The problem here is simple. Blindly creating new jobs doesn't work. In fact I think it makes things worse. Today's job market is a vast bloated over-saturated mess. It's a quantity over quality issue really. The problem isn't that there needs to be new jobs, the problem is the jobs available SUCK. Most jobs are simply tedious unappreciated grunt work that can be done by anyone. The people hiring often could care less about employees because there is so many people willing to do the same thing. And people hoping for better alternatives from the government are bound to be disappointed, because most government created jobs are either temporary, crappy, highly specialized, or some combination of the three.
The thing is, it's not all "The Man"'s fault, or the employer's. It's the worker's own fault a lot too. Because they often insist on letting the system beat them around, on letting the winds of fate decide their employment, and because they work for anyone who hires them. Not everyone has a choice in this, I know. There are times you need to do what you need to do to survive and thats that. But I think the most successful people today are people who make themselves successful.
In this day and age, it is entirely possible, for example, to start a site on the web or write comics, books, games, or music, and make millions of dollars. Why is this? Simple. Today's system rewards those with creative ambition (which I so wish I had more of) more then hard labor. And it's not hard to see why. ANYONE can work at McDonalds. But the big secret is, most anyone can create something people are willing to buy or find some clever other way to make money too, it's just that most don't try. That is not to say working at McDonalds is bad either. Some have no choice. Some people even enjoy it. And those people are exactly who SHOULD work there, not anyone else.
Besides that, another thing that annoys me is the tendency for the government to gave in to corporations because they may go overseas. I say let them. It would just give people the opportunity to make local versions in their place. There is tons of things about the "reliance on foreign oil" and such. But if America wanted, they could just NOT IMPORT OIL. Yes we may not be able to use our cars. Boo-hoo. Take a bike, jackass. Yes electricity may go out. Use a candle for light and ice for refrigerating. There is no reason for this "AMERICA MUST BE NUMBER 1 IN EVERYTHING" mentality. We don't. Besides I am sure we would make new ways of doing things quicker if we didn't have all this shit to stop us. Not that it really matters, people will do what they want and find ways to survive. I am mostly annoyed at the "must have" language. If they simply said "we want" I might not mind so much.
Personally just I think government and the economy should be as far removed as they can be from each other. The government's job has always been in my mind a basic rule of law only. Some sort of other organization should handle public services and economic issues, like a collection of unions/guilds that exist mostly to assure quality of service and worker's rights. The unions of today though are too self-serving so how well that will work I have no idea. I do have recurring dreams about a government/guild system that MOSTLY works. I have been meaning to describe it here in more detail... maybe next time... or not.
People have no concern for others outside of their immediate circle of associates. It's not a culture-bred thing, it's a hardware limitation of the brain itself; it only has so many slots to register people into. It's because of this lack of ability for humans to feel empathy for an extremely large number of people, that dictated which government and economical systems were successful... however, you have those isolated cases of things like unions, which are a large group of people working together for a common goal... which is getting in the way of other systems trying to get what they want. Either way, it's a big mix of conflicting systems, and I've completely failed to make a point. Oh well. I figured out how to comment anonymously recently and I felt bad that I wasn't leaving comments on the entries you made. So instead of leaving you nothing, I left you some gibberish instead.
ReplyDeleteThats all I post on the blog anyway. Gibberish for gibberish is a fair trade. :P
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the brain's limits has nothing to do with people's lack of concern. It is not that people are unable to comprehend things outside of their little circle, rather I think it's just that they simply think any one outside it is not part of their life in any meaningful way.
The fact is, people exist in there own little universe which happens to overlap at times. There is no one society, just a bunch of groups that do stuff. But they all want something, and need to work together to get it.
In fact in my opinion everything is like this. There is no one universe, there is just a bunch of things that do stuff. They all follow a set of rules only because if they have a common goal: To exist in a universe. If they followed a different rule, they would be in a different universe. :P