Re: A Modest Proposal: Fattening up the Proles

[stevenw@best.com (Steven Weller)]

Tim May:
>(Ironically, I brought up the new book, "The Winner Take All Society," at
>the last Cypherpunks meeting. No time to discuss it here, but it confirms
>my strong belief that we are heading for a economy in which a shrinking
>fraction of workers have really valuable things to contribute, and a
>growing fraction of the population does not. I had not recalled the
>authors, but Strick had a battery-powered laptop and Metricom wireless
>modem, and ran an Alta Vista search from where he was sitting: ROBERT FRANK
>& PHILIP COOK, The Winner-Take-All Society, New York: The Free Press.)

See also _The End of Work_ by Rifkin. It chronicles changing work patterns
from agriculture through mass manufacturing and the service age on to an
uncertain future. Lots of interesting numbers and "look what is already
happening" statements. It also shows that the changes are inexorable, just
as the decline in agriculture based on human and animal labor was.


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Steven Weller                      |  "The Internet, of course, is more
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stevenw@best.com                   |       -- Time Magazine, 3 July 1995