Time Theft

Terry Pratchett wrote a wonderful book Thief of Time, which is an entertaining piece of absurdity fiction. But there is a concept that bothers me economically about the value of time with money that is a serious disconnect within the system. Normally, I would journalize this, but i've decided to blog the essay on the fly - and deal with the debates from the original thoughts rather from the bowdlerized version that would be edited between journal and blog.

As the economy has shed many jobs to the evolutionary progress of machinery, there has been enough to do that required more man-hours, so that mechanical progress was innovation to give more time to accomplish more goals of the business at hand. But now with cheap labor available from many other sources, the manufacturing work has been farmed out and higher level work (via job retraining) created for those displaced workers. Recently, the job shedding at the white collar worker level has caused major middle class aungst and one of the major reasons seems to be time theft.

Time theft is defined as allowing somebody to do significant work under the assumption that they will get paid when the goods are delivered, then receiving the goods and discounting the time already spent. This happens often when new money arrives at the same time as the product is delivered - costs must be matched to get the new money and stuff already spent is treated as 'in-kind' donation for the match. Hence people who have the goods win, people who get the goods win and people who develop or produce the goods lose big time - they never get paid what the time spent was worth. They get only what has been made available by the kind folks who didn't use the convenient memory hole.

As a scientist, this has happened to dr lenny careerwise at every turn in the game. grad school work got published by a reviewer. post doc boss received a $2M grant and walking papers in the same week (denied tenure). first innovation pattented by bosses. another job where boss wanted relocation without more than a 6 month work guarentee (job lasted six months to the day of hire). job loss due to NAFTA GATT plant closure. unpaid year of volunteer work to get on, only to find grant reallocations from above. The common plan is to dust off, get up and find something else to do. Well this has got to stop.

Other people in related fields who do this type of work, also have difficulties, so it's not just me and my award winning personality (dr. lenny doesn't march to drumbeats - in his band the drummer plays the clarinet). Systemically, there is no money for grant writing and getting awards requires bringing multiple partners onto the team. So when grant is awarded and it comes time to do the job, one of the other partners always seems to have the work slot and the creative position goes out the window in 'rebudgetinging'. Dr. Lenny has many ideas developed on paper, but they can't be implemented because there is no control on the ethics of the operator - and ethics doesn't function in an economic driven world. They sit ready on-the-shelf.

So where am i going with this. I dunno. Perhaps to Galt's Gulch. Recently, dr lenny spent six months working part-time to develop an idea for weeds to fuel into a working model for a group, only to have the group democratically vote to redirect the mission away from the generation of innovative material substance to purchase and resale of fuel that already exists.

The need for matching funds for every government grant forces the dollars into non-productive uses like accounting and management. Very little is left for anything else - just minimize the cost of production and run from there. My time needs to be paid for up front - but people who could pay me up-front are not interested in changing the mechanism of the system, they benefit.

Perhaps, maybe dr lenny should take a position where he cannot do any chemistry at all, like holding political office. In congress, there is no intellectual property theft involved - haven't met very many thinking politicians (Ron Paul, Susan Morgan, Doug Robertson, Pat Buchanan(!)). Must be an oxymoron, like a little bigger.

Feedback appreciated on style and content. TY