View counts for the most recent posts, including me and Google bot and maybe other bots: 7, 8, 7, 8, 13 ... for the posts made on August 6, the more recent one had maybe 10 views a day or two after being posted but the one posted a few seconds earlier only had 2 views. I linked to the earlier post on the OWS forums and its view count is now 37, but the thread didn't really get any replies.
I am not sure if a certain person read the post on August 28, all I can say is I am very self-centered and always think things are about me even if most of the evidence is to the contrary.
Random song:
(Lyrics)
What could be a motive for making posts without assurance they are being read? Since the view count is a function of previous actions, one reason is a strategy that anticipates failure and assumes everyone else is more competent than they really are.
I think the drama linked above had something to do with this. At the very beginning, the male protagonist is shown to be dying while the female protagonist walks away.
So I have been receiving spam email messages from a certain address as well as Yahoo messenger add requests from random names and occasionally instant messages. The spammy emails would usually redirect to ways to make money online by working at home, while the instant messages (can be sent to someone offline) would usually redirect to untrue.com. Maybe some of the emails redirected there too, though more recently the redirection has been to free adult webcam sites. Soon after posting notes on how to fight against stupidity, I discovered that I had two emails at an older email address. These redirected like others, but the name of the html file on a hacked website that did the redirection was titled "attack"(.html?) in one case and "success" in another.
I should note, I received an email reply saying that several people in the NYCGA, a part of OWS, were very interested in the isn't getting better message and asked if I might be able to rewrite it as an article, but I read and responded to that email several weeks late and did not hear back from them. People are very reluctant to talk about solutions that do not involve discarding the idea of capitalism.
No one in discussions has ever suggested that this specific way of determining compensation when working less needs official support or that economists should have thought of this idea before... the closest I have seen is criticism of the idea that tax cuts have the same effect on the economy as an equivalent amount of government spending, which was in an article in some notable publication that also included other criticisms. However, this is probably because people see economic policy as a partisan issue, where it is impossible for people to agree.
So I think it's possible for change to happen through a popular movement in this particular case... I just don't think it can happen quickly, or more importantly that it can happen without a definite conclusion that the system is broken or without a leader, or leaders, who can give people confidence in this complicated topic of economic ecosystems and a possible reduction of military capabilities.
No one within the OWS movement seems willing to make that determination and lend the idea of working less their support. Not totally surprising.
I, on the other hand, have been interpreting all evidence at face value—that people do not care if the human race is evil, that unemployment and inequality are not urgent problems requiring discussion, that getting a job is not worth upsetting anyone by raising taxes, that even being killed is just part of how the world is, or of course that the prospect of a 10% increase in wages is not worth embarrassing yourself by responding to or forwarding a message which explains how to fix unemployment.
If any reasonable social goal can be linked to this idea of working less, then the lack of support means that people are willing to let someone else attempt to match goals with outcomes even if they are not completely aware of goals and must trust people to have accurately conveyed their wishes.
These posts always get so long! I have not been doing much lately, like not reading recent posts by certain people, partly because the Seattle library was closed for a week and partly because if there was anything very important to be said it would have been said before the library closed.
One of the last things I read was an opinion piece criticizing the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for taking his ideas from a work of fiction, or more accurately pointing out that this was the case and subtly hinting there might be something wrong with this. The person who wrote that piece has talked about having selected their current profession based on science fiction novels. None of the comments I read pointed that out, even though many of them expressed a negative opinion of the article.
So here is a promise: if I am still alive, I will try to help anyone who supports this idea of working less. I will be able to provide that help for at least a few weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment