I always hear, on right and left, but mostly on the self-righteous right, how laziness is a problem.
However, I look around, at the environmental destruction, at the weapons of mass destruction and the risks they pose around the world, and many other things. All these terrible things are created by work. We have done damage that will be impossible to reverse. On balance, the future of our species, and our planet, would have been better off had the 18th century industrial revolution, and all that, had never happened. And that involved a huge amount of work, and in the subsequent industrial revolutions, mostly to create destructive powers that played out immediately or mostly gradually. We had a huge increase in population, which surely wasn't just child's play, with the construction of new facilities of all kinds, most rather unsuitable for our future which must be hardened from climate, and a huge network of energy systems all based on our greatest toxic waste. If there is anything that has been truly beneficial, perhaps it has been art and science, but these things also have helped enable the others in no small part.
It seems to me that for the benefit of all, people should be paid not to work rather than the reverse, and paid the most to do the least.
All the better to be as far away as possible from this menace, work.
However, I look around, at the environmental destruction, at the weapons of mass destruction and the risks they pose around the world, and many other things. All these terrible things are created by work. We have done damage that will be impossible to reverse. On balance, the future of our species, and our planet, would have been better off had the 18th century industrial revolution, and all that, had never happened. And that involved a huge amount of work, and in the subsequent industrial revolutions, mostly to create destructive powers that played out immediately or mostly gradually. We had a huge increase in population, which surely wasn't just child's play, with the construction of new facilities of all kinds, most rather unsuitable for our future which must be hardened from climate, and a huge network of energy systems all based on our greatest toxic waste. If there is anything that has been truly beneficial, perhaps it has been art and science, but these things also have helped enable the others in no small part.
It seems to me that for the benefit of all, people should be paid not to work rather than the reverse, and paid the most to do the least.
All the better to be as far away as possible from this menace, work.
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