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Don't Know Much About History

May 15, 2013 13:35:24.941

It looks like you could fill volumes based on what Jaron Lanier doesn't know. Consider this bit from a recent interview:

Of course jobs become obsolete. But the only reason that new jobs were created was because there was a social contract in which a more pleasant, less boring job was still considered a job that you could be paid for. That’s the only reason it worked. If we decided that driving was such an easy thing [compared to] dealing with horses that no one should be paid for it, then there wouldn’t be all of those people being paid to be Teamsters or to drive cabs. It was a decision that it was OK to have jobs that weren’t terrible

Right... That's why there was no social upheaval when the economy started shifting from around 90% of workers being in agriculture to factory work. There was no late 19th/early 20th century populist movement, laborers in the new factories were just as happy as could be, and driving the same screw into the same steel plate on an assembly line for 12 hours a day was pleasant. Sure.

Can someone buy this guy a history book? He should start with something simple, probably with small words.....

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posted by James Robertson

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