Re:Ask HN: What to do about a strike?
by time_management on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @08:15PM
(#392184)
The lure of safe income was used to render incapable and irrelevant a great many human beings. Now they are scarcely fit for work. What now?
Board positions!
And that's exactly it. Some people are rendered as "labor" and others are rendered as "management", and their paths diverge significantly after age 40, not based on competence, but on social connections.
I would argue that your social connections are very much based on your competence (albeit in an often different skillset).
Re:Ask HN: What to do about a strike?
by time_management on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @11:40PM
(#392482)
The kinds of social connections that result in F-500 CEOship are not acquired, but inherited or (in rare cases) purchased.
Dehumanizing is exactly the word I meant. The lure of safe income was used to render incapable and irrelevant a great many human beings. Now they are scarcely fit for work. What now?
"I felt like I was useless -- like I was put out to pasture," he said. "It's just like how they treated the veterans. During the war, we were heroes. When we came back ..."
We are all party to stupid choices that these industrial behemoths have made. But laying blame won't solve all the problems. We need to specifically confront and dismantle the practices, organizations, and mindsets that lead us into this mess.