Posts Tagged ‘good ideas’
Last night at town hall Juliet Schor walked her audience through a short history of the economic convulsions that have brought us to this point of high unemployment, environmental degradation and market decisions made with indifference to both. This model she calls the business-as-usual economy. In her new book, Plenitude: The new economics of true wealth, she carefully details market assumptions that keep the consequences to natural resources out of the equation when assessing the cost of production and consumption.
This key flaw leaves the consumer in a state of ignorance.
“…it is important to recognize that consumers have been cut off from the material realities of production. Producers and retailers prefer that consumers not think about the damage their purchases are having on the earth, so information is not typically available, especially at the point of purchase.” p. 47
In order for us to rescale our consumption to appropriate levels she brought up the ideas of the honorable Frithjof Bergmann, whom I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I’ve often been intrigued by the idea that he calls “high-tech self-providing”. Ms. Schor takes this idea and gives examples of how some people are already taking advantage of their own capacity to create enterprises for “modern off-grid, resilient communities”. Other examples might be mushroom farming, beekeeping, raising chickens and many forms of urban agriculture. She also mentioned fab labs, or fabrication laboratories, which appear to be the holy grail of community-supported production means. Here is a description from MIT’s FAQ page:
“Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.”
I left the lecture feeling upbeat about the future in a very unexpected way. After nearly a year of unemployment, the urge to become involved with a meaningful exchange of ideas overcame me with enthusiasm. The need for something to make sense at last fulfilled. Looking for work felt like complicity in a game I no longer wanted to play.
Get to the point quickly and clearly. No problem. If you’ve dipped into my blog you’ll also notice I have an appreciation for humor once in a while, too. In fact, and maybe there is no secret about this, I would love to cultivate the use of humor more widely. However, you have to pick your medium carefully and do it just so. That is the part I’m working on. Once you’ve exposed yourself online so-to-speak, you really have to decide – OK, now what do I do with this? Last summer this began as a way to get myself adept with WordPress and take it from there. Now I’m feeling the tug to do greater and bigger things with it. No doubt 2010 will be when that happens. The process of refinement begins in ernest when you can answer the question: What does that say about me? and: Do I like what it says?
My criteria is: Does it put a smile on my lips after I’m done absorbing it? If the answer is yes, then I know I’m on the right track.
This morning Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece raised some important policy discussion points that I hope will strike a chord with those in the “other Washington”. Along with his suggestions for a jobs program I’d like to add a few of my own suggestions for legislation as well.
While we’re telling the public sector to take notice why don’t we tell the private sector to stand up as well and offer the next best thing to job security, call it job principles of conduct. I would suggest at least two to start with.
- Any employer offering a job to a new hire and thus entering into a social contract, should not be allowed to then rescind that offer. This should especially be true if the start date is within at least two to four weeks of the original offer. If a contract verbal or otherwise is to have any relevance it needs to be treated as such.
- Allow no open ended contracts. I don’t have any problem with language that says three to six months with possible extension. However, once you have been extended you should now be in a pool that triggers a zone of compliance to the employer that might now say: Employer must give contract workers at least thirty days notice of reduction in force or pay one month’s severance.
The goal of these principles is to equalize at least in part the extreme deficiencies in basic justice that workers must simply take for granted. Realities like: I can be laid off at any time for any reason completely divorced from any job performance issues. No one would expect this kind of treatment in any other relationship, so why should anyone be expected to accept it from the people they work for?
Employers put a lot of emphasis on their staff who are tasked with planning and strategizing for accomplishing their initiatives. It shouldn’t be too much to ask to extend that same foresight with regard to service agreements with their employees.
Unfortunately, what we have resigned ourselves to is a scene right out of the Mad Men television series. Roger Sterling, head of the ad agency says: “So we lost an account, we’ll just have to cut back. Who can we fire?” as he pours himself a scotch.
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