zlacker

>>NotInO+(OP)
I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs.

The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left.

The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?)

Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.

Where I live, it seems like half the streets don't have street signs (this isn't a backwater where you'd expect this, it's Boston).

I made acquaintance to a city worker who, to her non-professional friends, is very proud that she takes home a salary for about two hours of work per day following up with contractors, then heading to the gym and making social plans.

There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?

>>0_____+U5
> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal?

I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride in work done for an employee that you aren't proud of, or actively dislike.

>>sp0rk+ic
The solution to this is worker's self-management, an economic model that was pioneered by Yugoslavia, but has mostly disappeared with its dismantlement.

Any company with more than five employees had to be run as a worker-run coop. The board and execs were elected by the workers. Companies still competed on the market.

This would solve for the problem of alienation while still having an environment of competition.

>>saubei+dm
Was Yugoslavia an economic powerhouse?

>>Walter+Lm
Do we need economic powerhouses to live well?

>>layer8+No
Yes. Or would you prefer working dawn to dusk picking bugs off of your crops, with the constant spectre of crop failure and famine?

Do you prefer living in a mud hut to a house with air conditioning, central heat, hot and cold running water, electric lighting and flush toilets? All courtesy of economic powerhouses.

Maybe you'd prefer spending your free time spinning thread with your spinning wheel, making cloth, and sewing all your clothes? (The first industrial target was textiles.)

>>Walter+Oq
This is a false dichotomy: Either your country is an "economic powerhouse", or you're living in a mud hut, with nothing in between. A country can be a good, decent place to live, where people's basic needs are taken care of, with opportunities for modest life improvements for those who want them, without being an economic powerhouse (and all of the bad that comes with that).

>>ryandr+qv
Yugoslavia's economy doesn't sound so successful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder...

High unemployment, billions in US foreign aid, etc.

>>Walter+dC
> Despite facing numerous challenges, including political instability and external pressures, the Yugoslav economy achieved significant growth and modernization during its existence, with a particularly strong emphasis on education, health care, and social welfare

I'm not sure we're reading the same article then.

Here's some archive footage from 60's Yugoslavia for your reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXr5aKZ8mps

Sure doesn't look like people living in squalor in their mud huts.