two thirds formed idea

My own theory is that if I am going to get robbed I'd just as soon the robber not be pissed off by an almost empty wallet and take it out on my hide.  I mean if I am going to get robbed anyway I want it to be a smooth operation with no unforeseen hitches.  That one time I got robbed I just held my wallet behind my back for them to pluck without even turning my head lest they think I might be able to identify them and shoot me or something,  Pretty cowardly huh?  A little later I heard about a Champaign buddy who some guys tried to rob but he held them off and kept his wallet and all that happened to him was he got beat up.  Geez, I thought maybe I should have done something like that and then I remembered the beat up part and I was happy that my exchange had gone so smoothly.

Top dresser drawer huh?  I see that you lock all the doors, but I wonder if there are some windows that a guy might be able to jimmy.  Just wondering.  No particular reason.


See that's what I mean about the machines,  The cost of making it was the labor of so many guys and if it took more than it wouldn't have been worth the while of the mill to buy it.  All in all the men paid to make it would be less than the men who would be laid off because the machine would be doing their work.

I wonder though if that would be the way the mill showed off their new machine by displaying it proudly and then saying, by the way you four guys on the left, don't let the door hit you on your way out.  Sounds like bad PR.  My guess is that they just found some other work for those four guys, but when they quit or retired or died n the traces they were not replaced, so that over time they were making more paper with fewer people.  If they just canned them on the spot I imagine the remaining guys would find a place to drop a wrench.  How did it go in the paper mill?

Die in the traces, a superficial web search reveals that it may have originated in the story of a sled dog by Jack London.

The eight hour day, as I have pointed out many times in the halls of the institute (ivied? I think they should be ivied, or do my colleagues prefer the stern look of bare bricked walls as an indication that we will brick no nonsense.  Oh wait that's brook, brook no nonsense.  I thought that that phrase might have some colorful origin story like some variation on crossing the Rubicon, but apparently brook is a verb in its own right with no associations to its babbling brother), was brought to us by the hanged martyrs of the Haymarket.  But one of their goals was increased employment.  I don't know if there is any concrete evidence that when it was finally the law if it had that effect.

I don't hear it as much lately, but before capital took the whip hand and left labor begging for more gruel there had been talk of decreasing the work week.  The problem predictably was that the workers wanted the same pay for less work and the employers wanted to pay the same hourly wage,

But even with the same hourly pay the employers would still be reluctant to hire more people working less hours because it would have to pay the new guys benefits, the most expensive of which by far would be health insurance.  In that instance it looks like socialized medicine would help the employment rates.


But here's my half-formed idea, formed a little more by well, walking around and thinking.  It appears that the richer are getting richer and the poor poorer faster than ever before and there are no signs that there will be any changes in that.  And the problem will be there will be all these people left out of the richer and richer section, and maybe a problem for the rich in that don't they need somebody to buy what they are selling to stay rich and how does that happen if nobody else has any money?

And what is it with rich people?  Why do they need all that crap?  You can only sleep in one bed and eat three meals a day, most of their toys just sit around and it seems like the main reason they want all this stuff is to lord it over other rich people.

So what if rich people wanted instead of fast cars that they will never get around to driving some kind of artisanal object.  Something that takes a lot of people a lot of time to make, some kind of oh, huge totem pole where every square inch of it is clearly crafted by the human hand and not some machine. It would be totally useless of course but so are most of the toys of the super rich, but it would give them something to lord over their fellow richie riches and maybe seem like a morally superior person to them, though I don't know how much status goes with that value, and it puts money in the pockets of the formerly poor, now gainfully employed, to buy whatever the richie rich is making.

Lot of holes in it, still not worked out, and probably it will never happen, but maybe something to chew on in the ived (or bare-bricked) halls of Beaglestonia.