I too am interested in where fundamental structural readjustments to the world economy are taking us, how they affect community sustainability at a local (regional) level, and the implications for strategic economic development schemes. 12/22
A combination of technological and social developments (are) emerging which make full employment an impossible and undesirable social policy or individual expectation....Thus the most urgent task before us...is to determine (1) what the vast and growing numbers of people in North America (and increasingly, the world) who will never be fully employed...might peacefully and fullfillingly do with their freed time; (2) how the situations that do require human labor might be fairly addressed and satisfied; and (3)how everyone (employed and unemployed alike) can have easy and equitable access to the goods and services that are available. 12/22 I am interested in this area because with the widespread use of infotech we should be heading to an economy and society of plenty. Rather we seem to be seeing more and more fear and pain. We seem locked in to traditional methods of measuring, accounting and income distribution. Somehow we have to come to terms with the incredible potential inherent in infotech to be a plus for societies everywhere.... 12/22 I think there's a lot wrong with "the world" today and also a lot of opportunity for positive change. However, I'm fairly pessimistic when I see power being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands proportionately. (Obviously this is not a unique insight on my part.) 12/22 Thanks to our strong trade unions we do not have very low wages in Norway. Very few people earn more than $100,000 and very few earn less than $20,000 a year. 12/22 Today..while corporations are free to literally search the globe for the cheapest materials, labor markets, etc., labor is, for the most part, fixed in at least a country, and quite often a region or city...it is difficult to move self and family all over the world to follow the movement of jobs. 12/22 I see Latin America as our future...I think patterns there are good evidence of what the US ruling elite finds acceptable: a very small, very wealthy, very opporessive elite, a small managerial-professional class, a large petty bourgeoisie jusr narely making it, and an extremely large, extremely impoverished underclass. 12/22 I have written a recent book on technological change and work organization: Technocracy at Work (SUNY Press, 1993)...Some of the issues I discuss in the book--such as polarization of the workforce--have been prominent themes in these introductory statements 12/22 I am interested in the issues of change and the work force, because lately I have had to look a displaced logger in the eyes, and tell him that he should once agin start looking for another job because his temporary government job will disappear within six months. I am also interested because of the tragedy in Colorado last July, in which so many young people died fighting a fire there...Due to changes in the federal work environment, the retension rate among wildland firefighters has dropped significantly...so younger fighter are left to learn about the warning signs of danger on their own... 12/22 (I have) an intense interest in creation of a sustainable society and the part that business can/should play in that work. I am also concerned aboutn ethical issues involved in cyberspace and virtual reality and hope to see some discussion of those issues here. 12/22 How do you tell an area where coal was once king, that their economic benefit is the death of someone else's lake? How do you build a broadbased citizen's movement based on 'sustainability' when 'sustainability' could also be defdined as the quick fix of ending a few regulations that might mean a couple of hundread high paying jobs, even if only for a decade at most 12/22 A common belief is that the old economy of industrialism is dead and that to be 'competitive' the West must go the high tech route and engage its productive forces in the development of info technology and knowledge industries. A fatal flaw in this argument is the assumption that the West has more resources and sheer brainpower and know- than the so-called Third World...Many American corporations are turning to India for their software engineering needs...In reality, the former Third World is full of talented knowledge workers eager to work for less than American, Brit or Dutchman (not to mention) millions of Czechs, Poles, Russians..yearning for a peice of the high tech action. I think we in the West should initiate a dialogue with our counterparts in the East and South... 12/23
