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Gail,
I object, once more, to your catagory of
Artists. Am I wasting my time here?
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 12:33
PM
Subject: Re: Work and the economy
Charles,
Two comments in response to your interesting
posting.
1. You wrote: "I
suspect that many of those who have not entered the conversation have stayed
silent because they believe this is just a rather meaningless word game.
Gail to some extent perpetuates this view by
talking about voluntary work as different from employment, and Keith talks
about working for himself as different from employment. I guess these
are differences, but they are not what I am getting at (at least not
necessarily)."
You seem uncertain about distinguishing these
from employment. Could you elucidate, especially with respect to voluntary
action? (I was of course not talking about volunteering which is often
coerced, e.g. students and CEO's needed it for their resumes, young offenders
being sentenced to do so many hours of community services, churches and other
institutions making it almost a condition of membership, and even friends (or
Presidents) putting moral suasion on people to "volunteer." This of
course is not what I meant by voluntary action.) Do you not see it, and
entrepreneuring, as sufficiently different from employment as to meet
your criteria for "work?"
2. I am intrigued by your "peroration:"
"For me, the alternatives will involve a much
more vibrant local community (by which I mean the network of people and
resources close to us) than currently exists - mostly because nationals
systems simply can't measure let alone control needs and wants at the local
level. In my future for work, everybody has at
least one community with which they can identify and within which they can
sustain themselves. There will still be plenty of people who interact
within many communities and many of the current economic systems will continue
to very very useful in facilitating this interaction. But they will be
meaningless at the local community level which is where sustainable strength
will be based."
In my terms you are speaking about "meaningful
work" in which the work is meaningful both to the person involved and to the
community for which it is done, i.e. doubly meaningful, what we could
perhaps call "work-in community" done by "persons in community." (MacMurray).
Pressing you a little, do you think something can be called "work" that is
meaningful only to the person involved independent of what others may think of
it? Self-defined work? In short, is work necessarily a social concept or can
it be a personal concept, even perhaps in defiance of community? Who decides
what is "work?" To make this practical, my interest has been in public policy.
The question has relevance for taxation policy (personal income tax,
policies for foundations that give grants, guaranteed basic income), policies
toward education and support for people who say they want to be students or
artists,.. and so on. Where does individualism meet community in your
definition of work?
These are issues on which I would hope this FW
list might not only enter into discourse but perhaps even develop and spin
off some public policy proposals....
Regards,
Gail
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