Miller's old article on human limitation called "The Magical Number Seven plus or minus Two?" I would recommend it as a grounding in the fact that we are all inadequate and that the local loser may actually turn out to be the seminal figure of the age that makes idiots of us all. Happens all the time in the Arts. Jerome Rothenberg demonstrated it in Theology when he went around the world studying religious poetry and found that Indigenous Priests were the most complex of religious thinkers and the purpose of religion in human Domains. He termed the book of their poetry "Technicians of the Sacred." It is never about freedom of the individual or groups but "Freedom to do What?" Without the clarity of purpose and the Ultimate Values of that purpose we are perpetual slaves to our ignorance. War is so inviting because in war everyone knows that they need everyone else or they don't survive. Peace is much more difficult and susceptible to who tells the best story. Even tempting us to forget that we only really know that which we have personally experienced. Everything else is a story to be enjoyed but not considered worthy of emulation. My experience is that theories are just theories until we experience the success or failure of their action. But involving other people in the exploration of a theory requires both agreement and some kind of insurance lest we become criminal in our actions. The article that I read about Robotics and that I personally experienced in my youth and in the destruction of the performing arts in America by film, recording and television, is now being followed by the regular industrial sector. We didn't find anyway out of the heavy metal pollution and the destruction of family jobs. The Arts found solace from automation only through the amateur structures of religious music and the adolescent commercial entertainment that accompanied the technology. The result, as I said, was a 98% decline in the labor force as a result of economies of scale through automation. As for productivity. I'll say it again. It's a fraud, just a way of transfirring money from the competent to the speculative. Economics, as an Art form, has not evolved yet so they think people are "throwaway able." I believe that it is a stupid suicidal culture that thinks in such a short term manner. I think that Baker's beginning is inaccurate. Your environment teaches you and carefully preparing your environment is the only way we have of controlling our future. Robots are the same math as cheap slaves. They are even called "slaves" in the music business. But if your slave doesn't bankrupt you and frees your labor to human creativity, you can be Greece in the classical era. Otherwise you are Greece in the 21st century. Better living through capitalism. (joke) REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 12:37 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Skilled Work, Without the Worker Ray, I'm afraid you haven't read Dean Baker's response carefully. He's not saying all that bad stuff won't happen. What he is saying is that it doesn't have to happen. It isn't the inevitable result of technology but the result of bad policy that responds inappropriately to the technology. On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 9:31 AM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: Nonsense. Robotics destroyed my home town and destroyed the families and the culture in the hometown. It destroyed the culture of the Arts in America while making capitalists rich. There is a 98 % decline in jobs in the Arts business. I make less than half what I paid my teachers in 1970 dollars and I'm at the top of my profession. Productivity is a mirage for people to hide behind while they steal the competent blind. They are doing it now to the teachers in the schools and returning teaching to the ghetto it was on the Quapaw reservation before my father changed it. I don't know where you get this stuff Tom. I've lived through it several times and the NYTimes is correct. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 12:19 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Skilled Work, Without the Worker Dean Baker's response to that article is excellent: Robots Don't Cost Jobs, Bad Economic Policy Does <http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robots-dont-cost-jobs-ba d-economic-policy-does/print> <http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robots-dont-cost-jobs-ba d-economic-policy-does/print> <http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robots-dont-cost-jobs-ba d-economic-policy-does/print> -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman) _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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