That movement seems to me to have created a lot of very attractive and simultaneously practical living spaces, avoiding both the hazards of brutalism and frippery.
]]>For whatever reason (collapse of communism?), we have seen what seems to me an increasing hardness in capitalism. E.g., layoffs are now something routinely done to increase stock value, rather than a last resort in times of poor business, off-shoring is done with no concern for in-country employees, etc., etc.
USians will know what I mean when I say we are all living in Potterville now...
]]>Also, communism's unsung triumph is that it is the system we use for roughly 75% of our social interactions -- those that take place outside the marketplace, between family members and close friends. (Or do you believe parents should charge their toddlers for room and board?)
really plausible?
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to say that what we are seeing is not communism (which in the Marxist form was teleological and based on the messianic triumph of the proletariat) nor capitalism, but something prior to both? What you say seems almost like attributing the rump of the House of Lords to a triumph of capitalism, whereas it's a hold-over of feudalism.
Seems like what you've got here is more like The Gift than The Communist Manifesto.
But it's clearly not capitalism....
Cheers
]]>People also don't function in terms of calorie input and calories burnt. They function in terms of eating (which is a very complex process) and activity (ditto). Then there's the additional complex process of storing unburnt calories in the body. And extracting those unburnt calories and using them is a different process than extracting calories from food and using them.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. There are a lot of people trying hard to drop pounds (or kilos!) --- if it was simple there would be a lot more shed. The studies of effectiveness of weight loss programs all show pretty discouraging results. I don't know that there's anything real effective other than stomach-stapling.
Saying it's just calorie input and output is sorta like saying: here are Newton's laws, now go build a car. And biological systems are even more complex than mechanics...
]]>There's also a huge cultural component, that I don't pretend to understand. Compare the US population distribution with that of Canada and Australia. I don't know if it's just that the geography was more comfortable for settlers, but USians are much more evenly spread (even taking into account the unpopulated wide open spaces scattered around). If you can figure out how to change that, maybe you can figure out how to get us gun control, too! ;-)
Even if this was just a lifestyle choice, good luck getting people to pay for their lifestyle choice in a society where that lifestyle choice is the one taken by the majority (at least of voters).
IMO we're going to have to figure out how to live with the lifestyle choices we've got....
]]>steampunk novel that took the taproot history of the period seriously
that you talk about in your essay.
I have been listening to them as audio books with children and they do present much of what you talk about --- especially where the rights of women are concerned --- although toned down for their intended readers. By which I mean that though we see the oppression going on in the setting, and it is critical to the plotting, the main characters are substantially freed from it.
]]>I think there's a sense that science and engineering research may steal faculty focus from instruction, but having worked both in and with universities on the research side, there's money flow into the university from research that makes it possible for them to hire more faculty and build facilities.
If this is poorly done, it may not help instruction, but it does not steal resources from instruction.
Athletics is a whole other beast, and not one I'm qualified to speak about --- but I know US universities don't get NSF or DARPA funding for their football teams!
]]>Meanwhile, individual workers may find that their increased earnings from acquiring the employment credentials leave them behind their peers who skipped out on higher education and went straight into a trade.
Is this really true? ISTR reading in a recent issue of The Economist that the UK and the US led in income differential between University graduates and not (I'll see if I can dig up a pointer, but I'm not expert with their web site).
There was certainly a time in the early internet bubble when one could leapfrog the credentialing process (and it may recur in web 2.0), but I'm not sure we should generalize from this transitional period and relatively small proportion of the working population.
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