Time is Money: Choose Wisely

 I need a job.

That statement is so simple.  It's just four words.  What happens if the word job is changed out for a similar word or phrase.

I need a source of income.

A job is now an option.  There are other means of obtaining income than working for someone else.  You can sell stuff you own, hopefully for a profit.  You can create something or provide a service to someone in exchange for money.  

I need a source of food, shelter, and clothing.

This is the heart of the need, survival.  Money is a means of obtaining goods and services.  It stores time.  

Humans don't survive on instinct.  At some point in our collective past, it dawned on someone that a pile of food could be traded for a place by the fire in a cave.  I imagine it was probably at the same time the bigger guy realized he could just take the food; but, didn't want to be alone in his dark cave.  You can't always tell what the other person really wants.

Hunting, farming, making what you need all take a lot of time.  Not to mention the time it takes to learn all of those skills.  We slowly refined bartering into money, and stopped.  

There are three things in the above musing that stand out to me:  Time, Skills, and Relationships.

Downtown Dallas
Most of my notions of jobs include an office or workshop, which is silly since there are more people doing physical labor outside of air conditioned caves.

Exactly what do I mean when I say: I need a job?  

First: I want to get paid  

Second: I am in need of a group to be a part of that values the skills I have learned over time.

Third:  I did not like my other options, or more likely, did not think about them.

For some reason, jobs have become the default way of obtaining income.  But, there are still people who will work for themselves either by choice or circumstance.   Some have more resources; but, all are investing time.  

I can spend my time in exchange for set wages, that are kept hidden from everyone so you don't know what the market rate is for that time.

I can spend my time building a relationship with people who want my skills or products or both enough to pay me for them.  

  

Musing on What World I Want to Live in.

Prelude:  This is an opinion of mine.  It's well established, based on experiences, reading, and education -MArch if your curious.  I just need to say it outloud.  I do think when painting and it gets in my way.  So hopefully this exercise will help with that block.

Cross Study
Ink on Paper
2014
The power of the Cross is simply what we give it through faith.   
It is a creation of Man, a symbol of unity of belief in an organization.
That does not make it wrong, or evil, or good.
Such descriptions should be applied to our actions.

What kind of world do I want to live in?

A world which values individuals over the group think which currently infests the political sphere would be nice.  

Let's face it.  Our thinking has not changed much since the Enlightenment.  We still perceive our world through the concept of the Clockwork Universe.  In a nutshell, it's the idea that the universe is a clockwork that operates on its own and without further input from God.  And, we seek to emulate that clockwork in the things we make, including businesses and government.  

Corporations run on their own, changing leaders to fit the times.  

Marx organized history using governments tendency to control more of the economy as they age.  Not a bad analysis of history, really.  

Religious organizations, well, they are not as adaptable as government and corporations.  They can last a long time, though.  Adaptability is not everything.  

All of them are highly dependent on creating and maintaining a uniform set of beliefs and goals.  And, their organization out live humans by generations, if not thousands of years.  Clockworks that can run on their own.

I believe the fact we are human being, animals of the primate types, does not fit well in the expression of this concept.  

For example, most literature about management limits the number of people in a group at eight, which is the number of people that can be efficiently managed by one clear leader.  So the leaders of those groups are indoctrinated and organized into groups, and so forth.  

Cities are organized along neighborhoods, districts, and at large districts, zoning terms controlling density, activity and resources.  The term family unit is a political term, but I don't believe it has any relevance these days.  The neighborhoods are wrangled by community organizers, neighborhood associations, etc., into a common goal.

In business, it depends on the corporation.  There are many, many forms of organization.  They do more research about organizational efficiency.  It comes down the factory model.  Tasks are broken down to their simplest actions, and distributed among groups, who work together to achieve middle management goals, managers who work in turn to achieve  upper management goals.

In religious organizations, I only know evangelical churches fairly well.  It's basic organization is church, region, national.  But, religious organizations are conservative in nature, fighting change more than embracing it.

The massive super churches, who appear to be trying to establish themselves as a social and political entity in their own right, are something else.  

In every case, there are massive amounts of people gathered in one place, performing boring, repetitive tasks that only matter to the corporation.  Similar to a modern chicken farm, thousands of chickens either laying eggs, or getting fat for slaughter, all stacked in cages or running around a fenced in enclosure if free range.  ( Yeah, I know that's not free range; but, I don't believe most of the marketing material massive corporations put out.)

As a species, we don't appear to function well stacked on top of each other like those caged chickens that produce eggs for us.  Did you know eggs do not come out of the chicken in uniform sizes?  They are sorted and sold according to size, some for food, some for vaccine research, and some for purposes I am not clear on.  My point is standardization and breaking down tasks to the simplest movements are the go to concepts for massive organizations.  

Those two concepts work.  I can't deny that.

Corporations have produced enough food and clothing for the world, although there are problems getting the actual food and clothing distributed.  If we could get corporations to build shelters that quickly, then we have covered the three basic needs:  Food, shelter, and clothing.  (Shelter does not necessarily need delivery.)

Unfortunately, the cost to individuals working in corporations can be high.  The mines and factories of the US industrial age are a good example of the human cost as well as the benefits.  Whether your economic beliefs are Capitalist or Communist, that age needs to be remembered.

March 25, 1911, the date of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, comes to mind.  In New York City, this factory was being operated by its owners/managers on standard practises of that age.  Most of which are now illegal today as a result of the tragedy.   No one batted an eye at chained exits and long hours with no breaks in those days.  If the workers voiced any objections, the management ignored them at the very least.

What kind of world do I want to live in?  One where the individual is not ignored for "the greater good" a phrase that has justified many atrocities and excesses.