Worker Quotes - page 7
In mathematics, as in any scientific research, we find two tendencies... [T]he tendency toward abstraction seeks to crystallize the logical relations inherent in the maze of material in a systematic and orderly manner. On the other hand, the tendency toward intuitive understanding fosters a more immediate grasp of the objects... a live rapport with them... which stresses the concrete meaning of their relations. ...[I]ntuitive understanding plays a major role in geometry. ...[S]uch concrete intuition is of great value not only for the research worker, but... for anyone who wishes to study and appreciate the results of research in geometry.
David Hilbert
[A social worker has shown up to talk about Raffi's adoption during dinner with Toni's parents]
Sr. Ortiz: What's going on here?
Toni: Uh... mamá y papá, Gwynne... viene de la iglesia! ¡Sí, sí! Y viene para hablar... uh... del bautizo de Rafael! Decidimos que sería bueno que lo bautizaramos! (Mom, dad... Gwynne is... from the church! Yeah! And she's here to talk about, uh... Rafael's christening! We've decided to get him baptized!)
Sra. Ortiz: Gracias a Dios!
Sr. Ortiz: How very good of you to come, Sister.
Gwynne: Back at ya, brother! It's a pleasure in this day and age to meet folks who are so supportive of their daughter's decision.
Sra. Ortiz: That is unusual?! This country is even more wicked than I thought!
Gwynne: Yes, it's a shame, but many lesbians' parents tend to disapprove.
Sr. Ortiz: What does her being a ... a homosexual have to do with it?
Gwynne: Exactly, Mr. Ortiz! If only more people felt like you!
Alison Bechdel
I learned later that economic reasoning was not just mathematics and could be applied to a wide variety of social problems. Now, I think that no forms of social interaction-including religion, love, crime, and fertility choice-are immune from the power of economic reasoning. Hence, even widely held beliefs-for example, that beauty is an illegitimate credential of a worker or that democracy is important for economic growth-are not sacred truths and are subject to analysis.
Robert Barro
Computers and robots replace humans in the exercise of mental functions in the same way as mechanical power replaced them in the performance of physical tasks. As time goes on, more and more complex mental functions will be performed by machines. Any worker who now performs his task by following specific instructions can, in principle, be replaced by a machine. This means that the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish-in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors.
Wassily Leontief
We leave the question whether a man shall be a brain or hand worker entirely to him to settle. At the end of the term of three years as a common laborer, which every man must serve, it is for him to choose, in accordance to his natural tastes, whether he will fit himself for an art or profession, or be a farmer or mechanic. If he feels that he can do better work with his brains than his muscles, he finds every facility provided for testing the reality of his supposed bent, of cultivating it, and if fit of pursuing it as his avocation. The schools of technology, of medicine, of art, of music, of histrionics, and of higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without condition.
Edward Bellamy
President Davis said, "The 'free' factory worker in Manchester or Paris- yes, in Boston as well- is free only to starve. As Mr. Hammond from South Carolina put it so pungently in the chambers of the U.S. Senate a few years ago, every society rests upon a mudsill of brute labor, from which the edifice of civilization arises. We are but more open and honest about the nature of our mudsill than other nations, which gladly exploit a worker's labor but, when he can no longer provide it, cast him aside like a used sheet of foolscap."
Harry Turtledove
When Taylor began his efforts at the Midvale Steel Company in the 1880s, several members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers were likewise interested in labor management. Industrial capitalism was running up against renewed resistance from the growing ranks of labor, still committed to a sense of work integrity and craftsmanship. Task management, or scientific management as it came to be called, began to take shape in the eighties as the way to break the worker's threatening resistance. The heart of this approach is the systematic reduction of work into discrete, routinized tasks, totally separated from any policy decisions about the job. ... For capitalism to be firmly in control, it must monopolize information and techniques as surely as it controls the rest of the means of production. The worker must be permitted only to perform certain specific narrow tasks as planned by management.
John Zerzan
Can't you approach the young worker and tell him that the way to live is to work for life and not for death? Is it beneath American scholars to try to do that?... Your only salvation is in carrying the idea of socialism to the working class and coming back to storm-to storm, yes, to storm-the bastions of capitalism.
Isaac Deutscher
A worker is protected from his employer by the existence of other employers for who he can go to work. An employer is protected from exploitation by his employees by the existence of other workers whom he can hire. The consumer is protected from exploitation by a given seller by the existence of other sellers from whom he can buy.
Milton Friedman
