The 4 Hour Work Day

Discussion in 'The Future' started by PacifistEgalitarian, Apr 17, 2014.

  1. RandomVegan

    RandomVegan Member

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    many do it merely because otherwise they would die, starvation/exposure or some such - both stealing food even if dying AND not having a home are a prosecutable offense in most jurisdictions
     
  2. Sallysmart

    Sallysmart Raynstorm Serenade

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    I think it will be half what you made in eight hours but those with need and ambition will hold two 4 hour jobs at two different places as many already do. There are places like restaurants hiring a few hours a day to keep peeps off work benefits (gotta be under 40 hrs a week I believe) and many hold two or three jobs in a day to make full wages.
    It's not really new, just being more widely used in more and more work places to cut benefits off from the working class.
     
  3. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    not if it doesn't cost you anything to live, travel or make things.
     
  4. RandomVegan

    RandomVegan Member

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    nice fantasy but I don't know of a place where you can accomplish this - any roof over your head they are going to charge you for (and they execute people who just go out some place and live) , travel can get you arrested and turned into a slave should you not have a vehicle or some such , making things requires a minimum of resources which are all pretty much owned by some entity so you need to purchase either the resources or the land itself to mine for yourself
     
  5. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    the equating of symbolic value with real value is a fantasy also. it just happens to be the one the part of the world we live in runs on at the moment.

    two things that aren't a fantasy are the natural environment, and constructed technology. pretty much everything else is in our heads. or someone's.
     
  6. RandomVegan

    RandomVegan Member

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    and this helps me how? still in a world that runs on that fantasy, I walk out someplace and try to live by my own hand some government thugs are going to gang up and shoot me
     
  7. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    this condition prevails primarily as a result of all of us statistically contributing to the incentives for it to so so. it is in very real fact, quite possible for organized societies to exist, with all the benefits of infrastructure and technology, without having to make everything, including the construction of one's own shelter, begin and end with symbolic value. indigenous cultures have done this quite nicely for thousands of years, before symbolic value or even force of arms was ever invented.

    one suspects a deliberate degree of obtuseness. or possibly an innocent lack of having noticed the existence of a universe beyond the invisible box of human society.
     
  8. RandomVegan

    RandomVegan Member

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    obtuseness? pot meet kettle! the fact that capitalism does not exist on the moon does not help since I cannot survive there
     
  9. Sallysmart

    Sallysmart Raynstorm Serenade

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    Someone mentioned on another thread that some places like Croatia don't use currency, it made me wonder, how do they sell and buy stuff? Do they all put into the work force at a same rate of pay in living expenses or how does it work? Does a person only need to work so many hours and maybe there are tickets or cards offered for living expenses?
    Never heard of a no currency situation but maybe that works. Can a person work as much as they want? Does the government supplement if you are working?
    Here it was impossible only a few years ago to work and get on the shift for only a few hours a day but some people wished for that, now people are afraid of that because it's kind of going that way and many want or need the full shift of 8 hours. For moms it might be a good thing but to manage a mortgage it would hurt a lot of people, those who already bought at an 8 hour income and have to go down to 4 and even those who want a mortgage or need to rent and need 8 hours to cover the cost.
     
  10. BeachBall

    BeachBall Nosey old moo

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    Course you have, if you think about it?

    What currency did the native Americans have, before the white men came along with their trade goods??

    What currency did they have in Iron Age Britain, before the Romans came along with their legions and their coins?

    There's just two examples ... but primitive cultures the world over have existed quite happily without the need for any sort of currency. You got an orchard and I raise sheep. You want some lamb chops, and we agree 7 apples per chop. You want 6 chops so you give me 42 apples. What's the problem?
     
  11. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    Wampum I think the Native Americans called it. Seashells.

    Probably the pre-Roman Brits would have taken gold.
     
  12. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    nooop. you of all people would know there was no single american culture pre euro invasion. there was one culture that used something refered to as wampum. it was and is however, NOT a currency or medium of exchange.

    as for the celts (pronounced kelts) they were fond of gold decoration, but i don't believe economic concepts as we like to think we know them, were yet common anywhere rome, greece, egypt or india had not yet had contact with.

    economics in the sense of trade, is simply not an intrinsic concept. nor were any related concepts universal. there were concepts of ownership in the sense of utilization rights, but only in some cultures, nor did those which had them define or even conceive them in the same ways as each other.

    trade of some sort did develop, more likely potlatching then barter, as evidenced by artifacts created in one place and culture showing up in another, sometimes half a world away. though parallel development also existed as well.

    there are of course many uncertainties where we have only an archiological record, of where things were found and approximately when, but in the absence of laundry lists or other perminent record keeping.

    the wampum you refer to, were a record of agreements along similar lines to treaties between cultures.

    and again that's a localized term and method from only one place, the atlantic north east of north america.
     
  13. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    buying and selling stuff, is not intrinsic to the development of a technological nor civil culture. it has merely become the pervasive methodology and perspective on this world, and that, only since the development of agriculture. in many places not even then, but only after the development of metal smithing.
     
  14. TheGhost

    TheGhost Auuhhhhmm ...

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    No money in Croatia? And you believed that?
     
  15. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    The Eastern Woodland Native Americans used wampum. According to sources I've looked at it was used as money, and was adopted by the settlers as a medium of trade with the locals.

    From Wiki:

    When Europeans came to the Americas, they realized the importance of wampum to Native people. Soon, they were trading with the native peoples of New England and New York using wampum. Wampum was legal tender in New England from 1637-1661. Meanwhile it continued as currency in New York at the rate of eight white or four black wampum equalling one stuiver—meaning the white had the same value as the copper duit coin—until 1673. The colonial government issued a proclamation setting the rate at six white or three black to one penny. This proclamation also applied in New Jersey and Delaware.[11] The black shells were considered worth more than the white shells, which led people to dye the latter, and diluted the value of the shells.

    Writing about tribes in Virginia in 1705, Robert Beverley, Jr. of Virginia Colony describes peak as referring to the white shell bead, valued at 9 pence a yard, and wampom peak as denoting specifically the more expensive dark purple shell bead, at the rate of 1 shilling and 6 pence (18 pence) per yard. He says that these polished shells with drilled holes are made from the cunk (conch), while another currency of lesser value, called roenoke was fashioned from the cockleshell.[12]

    As for the pre-Roman Britons, call them Celts if you want, gold coins have been found.
    From Wiki again:

    In Southeast Britain, meanwhile, extensive contact with the ‘Belgic’ tribes of Northern France is evidenced by large numbers of imported Gallo-Belgic gold coins between the mid-2nd century BC and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the 50s BC.[23]

    From http://www.localhistories.org/celt.html

    Trade with Europe was common. Metals like copper, tin, iron and lead were exported from England. Wool, cloth, skins and grain were also exported. Luxury goods like fine pottery and expensive metal goods were imported from Europe. At first the Celts used iron bars as a form of currency but by about 50 BC they were using gold coins.
     
  16. IamnotaMan

    IamnotaMan I am Thor. On sabba-tickle. Still available via us

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    Its a very interesting bk. Really its about working smarter on the key stuff, and delegating lesser shit.

    But it does have its limitations. An employee in England doesn't actually cost much more than an Indian one. And you do have extra benefits with the English one - face to face contact, job grants, and the fact they are doing real life networking for you.

    Second, the book works great for people without ties. But you cant really drag your kids off to school in Argentina one month, and Timbuktu the next.
     
  17. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    :D
     
  18. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    hunting and gathering was essentially replaced by nomadic herding, nomadic herds were replaced by agriculture and with it land. the landed gentry were then replaced by money. i see no logic in assuming money, won't in tern be replaced, especially when you can upload and download the cow itself, instead of having to symbolically represent it. replaced perhaps by actual technological skill.
     
    1 person likes this.
  19. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    nomadic herds replaced hunting and gathering, land and agriculture replaced nomandic herds and money replaced the landed gentry. i see no logic in assuming money's time won't come and its being replaced by something else. something such as for example, actual technological skill.
     
  20. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    I'm not sure if we can easily get rid of money in itself, but we could treat money differently, and the nature of money itself could change. It is or should be really only a convenient medium of exchange and a store of value.

    One thing that needs to happen I think, is that we need to find ways to reward people for what they are rather than just what they do. Which isn't to say people shouldn't be rewarded for doing good things.

    At present you can be a total dick head, a thoroughly obnoxious person, but if you earn a lot of money it's ok. On the other hand you could be the nicest and wisest of people and be poor and thus regarded as dirt by the money consciousness.

    An interim solution that's been mooted is to give everyone a basic income regardless of what they earn or what they do. People would be free to earn more on top of that, but it would eliminate poverty and maybe help to pull some people out of generations of abject poverty with it's concomitant lack of opportunities for education, personal growth etc.
    I believe the Swiss have been considering such a scheme.
     

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