Re: Like long hours?

Subject: Re: Like long hours?
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 13:28:44 -0700


Kevin McLauchlan wrote:


a) those are investments that were freely chosen, as were all the relative trade-offs that got the writer/worker into that position and,


You have a strange idea of choices.

The best reply to your comment is to quote Anatole France's comment that " The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."


In other words, what alternatives are there to basic needs?
You can choose the scale on which you fulfill those needs (for example, you can live in studio apartment rather than a mansion), but you still need money for both. In theory, you can say that you can choose between shelter and homelessness, but in practice I doubt that many people would agree that a choice exists when one alternative is unacceptable..

And, now that I think, I don't believe that 100% of children are planned, either.


b) the employer is similarly "trapped" in its current location (thereby being able to select among only a limited segment of the global labor pool), having chosen to make a bunch of investments and trade-offs that got the employer into its current predicament.


The two situations aren't comparable. First, many employers do have access to the global labor pool. Second, within the local labor pool, employers have a choice of whom to hire; in theory, employees may have a choice of who to work for, but the economy or simply the difficulty of searching while holding down another job may make this choice difficult or impossible to exercise.


If, instead, you have spent the greater part of your adult life keeping up with the Joneses (barely), then that was a choice. You traded gratification for security or flexibility. Why should you be exempted from the consequences? How is it unfair that you now have a big mortgage and big car payments and big club fees and credit-card debt and have thus made yourself feel trapped in your current employment?
How is that the fault of your employer?


As I said to Andrew, a discussion usually goes better if people respond to what was actually said.

I'm talking about basic needs, not about runaway yuppie consumerism.


--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com






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References:
Re: Like long hours?: From: Andrew Plato
Re: Like long hours?: From: Bruce Byfield

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