by liberal japonicus
a picture hint
some other stuff below the fold
Month: September 2013
I’m Sure Only Angels Work for the National Security Agency
by Ugh The New York Times: Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own “back door” in all encryption, it set out to accomplish … Read more
Work, marriage, and the industrial revolution
by Doctor Science
I was surprised by the romantic historical ignorance about work in Yves Smith’s post on The Rise of Bullshit Jobs. It’s annoying, because I agree with Smith (and David Graeber, whom he starts out quoting) that
most people work longer hours than they should and consume too much, and many would benefit from increased free time to spend with family or relaxing.
But then he goes and quotes Yasha Levine, talking about
The Invention of Capitalism by economic historian Michael Perelmen:
Yep, despite what you might have learned, the transition to a capitalistic society did not happen naturally or smoothly. See, English peasants didn’t want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in shitty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too. Using Adam Smith’s own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes. Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It’s really not much of a choice, is it?…
A romantic vision of the pre-industrial “rural communal lifestyle” is also my biggest criticism of Graeber’s Debt, though he romanticizes the forager (hunter-gatherer) communal lifestyle instead.
The Harvesters, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Are these followers of a “rural communal lifestyle”? Or are they hired hands?