People must have jobs - ?

This is a councillor being quoted on a council's website:

"Breaking the cycle of unemployment where generations have not known work or wages can be very difficult. Apart from job availability, the barriers may be the lack of skills, fear of starting a job in a new environment, a need for childcare, clothing and perhaps social skills.

"If a suitable job is available, we want to help identify factors that would prevent a jobseeker from getting and keeping that work.

"It's important the cycle of worklessness is broken, particularly where children are concerned, so they can learn to embrace the world of work and aspire to a more varied future."


 Apart from the "aspire to a more varied future", this gets a big thumbs down from me. Let's not indoctrinate children to 'embrace the world of work' - at least not with our current understanding.


TVP/TZM approach (as I express it).

• What needs doing? (Only things that are socially constructive, and preserve and improve us and our planet for our continued existence as a species should be done.)
• Can it be done efficiently and sustainably by machine(s) / technology now, or in the future? If so deploy/develop the technology as soon as possible.
• What is left has to be done by humans, at least until the technology can take over. 

TVP/TZM thinks there will be very little need for human work in a technologically advanced resource based economy

Coming to terms with cuts

http://www.kable.co.uk/vega-round-table-efficiency-staff-5jul10

Well into this article, with classic understatement, the writer says:

"It will always be difficult to provide an incentive to employees to suggest measures that might result in the loss of their jobs, or those of colleagues."

Quite. More inefficiency means putting in more work to achieve the same level of output. More work = more jobs. So is inefficiency good or bad?

The ideas of The Zeitgeist Movement and The  Venus Project address this fundamental flaw of our economic system by decoupling work from access to life's necessities. Everyone gets access to life's necessities - you, me, and the 1 billion starving people. Using the best technology, we obtain the earth's resources sustainably for our survival. Only work that directly improves our lot as a species (is socially relevant in Peter Joseph's terminology) gets done, and that gets done as efficiently as possible - ie by maximising automation and minimising human labour.

Technological unemployment? Yes please!

Geothermal to benefit from Gulf of Mexico disaster?

Impax invests in environmental markets. One of their pundits "likes" (= believes he can make money out of) Ormat Technologies - a firm that specialises in geothermal energy.