Seth's Blog: The ever-worsening curse of the cog

Seth's Blog: The ever-worsening curse of the cog: "The ever-worsening curse of the cog

Our story so far:

Since you were five, schools and society have been teaching you to be a cog in the machine of our economy. To do what you're told, to sit in straight lines and to get the work done.

In the early factory era, there was great demand for trained cogs, the cogs even had unions, and cog work was steady, consistent and respected. There were way worse things than coghood.

Over the last decade or two, that's all gone away. I found this via Gizmodo: dottocomu: Clocking on with King Jim's QR code clock and it's a perfect symptom of what I'm talking about. It's a clock that puts up the time in a camera-readable format, making it easy for the factory supervisor to automate time in and time out via cell phones.

More important than the device itself is the thought pattern it represents:
1. cog labor is a lowest-common denominator activity
2. if cog labor gets expensive, automate it
3. if you can't afford to do that, move it somewhere where it's cheaper
4. if your competition does that, figure out how to measure and semi-automate your cog labor to make it cheaper still

The end result is that it's essentially impossible to become successful or well off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else.

Worth reading the italics twice, I think.

The only chance our country (your country, depends where you live), your economy and most of all, your family has to get ahead is this: make up new rules.

People who make up new rules continue to be in very short supply.

Posted by Seth Godin on March 02, 2005 | Permalink
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Grokster and the financial future of America - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com

Grokster and the financial future of America - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com

Mark Cuban, blog maverick writes about how technology has revitalized america over the past 2 decades, and how the government remained on the sidelines permitted the resnaissance and emergence of PCs, MSFT office, oracle databases, cisco routers, etc. and by extension, walmart, and mass produced networked global companies.

now, government overinvolvement in everything from warfare, to social security, to medicare benefits for pharmas, not old people, to jerrymandering political districts, to rewriting ethics laws, to supporting DCMA and the entertainment industry (ever notice the liberal media's biggest fans is the republican beltway, fiscally, except when on camera.) threatens our personal rights and liberties..

how DCMA is absconding your personal rights, and congress is giving away the keys to the car.... for a price $$$$$

peer to peer baby..

Bush's pro-business approach isn't pro-consumer, it's pro corporation, and killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

The Observer | Business | How Apple saved the music biz

The Observer Business How Apple saved the music biz

think about all the law suits, the BS.. apple mean while built a business model.
if the entertainment industry unleashed it's creativity instead of trying to protect every dollar and morsel of oligarchy, they'd actually grow...

these days it takes outsiders, like apple, mostly cause, RIAA and MPAA are pissing off the very people they should partner with, meanwhile their business model creaks and growns under bricks and morter of unsustainability.
or is that mordor.....

Burnt Orange Report

Burnt Orange Report

Dick Armey announces Bush agenda is to phase out social security and then phase out privitization?

The New York Times > Washington > For Bush, a Long Embrace of Social Security Plan

The New York Times > Washington > For Bush, a Long Embrace of Social Security Plan: "

Midland Reporter-Telegram
As a candidate for a House seat from Texas in 1978, George W. Bush said the 'ideal solution' to Social Security's financial problems was for workers to be 'given the chance to invest the money.' "



Midland Reporter-Telegram
As a candidate for a House seat from Texas in 1978, George W. Bush said the "ideal solution" to Social Security's financial problems was for workers to be "given the chance to invest the money."

The New York Times > Washington > For Bush, a Long Embrace of Social Security Plan

The New York Times > Washington > For Bush, a Long Embrace of Social Security Plan

GW wants social security privitization since 1978, claims back then the system
has 10 years, NOT!

what is this obsession all about...
passing pork to his fathers and his financial friends and relatives on wall street.
stinks.