An interesting writeup on Harvard Business Publishing blog by Michael Harris, discusses what most of us have already known, but each of us have colleagues (or worse, bosses) who still don't get it:
"In early April a series of reports appeared online in the United States and the United Kingdom lamenting the "lazy French." A new labor law in France had apparently banned organizations from e-mailing their employees after 6 p.m. In fact, it turned out to be more a case of "lazy journalists" than "lazy French": as The Economist explained, the "law" was not a law at all but a labor agreement aimed at improving health among a specific group of professionals, and there wasn't even a hard curfew for digital communication.
Like all myths, however, this one revealed a set of abiding values subscribed to by the folk who perpetuated it. Brits and Americans have long suspected that the French (and others) are goofing off while they the good corporate soldiers continue to toil away. They're proud about it too. A Gallup poll, released in May, found that most U.S. workers see their constant connection with officemates as a positive. In the age of the smartphone, there's no such thing as "downtime," and we profess to be happier and more productive for it.
Are we, though? After reviewing thousands of books, articles and papers on the topic and interviewing dozens of experts in fields from neurobiology and psychology to education and literature, I don't think so. When we accept this new and permanent ambient workload checking business news in bed or responding to coworkers' emails during breakfast we may believe that we are dedicated, tireless workers. But, actually, we're mostly just getting the small, easy things done. Being busy does not equate to being effective."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday August 03 2014, @12:11PM
You're only talking about industrial material production.
You've got two models.
One is 3rd world where 1% owns everything and 99% are peasants. Coming soon to the USA and in many aspects, already here. An economy doesn't require 100% participation of all its citizens and illegals. I suspect you don't even need the full 1% of population to be viable.
The other model is service driven. One lawyer in a small town will starve, two lawyers in a small town and both get rich. Prison industrial complex requires real live humans, if not for guards at least to be the prisoners, law enforcement in general. War. Paranoia like TSA security theater. Hospitality services, at least for the cute young women. You can tell a lot about the viability of a local economy by looking at the waitresses and cashiers, and I haven't seen anything below a 9/10 in awhile, so there must be no other way for women of the caliber to make money (If theres no HR, marketing booth babes, sales execs, then there's always waitressing). Ditto for pr0n. Pro athletics. Entertainment industry in general.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 03 2014, @04:35PM
Without some sort of manufacturing base,
even if it has been essentially fully
offshored like it is in the USA, how can
there even BE a service industry?
The cows have to be 'factory farmed'
and slaughtered on the manufacturing/
production end to be used as an input
in order for restaurant service industry
giant McDonalds to turn the incoming beef
into hamburgers to sell to a hungry public
to make money and create capital to
re-invest in the company and profit to
pay its shareholders and executive staff.
The tiny remnant of profit left over is
used to pay the underpaid, overworked
masses who provide the REAL value to
the company...everybody beneath the
franchise owner level....
(Score: 1) by terryk30 on Monday August 04 2014, @08:29PM
Yikes, I'm trying not to read something unintended in what you wrote, but your stereotyped list
seems to imply "women of that caliber" (which you mean, I assume, smart and attractive women) would not pursue jobs or careers that don't primarily or secondarily require attractiveness. (No, I don't have my head in the sand on whether attractiveness plays a role in success.)
Perhaps you were being flippant, but you may have insulted either smart women (with many career choices) or sales execs (of either gender, attractive or not, who I'm sure add some value you or I cannot...).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 04 2014, @08:54PM
I'm all confused.
There exist several jobs which hire women based primarily, if not solely, on looks. The pay for some appearance based jobs is much higher than others.
So if the economy is great aka lots of high paying corporate jobs, then the 9/10 and 10/10 appearance all get higher paying corporate jobs and the marginally less attractive women get lower paying hospitality jobs. There is of course quite a bit of overlap and there are some training issues. But pretty much, smiling while selling cheezeburgers is the same as smiling while selling helicopter engines or routers, its just one job pays at least 10x as much as the other for the same "looks"
Of course if the local economy is in the dumps, the best a 10/10 appearance saleswoman can hope for is selling cheezeburgers because the corporate HQ might have closed and there's no real jobs, but at least the restaurants are still open because people gotta eat. In a competitive appearance oriented market I have no idea where the 9/10 and 8/10 get stuck working when the 10/10 population is high enough to fill all the appearance oriented jobs. There are more jobs in the world than solely appearance oriented, of course, although if the local economy is in the dumps as a prerequisite ...
All sales exec types are confrontational in that they are inherently only interested in their own success and that involves convincing people to make decisions for non-rational non-engineering reasons. Such as the sales exec being very attractive or having sports season tickets to share or just outright corruption like financial kickbacks / bribery. So yeah I don't think very highly of that profession, you can think I'm insulting them as a group if you'd like, I wouldn't disagree with that. Their very existence as a profession is oriented around insulting my intelligence and analytical ability, by attempting to hack my greed or sex drive or general psychology, so we'll call it even. They exist solely to screw me over, so a little contempt seems fair.
Smart women would tend toward smart jobs and I do like them quite a bit. Its not controversial at all that when there's no high paying corporate jobs for smart people in a community, the taxi drivers tend to have PHDs. Its pretty much the same deal as happens with appearance oriented jobs, but with intelligence. If your taxi driver used to be a petroleum engineer or aeronautical engineer like Houston in the 80s, the local employment situation for smart people is likely dismal.