Sun, 2007 Jun 10
Ramblings on economics
NB: These are ramblings. Don’t read too much into them, por favor
The odd thing to me is that there a lot of people who rather enjoy working. Me, for example. That’s not to say I enjoy all aspects of my job or that I would do it if I wasn’t being paid, but I like feeling productive. I like the challenge of building systems. Actually, that’s a bit of a problem. I like building systems so much that I tend to want to replace them about as quick as I get them built.
The other part of the odd thing is that some people apparently don’t like work. I rather see the major problem of socialism (the fake-world examples, not the theory, the problem of which apparently has something or other to do with math) as ignorance of this odd thing. Of course, when building any social system, odd things can create problems.
Take for example, the entertainment industry. The odd thing here is that most people seem to want at least one of sex, violence, or bad puns. That they want it is not the odd part (judging by human history). The odd part is that they apparently don’t want anyone else to have those items in their entertainment. This has created problems.
Of course, in capitalism, odd things creating problems can be rather profitable. At least for the lawyers.
Socialism, sadly lacking such litigious forces, is ill-equipped to deal with odd things, in particular, the odd thing that some people like to “work” (as in, produce economically viable goods or services) and some people don’t. So, everybody has to work, which means that the people who really like working can’t work as much or as well because they’re having to deal with all these otherwise nice and valuable people who don’t like working.
Actually, capitalism doesn’t deal with this so well either. There’s this odd thing that the staunchest anti-communism/socialism folks think that the most important thing is for everybody to be a productive member of society. And, in another odd twist, productive for them means playing golf, whereas for others it means flipping burgers, etc.
Anyway, I’m just saying that it all strikes me as odd. Count it for ramblings.
