Labor Day

I've made several promises which I've not kept. Real life seems to get in the way. Outstanding debts: more comments on the "wage slave" entry in Wikipedia and further comments about Diamond and Hahnel.

Briefly about Diamond: The context of the passage which I previously noted.... a passage in which Diamond dogmatically accepts the language and views of that famous conservative and Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman.... saying a businessman must, of course, go after profits, otherwise he's in the charity business, and he fails to fulfill his duties to the shareholder....

The odd thing about it is that Diamond has taken the view from someone he labels as an "ecologist", as if the fact that the person were on the "right" side of some political issues were an excuse. Interesting structure to Diamond's thinking (and naivete) there....

IN HONOR OF LABOR DAY
let us recall all of those who died so that we could work only eight hours (although that's mostly in theory, isn't it?)

And let us recall that Czechoslovakia had an eight-hour day long before the United States. (The First Czechoslovak Republic had an eight hour work day in 1919, while the US waited until ?1935?--need to check that)....

Also in honor of Labor Day, I would like to recommend a recent essay by Barbara Ehrenreich, "Kleenex Workers", on the difference between the rights workers enjoy in France or Great Britain and the absence of worker's rights in the United States:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=10170