OT: El Chapo

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re forced to pay. If Bill can't see that... I don't even know what to say t o that. Putting an argument on the table with someone that hasn't realised the table is there is pointless.

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ns why are very well known.

Unfortunately, the logic leads to a false conclusion. Work is primarily a s ocial activity, and people like to work because it gives them co-workers to interact with, and a well-defined place in society.

Getting paid matters, but getting status where you work matters too.

James Arthur's logic is based on the delusion of the perfect free market, w here every participant is omniscient and entirely rational. It leads to mat hematically tractable, but fatally unrealistic mathematical models, and som e particularly daft political opinions.

Researchers who have looked at what people do, as opposed to thinking about what they ought to do, find that real people are much more willing to work than cash-flow calculus would indicate - the social implications of having a job and people to work with tend to be very influential.

The US has elected a president who now seems to have gone over the edge int o certifiable lunacy and the country as a whole does look as if it is on th e verge of collapse.

The democratic socialist regimes in Scandinavia and Germany look a whole lo t more stable, and offer a rather more to the bulk of their populations.

James Arthur is right to worry about social collapse, but he can't see it w hen it is going on around him, and he imagines that it is about to happen i n places that most observers find to be doing very well.

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re forced to pay. If Bill can't see that... I don't even know what to say t o that. Putting an argument on the table with someone that hasn't realised the table is there is pointless.

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And Trump thinks that the crowd for his inauguration was bigger than that f or either of Obama's.

Charity begins at home, and James Arthur comforts himself with the idea tha t I don't really think that he is delusional, which is just one more self-s erving delusion.

Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson hasn't noticed that he could be smirking about James Arthur's self-serving delusions, rather than James Arthur's rather transparent attempt to frame them as a put-down.

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lunches,

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e're forced to pay. If Bill can't see that... I don't even know what to say to that. Putting an argument on the table with someone that hasn't realise d the table is there is pointless.

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NT suddenly showing some grasp of reality. Not a lot - the "unfortunately" suggests that he thinks that pointing out that James Arthur is out of touch with reality isn't a good idea - but enough to boost NT out of the krw cla ss.

If you stuck to trying fact & rational argument instead of this childish idiot level ad hominem you'd get more respect.

NT

Define 'working'. When a corporate entity sets priorities, it generally doesn't support its subordinate members laboring on projects that are outside the corporate goals. So, a farm worker is paid to plant crops, not instruct children in history, and a teacher spends the workday in lecture/drill/display activities with the students, not poking seeds into soil.

But, that farm worker DOES instruct his/her/the neighbor's children, and the teacher has a splendid herb garden. The fact is, no life is driven by a formal listing of wants (life is more, broader, than 'work').

Everyone does things when work is done. Those things matter!

If I got your "respect", I'd wonder what I was doing wrong.

I do try to extract facts and rational argument from you and James Arthur, but I can't say that I've had much success.

Expending your time and energy to get things you want, e.g., to acquire food.

Let's not get confused here. The farm worker planting seeds is doing that *precisely* to educate his kids in history, feed them, and everything else. He gets paid, and uses the money to pay for those things.

'Money' and 'wages' allow the teacher and the worker to convert whatever they each offer into something the other can use, facilitating exchange. But that doesn't change the essential equation: the farm worker is still trading his labor to get what he desires and does not have. Same for the teacher.

If either worker can get food without working for it, he can subsist while working less, spend more time with his family, etc., an obvious advantage.

If he can make others pay for his kids' education and shoes and health care, he can produce even less, still enjoy the same material standard of living, while gaining free time to spend as he chooses. It's a rational choice.

These workers aren't alone--the same logic applies to everyone. When living off your neighbors pays as well (in money and free time) as work, that's the rational, self-interested choice.

Cheers, James Arthur

No, it's just one of many strategies. If you enjoy your "work", it IS how to use free time, so cessation is not self-interest.

Much of religion, mathematics, astronomy, politics... has historically been practiced outside of commerce. To insist on a 'work' model that encourages minimum effort, is to ignore large parts of reality.

You're right--if you enjoy what you do for a living you won't have to work a day in your life. But there are a lot of unpleasant chores that people do in order to be able to do the other things they enjoy more.

Someone has to clean my gutters. It's a bit dangerous, and it's hard to imagine someone cruising by and doing it just for the joy of it. And if they did, just for the joy, that person gets taken advantage of by all the other people doing things benefiting themselves and not the gutter- cleaning Samaritan.

So we pay people for working, they pay us for working, and thereby negotiate an approximately equitable exchange--after all, both sides agreed to it, and both sides thought it was in their interest, or they wouldn't have done it.

Ever been to a tropical paradise where temps are warm, the women lithe, huts quick to build, and food's only a tree away?

They're relaxing, but not known for their contributions to science.

Cheers, James Arthur

The Polynesians never did build up big enough population centres to support what we would call science.

They were spectacularly good navigators and colonised Easter Island around 1200 CE and New Zealand around 1280 CE, long before any western navigators had found them. The statues on Easter Island do suggest that there was more to their lives than relaxing.

king,

You can use logic to come to this conclusion, if you ignore what happens in the real world - which is one of James Arthur's special skills.

re food.

Or the approval of your neighbours, which does happen to be important too.

the money...

rk,

But there are people who do odd jobs for elderly neighbours because they li ke the people they are doing the job for, or to curry favour with the neigh bours relatives and friends. There's more to life than making money and get ting fed, even if pure free market theory doesn't bother taking it into acc ount.

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Some people find particular jobs more satisfying than others. If they do th ose jobs are the people who do other - different - jobs for them "taking ad vantage" or is it just a more nearly optimal distribution of labour.

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"Pay" usually means money. The rewards for work aren't ever exclusively fin ancial, and ignoring the non-monetary component is unrealistic. It blinds y ou to a lot of what is actually going on, and the real motivations of most real people. My abominable great uncle Ernest does seem to have been more m oney-grubbing than most, and the rest of the family disliked him for it.

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Science is just one of the many things society creates out of the collectiv e activity of individuals. You need a lot of individuals - in communication - before it starts creating anything that's all that powerful.

The giant heads on Easter Island didn't carve themselves. They are art, rat her than science, but the people clearly weren't lotus-eaters all the time.

If you stuck to trying fact & rational argument instead of this childish idiot level ad hominem you'd get more respect.