Unfortunately, a substantial and powerful segment of society view high profits as their entitlement above all else, and therefore feel empowered to take it upon themselves to basically bring near slavery - well actually a close facsimile of it, back.
And they are doing so, largely under the radar. One of the ways its being accomplished is dividing people so they cannot have important discussions we need to be having about the nature of work, the reason why businesses exist and what is and is not a reasonable level of profit. The result will be an outcome literally none of us want or would have voted for. A prevention of the bright future that a few years ago seemed assuredly ahead of us an in view.
So I urge people to not fall for the framings that attempt to put forward this trivalization of what is a real, serious problem, if some people have issues they feel they need to see addressed, its not going to kill us to try to figure out how those issues can be accomodated. If we dont, we're falling into a very cynical trap - the result of which will be horrible for all of us.
(here is a link to
one big cause of many problems, nicely formatted for printing, worth downloading)
(Hierarchies and high functioning professionalism don't mix well, IMHO. Professionals want to do quality work, and that might conflict with pressure to lower costs to the bone, behavior consistent with a push to extract the most possible profit out of any situation)
The idea that work might occur for other reasons than just money, or that workers might be something more than interchangeable commodities to be traded internationally, and nothing more, - as well as all laws that might support job security and improving standards threatens some people, science threatens some people, and its in all of our best interests to try to rise above bigotry, blind profiteering, and "thought terminating cliches" so we can get on with doing good work, if we dont we may find that there is no longer professionalism at all, for anybody, just a race to the bottom.
We're being browbeaten into not seeing the big picture, that we can choose the future we want, do we want a rational future where society brings out the best in everybody or a struggle against one another for the means of existence that leaves everybody so exhausted we cant climb out of the hole it digs us into. Nobody wins that struggle.
The one thing I don't understand is how the terms "master" and "slave" can ever be deemed to be racist. Anyone who believes they are, is ignorant about history, especially African history.
The black lives matter campaigners are upset about how African history and the atrocities committed by the British Empire are not taught in UK schools, which I agree with: African history and the gross human rights violations of the colonial era do need to be taught in school. If you actually take just a few minutes to research the real history of Africa, you'll find is that slavery was endemic to the continent, long before the white European invasion. Black people enslaved other black people, the same as white Europeans enslaved other white people, way before the colonial era. Africa was not some peaceful, eutopian, harmonious, continent, before white people took over and ruined it. There were wars, atrocities and empires for thousands of years before European conquest.
I'm not defending my ancestors, who profited from slavery and should have known better, but no one can take the moral high-ground regarding slavery. The only reason why Europeans managed to dominate and pillage Africa was because they were technically advanced at the time. We saw a similar thing in Africa: look at how successful the technically advanced Egyptians were.
We need to eliminate racism, xenophobia and bigotry from society, but changing technical terminology will not make any difference and will only promote current misunderstandings of history and slavery.
Its not bigotry to demand that
working people such as engineers earn a decent wage, nomatter where they are from. Even if their own employers want to pay them less, it shouldnt be allowed. Not allowing it is not discrimination. (thats what some developing countries are claiming, a right to basically enslave their own workers at the lowest wages imaginable should be their entitlement under trade instruments) the WTO wants to take over this kind of work, that would be a disaster and likely would set us back a hundred years or more as far as racism, as it will result in large scale job losses to favor the new dirt cheap firms and their hugely underpaid work forces. tahst what the real goal of dividing everybody is, quietly creating conditions so that the middle class can literally be eliminated by very low wage migrant, hi skilled labor, also capturing immigration. To my way of thinking, actual immigration is good, but what we'll get instead is a new form of slavery, where peoples presence in a couuntry is tied to a job and if they lose it they have to pack up and leave, keeping them in limbo, and most significantly, keeping them making very low wages for many many yesrs, even decades or more) . Thats why people are trying to divide everybody everywhere. they have a financial motive. Anyway, thats why I plea, lets rise above our predjuidices so we can have intelligent discussions, otherwise, we're going to lose our middlc class jobs, everywhere..
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