Re: OT: Inflammatory Post of the Week


<bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1132702089.495318.158410@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> > Why would they want you, when they can have three for the same price on
some
> > "work support scheme" (or Ten in Poland or Tjekkia). It's the same story
> > here; if you are more than 55 they like you better dead. It's cheaper
for
> > "society".
>
> They might want me because I know more than any of the three they can
> get on the support scheme, or from Poland or the Czech Republic. The
> job that I would have got - if the proect had gone through - depended
> on my knowledge of phased-array ultrasound, which is pretty specialised
> stuff.

They probably got a Russian guy then ;-).

Have you tried signing up with the temp-agencies and for work outside of
your field? I have had good experiences with phoning a couple of
headhunters; they are good sales people, often they can get you in
somewhere.

Temps are seen as "disposable" so employers are more willing to give them a
"test run" on uncertain or throw-away projects - and once they know your
name they are more likely to call again. Temping can be an effective way to
set up a consultancy business "on the side" . We relatively often hire a
person for 2 weeks to roll some software for a demo or something; generally
work that is not "core business". We often call the same person back too.


> > I can, by making a phone call, get a young person *right now* with 2/3
of
> > the salary paid by the State for six months of "job training" and the
young
> > person cannot refuse because the State will pull his/her wellfare for
"not
> > being available to the labour market". That is what you are competing
> > against my friend. Paid with your own money too!
>
> I've worked with people getting on the job training - they can provide
> useful pairs of hands, but you have to spend a lot of time on training
> to make the hands useful.
>
> You wouldn't do it if you didn't expect to hang on to a fair proportion
> of the candidates past the six months.

Yes you would - university graduates can harvest X-mas trees and X-mas
crackers with hardly any training and they are not needed outside the
season. The situation is worse with long-term unemployed older people; they
tend to be "mentally broken" and have accumulated other problems than lack
of job. Young people are generally more hand-to-mouth in their thinking so
they cope better with the random jobs offered by the state.

> They don't compete with me - they represent a different product. A
> sensible employer would hire both of us, and get me to train that young
> person ....

Heh!

You have too much faith in assuming that rational decision making actually
exists. I enjoyed reading Twersky and Kahanemans papers on "rational"
decision making: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman . Good
perspective on many things.

Nicholas Nassim Taleb is another eye-opener:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Taleb The sceptical wiew on people
blindly attributing cause to an effect in complex systems.


> And the same system that subsidises the workless young is paying my
> unemployment benefit

Divide and Conquer!

>
> > All of those people, 1/3 of the population, are pacified and manipulated
> > with the wellfare system - all paid for by ever increasing taxation (the
> > growth rate of government spending has exceeded the growth rate of the
GDP
> > for decades and eventually the curves are set to meet. In 2015 or so).
> >
> > So,
> >
> > - What will those people do once they finally realise that society
actually
> > do not want their contribution and probably never will?
>
> Vote for someone who wants them to make a contribution as
> cannon-fodder? They may be unhappy, but very few of them are suicidal

Look at your average islamist/communist/autonomous/skinhead/neo-nazi type:
Do you think they have enough imagination to worry about what actually
happened to their equivalent, the SA, once herr Schickelgruber had no
further need for their services?


>
> > - What will those people *do* should there be a recession so that
wellfare
> > will be cut below subsistence levels?
>
> Start a revolution - which is why modern governments don't use the
> starvation weapon. Granting the awesome productivity of modern
> agriculture, they don't have to.
>
> > They will, I.M.O., do the exact same as always in Europe; they will find
a
> > way to start a war (civil- crusade- or otherwise) to exact revenge on
"the
> > system" and clear some space to grow in.
>
> Probably not. Europe and Russia have learned that violent revolution
> saddles you with truely appallingly inefficient governments. Lenin and
> Stalin in Russia, Franco in Spain, Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in
> Italy were all economic disasters.

So What??

At the same time those regimes provided extreme opportunities for the
misfits and outsiders of the previous society and allowed them to assume
power and become somebody, which was *the point*. "Efficient government" and
"economic disasters" are tertiary concerns.


>
> Even the American revolution saddled the country with a crowd of
> tax-dodgers, and to this day they still cheapskate on providing
> services that are most efficiently provided by the state.
>
> Much as you may dislike the system you've got in Denmark, you can
> guarantee that a violent revolution would replace it with something
> even less effiicient.

"Efficient" at What? That is the question!

>
> > I worry about it:
>
> Though not to the point of finding out what the alternaitves really
> are.

That is I.M.O. what the political process is supposed to do - and in my
opinion it has degenerated into a sterile discussion about the best way to
micro-manage a system that belongs in the 1980's so that one can avoid the
dangerous questions of what kind of society we would like to have in the
future given the conditions we have now.

If 30-40% real unemployment figures is to become a permanent feature of
Western society, as I suspect they are, then we need a different valuation
of people than one that is based on what kind of salaried work one does and
different ways of contributing to society than taxes.

The former eastern block countries, Poland, Tjekkia, Slovakia, Latvia,
Slovenia e.t.c. are the only places in todays Europe where they are having
such discussions; when one goes there for work, there is an atmosfhere that
something new and wonderful is being created, while France, Germany and
Denmark feels dead and sterile - their objective is "safety" nothing new
must happen because it might upset the "old" people.


> > If one spends some time in factory cafeterias, bier-stuben and football
> > grounds one will learn that there is a lot of "combustible material"
stored;
> > people visibly *hate* the failing immigration policies of Europe and
they
> > especially *despise* Muslims for they are being seen to not contribute
to
> > society while vocally making demands from it.
> >
> > All we need is some event to set it off and some person to feed and
direct
> > the hatred.
> >
> > The politicians never go such places, they visit the VIP lounges of
airports
> > and think that everybody are nice, happy people, with the approved set
of
> > opinions; they do not realise I.M.O. how close the edge really is.
>
> You haven't met the right sort of politicians. The British Labour party
> did have people who worked trade union meetings and other places where
> they could run into lumpenproletariat. The Dutch Labour Party (Partij
> van de Arbeid) seems to work the same way, and the Dutch Socialist
> Party aims to mobilise exactly those working class voters

To engineer their own career - there is a long history of those "working
class heroes" assuming the role of the worst kind of capitalist exploiter as
soon as they get any kind of office. Over here, the employers with the
longest list of convictions for breaking employment rules are .... The
Unions!

That is why "their parties" are not in government anymore - and they still
do not get it.


> > They are flying blind, producing one report after another that confirms
> > what they believe in the first place.
>
> That is a diagnostic failing of right wing politicians - if they don't
> like a report, they'll find another, more congenial opinion, even if it
> comes from the lunatic fringe.

Get Real: *Every* Government is like that.

Once in office they rely on the central administration to provide them with
decisions and the media to keep them in power; hence they need the right
kinds of performance measurements - the kind that will show that their
policies are working and that the central adminstration is competent and
efficient.

The problem starts *immediately* when an organisation defines "performance
metrics" - producing the right metrics becomes the primary goals of the
organisation and whatever the organisation was supposed to produce will be
secondary.

The "social cohesion metrics" you have in another post is exactly that: A
"rational" measurement of own greatness. I am sure Iran has similar
measurements "proving" they are the best country in the world.

PS:

Private business is run exactly like that also - except that a business have
accounts that must conform to reality, rules and scrutiny so *eventually*
the truth will play out. Governments are not so hindered, they can
perpetuate failure far beyound any reason. They should know better, but they
do not.

>
> > > That France is having the same sort of diadvantage minority riots that
> > > the U.S. has been having for many years - Watts comes to mind -
doesn't
> > > make it a failed state, any more than the Rodney King riots in Los
> > > Angles made the U.S. a failed state.
> >
> > The US, being vastly larger and wealthier, is much more resilient than
> > France.
>
> The U.S. is four times larger than France, which may be vastly larger
> if it were to come to a military confrontation, but France is big
> enough to support the same kind of society as the U.S.. Countries like
> a Denmark, Australia and the Netherlands are crucially smaller, and you
> can see the difference in the way the country is run if you compare
> them with places like Germany, France and the U.K. but you can't see a
> real difference between the U.S.and the major European countries -
> beyond that imposed by the U.S. money-dominated electoral system.
>
> There is no reason to suppose the French would be less resilient than
> the U.S. in dealing with social unrest amongst minority groups, and one
> good reason to suppose that they would do better, in that their
> politicians aren't drawn quite so exclusively from the ranks of the
> rich.
>
> --------------------
> Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
>


.

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