From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:09:20 MDT
On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 05:52:57PM +1000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 06:14 PM 8/30/01 +0200, Anders wrote:
>
> >And the idea of
> >volunteer activities of retired people as a solution of labour
> >shortage has been floating around - talk about the exact opposite of
> >the right solution! :-)
>
> Why is that, Anders? Wrong kind of skills? Dragging down prices of existing
> labor? I can see all kinds of upsides, though. The rediscovery of
> community, for a start, and an opportunity for lots of disconnected people
> who might otherwise remain isolated and anomic at home.
Well, I guess the upsides are what make some politicians so eager to
propose it. But notice the word "volunteer". As far as I have understood
these ideas - they are seldom stated clearly, just something floating
around nobody wants (yet) to propose - this implies more or less
"unpaid". After all, they have their pensions. So that implies a health
care system (it is especially in this respect it is mentioned) that
would become dependent on healthy older volunteers. I wonder what the
nurses say about that. And what if too few volunteer? Well, in that case
the idea seems to be to appeal to their "solidarity", i.e. *make* them
volunteer. Of course, nobody says that, but whenever this question is
asked by rude libertarian transhumanists like me the word "solidarity"
is mentioned with the special Swedish intonation suggesting "must help"
rather than "want to help". :-(
Personally I think having a lot of older people around might help start
up new companies - quite a few people seem to see their retirement as a
chance to start doing what they like, like starting a business that they
have always wanted to try. It might be that it could create the security
needed for quite a bit of innovative enterprises (assuming the strong
legal/taxation/economic disincentives for small businesses in Sweden can
be changed; this is what I hope the increasing group of grey politicians
might actually help with).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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