Departing from the acclaimed hip hop group Odd Future to release his album, Orange, Frank Ocean’s commentary on the monotony and excesses of today’s young elite is as clever as it is addictive.
Yes, low taxes and few regulations have done great things for eliminating poverty. That’s why poverty levels here are higher than in welfare states.
In an interesting twist, Ukrainian protestors mace police during a rally against Russification of Ukrainian society.
The Article: It’s the 21st century – why are we working so much? by Owen Hatherley in the Guardian.
The Text: If there’s one thing practically all futurologists once agreed on, it’s that in the 21st century there would be a lot less work. What would they have thought, if they had known that in 2012, the 9-5 working day had in the UK become something more like 7am to 7pm? They would surely have looked around and seen technology take over in many professions which previously needed heavy manpower, they would have looked at the increase in automation and mass production, and wondered – why are they spending 12 hours a day on menial tasks?
It’s a question which isn’t adequately answered either by the right or by the official left. Conservatives have always loved to pontificate about the moral virtue of hard work and much of the left, focusing on the terrible effects of mass unemployment, understandably gives “more jobs” as its main solution to the crisis. Previous generations would have found this hopelessly disappointing.
In almost all cases, utopians, socialists and other futurologists believed that work would come near to being abolished for one reason above all – we could let the machines do it. The socialist thinker Paul Lafargue wrote in his pointedly titled tract The Right To Be Lazy (1883):
If Ireland’s got its shit together, when will we follow suit?
