Originally Posted by
Bandera
I know NASA folk here in TX, they have been in my home and we have fed them in my kitchen.
There is Zero Fantasy in what they are up to, but they do provide interesting and realistic conversations on what's up next in terms of space exploration.
NASA has brought my profession of Project Management to it's most complex and sublime expression of real accomplishment.
None of your soft silly fantasies would cut it for a moment in my kitchen, or anywhere else where competent folk work on real projects.
-Bandera
It's just not possible to have content-based discussion with you. Your reasoning boils down to NASA people ate in your kitchen and someone else's ideas don't cut it 'in your kitchen.' Presumably this is because your kitchen is 'up to code,' and if the same NASA people ate in my kitchen, the things we talked about would be fantasy because my kitchen isn't up to code. Complete ad hom logic-free reasoning.
Originally Posted by
kickstart
And what about all the displaced people who once were employed doing those service jobs?
The whole crux of any economic-cultural shifts is that benefits structures, like retirement, have to change to accommodate new choices. If they don't, the lack of benefits work to discourage people from making such choices. You are making a circular argument, that the loss of benefits is a problem with the choice, instead of recognizing that the criteria for currently achieving retirement benefits incentivizes one choice over others.
Originally Posted by
wphamilton
The allure of decompressing with less-demanding work wears off quickly when your time brings in a tenth as much.
So what you're saying is that the rat race is worth maintaining because of the huge income it makes possible for some people by having everyone commute across town from poor neighborhoods to affluent ones? Is there any other possible solution you can imagine that allows everyone to continue the crosstown commuting without motor traffic getting out of hand?
Originally Posted by
Machka
Very simply ...
1) Your idea is not offensive. It's just not desirable. At all.
'Desirable' is relative. All you're really doing here is asserting that you have an opinion and it's strong. You're not explaining anything about the basis for why you desire one thing and not another.
2) I prefer the system we've got now where people acquire education, training, skills, and experience in a particular field or fields of their choice ... and then work in those fields, or related fields as desired. Freedom to make individual choices.
People are free but employers don't respect that freedom. You can't go to an employer and say you want to work mondays and thursdays from 7 to 1 and then tell your principal you're only going to teach on tuesdays and wednesdays because you've decided to diversify your economic responsibilities by taking on mixed work. Well, you COULD but I doubt your managers would accept it.
If someone wants to be a doctor and acquires the education to become a doctor, that person should be free to be a doctor without being required to spend 2 days a week collecting rubbish.
Is the person free not to take the trash out at home? Is the person free not to push their own shopping cart at the supermarket? We all perform labor that is outside our educational skillset because it's necessary. No one complains that their freedom is being curtailed by it because it's just part of life.
If a person prefers to collect rubbish ... that person acquires those skills and is free to get a job in that area without being forced to be a doctor 2 days week.
I'm not forced to read nonsensical reasoning about freedom vs force for the sake of squelching reasonable discussion about how to use economic reform to solve transportation problems but I end up doing it anyway because it is the response I get. My free choice would be to have you and/or other posters respond with real logistical reasoning about how to reduce crosstown traffic but instead I get responses that boil down to, "people don't want this and you're forcing them into things they don't want." I'm sure the exact same arguments were made against the abolition of slavery, "free people don't want to work in the fields and aboliting slavery FORCES them to."