jadero

At this late stage of my life, I think the future in non-union employment might be in some kind of collaborative enterprise. There is a local company made up of a plumber, an electrician, a couple of equipment operators, a bookkeeper, and an accountant. They were all independent businesses that decided to formalize their existing business relationships under the umbrella of a shared company name. They still take independent bookings, but all under the new company name. The bookkeeper already offered answering services, so that fits nicely.

If I were younger or interested in coming out of retirement, I'd try to throw in with them for networking, computer security, and automation.

I'm retired now. My experiences during 50 years of employment across a couple of dozen employers in several different fields is that employers, as a group, are heartless.

There are exceptions:

One of my first jobs was with an employer who taught me what he thought I needed to know, encouraged me to find my own ways to get the job done and didn't reduce my pay or throw extra work at me when it turned out that I found ways to get the work done with less time and effort than he expected. This employer also hired a couple of young vandals to clean up the damage they caused, then kept them on as full time employees.

One of my last jobs was with an ambulance manufacturing company (Crestline Coach). The founders were making enough money to do things like fund the restoration of emergency vehicles with personal money and they shared the wealth with their employees. Every employee got the same financial reports as the owners. If an employee wanted to further their education, the owners helped with tuition and work schedules. At least twice that I know of, the owners helped employees start their own businesses. I don't know what the place is like now, because the founders retired and the new owners drove me (and others) out.

That doesn't really sound wasted. Sometimes the most beneficial use of time is also the least productive.

Okay, so I do less computer programming for money, but it's still a hobby and I contribute to a few open source projects.

But here are a few things that wouldn't get done if I were still employed:

• regular classes in internet security and privacy to help keep community members safe online.
• volunteering at the school to help teach students both new technologies (3D printing, robotics, environmental data collection and analysis) and old (boat building, sailing, winter survival in nature) plus tutoring in everything from music performance to math.
• serving with the emergency measures organization

That's approximately where my list ends, but fellow retirees are helping less abled people stay in their homes and communities, showing up at social justice rallies, and a myriad of other things that are important both societally and economically. If it's judged to be less important than employment, it's also important to note that much of it wouldn't be societally affordable without our free labour, yet has profound impacts on quality of life.

And I disagree that removing incentives leads to less being done. External incentives, like paycheques, are probably the least effective incentives there are. Most people are motivated by passion, desire, contribution, and satisfying results.

This may not apply everywhere, but around here (Saskatchewan), retirees are the lifeblood of service and community organizations. From the quilting club that generates revenue for brain injury research and food banks to the senior centre that helps people age in place, retirees are a critical component of the glue that holds us together.

Even if you have a fairly narrow economic view of what it means to contribute to society, there is no question that retirees are making those contributions. While actual money is required for most things, nothing happens without people putting in time and retirees have plenty of time and aren't shy about using it.

This is something I became aware of as my older relatives retired. Now that I'm retired myself, I'm more active than ever in the community, despite having also retired from the volunteer fire and rescue service.

My concern with a universal income is that it discourages healthy people from working and thus contributing to our collective wellbeing.

Every study I've heard of shows that is not what happens except in very narrow situations. For example, the study run in Dauphin, MB found that teenagers were less likely to work or to work less, but that was because they were choosing to focus on their schooling and, in some cases, actually stay in school. IIRC, there were also people who chose to stay at home with young children or care for infirm relatives rather than find other care options so they could go to low wage, "low skill" jobs. Those outcomes seem positive given the results of other studies regarding education and family care.

There is a general problem in mass psychology where people sitting around a table or in their armchairs try to imagine the impact of a policy without conducting a study or looking at historical results.

I don't know about farms, but I remember having weekly passenger service between Eston and Saskatoon, with stops at Plato, Greenan, Wartime, Elrose, Dinsmore, etc. Technically, they were mixed trains, hauling grain and mixed freight, along with a passenger car.

On arrival in Saskatoon, we could switch to a major passenger train to cross the country or catch a rail liner (self powered passenger car) either North to Prince Albert or South to Regina, with stops at every village along the way. At those terminals, you could then catch trains to Nipawin or Meadow Lake or to other parts of the country.

I'm not sure that a pure passenger service is feasible, but most of the destinations I listed still have sidings in use for grain and oil, so adding a passenger car to create a mixed train might work.

I can't speak to the general problem, but I can tell you why I left construction and manual labour more generally.

A lot of the work is still as damaging to the body as it was in 1930.

Toxic coworkers enabled and even encouraged by psychopathic supervisors.

Safety is not only not built in to procedures, but actively mocked and even deliberately worked around, even when doing so slows things down.

And all that for less than double minimum wage for experienced workers when it used to be easily triple minimum wage to start.

my-family-is-controlling-my-life-even-though-I-don't-live-with-them-anymore

I suspect that this is more common than we realize. There are the obvious cases, like you and me, but since I got clear I've realized that it frequently doesn't really look controlling to an outsider and that even from inside it can look and feel normal without actually leaving you free to be yourself. Now that I know what to look for, I see a lot of people living their lives to family (and other) standards that do not allow for personal growth.

Good luck on your journey!

Add an elevated platform for the feet to get the knees up a bit and you have the best of both worlds.

I'm genuinely failing to see the downside here of facebook, twitter, and the like ceasing to exist.

Me neither. I should have been clearer. Despite all the bad things they do to make things worse, the problem is not the existence of the platforms. The problem is people. I was alluding to the fact that if there were enough people who recognized the problems of these platforms and acted on that, those kinds of platforms would never have arisen in the first place.

The various nasty types have always found ways to spread their messages, convert people to their cause, and convince others to do the actual dirty work.

Throughout history, every time a technology was introduced to increase the speed and geographical distribution of a message, extremism founded on false conspiracy, propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation has at least temporarily increased. There are really simple explanations for why that is. First, we have the problems of human cognition. Our brains are really lousy at identifying cause and effect, separating meaningful patterns from useless ones, and creating and maintaining accurate memories.

Second, truth requires verification. Verification cannot happen without investigation and communication among investigators. This means that verification will always happen much slower than message distribution. That is why a lie can circle the globe before the truth can get out of the starting blocks.

As bad as these platforms are, it's important to remember that their problematic algorithms are little more than codification of the methods that propagandists have used for centuries. Rush Limbaugh brought these concepts to a peak before most people had ever heard of the internet. Usenet was filled with the same stuff we see on Facebook, and there were no algorithms or central systems, just people doing what people do.

Not using the platforms is a personal solution for any individual who wants to escape, not a general solution. For "don't use the platforms" to work as a solution for the masses, so few people would use the platforms that the platforms would cease to exist.