A Proposal

Uhhhh I've added a blog to follow that I've recently discovered. It seems to be exceptionally well done for the most part, but each entry is so long even I (bold and underlined here) start running out of the necessary patience to read through it all. And I'm almost 93% composed of patience!

Probably it was the tenth (of December- last week) if memory serves that I was walking downtown and got hit with a desire to think about society and what not. You know, thought I'd give that a try.

What's probably more interesting here is the fact that once I got into this thought-rut I remained entrenched for the whole hour long trip home. Maybe longer if you count when I was actually at home, but I forget if something may have distracted me at that point.

Oh, did you actually want to hear my thoughts? Even though I'm not, strictly speaking, a social scientist, and therefore I open myself up to potential ridicule?

Sure why not.

There was a radio broadcast... or maybe an editorial (it was almost a week ago, get off my back!) saying how we should close our borders to immigration, fix the problems in the country first before we let any more people in... with of course the added implication of an 'IF' we let any more people in.

"These new guys are taking all our jobs!" would be the jist of that statement.

That's never made much sense to me. For every person there is, because of how interdependant we all are, we would inherently create more work by the very existence of an additional person.

If that is the case, then immigration would only help matters, especially considering the low birthrate in this country (no, I can't cite the statitstic, it's a stat that is spouted so often in various papers that I just, perhaps erroneously, take it at face value. For what it's worth, it sounds right to me.). If we aren't growing then we're withering away.

Pretending that the problems we face as far as equitable employment are NOT a result of that "withering" of too few people- just because a) immigration does still exist and b) there are SO MANY PEOPLE EVERYWHERE! then where is the problem stemming from?

The problem seems to be from how we value the basic level of work- for a decent standard of living we need to earn X dollars over Y hours, and if Y is cut in half (say, by hiring someone else to pitch in with the work load) then X is also cut in half... so that they're only achieving half of a decent standard of living! Obviously, in this scenario the incentive is to hoarde all of the work/hours to oneself, even though we have over crowded classrooms, diseases that need cures, places to be cleaned, and lines lines lines everywhere. Many hands make light work.

In this case, creating a job is easy. Make X dollars constant regardless of Y, and divide Y as often as you want... well, as often as will increase that tasks efficiency, it'd be silly if people spent more time "changing the guard" than actually doing the job!

That's the case for reducing time on the job, but just to be clear- they should ALSO increase the number of people doing those jobs. Easiest example: instead of one 30 person classroom, make 2 15 people classrooms.

"But," you ask "what about quality control? Isn't it more work to see if these multiple teachers are up to the task of teaching their respective classes?"

Well, yeah! That's part of the point- there are now an increased number of "veting teacher ability" jobs. It's a cycle that fits itself to what is needed.

Having one person overburdened at a position is, as far as I can tell, a relic from an age when there just weren't enough people to fill those posts, so the one person HAD to handle it, and afterwards even though they COULD hire someone else to help, well, why bother? This lone person has already proven that one is just as good as two.

I'm reminded of this past summer, I had an older retired gentleman (emphasis on the gentle) working for me- his job was to stand at the door for nine hours. I don't know anything about his finances, but maybe he needed this job to get by? Well, what's the point in getting him to stand there for nine hours, hurting his back, for a job that takes two seconds to learn how to do. I could (and in fact did) get a random person from another department to fill the spot when necessary. Forcing this guy to do the full shift on his own seems, in this context at the very least, cruel.

While it may seem as though I'm advocating an excess of leisure, I'd really prefer if people could just get the chance to live a full life.

In my first year at university I read this book "Woman on the Edge of Time". I hated it. It cost me way too much and was ridiculous, so I never bought another book for a course again (not counting course kits). However, one thing I did like was the future society they showed. Not only did they have plenty of time for bike riding, but they also shared essential tasks- so instead of one person doing one job for a short amount of time, which is what I have thus far spoken of, they rotated jobs.

It's sort of a macro scale version of the ergonomical suggestion to get up out of your chair every hour and get the blood flowing- you've done one job now for a while, come over and try something else for a bit. Maybe by monetizing our hobbies we can legitimize them in OUR OWN EYES.

To return to my faceless dissenter: "But," you will say, "given the ease with which people can get by, isn't there a danger of people over consuming? That the only thing keeping us from stripping this planet bare of resources is that we many people can't afford them? You know, like in Urinetown- the people thought the payment to use the washroom was purely a money grab by the guys in charge, but it turned out that without that "natural" hold the environment became so toxic that the people ended up killing themselves off?"

I've thought of that (obviously, seeing as I wrote it. Just now. Making me the faceless dissenter.) and as far as I can see there are only two responses. One is that how much each person can accrue (in food stuffs and other possessions) would be regulated by the government- which I can't say is much of a solution at all- and the other is to change how people think about possessions, either with an enlightened disinterest, or (making this a third option I just thought of) completely reversing the advocacy for "getting stuff", in effect turning "not getting stuff" into just as pervasive a brand as that which we're already bombarded with, but hopefully with a positive effect. Which is sort of a horrible manipulative mix of options one and two.

I'd rather hope for elightened disinterest- it could be that sort of enlightenment would be a natural side effect of the ability to, as I've said, live life- in which case, take that faceless dissenter!