>>Yes. Management and administration is a vital part of a complex industrial
>>society. But perhaps you can't conceive of any way of co-ordinating people
>>in a workforce that does not necessitate the manager having coercive power
>>over subordinates.)
>
>
>that's precisely what parecon proposes. were you not paying attention?
Sure, but I have a bad habit of looking below the surface. You think making the manager sweep floors for a few minutes a day negates the coercive power inherent in the capacity to take away someone's livelihood. I dismissed that conception, but obviously you weren't paying attention.
>what you seem to have trouble with is the comparative rigidity of parecon
>to your extremely hypothetical system.
No. What I have trouble with is the conception that the right to eat and therefor continue living is conditional on obedience.
>Man there's a tremendous backlog here. Exams were brutal.
>
>Btw I didn't respond to your last post, bill, because you went out of your
>way to insult me for having what work i can find. Perhaps we should _all_
>be unemployed?
I didn't go all that far out of my way. It was a sort of scenic route. ;-)
>particularly offensive was your suggestion that I am "happy" to wash dishes
>out of intellectual laziness or outright stupidity.
I found some of the things you were saying offensive too. But I tend not to moan about it, I just get even.
>Some responses, more or less at random...
>
>You said you don't tip because it's demeaning.
Yes, your suggestion about getting up some stickers promoting tipping is one of the things I find offensive. I see you're still doing it.
>First, keep in mind that the world is not Australia. in America, many
>service workers make more than half of their money from tips. For
>waitresses and waiters, tips serve to bring them up to the minimum wage
>because the employers pay about 2.15 an hour or thereabouts.
We call that a sweatshop here. I can see why workers in the restaurant industry in the US have to resort to begging to make ends meet, I just can't see why anyone would be pleased about it.
>Second, yes, the tipping system is demeaning, but following your logic all
>employers should stop paying their employees as well, since we would agree
>that the wage system is almost as bad.
So, customers of the restaurant are considered the employers of the restaurant staff? Yes, the wages system is bad, but at least a system of contract rights have developed to mitigate the worst of it. Your system seems to amount to a bargain where restaurant workers exchange their labour for little more than a franchise to beg on the premises. I find it quite disgusting.
> Also, i can't help but notice that
>your principled stand on the tipping issue puts more money in ol' bill's
>pocket.
Don't be silly. People can't work for $2 an hour, if nobody tipped then the boss would have to pay you a living wage and charge prices commensurate with that. You think the actual cost of a restaurant meal is any lower here? Not at all, it is just that the menu prices reflect the actual cost of the meal. If it says the price of a steak is $18, then that is the actual price.
And no begging.
>Another thing. You say that all service type work is inherently demeaning
>even if equally shared among all and well recompensed besides. I disagree,
>but consider the following scenario:
>
>
>we have a parecon. We like to eat out so we vote to keep the service
>industry, but because it's a parecon every able-bodied person is now doing
>a fair share of service-industry work.
Even those who find it degrading to be forced to act as the personal servants of others. Or those, like me, who find servility equally distasteful?
> Former professionals, office
>workers, construction workers etc find themselves spending, i don't know, 5
>hours a week doing what they did in the summer as teenagers.
Getting pissed and hanging around on the beach? Five hours isn't much I suppose, but I still don't think it should be made compulsory.
> they suddenly
>realize that all these restaurants and movie theaters aren't necessary,
>dammit, and besides they want more free time. at the same time, there are
>lots of bill bartletts running around, advocates for service-industry
>abolitionism. the bills organize among the pissed off professionals and
>former service workers alike, get a movement together, etc. We hold a
>referrendum, poof, no more service industry, everyone cooks their own damn
>ramen noodles or whatever.
Whatever.
>show me how any of this is inconsistent with a parecon.
I'm sure it isn't, that's the problem. But this concept of "free time" implies that the rest of your life isn't free. You want to regiment people's lives even more than is so at the present. You want everyone to be unfree. But that isn't the solution.
>now, last time you deflected this question with an insult, and it was a
>pretty low blow too. Here it is again: "Should we become the servants of
>those who choose not to work in bill bartlettland?"
There you go again. I answered that. If you want to counter to my response, then you may do so, but I'm not going to repeat myself.
>would you care to respond now?
OK, let me put it another way, since the first try went over your head.
You know what seems odd to me? You defend an arrangement where it is optional for restaurant customers whether they pay the real cost of the service they enjoy, yet in the same post you insist that it would be madness to allow workers the same liberty about if and what work they should contribute to society. Now obviously there will be some customers who fail to tip adequately. Obviously other customers are forced by this system to make up the difference. Tell me, why do you defend a system where some customers have to pay for the meals of those who choose not to pay?
It seems to me your premise must be that free people can't be trusted to contribute their labour voluntarily, yet you work in a job where you depend on customers to voluntarily pay for their service while the boss gets your work for practically nothing. It seems a contradiction, that's all. Explain it to me why, in a dog eat dog competitive capitalist society, you trust your customers to do the right thing without compulsion, but you utterly reject a free society all transactions are based on the same free spirit?
Why is it that you think coercion is so essential for getting people to contribute to society?
> >What? Now you want housework police to monitor every home?
>
>he didn't say anything like that. what's more i think you are aware of this.
It goes with the territory though.
> > Yes, I think a few couch potatoes is a small price to pay for avoiding a
>police state.
>
>on my shift i have another guy helping me. what if i decide, fuck you man
>i'm gonna sit on my ass and have some hotwings while you do all the work
>and at the end of the day i'll clock out just like you and collect my 70
>bucks (the tips i get mean i earn very good hourly wages for a
>dishwashwer). Should he be cool with this? If he tries to curb this
>behavior does this constitute a "police state?"
You miss the point, but if workers in that industry refused to accept tips in lieu of wages, it would be no skin off his nose. But you don't see any problem with things being arranged in such a way as to undermine class solidarity. Do I need to spell it out for you?
>Another example. I have two little speakers on my computer, but they can
>get really loud. Let's say I decide to turn them all the way up and play
>"die goldene pave" by Chava Alberstein and the Klezmatics at 4 am during
>exam week. Klezmer music everywhere. windowpanes rattle, plaster falls
>from the ceiling. People see their GPAs evaporating before their very
>eyes. If someone comes over to tell me shut it the hell off, am i to
>conclude i am living in a police state?
I don't know what a "Klezmatic" is, but it sounds awful. This is the little old lady who lives next door complaining? Is she threatening to have you transferred to a job shovelling plutonium in Alaska if you don't comply? Does she have the power to do that? No, someone asking you to be considerate is not a sure sign of a police state.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas