By Friedman (in some ways even more of a clown than Brooks), but it really makes the above-mentioned “dissonance” 1000 times more explicit, hilariously.

For example, in high school I worked at McDonald’s, which I imagine is the very sort of work you would consider dehumanizing and without dignity. And it wasn’t great work — it was work for a paycheck, nothing more. But no one was able to beat me or urinate on me as a condition of my work. No one could withhold my paycheck, or verbally abuse me, or impregnate me, or expose me to a deadly venereal disease. No one could force me to kneel (or at least purchase the illusion of my being forced to kneel) and revel in their domination over me. No one had to trick me into working at McDonald’s, or traffic me from another country with the false promise of work as a domestic servant. No one could set their price on me based on my youth, status as a virgin, race, or sexual appeal to customers. No one could kill me, and probably not even draw much police scrutiny until several other additional bodies piled up. But, but, but, you might say — all these problems would go away if prostitution was legal! And I submit to you that they would not, for the simple reason that this is what prostitution is — men paying women (or sometimes other men, but very rarely women paying men) to be treated like what they are designated — members of the sex class. These acts are not neutral acts, or the hazards of a job similar to the hazards experienced on other jobs.

That women somewhere can be bought for a price means that in their minds, men can rest easy in the assumption that any woman anywhere can be bought for a price — she’s just setting her price higher. Many a misogynist has soothed his angry soul with the image of a powerful woman with her pretentions to equality quite literally stripped away along with her clothes. And by their position on the lowest rung of society, prostitutes serve as a cautionary example to women everywhere of what is in store for them if they stray outside of society’s strictures, and reinforce women’s mainstream position as the (respectable) suppliers to men of unpaid sexuality, childbearing, and childrearing.

Which is not to say that I blame individual women for accommodating themselves to the system — quite the opposite. Individuals strike the best bargains they can in their lives, given their circumstances. But let’s not pretend that this sort of work is devoid of political or social context, or is the same as other work.

What came through to me in the negotiating sessions is that management very clearly held a neoclassical opportunity cost view of the work. Or perhaps it is the other way around, that the neoclassical view reflects the standard management perspective.

Whether work is painful, pleasurable, ennobling or alienating depends very much on whether it is coerced or free, whether it is integrating or isolating, whether it is creative or drudgery. The same distinctions apply to “leisure.” Leisure is not the opposite of work, it is a complement to it.

Time for a nap.

Basically, we can go about certain tasks in our domestic realms without finding them either immediately “fulfilling” nor mere drudgery. I am a genderless but male-bodied person who takes care to keep the apartment I share with my partner. Basically, I like to see dishes get done the same day they are made, that the most commonly used spaces aren’t landing pads for stuff that has other places it can “live”, that the toilet isn’t caked with crud, and that the floors aren’t covered with all sorts of loose particles.

My partner is in some ways, compared to me, a slob or slovenly inclined. I usually don’t get a whole lot of immediate enjoyment out of doing the dishes though. Sometimes I do like an artist mindlessly manipulating their medium. It never occurs to me that this is drudgery though, because for me it’s a moment in something bigger that I do consider something I enjoy. It’s not deferred enjoyment, but a more capacious way of enjoying what I’m doing. Against this, in the counter-culture, is posed an image of the upright house-wife whose clean house “is a sign of a wasted life”, which apart from having some misogynistic baggage equivocates what people care about with what “society” cares about.

I think of this work in terms of Heideggerrian “care” and world-building though. Of course, the world the work-ethic compels us to build is in many ways a bunch of bullshit, but I’m wary to throw out the baby with the bathwater. David Graeber argues that debt is a perverted promise, and asks somewhat rhetorically what kind of promises people will make to one another in a postdebt society. Similarly, I wonder is how we understand our continuing care for the world (our ethical commitment to it) in a postwork society.

The innovation by startups (and even, say, Apple) is amazing. I think the capitalists are in general doing fine at increasingly rapidly revolutionizing the whole relations of society.

Even if not, why TF would we want to help capitalism again? Maybe to save it from rentism (abolish software patents, etc. regulate Apple and other gatekeepers) but when do we know we’re done? At what point then do we stop running capitalism for the capitalists and start building something else? Why not build that something else right now?

Q. 2 is a no brainer, so we will leave it alone.

Q. 4. Frase says a decent chemist could solve the problem. Well, you tell him that, other than identical twins, no two people perceive smell or taste the same way. Because of my sinuses, I have had my olfactory tested senses tested several times, and I can ASSURE you, there ain’t anything scientific about it. The test is very subjective, and I never was sure whether my assessments were consistent.

What Frase confuses the ability of chemists to ANALYZE the chemical composition of volatile substances, not what people smell. So he is making a fundamental error.