ants marching

[amos]

'Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went down in the morning into your dairy, and you found that your youngest child and the cat were at play together, and that the boy had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would scold the child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. But, if instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there were golden bowls with human life in them, and instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour the human blood out on the ground for the fiend to lick up -- that is no waste! What! you perhaps think, "to waste the labour of men is not to kill them." Is it not? I should like to know how you could kill them more utterlly.'

From John Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olive, 1866

[Tinker]

He's got a point. This is one reason I have so much trouble with working for the corporatocracy. It just seems like so much wasted labor for trivial efforts.

[Marcus]

. . and that is why I'm self-employed.

[amos]

I ran across the quote in this interesting little book. Never read the Ruskin work in question, though I am somewhat familiar with Ruskin's art and social criticism. Anyway, Alain de Bottom approaches the subject without getting ponderous which, considering the subject, is not such an easy thing to do.

http://www.alaindebotton.com/work/index.asp

[lzzrdgrrl]

[~]

The purpose of a corporation is to privatize profits while socializing risk.

[AzariLoveIran]

[Tinker]

Azari So what you are saying is that within one generation the government should own everything?

[AzariLoveIran]

[Tinker]

So you think that by the end of this generation the government should own everything then.

[Demon of Undoing]