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[Commentary] © 2001 Philip Hyde, The Timesizing Wire™, Box 622 Cambridge MA 02143 USA (617) 623-8080

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Makework Stories, 2001

10/13/2001  1 makework case, yielding 30,000 new 'jobs,' reported in New York Times (NYT) or Boston Globe (BG) -

• Florida: Plan to aid economy, AP via NYT, A8.
  In an effort to help its economy, the state will step up road and school construction and spend more to promote tourism, Gov. Jeb Bush said. The construction will create 30,000 jobs at a time when state unemployment claims are at a 10-year high.... The state's economy suffered as vacationers canceled flights after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

• Peru: Jobs for the poor, by Clifford Krauss, NYT, A6.
  President Alejandro Toledo mounted an antipoverty program designed to create 49,000 jobs in the poorest areas of Peru.
  [Good - to have so many new jobs. Bad - that it's makework, instead of sharework. So it's "new jobs" on the rigid, frozen-in-time, 1940(US) basis of 40 hrs/wk.]
  The plan will limit imports of food to encourage domestic grain production, spur new public works and maintenance of roads and step up efforts to develop tourism.
  [Good that they're not obsessed with something so simplistic as free trade. Bad that at least this article is giving us the impression that limiting imports is the centerpiece of the strategy, instead of designing the least-stifling way* of limiting worktime per person per time unit, that is, sharing the overwork and spreading the funneling income to unleash spending and effective demand. *For example, the least-stifling way of not having to stop everybody - just those who keep working longer and longer hours per week for money. If they're just doin' it for love, fine, no problemo. But how to separate the sheep from the goats? A: require reinvestment of overtime earnings (as we do in Timesizing Phase 2 and Phase 3). In what? The helpfullest, healthiest, thing. Which is? Making sure you're not working overtime because of subtle limits (vs. other people) on your skills.]
  Mr. Toledo took office in July promising to make the fight against poverty and corruption the centerpiece of his administration.

• Uncertain economy spurs interest in law degrees, pointer digest (to Front Page), NYT, C1.
  A growing number of relatively recent college graduates have decided that a law degree is the best ticket to a safe perch in the new economy of uncertainty.
  [Except that humans aren't birds and for them, no "perch" is safe.]
  Nearly 24,000 people took the Law School Admissions Test in June, an increase of 18.6% from the same month the previous year, according to the Law School Admissions Council. The organization, which administers the exam, expects a similar or even larger increase in the number of people taking the next test in early October.
  [Great, just what we need - more lawyers. Surely lawyering is one of the biggest private-sector makework campaigns we've got. For example, if you're heading for an amicable divorce, after your lawyer works you over it'll become a hostile divorce - lawyers make more money that way. Sorta like stockbrokers who churn your account. And what about all these TV commercials stirring up malpractice suits - "Get what you deserve!" The actual frontpage headline is also evocative -]
  Law school calls as economy slows - Dot-com dreams give way to hopes for a stable career, by Jonathan Glater, NYT, A1.
  [Pathetic. A century ago in the midst of another unnecessary downturn, job desperation drove people to the Klondike Gold Rush. Today desperate humans, for lack of a simple redesign of the core institutions of our economy, turn hither and yon for security, struggling to hold onto their ridiculous belief in uncapped concentrations of work, income and wealth. Yet as long as we clasp this phantasm of limitless greed, and delay updating our sharing technology, we'll have misery and want. And don't look now, but going back to our original pointer headline, right on the other side of the first business page is a currently not-"seldom heard discouraging word" -]
  Marquee firm in California cuts lawyers - Layoffs show profession vulnerable to economy, by Jonathan Glater, NYT, C1.
  [The inside headlines for these two stories are even more contrastingly juxtaposed -]
  Dot-com generation seeks job security in law school - Out with the 'new economy'; In with test preparation for law school, NYT, C2.
  [And right below it -]
  Marquee law firm in California is sharply cutting work force, NYT, C2.
  [The most gradual, market-based, minimum-intervention alternative to this desperate grasping that we've been able to come up with is Timesizing.]

• Galley is makework for some - Replica provides training for jobless, by Anthony Murray, BG, A13.
  [Yeah, and that training in making 17th century ships will be sooo useful in today's job market!]
  MORGES, Switzerland - ...The 140-ton galley La Liberté [is] built in the Mediterranean style. Its construction provided work for scores of unemployed workers...
  [Unemployed workers? In Switzerland? But we thought Switzerland was perfect! Or that's what the Swiss would have us to believe.]
  ...and its launching Saturday [6/23/01] from this city on Lake Geneva drew thousands of cheerleading onlookers. Hundreds of La Liberté's admirers have already volunteered to help row the ship.
  [Volunteered!? If they're into makework instead of timesizing (i.e., "sharework" = sharing the natural market-demanded work among as many people as need it), why don't they snub the volunteers and use the rowing as employment too?!]
  The 180-foot wooden vessel - under construction for five years at a cost of $1.6m - was adapted from 17th century models and data in the Marine Museum in Paris.
  [So what are these "scores of unemployed workers" going to do now that this five-year construction boondoggle is finished?]
  Naval galleys with up to 50 oars were particularly popular under Louis XIV [the "Sun King"] who ruled France from 1643 to 1715 and manned his galleys with forced labor....
  [Not to be confused with Louis "après moi le déluge" XV. Guess that's why they called it La Liberté. Sort of like America Land of the Free with the world's biggest prison population. Plus we here in more enlightened America only "man" our cleaning firms, grape harvests, garment industry, hospitals and old folks homes with forced labor.]

1. Big Dig price tag grows by $150m - Public forum sought on new cost overruns, by Thomas Palmer Jr., BG, B1.
   ...pushing the estimated total cost of the massive construction project past the previously announced total of $14.075 billion...less than a year after the Big Dig's estimated price tag was boosted by almost $2 billion, triggering immediate criticism of Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhof, the project's private management consultants....
   [And let's not forget our own dear Sen. Ted Kennedy (Dem., Mass.), who fought to get us this rancid taxpayer-bashing side of pork. The WPA lives! We're not too clear on the concept of the Big Dig because we've been trying to block it out, but for out-of-staters, we believe it involves the crazy idea of burying underground (where expansion will be impossible or prohibitively expensive) one of Boston's busiest and most frequently expanded highways, the horrible Southeast Expressway, which defined phrases like 'stall & crawl,' 'beep & creep,' 'honk & bonk' etc. At least it's not going to wreck all the stuff the Three Gorges project is going to ruin in China. Speaking of which -]

2. Chinese test new weapon from West: Lawsuits - Many of China's young see no virtue in quietly 'eating bitterness', by Elisabeth Rosenthal, NYT, A3.
   [They better be careful with this weapon. It's one that can hurt their own country, as it's been hurting ours. (And still we get points for it in our gauge of "progress," the GDP!)]
   ...As Chinese increasingly take to the courts, the number of lawsuits has grown exponentially, including suits for defective products, wrongful injury, poor service on trains and the like. "As legal awareness improves and the legal system develops, more and more people go to courts to defend their rights," said Liu Yuge, [a] lawyer....
   [Rather than evermore makework for lawyers, we feel that if people had a more visible and functional mechanism to express their common interest, such as a maximum workweek that automatically adjusted downward to avoid wage-punishing labor gluts as technology progressed, there'd be fewer suable offenses and fewer "ambulance chasing"-etc. wannabe offendees. The thing that really bugs people today is the widening income gap and the utterly unimaginable excess wealth of the rich. This gives everyone the idea - "I want my share" - without limit. The easiest dimension in which to define a fair share per person, and limit it, is market-demanded employment per week. That's what Timesizing is all about.]

1/29/2001  can pure advertising and cool sustain genuine "need" or is this just silly makework?

• Weak reception - U.S. lagging behind in wireless, and that may be just as well, by Simon Romero, NYT, C1.
  ...A closer look at the new uses for wireless phones overseas indicates that Americans may not be missing much..\..
  • [Photo caption] A rock concert, viewed live by cell phone, in Japan....
  • [Photo caption] A [tiny] stock chart on an NTT DoCoMo phone in Tokyo.
  • In Britain, the user of a mobile phone can book restaurant reservations by laboriously linking to a website by typing on the phone's keypad (even though it would probably be faster to call the restaurant).
  • And in Finland, arguably the most cellphone-obsessed country in the world, consumers can use phones for such edge-of-the-envelope experiences as buying a soft drink from a vending machine.
  In the United States, instead of bemoaning the lack of such opportunities, a growing number of industry executives and analysts contend that consumers and communications companies can only benefit by letting someone else be the guinea pig. So far, in Europe and Asia, there has been little evidence that many of the wireless services can actually make money for the companies that provide them, portending and industry shakeout comparable to America's dot-com meltdown of the last year....
  [Ah, judging from our Collapse Trends story today [1/29/2001], that should read "comparable to America's ongoing dot-com meltdown."]

1. Aid for Nissan plant approved, AP via NYT, W1.
   The British government [ever copying USA like puppydogs the last few decades] won approval from European Union officials to offer the Nissan Motor Corp. a package of aid valued at about $59m as an incentive to build a plant in Sunderland in northern England to assemble its new Micra model....
   [When they take our tax dollars for the wealthy, they call it "healthy capitalist incentives." When they take it for the poor, they call it "risky socialist welfare." The mounting centripetal force on money speeds us toward the dread Black Hole economy. Ralph Nader and others have been calling this "corporate welfare" but that doesn't have the necessary wakeup value to CEOs and B-schools and it leaves open the door for them to dismiss him as "on the left," i.e., socialist (and we've all been told millions of times that socialism is a total end-of-discussion failure after Gorby tossed in the towel in the late 80s). So let's cut off their wiggle room and call it what it is, socialism - for them, for top "capitalist" executives. Enough of this sloppy language. They're not capitalists. They're capitalist-disguised socialists because they're always looking for government subsidy-crutches, regardless of taxpayer-consumer cost and market damage.]

2. Hyundai Electronics cuts back, Agence France-Presse via NYT, W1.
   ...to lay off one quarter of its workers, including 30% of its managers, and raise $776m by selling assets. The company has been struggling to reduce debt since it acquired LG Semicon in October 1999...
   [again the slide from chest-thumping takeover to crippling debt]
   ...and needed government help to escape a liquidity crisis at the beginning of the year when $4.7B in loans came due....
   [Again, the shakedown of capitalist taxpayers by self-styled "capitalist" CEOs who are actually socialists - shilling for their stockholders (i.e., mainly themselves).]

Makework Stories, 2000

4/26/2000  1 makework case, yielding unspecified new 'jobs,' reported in New York Times (NYT) or Boston Globe (BG) -

• [Star Wars is baaack -]
  Missile defense cost put at $60B, by Jim Abrams, AP via BG, A14.
  DC - Erecting a missile system to give the nation limited protection from ballistic missile attack would cost nearly $60B through the year 2016, according to a congressional report released yesterday....
  [And not work. But the makework and pork and patronage would certainly be there. How much easier to just cut the workweek and share the vanishing work. Compare story above -]
  Russia's Ivanov warns on US missile defense plan - 'The collapse of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would undermine...disarmament agreements...over the last 30 years, by Joe Lauria, BG, A14.
  Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, [spoke] to reporters after his meeting with Pres. Clinton. US officials said Ivanov's remarks yesterday set the stage for talks on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. [photo caption]

For more details, see our "social software" manual Timesizing, Not Downsizing, which is available online from *Amazon.com and at the Harvard Coop (3rd floor) in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. 02138

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