(Also, though it's more of a zeitgeist with no standout examples to point to: personal-finance blogs that, just, casually talk about decades-long plans, as if society in 2050 will be fundamentally the same as it is now.
(Like, don't get me wrong, it *might* be, and even some of the possibilities where it isn't still place value on having a well-stocked retirement fund! It's worth preparing for that outcome! But a lot of the bloggers brush off the idea of a wider view of diversification†, or never even seem to have thought about it at all.))
That's definitely some whiplash. I think the first post with the diagram of four wildly different directions humanity could go has nailed it.
(Disclaimer on the rest of this comment: tired cynical tortoise way outside of the transhumanist or rationalist communities is not good at optimism.)
I think my own opinion on the trajectory of this century was formed around the time I was being homeless in DC and learned that about 30% of the service industry workers there are also homeless. We have the technology to do amazing things; for the first time in human history, we have the technology to enable *everyone* to live in relative leisure, rather than needing a giant underclass of slaves to keep a few people in luxury. But we hit points where we can make choices, and we're aggressively going with keeping the underclass subjugated, over and over again. So it's hard for me to get excited about the advances in AI and so forth when, until I see differently, I only believe they're going to be used to continue subjugating the underclass.
I kind of wonder, though... the second post points out, of course, the ways the global supply chain is breaking down, with people choosing to leave the grindingly inhumane jobs and not return. For the first time in a long while, it's a worker's market. If I was going to be the most optimistic turtle possible, this right now could be exactly what is needed to get to a brighter future. Break the monopoly of the employers by walking away, because we had a taste of being treated a little bit like humans and we're not going back.
The chatter in the virtual training room at my work this past week has centered around whether my new department will be forced to return onsite. The voice department is going onsite tomorrow (Monday), at least some portion of them; not having email yet, I don't know the specifics. They're telling my department "There is no set date for you to return to site yet", and the chatter within my own training class is basically... half the class was hired for work at home and doesn't have the ability to commute to site, and even among those of us who can commute, I'm hearing a good deal of "If I have to go back onsite with people I know are lying about their vaccination status in order to avoid masking, I'm getting a different job".
I think we're really facing a crisis point in this country right now, maybe in the developed world idk, where employers are having to decide whether they can possibly bear to treat their employees as human beings with some modicum of rights. I don't actually see any reports of employers bending in that direction yet, but I see plenty of reports of people who aren't going to take it anymore. I don't know which way that's going to go, but I think [if the workers can win this one] is the only way we're actually going to see the fancy new technology have a chance to benefit the erstwhile underclass in the ways that it could.
I don't know. I still try to be optimistic occasionally. Or we could be at a point where we're already all too poor to stick it out, and we have to go back to the grinding labor and let the employers win. I guess we'll see.
I've seen the "help wanted" signs everywhere too, but Meta-Boss in particular seems to be having no trouble finding new employees. He's still his usual (high) amount of reluctant to do so because *training* them is a pain in the ass, but it's been a couple weeks since two people abruptly dropped their availability a lot, and he's already well on his way to replacing them and not needing me to cover all their empty shifts anymore.
I have never been explicitly told this, nor have I overheard any English-language conversations about it (sometimes I'm tempted to learn Hindi just so I can feel like a full person), but reading between the lines I get the impression that Meta-Boss is very hooked into the local Indian community and has an easy time finding a guy who knows a guy who could use a new sponsor for their work visa.
(Every time we have immigration-related chatting, my co-workers are always surprised that my family skipped straight to permanent residency and didn't come here on a work visa: apparently that's not the Done Thing in India. My first manager, when he was telling me about how he'd just obtained permanent residency, even described his new permanent-resident ID card to me as if he thought I'd never seen one before!)
As is so often the case, I guess, "the brown immigrants are taking our jobs" applies mainly to jobs the locals rejected. Although I can see how this could snowball into an equilibrium where fast-food/retail jobs are *only* (or even just primarily) available through networking with the Indian community, and where non-Indians mostly *can't* access them even if they want to. (AFAIK, I got the last open-to-all-applicants slot before Meta-Boss got good enough at networking not to need job listings anymore: as far as anyone looking around at job ads or handing out unsolicited resumes would know, there have been no openings at my workplace in four years.)
Meanwhile, getting *any* desk job, let alone a remote desk job, is a nightmare: oh, there's plenty of *listings*, but they all have tons of competitors. I'm currently taking a break from job hunting to focus on obtaining some more accounting-software certifications, in order to have the right to put some more keywords in my resume; I may well end up spending a year or more with a four-hours-a-day commute, or doing accounting 3 hours/week while I continue with my fast-food job, just to bootstrap into having some related work experience.
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>>even among those of us who can commute, I'm hearing a good deal of "If I have to go back onsite with people I know are lying about their vaccination status in order to avoid masking, I'm getting a different job".
For people in that situation, I recommend the me method: show up to work in a high-grade respirator, go about your business like everything's normal, and silently dare your boss to fire you. I can't recommend this to *everyone* because I [knew my superiors well enough to know I wouldn't be fired for it + was willing to accept the risk of being permanently restricted to one shift per week] (and in particular I can't recommend it to voice workers because talking on the phone is nearly impossible with my respirator on), but if one has a non-speech-based job and has already decided that one is unwilling to work at a job with unsafe air, one can give them an ultimatum rather than just quitting.
No, seriously, I think you should tell your co-workers this. Give them the purchase links I recommended. Maybe crowdfund for anyone who can't afford $30 for a base unit and a pair of filters. If your bosses won't *give* you a safe work environment, then *take* one, and see if they are willing to go so far as to actively stand in your way.
(P.S. Also, they're great against wildfire smoke! I highly recommend that people living in the Western U.S. have one even for that alone!)
Obtain anti-crush armour and learn how to put it on?
It might not be *enough*, and an amount of armour and skill that would be enough might not be *affordable* in money or time or spoons, and one might guess wrong about which forms of crushing to prioritise protection against, but it *is* worth a shot.
Well, yes, that. But, mmm. It's still scary, to see vast inexorable systems at work in our lives? Even if winning is theoretically possible sometimes in the sense of saving yourself, to the extent that the things which you need to do to armour yourself aren't the evils which you fear in and of themselves, then it's still scary to see these vast powers because saving you and yours isn't *enough*, sometimes you also want to actually fix things.
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(Like, don't get me wrong, it *might* be, and even some of the possibilities where it isn't still place value on having a well-stocked retirement fund! It's worth preparing for that outcome! But a lot of the bloggers brush off the idea of a wider view of diversification†, or never even seem to have thought about it at all.))
†I literally saw a guy--I think it might have been Nick Maggiulli?--mention "investing in canned goods" as if it were something proverbially absurd and the sole province of Crazy Prepper People™, even though canned goods are an *amazing* investment *including* in normal circumstances. ↩
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(Disclaimer on the rest of this comment: tired cynical tortoise way outside of the transhumanist or rationalist communities is not good at optimism.)
I think my own opinion on the trajectory of this century was formed around the time I was being homeless in DC and learned that about 30% of the service industry workers there are also homeless. We have the technology to do amazing things; for the first time in human history, we have the technology to enable *everyone* to live in relative leisure, rather than needing a giant underclass of slaves to keep a few people in luxury. But we hit points where we can make choices, and we're aggressively going with keeping the underclass subjugated, over and over again. So it's hard for me to get excited about the advances in AI and so forth when, until I see differently, I only believe they're going to be used to continue subjugating the underclass.
I kind of wonder, though... the second post points out, of course, the ways the global supply chain is breaking down, with people choosing to leave the grindingly inhumane jobs and not return. For the first time in a long while, it's a worker's market. If I was going to be the most optimistic turtle possible, this right now could be exactly what is needed to get to a brighter future. Break the monopoly of the employers by walking away, because we had a taste of being treated a little bit like humans and we're not going back.
The chatter in the virtual training room at my work this past week has centered around whether my new department will be forced to return onsite. The voice department is going onsite tomorrow (Monday), at least some portion of them; not having email yet, I don't know the specifics. They're telling my department "There is no set date for you to return to site yet", and the chatter within my own training class is basically... half the class was hired for work at home and doesn't have the ability to commute to site, and even among those of us who can commute, I'm hearing a good deal of "If I have to go back onsite with people I know are lying about their vaccination status in order to avoid masking, I'm getting a different job".
I think we're really facing a crisis point in this country right now, maybe in the developed world idk, where employers are having to decide whether they can possibly bear to treat their employees as human beings with some modicum of rights. I don't actually see any reports of employers bending in that direction yet, but I see plenty of reports of people who aren't going to take it anymore. I don't know which way that's going to go, but I think [if the workers can win this one] is the only way we're actually going to see the fancy new technology have a chance to benefit the erstwhile underclass in the ways that it could.
I don't know. I still try to be optimistic occasionally. Or we could be at a point where we're already all too poor to stick it out, and we have to go back to the grinding labor and let the employers win. I guess we'll see.
no subject
I have never been explicitly told this, nor have I overheard any English-language conversations about it
(sometimes I'm tempted to learn Hindi just so I can feel like a full person), but reading between the lines I get the impression that Meta-Boss is very hooked into the local Indian community and has an easy time finding a guy who knows a guy who could use a new sponsor for their work visa.(Every time we have immigration-related chatting, my co-workers are always surprised that my family skipped straight to permanent residency and didn't come here on a work visa: apparently that's not the Done Thing in India. My first manager, when he was telling me about how he'd just obtained permanent residency, even described his new permanent-resident ID card to me as if he thought I'd never seen one before!)
As is so often the case, I guess, "the brown immigrants are taking our jobs" applies mainly to jobs the locals rejected. Although I can see how this could snowball into an equilibrium where fast-food/retail jobs are *only* (or even just primarily) available through networking with the Indian community, and where non-Indians mostly *can't* access them even if they want to. (AFAIK, I got the last open-to-all-applicants slot before Meta-Boss got good enough at networking not to need job listings anymore: as far as anyone looking around at job ads or handing out unsolicited resumes would know, there have been no openings at my workplace in four years.)
Meanwhile, getting *any* desk job, let alone a remote desk job, is a nightmare: oh, there's plenty of *listings*, but they all have tons of competitors. I'm currently taking a break from job hunting to focus on obtaining some more accounting-software certifications, in order to have the right to put some more keywords in my resume; I may well end up spending a year or more with a four-hours-a-day commute, or doing accounting 3 hours/week while I continue with my fast-food job, just to bootstrap into having some related work experience.
---
>>even among those of us who can commute, I'm hearing a good deal of "If I have to go back onsite with people I know are lying about their vaccination status in order to avoid masking, I'm getting a different job".
For people in that situation, I recommend the me method: show up to work in a high-grade respirator, go about your business like everything's normal, and silently dare your boss to fire you. I can't recommend this to *everyone* because I [knew my superiors well enough to know I wouldn't be fired for it + was willing to accept the risk of being permanently restricted to one shift per week] (and in particular I can't recommend it to voice workers because talking on the phone is nearly impossible with my respirator on), but if one has a non-speech-based job and has already decided that one is unwilling to work at a job with unsafe air, one can give them an ultimatum rather than just quitting.
No, seriously, I think you should tell your co-workers this. Give them the purchase links I recommended. Maybe crowdfund for anyone who can't afford $30 for a base unit and a pair of filters. If your bosses won't *give* you a safe work environment, then *take* one, and see if they are willing to go so far as to actively stand in your way.
(P.S. Also, they're great against wildfire smoke! I highly recommend that people living in the Western U.S. have one even for that alone!)
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It might not be *enough*, and an amount of armour and skill that would be enough might not be *affordable* in money or time or spoons, and one might guess wrong about which forms of crushing to prioritise protection against, but it *is* worth a shot.
no subject