When I was young – I think fourteen, fifteen, but it could be a year more or less. It’s weird how the experience remains a vivid memory but everything around it has become a soup of events and adrenaline – mom and I went to an illegal demonstration in downtown Porto.
For those in the States, Portuguese at the time had the right of assembly, supposedly at least, but you needed to get a license, and that mysteriously was never granted/was delayed/was lost if you were to the right of the people in power.
So people assembled illegally. (At least once, under curfew rule that mandated everyone under 21? 25? be home, to curtail public unrest, I ran from the police into a coffee shop where I was helped out a back door and then through a warren of back alleys and houses/establishments to I THINK a place where I got a ride home. The details are fuzzy and confused these many years later. I might have grabbed a train leaving at that moment. I wasn’t exactly brave, understand, I just couldn’t stay quiet. Congenital inability.)
Anyway, this was an impressive illegal demonstration, with people packed tight in the central plaza. And then from one of the buildings above, someone let loose into the crowd with AK 47s. (At least two someones. I remember the sound vividly.)
A moment before the crowd had been mostly middle-aged people, most of them small business owners being squeezed by the policies of the far-left government then in power.
They were the kind of people who helped old ladies across the street, and took care of stray dogs. You know the type.
In that moment, as people fell somewhere in the middle of the crowd, and blood splattered, the crowd panicked. We were packed so tight that there was barely enough room for people to breathe in and out. We were sitting ducks.
Someone pushed. Someone started running.
I wouldn’t be here today if mom hadn’t had more experience than I had of these situations. Reason being, I was wearing high heel stiletto sandals. I was a runner (marathoner) when I was young, but not in sandals. I’d have fallen. Those who fell were trampled by this laid back, staid, very nice middle aged crowd. (As for the wisdom of wearing such footwear, let’s say I learned that day not to wear it where I might need to run.)
Mom didn’t try to run with the crowd. By main force, she gained a place near the wall and dragged me along, and flattened me against the wall, while the crowd ran by.
In my memory these aren’t even people, but something like an onrushing train. That’s what it felt like.
Besides the dead from the shots, there were people trampled on the steps to the underground crossing. I want to say seven, but my memory is not what it was and seven seems low for the size of the crowd.
I’ve been having images of that crowd as I read the nonsense my colleagues pull out to condemn Amazon and justify Hatchette, even though Amazon, while being a business, offers them opportunities Hatchette doesn’t. Even though Amazon offers them the opportunity to escape the truly abusive model of traditional publishing. (Not saying Amazon is perfect, and it could use competition, but with all its faults it’s miles above Hatchette. And btw, more on this dispute here and here.)
They’re in a panic.
If you’ve never done anything but traditional publishing, I know how scary it is to contemplate going indie. I KNOW. I was terrified.
And if you’ve been well treated by traditional publishing, you have a lot more income to replace, and indie is proportionally more scary. Not just because it’s giving up income even, but because it’s giving up STATUS. Used to be if you were traditionally published, you’d achieved something, you’d run the gauntlet, you could be proud of yourself, and superior to those newbies who simply paid to have their book printed.
It was credentials, not achievement, but in a field that paid almost nothing and where writers got no respect, it was something hard achieved and hard fought for.
Now we see newbies push in and make money we can only dream of.
Do you know the average income of a SFWA member used to be 3k? It’s probably lower now. I usually clocked in at close to ten times that, by writing an amazing amount. It took its toll.
Now I know self-published people making that in a month with a couple of books out and without even trying.
I embrace this, because if they can, so can I. But then I was never one for status. If it was status I wanted, I’d have stayed in Portugal where by virtue of birth and connections I could have claimed some without having to do anything.
But my more conventional colleagues feel the loss of status, fear the loss of income and panic.
Under this go the several SFWA witch hunts and calls for ideological purity (too late. We’re out and running.) The inane denunciations of self-publishing as reactionary, and whatever in holy heck Damien Walters is flapping his lips about at the moment. If he even knows.
Panic. Frothing, spittle-flecked panic.
This explains the bizarre screeds I’ve read in the last year from some of my colleagues who were, yes, left, but always urbane, decent people.
They see others’ careers collapse and they don’t feel secure, and they’re running for that underground passage, pushing and trampling everyone in their path, thinking of nothing but their own safety and saving themselves.
Gee. I’m glad Baen and indie pulled me, and I’m standing here against the wall, watching the crazy rush go by.
But I’m also a little worried.
You see, writing wasn’t the first field hit by this. That was music. Catastrophic, rapid, technology change did a number on that. But music is also different, requiring more equipment, more practice hours to do even bottom level. Also it has a reputation for difficulty. So it got off lighter, I think.
The panic in writing seems to me more widespread and visible. But maybe that’s because I’m not a musician, I don’t know.
On the other hand, what I do know is that the fields set to be hit by the catastrophic change stick are even wider and more visible, including to the average person, than writing: teaching. News (already under the stick.)
We tend to think of these things as good things, because they’ll free us from the dead hand of Marx guiding those fields. And so it is a good thing, just like indie is by and large a good thing. But we don’t think of the “reaction” to rapid change. (It might interest El Grauniad to know that “reactionary” doesn’t mean as they seem to think “right wing” or “individualist.” It, in fact, means “in reaction to change.” Of course, progressives thought the change would always be in their direction, and neither recognize that they’ve taken the positions of power and are, therefore, the establishment, nor that change is now taking us the other way, away from the concentrated power of the industrial age. And that they are the reactionaries, trying to hold on to their conventional power and stave the change. For instance, our current government is not just profoundly reactionary, but if you look in the dictionary there will be a picture of them under “reactionary.”)
Imagine the craziness of SFWA spread out over every school in the land. Imagine the insanity of calling for ever more left solutions coming from every newspaper. (Yeah, yeah, how would you tell the difference? Indeed.)
Imagine as other industries get hit by this – they will, even manufacturing to an extent, and retail is already getting hit because of online shopping.
We’re in for interesting times. Keep your powder dry, or to quote Heinlein (and metaphorically, though it’s also a good idea literally) “Always keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.”
We are the forces for change, the ones on the side of a technology that for the first time since the industrial revolution empowers the individual and is targeted to the individual.
It’s going to get all sorts of fun, and some otherwise urbane people are going to turn into foaming-at-the-mouth panic monsters. Some people will get trampled.
Get rid of those stiletto heel sandals now. You can run better barefoot.
And be ready. The crazy times are here, but the crazy times will pass.
In the end, we win, they lose.
According To Hoyt 
Boots. This is one of the reasons I always wear combat boots. Usually with steel toes. Makes it easier to keep ones feet when the crowd shifts and goes nuts.
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I speculate we’re struggling through a couple-few kinds of change and disruption and this results in a masking effect.
The digital revolution continues unabated, and the areas of impact are spreading rapidly. But there’s also a great deal of uncertainty related to politics and government, a disruption whose ripples are crossing the digital with increasing frequency. There’s also significant social shuffling taking place, and many standby ideas (college, home-ownership, long-term employment) are getting disconcertingly queasy.
I think there’s more, but this is a nebulous newborn thought. I ask myself frequently how much of the disconcerting feeling of modern society is the subjective impression of age-old patterns (a fair bit) and how much results from standing on a narrow board atop a rickety tower with multiple agencies swapping boards out of the structure wily-nily and with competing goals.
Guess I just need to surf this board as well.
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I have worked in a field that required very, very rapid change, in unpredictable scope and unpredictable amounts. It paid very well, with great benefits, but tended to burn out a lot of folks anyway. I came to the conclusion that people in general do not deal well with change when they’re exhausted, sick, scared, tired, or feeling unable to control their immediate environment. Most folks want a predictable system that they can work – and they’d rather stay with the predictable old system and try to cheat it for personal benefit than deal with a new system that changes to make life better for everyone.
They’ll say otherwise, but after the third, or fourth, or twentieth change, some just hit a mental wall and the thoughts shut down while the emotions blew up.
The survivors tended to be people who 1.) had a strong sense of self that wasn’t tied to the job, 2.) had a strong internal compass and morals, 3.) took care of their physical and mental health.
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Oh, I KNOW I suck at #3. I’m trying to improve, okay?
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Hey, I took care of my mental and physical health as much as I could, and there were still days I had to walk up to my boss and say “I’m burning out. I’m going on vacation for the next two days.”
To his credit, his response was “Ok. Leaving now or not coming in tomorrow?” Because it was just that kind of job.
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Heh, I’ve worked those type of jobs, usually you worked until you were so dog tired you couldn’t see straight, and then worked for four more hours. But the ones I worked you were always working piecework (or more commonly working for yourself, and marketing your production) so the more you worked, the more you got paid. You knew you could quit any time you wanted, but there is always a deadline/quota. Sure you can make two months wages in a week, but you only got six weeks to work if you’re lucky. You can take those couple days off (and it is often a good idea/necessary) but know that for every three days you take off, you’ll have to find another way to earn a months worth of wages (usually by doing enough part time work to add up to a month) or tighten your belt up for the next year.
I like that kind of work, but most people can’t handle the uncertainty (and with a family it would be more difficult) nor can they handle budgeting six months to a year in advance. (I’ve done it for long enough that I don’t think about it, I don’t budget per say, I just know I need X dollars to make it until next June, if I’m a little under that, I know I’ll need to either pick up some part time work, or not buy that gun/four wheeler/etc., this year; in a couple months I know I’ll only need Y dollars to make it comfortably until June, so I’ll reevaluate and see if I am on track now, or if I need to tighten the belt another notch). The problem is that with the economy the way it has been, everybody has been tightening their belts, and it has been several years since I could make a living that way, it isn’t a question of working harder, I would gladly do that, it is that the market just isn’t there. I can still make close to the same day wage, I just can’t put enough days in. So you adapt, you find other markets, you find part time work, you do something to fill in the gaps; it’s either that or you quit the high paying but unreliable work, and take a 9-5 job that will earn you a reliable living.
Guess what most people choose?
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The problem is that so many people have chosen reliable 9-5 work scheduling in a world that only has a limited number of those jobs that they’ve glutted that marketplace. This is why the unreliable work tends to pay so well but we train against it, and K-12 education is major training for this.
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I’m pretty wedded to the idea of having a reliable drudge work. Part of the reason is the SAD, because of that I have failed most of my life when it comes to anything which requires more than getting there on time and then just doing something which does not demand that I think. I’m scared to death of trying anything more challenging since I can’t no longer really believe I might succeed in anything like that, not long term. One bad winter, and that’s that. And I’d be doing not very good work even on the best winters.
But since the type of drudge jobs I can do well throughout the year tend to pay low and anybody can do them, well, when I started to do them the job situation was good and I was healthy so then there was a lot of demand for people willing to work them and I could do them easily, and for several years I did not have a permanent one since I could always find a new one when I needed it (was still trying to study during those years, I’d work when I could do both, and try to just study in winter). Now… if I lose the one I’m working at now there are no guarantees I’ll find anything else ever. Bad job situation, enough people willing to do even those jobs, they can pick and choose and of course they choose young and healthy every time over older and not healthy.
And I no longer have the nerve to jump unless I have a safety net, which means I am probably tied down to the point which stops me from improving my life since even if I were to get a chance I probably would not take it if it required leaving this place and my current job (which should be at least sort of certain for at least a decade, or close to a decade, more, if my health doesn’t get any worse). I am too damn scared of the probable failure, I have had too many of those.
I suppose my best chance really is something like writing, or any other form of self-employment I could manage while also working the job I have now. And which does not demand that I can work well also through the winter.
Reliable is in high demand when the job situation gets bad. And reliable also gets more in demand as people get older. And now we have both – more older people, bad economy. People are running scared. Unfortunately that also means that more of them are going to back anybody who promises more security, whether it’s stopping employers from firing them at will or comfortable level of social security if they do drop out or whatever. Security when things are uncertain trumps warnings that striving for a certain security will only make things worse (or often even undeniable proof), too often even with those people who may believe those warnings.
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I worked on a job that we had six people who were on call twenty-four hours a day. Plus we got several service calls usually in the middle of the night. We burned out quickly. I began taking a two day vacation every three months. The hubby and I would stay in a hotel and just relax. That was the only way I could keep going. I decided afterwards that I just didn’t have the stamina for a job where officers felt you had to come in all the time. They liked to page you between 12 midnight and 4 a.m. in the morning. We hated having that pager.
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I had some of that kind of job as well – working 12 hour days and being on call when you weren’t there in person. I was toast at the end of four years of this, and pretty well resolved at that point to do everything I could do to avoid working in that career field again.
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Did something similar while I was working in Iraq. 12-18 hour days, 7 days a week and on-call otherwise. But there were other things, subtle and not, making that job a burner.
Prime example of the cumulative nature of stressors, though.
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Yep – I enjoyed the career field, but the on-call time was a bear. And you weren’t able to relax when you were on-call
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I had that kind of job for a while – this was before cell phones became common (and affordable) so I had to carry a pager. The job payed well, and had a fair amount of responsibility, but it got wearing to the point that years after I left that job I resisted carrying a cell phone because I didn’t want that feeling of always being leashed and available.
I must have been a slow learner, because for a dozen years after that I worked in jobs where instead of being reachable by phone I needed to be ready to travel to customers (usually in different countries) on a few hour’s notice – and stay there for as long as necessary. A fun job in some ways, and very interesting, but the constant uncertainty can wear you down. Along with the guilt for being a third of the way around the world when your kid needs an appendectomy.
Even though I’m working in the same general tech field, my current job’s very regular schedule feels like sinful luxury in comparison. And yes, the closer I get to retirement age (a dozen years or more out now – but it’s starting to feel like a real thing) the more “predictability” trumps “opportunity”, especially if you have responsibilities to meet.
The thing to remember is that even the most “predictable” regular job . . . isn’t. The company can go belly up, they can close the office you work in, the industry itself can change, you can be fired/laid off . . . the security and predictability is often more apparent than real. For the successful ( “successful”?) in traditional publishing I think the illusions are starting to tatter, but it must be tempting to believe that if they close their eyes and believe *really* hard that everything will be OK again. After all, it worked for Tinkerbelle, right?
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Oh, yes – I worked at a number of jobs after “retirement” which turned out to be on shaky ground. One was the classical music CD mail-order place (I did data entry for their internet catalog) which, on the spur of the moment, decided to relocate to another state. The only person they took with them was the office manager. I was not the office manager. Then there was the consultancy which dealt in intellectual properties – we dealt with inventors, securing provisional patents, and setting themselves up to market to manufacturers. That one bit the dust as part of the fallout from 9/11 – and I was the office manager. I wound up basically clearing out the files, overseeing closing the office, fulfilling the work to the last of our clients. And then there was the teeny one-man computer repair, maintenance and training organization. I did office work for him twice a week; he was a friend, he taught me all I know about computers and marketing. Sweet guy – this didn’t feel so much like a job as it did hanging out with some cool high school friends. His little company was run out of his home. I came to work one morning, and found that he had died of a massive heart attack sometime the night before. (And … he was gay, too. Guess who sanitized the place before his family came for the funeral. Well, they KNEW, but … yeah. There is stuff that you really don’t want the family to see.)
Out of a job, and short of a good friend in one swell foop. But I could never, ever go back to working for a huge corporate enterprise. I’d rather work for small and nimble.
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Where I work there was an app that had one (?!) person listed as the contact and we were to page no matter what the time. Still felt guilty paging him at 2am.
Fortunately there are now some people in Australia we can page so the other guy doesn’t get woken up all the time.
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2 a.m. is excessive unless it is a real good reason. The AF would check one of their boards between 2 and 3 in the morning so we got a call every day at 2 a.m. until one of the techs showed him how to turn off and on the power, which usually gave us another hour or so of sleep.
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I worked one of those jobs in the Air Force. We had five people to cover 24/7. NONE of us did as well as we could, because we were all burned out after the first month. That was the only job I’ve ever worked where I didn’t know what I’d be working three days ahead of time. Between the five of us, we’d AVERAGE 80 hours of overtime a week. I stayed the longest (2 1/2 years), but ALL of us burned out — some after only six months. It wasn’t until the unit commander got chewed out by HIS boss that things changed. The stress from that assignment is probably why I have some of the physical problems I have today.
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Every once in a long while there’s a revenge of the nerds. Senor NCO’s (juniors were excused for the purpose) manning a listening post in Berlin when that was behind the Curtain once woke the Secretary of Defense O’dark hundred DC time with a we’re going to war priority to say they couldn’t handle the new stress on top of the old stress and were likely to make mistakes.
Worked but the circumstances were unusual.
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I came to the conclusion that people in general do not deal well with change when they’re exhausted, sick, scared, tired, or feeling unable to control their immediate environment.
Yes, I know that feeling.
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Well, that’s odd. That last comment went to moderation, even though it had no links. Wonder if this one will, too?
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no. And NO IDEA why that happened.
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Well, time to blame WordPress, obviously. :-)
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At least once a day.
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There’s a reason why she doesn’t’ put a pretty picture in every post. My blog is structured that way, and half the time I can’t label the photos without inline text. Don’t get me started about WP.
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Might be akismet. I finally got a response from them after filling out a form and can finally post again. 3 posts on 3 different blogs I comment on w/Wordpress account and the comments aren’t vanishing as soon as I hit post.
(*rushes around yelling “I’M ALIIIIIIIIVE!!! ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVEEE!!!!”*)
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Found myself in a discussion about this in another blog this morning. Someone, I suspect a shill for tradpub, remarked that should Amazon destroy the traditional publishers it would become a monopoly and abuse writers as bad or worse than what they now get from most of the major publishers. My initial thought was “strawman much?” but what I wrote was more of a practical nature:
Traditional publishers had a monopoly because they controlled the infrastructure. The creation of e-books gave birth to an alternative to paper, thus destroying the monopoly.
Amazon brought a new business model and an existing internet presence to the table. Anyone could come along and duplicate what Amazon has, true with some expense and effort, but without any resource that Amazon controls.
As a perfect example already in place just look at Baen Webscriptions, a niche market serving primarily SFF, but quite successful and totally independent of either Amazon or the dead tree folks.
Full disclosure, Toni cut a deal with Amazon a while back which opened Baen access to a greater market, but forced some changes to Webscriptions. Good business move, but it is a qualifier to my “totally independent” statement above.
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I read that article; I wanted to respond, nastily, but remarks were already closed. The thing is, every argument was predictable nad, of course, she mentioned no contrasting points.
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advances in CNC and 3D printing are starting to do this sorts thing to manufacturing. As time goes on the tech is getting cheaper, and more and more uses are coming about (Like Jay Leno using a 3d printer to make molds for car parts that often were onesies, or on some parts, the printed bit itself is the new part), and others are making the things out of spares, or old tools and converting them (Like some of the things made by Jake von Slatt)
****and I wandered off to check something to move my point along, and Wham!!! Squirrel! WTFOMGBBQ and 4 hours later I notice I had a post reply going…Where it was going I now have not a clue … 4 hours****
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oh, only 3 hours…that is sooooo much better.
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Yep, now you got another hour to kill that you didn’t realize you had. :)
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Last month I was looking at a heat-glue binder for the perfect-bound books. Combined with a high-end printer and guillotine and sufficient patience you could pop out books as fast as you can print them. Book printing used to require a warehouse full of equipment and the need to print runs of thousands, now I could run it from the back bedroom and print to orders for under $2000 for equipment. The bottleneck would be writing and marketing.
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Bob, you’re talking about a small one man print to order business. How many indie e-book only authors would not want a small private run of say anywhere from a dozen to a hundred or so of their books done up right and proper. Not even to sell, so no real need to cut corners. Charge a standard setup fee then incremental cost per book.
I have a hunch that once word got out your bottleneck would be handling all the orders by yourself.
Will again stress a point I’ve been trying to make for weeks now. As an indie author you do not have to go it alone and do everything yourself. Every service once supplied by a traditional publisher can now be bought by the yard, from copy edit, to cover art and layout, to small print runs.
Best I understand it, Sarah does it all herself, and that seems to work for her, but for someone without her exceptional skill mix why beat yourself up doing the other stuff when you could be productively writing your next best seller?
What I’m trying to get across is that you or someone with your skill set could develop a nice little business based on small run print to order. If as I suspect you also aspire to be a published author, do that as a separate endeavour.
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A little digging turns up a half dozen places with menus ranging from “send us the file, we’ll send you a box-o-books” (and a steep bill) to fully a la cart, and more people are trying to find more services to help indie authors. Cover art? Marketing? Formatting? Concept editing? It’s all out there. And those are just the formal businesses. Who knows how many people barter alpha reads or copy edits for cover art or help with the Meatgrinder.
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Well, I was looking at the cost of binding field-manual type guides on equipment for re-enactors for a friend, and that sort of thing has an unusual binding, a distictive size and a captive audience that would have good word of mouth. But yes, new tech has freed us from depending on a centralized printing service.
The hard part is advertising, though. I suppose it comes back to covers, but, when I was in high school I could go to the store and nab a DAW with a yellow spine and know it was probably decent at worst. Nowadays I can do the same looking for the Baen logo, but if I’m on Smashwords, which of the 5000 titles should I spend money on? (besides yours)
The magazines gave good exposure to the writers and the publishing houses supposedly only printed good stuff. That has all appears to have been peed in now, but I wonder if there isn’t a niche open for short story collections set up in the manner of Analog or IF for Indies and sold on ebook vendors.
(for the record, I love me a short story. They fit my lunches and breaks wonderfully)
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We are way past the pee stage, that was more typical of the “good old days” back when many a SF magazine’s policy was payment on threat of lawsuit. Why did you think they called them the golden days of SF.
Today and by all accounts for several years past the traditional publishers appear to have adopted a policy of not only serfdom but of crapping in the serf author’s bowls of gruel just to show who’s the boss.
IMHO the market is crying for someone to come up with a reader’s recommended guide. Amazon makes an attempt, but I know they have issues. Just for grins I picked up a copy of Locus the other day, and read with some interest their book review section. None of the books mentioned had the slightest appeal for me. I can say much the same for the reviews in Analog, once one of my favorite monthly pleasures, but dropped years ago when they executed a hard left turn.
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I had been thinking of an online, reader-friendly newspaper for local news (basically a collector of local news from the small weeklies) where you bought a subscription ahead of time and each article you read had a set amount deducted from your subscription (like a pay-as-you-go phone) until you ran out of money and had to buy another subscription. I wonder if that could be adapted to an online sci-fi webzine. $10.00 subscription to start and you might be tempted to spend $.75 on an 18 page short story.
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In addition to Baen there are a number of smaller publishers. The one I’m most familiar with is The Pragmatic Bookshelf (www.pragprog.com). They publish software development titles, and even offer a discount for buying both the paper and electronic books. They’ll send your book to Amazon, or put it on Dropbox, or both, and email you if there’s a revision — and in some cases you can buy the book before it’s published and as the author hands in revisions, you get them…
Oh, and RPGnow and its relatives — and SJG’s Warehouse 13 — and…
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In the comments to one of the previous postings someone pointed out that more and more jobs are becoming contract only. I think that is going to start being a large driving force. If you need something, say 2000 lines of code or a new dress or a widget built to spec (think 3D printer) you simply put an RFP out and see who comes back. When the ACA passed and the employer mandate’s implications became clear, I had a thought about building a web site that would allow people to do just that. Turns out someone beat me to it. The market place would end up determining who is competent and who isn’t. And that would cause MASS dislocation and panic.
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Oh, yeah. My husband says we’re seeing the end of the “job” as we’ve known it.
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Relying on a single source of income (job) is going the way of the Dodo. We are moving into the self-employeed jack of all trades.
I do believe we are heading for interesting times.
Am I crazy for thinking it will be fun.
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oh, for us adrenaline junkies, it will be. If I didn’t have kids, I’d be doing fine.
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Oh, I’ve been doing that for simply years – multiple small jobs, some of which come out of the clear blue. The funny thing is – at the end of the month there is always enough plus a little – but it’s never predictable. My odds of ever getting a car or home loan are practically nil, because … no regular income as the banks and credit unions understand it.
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That’s going to be a bigger and bigger problem going forward. Someone is either going to form a credit union for people with lumpy-bumpy income or figure out how to assess the credit worthiness of said people. Estimating risk is one of the fun parts of finance.
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One problem with a job market with no regular jobs are people like me – could reliably do physical drudge jobs when young, but is getting too old for that, is not necessarily reliable for anything else (and has not much of a work history with anything else).
Personally, I may not be totally sunk because my head does work at times, it’s just not reliable all the time. So maybe I can figure out something. But what about those people who really aren’t any good for anything but the simple physical stuff which does not require much of any kind of brain power, especially when they get older? There are those who do not have the inventiveness and the drive to survive as self-employed, at least not well, and once they get older or for some other reason develop problems which make them less desirable as manual workers not that many will be willing to hire them as new workers, especially if the times are such that there are enough younger, healthier people competing for the same jobs.
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pohjalainen, in the warm-body democracy that is the US, the people in your last paragraph will trade the one thing they have of value, their vote, to any party that promises minimum security. It’s already happened. See Barack Obama.
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And that is one of the strengths of the left, they do know how to exploit scared people. And it’s easier when those people are scared for a valid reason (and never mind what made that reason valid, most people worry about the future starting from what is now, not might have beens).
Should try to figure out something to offer that group which might sound at least almost as good, or at least make them feel good about that offer – again, that is the game where the left excels, sounding good, making scared people feel good. They may not deliver much in reality, but they sure can make it sound as if they really, really care about you and are really, really trying.
Guys, the solutions you usually talk about are good ones, but they are good ones for people like most of the group here is – smart, and at least fairly well educated. But when it comes to politics, if you want to win you should think of ways to get in as many as possible of all groups.
See Barack Obama.
(Okay… maybe all legally countable groups, I don’t think I’d want to advocate going completely overboard when fishing for supporters. But I think our side should perhaps try to do more fishing in general, however much that may be against most of our natures. Like sometimes maybe trying to figure out what might work as a good lure for the definitely stuck in menial jobs -people. Even if you then use it only on some internet forum debates. Any little bit may help.)
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Yeah, we’re working on that transition. Dan will keep his job as long as he can, and hopefully till the kids are out, but after that we’ll be writers and programmers and jacks of all trades of fortune. (Which sounds much better than scrounging.)
Part of the reason that, as soon as there’s time, I’m going back to get art classes. Because that’s ANOTHER stream of income.
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Diversification goals are a large part of my stress load, these days. Time-suck, that’s what they are.
I fear they are necessary, though, very necessary.
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Here too. It’s what blocks me. The constant feeling I should be doing three other things.
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YES!!
This and knowing that even as I juggle — something’s gonna drop. Speaking of which, I need to go…
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I own the scrounding label. Scrounging is fun. (I’m not quite sane,too!)
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“The funny thing is – at the end of the month there is always enough plus a little – but it’s never predictable. My odds of ever getting a car or home loan are practically nil, because … no regular income as the banks and credit unions understand it.”
Yep, this is why I built my house and paid cash for it, and paid cash for every vehicle I have ever owned. Well and the fact that if I saved up and paid cash, I had the piece of mind of not having any monthly payments that I HAD to earn enough money to make.
On the other hand I have had the same visa for years, and they keep upping my credit. The mind boggles that I have a $35,000 credit line on a visa (that started out at $500) yet would be incapable of obtaining a $1000 loan for a beater car.
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Except for the house we pay cash for EVERYTHING.
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So what’s the best bet for those of us who aren’t adrenaline junkies?
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That’s what I’m trying to figure out…Constant change makes me sick and tense at the best of times, but while raising five kids? The end of the “job” is terrifying to me.
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My sympathies. I worry for my siblings, nephews and nieces but I have no children of my own.
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Valium?
Okay, bad joke. I really don’t have an answer, as an adrenaline junky and someone who gets bored easily I know my choices aren’t for most people. But even so I need down time, of course much of what I do on my down time, most would not consider relaxing, but like most junkies I find I relax best with a limited amount of my addiction of choice. :) And I still do better with the occasional pure ‘zone-out’ relaxation period.
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Seriously? Learn a skill that is always in demand in the service industry. There is always work for plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and such. My youngest has a night job with a major retailer unloading their delivery trucks and restocking shelves. It’s steady work and comes with benefits. On the side he paints apartments in a college town, so very constant and reliable turnover, and he only paints them between renters, so minimal aggravation on each job. He could easily grow his business, but choses to keep it a one man operation because he cannot stand the idea of being someone’s boss. His wife runs an in home day care and always has a waiting list. They are doing quite well for themselves by working hard and providing services that are needed.
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If I had known 30 years ago where we would be, I wouldn’t be in IT; I’d be a plumber. Of course, while they can’t outsource plumbing work to Bangalore, they can and are importing people to glut that market as well.
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So our plumbing will be done by people who couldn’t perform to the standards of Guatemala, so hoofed it out of there?
Great.
Gotta buy that farm.
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Or not.
Meant to link this earlier:
http://www.centerforamerica.org/
College isn’t the only answer.
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Call center work is returning to the US due to customer dissatisfaction with both accent and the inherent disconnect in communication caused by differing perspectives. Foreign nationals simply don’t think the way we do, partly due to language, but mostly background. Not slamming foreigners, an American in their country has the same difficulties.
My kid regularly gets outbid on those apartment painting jobs. A couple of weeks to at most three months and the apartment managers are begging him to come back. Fast quality reliable service still matters. Nothing wrong with cheap for throw away consumables, but for things that you rely on to hold up over time, you eventually learn that cheap brings a false economy.
Get a new roof put on your home. I can almost guarantee that the crew will be primarily hispanic, but the sales agent, the shift foreman, and the quality sign off inspector will be solidly America. He may very well be of hispanic ancestry, but will have a long term US history.
Immigration is a good thing, we built this country on it. But when the rate escalates to the point where the newcomers do not have the time or incentive to acculturate is when the system breaks down. Add in the illegal aspect which fosters criminal behavior and hinders acculturation and we find ourselves in the situation we have today.
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If you have a decent-sized personal or professional network, leverage your network. Work out spiffs/finder’s fees for referrals to those of us who are crazy enough to work for ourselves. For example, [shameless plug] our family’s small business technology company will pay 5% commission for successful referrals, and we’re in your area now. [/shameless plug] There are lots of others out there, too.
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Crazy? Probably.
:P
Humans crave a certain amount of stability in their lives. That’s one of the reasons why totalitarian governments can come to power. “We’ll protect you and keep you safe from all of the dangerous uncertainty out there!” And, well, there’s a reason why a lot of people would rather have a steady job with steady and known income every year, instead of constantly work freelance and wonder where the next check is going to come from.
There’s actually an article that I just read that touches on this. One of the former big-wigs at Omni is apparently living on a small (35 acre, iirc) piece of land following the collapse of Omni, and then the collapse of the freelance market. So currently he’s living on the plot of land, which was intended to eventually house a summer home, in an upgrade barn, with his mentally ill wife, attempting to balance the work he does to put food on the table (i.e. work the land he has access to with non-motorized tools), and the work he does to bring in extra money (i.e. his freelance work).
He admits that some of this is a self-imposed challenge (he wants to see if he could live like people did 1000 years ago, and he also realizes that he could probably find work if he moved back to the city), but it’s still a reminder of just how fragile things can get for people when key pieces of stability are removed.
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Junior,
Security vs. Liberty
Stability vs Freedom
A continuum.
What did Ben Franklin have to say about this?
I find a measure of security in the knowledge that if I lose everything tomorrow, I’ll be OK. I’ll just start over. Will it suck? You bet, but it will not be the End of the World.
The thing about those who seek security or stability over liberty or freedom is that you just end up at the mercy of what ever you get dependent on to provide your sense of security.
I should know my biggest enemy right now is complacency. I got to compfortable for to long. Working on breaking out of my comfort zone.
:-)
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Josh,
Balancing both is the key. Anyone who goes whole hog for one or the other is, imo, a fanatic who should be avoided. Recognizing that too much of one is just as bad as too much of the other is the key.
And *you* might be okay if you lose everything tomorrow. But will your spouse? Will your kids?
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Will your parents?
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Junior,
There seems to me to be a disconnect in that people seem to think freedom over security is advocating recklessness or no security at all.
Self-Reliance… Personal Responsibility.
The key words are self & personal.
In other words, who do you look to to provide your safety nets, redundancies and back up plans.
Yourself or the government?
Because if you are relieing on the government you are not the master of your own fate. No better off than a child relying on their parent to take care of them.
On that note I have no wife or children. But I do hope that when I do find someone to put up with me they’re not dependent on me for their livelihood. That they can stand on their own two feet if needed. I’m looking for a partnership not a one way power dynamic.
Kids start out as total dependent on their parents this should not be or turn into the permanent state of things. The goal I believe of parenting should be to teach kids to stand on their own. To not rely on their parents or turn the governmet into a serigate parent; which Junior, you have pointed out is a problem. (Families are in and of themselves a safety net, but one not to be relied on or turned to but in extreme measures. A last resort. Not the first option one turns too.)
The moral hazard of relying on others to provide your sefety nets is that people then tended to stop asking, what happens if this fails, and what then?
Plan for yourown future, and build in yourown safety nets and redundancies. Knowing no matter what the government tells you there are no guaranties in life but one.
;)
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P.S. A good read and good advice:
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On that note I have no wife or children. But I do hope that when I do find someone to put up with me they’re not dependent on me for their livelihood. That they can stand on their own two feet if needed. I’m looking for a partnership not a one way power dynamic.
If you insist that your wife not depend on you, you will not get a partner.
You’ll have a house-mate, but partners must rely on each other.
If your starting point is to require economic self-sufficiency at all times– which means that, if there are kids, your wife will also have to be able to provide for them without you– then don’t be surprised if they trim the dead-weight.
I believe that mindset of “women must be able to support themselves and their children at all times without their husband” is part of why marriage is so screwed up, along with the notion that the only contribution that matters is economic.
Depending on your spouse is not a “one-way power dynamic.” It’s two sides of an arch.
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Foxfier,
Fair points, and could be why I haven’t found someone.
I do believe that both partners need to be able to stand on theirown, but to come together to be greater stronger than on thier own.
Point: the widow/er that finds thems list because the other one took care of that.
I wasn’t trying to advocate apartness or separateness, but do believe that the ability must be their if the worst case happens that the other can go on. A safety net if you will.
But you could be right that right be why I’m alone.
Shit :( I might have trust issue that need to be worked on.
I’ll give this more thought. Thanks.
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But you could be right that right be why I’m alone.
Shit :( I might have trust issue that need to be worked on.
I’ll give this more thought. Thanks.
And to make it more depressing– if you just jump in and decide to trust the wrong person, you’re even more screwed. (My little sister found that out the hard way, along with countless other men and women.)
It is hard to trust someone that much– and it’s hard to find someone you can trust. Part of why my husband and I tell folks to be friends before you date. (Advice from his grandparents that he followed only after trying everything else.)
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Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.
:-)
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You need a teaching circuit. No sarcasm. There are many, many people that need to hear this, these days.
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But would they listen?
I’ve been thinking about this a LOT– don’t think I could make it much longer, although I did send a related one to Sarah a while back. I think this came out better.
Delicate topic.
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If you want to do a rewrite? We’ll get crucified, but that’s what this blog is for!
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*laughs* I probably should at least try. Things are a little crazy…..
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I can play guard dog, and we have a dragon! Not to mention wallabies, undead cats, and Kate Paulks…
I’d like to read it, for my little vote.
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Kate Paulks are of course, terrifying.
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Yes. I hesitate to mention Kate Paulks — but people deserve a warning. If they don’t listen…
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I don’t know how many would listen, but some of us do. And some of us are reminded of things we knew long ago but were buried under the modern BS.
And, maybe, there’s the slim possibility of hope.
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*wry* There’s always hope.
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Well from Eamon’s picture he looks like a heeler, and I tend to be a header, so if you need a dog to work both ends, I could probably play along.
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When I was single, I made plenty of money and lived just fine by myself. My husband also lived just fine by himself when he was a bachelor. Well, except for that whole heart attack right after we got engaged.
After the heart attack, he was completely dependent on me for food, tea, someone to drive him (up the wall.. no, wait!) to medical appointments. This was not a drag at all, because I didn’t view it as one of us supporting the other and doing all the work – it was about both of us making sure we did best as we could, together.
When I was out of work and commuting back and forth to Alaska to finish restoring my plane and fly it down to the new home, he never once complained about me not having a job. He never once accused me of letting him down by being gone for months at a time, working on an expensive project that he didn’t particularly care for. No, it was “I understand the plane’s important for you, love. Finish it as quickly as you can, because I miss you.”
See, marriage is a partnership. People who are not religious may cringe at “and the two shall become one”, but it’s true; one of the harder parts for both of us as strong-willed people has been learning to give up control and habits in order to work together for our combined health and happiness. It’s never going to be about me again, until I become a widow; it’s going to be about us.
If you can find someone who is willing to bring everything they have to the table, and you bring everything you have to the table, and pool it all together, then you’ll find you have the foundation for a marriage that will weather the hard parts, and not get shaken by “Well, I could do just as well on my own. Screw this, I’m outa here.” This isn’t just economics – it’s also emotional, spiritual, and physical.
Right now, I’m the one that works out of the house. I make less than I used to, before I quit my job to take care of my fiance, in the muggy hot misery of the southern summer. But you know, I have a man who wakes me up with a cuppa every morning I work, and packs my lunch, and cooks dinner for when I stagger in the door. And the love, caring, and emotional support mean that my life is far, far better than when I was living alone in a state that I liked a lot better.
In a few years, G-d willing, he’ll make enough from the books it’ll be truly optional whether I work or not. And if I quit in order to be his full-time assistant and don’t bring in cash, it won’t impact our relationship one bit. Because the income into the bank is to support both of us, not either one.
I hope that makes some sense to you, and helps.
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/amen
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Yes, Thank you.
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I had a professor once who said that partners in life were like cars. Some come with an engine and wheels. They can navigate their own course and get themselves where their going. Then there are the ones without engine but with wheels. They are happy to go along with you where ever you are going. Then there are the ones with no wheels and no engines. These are also referred to as anchors.
IMAO a good relationship is 50-50. Sometimes it’s 30-70 followed by 65-35 followed by 55-45, etc but by and large it averages out to 50-50. Granted, the definition of 50-50 is up to the participants in the relationship.
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Speaking as a life-long single guy (just turned 60) who likely won’t ever get married, I suspect it’s more like 100%-100% for a successful marriage. IE both people have to put 100% effort in making the relationship work.
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Yes, except it’s not an effort — it’s natural and what has to happen.
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Qualifier:
Sarah need? In a healthy realtion ship where bothsides are making an effort.
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+1
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(Who needs a button?)
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Byron,
I like that analogy. I guess I’m focusing on; some let that anchor drag them down because they don’t feel confident enough to sail with out it.
Foxfier,
What is the number one reason given by abused women for staying in abusive relationships?
Dependency and Codependency… and Abusers foster it. Whether it is a spouse or a government. Sometime there no fixing them and the best option is to cut your loses even if that means starting over. You don’t want to at the first signs of trouble, but some point enough is enough.
I’m here because I want to be here, quite liberating.
I hope your sister had the courage to get out and start fresh. Hopelessness of being/feeling stuck in a bad situation is not a good way to live. (IMO)
Where do we draw the line of when to work it out and when to cut and run is a personal choice. Having the confidence and skills to stand on your own, if need, helps give you that choice.
(Not to start the everyone has a Choice Argument again. ;-) )
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Josh,
That makes sense. The government is big on letting us know “You’ll never make it without me. You’re too stupid/lazy/incompetent/etc. I’m the best you’re going to get.” That does sound like an abusive relationship. Is there some way we can tell the gubmint “It’s not you, it’s me” and leave? I guess we can use the ballot box but we’re always afraid our next “Significant Other” will be worse than the one we have now. Maybe that’s why attack ads work.
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Byron,
That’s the 64 million dollar question.
My current thoughts are to push, advocate, self-sufficiency believing that their will be a tipping point where people stop turning to government and it just fades away.
Will this have the same effect on marriage? I hope not, but then again I’m single. So, maybe Foxfier has a point.
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“See, marriage is a partnership. People who are not religious may cringe at “and the two shall become one”, but it’s true; one of the harder parts for both of us as strong-willed people has been learning to give up control and habits in order to work together for our combined health and happiness. It’s never going to be about me again, until I become a widow; it’s going to be about us.”
Amen.
I know I have trust issues, and am selfish and can’t really imagine a woman worth having being willing to put up with me. But the main reason I am single is I know what I want and need in a woman, and what I am attracted to in one, and so far I haven’t met one where the two coincide; and I am unwilling to settle for less.
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I know I have trust issues, and am selfish and can’t really imagine a woman worth having being willing to put up with me.
Both my husband and I can’t figure out how the other has the major lack of taste to like us and the patience to put up with us…..
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we went through years of my making next to nothing, but I was taking all the household stuff off Dan’s hands, and in any emergency, I was the one who dropped the plans for the day and took kid/cat to vet; stayed up all night with someone sick, etc. I also refinished all our furniture and kept the house running. I think this is why married people do better economically. You can pivot to one or the other, as times require.
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That and hanging around in bars cherchez la femmes is a bit expensive …
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You took both your kids and cats to the vet? :)
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Duh. Have you met my kids?
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The pediatrician in the family and a vet were chatting and they decided that their patients are rather similar – small, wiggly, unable to communicate exactly what ails them, and prone to making messes on the exam table.
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And both are prone to biting, but parents often complain when you muzzle the child.
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Stability vs Freedom
A continuum.
What did Ben Franklin have to say about this?
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Franklin’s Contributions to the Conference on February 17 (III) Fri, Feb 17, 1775
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/quote04.htm
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The really frustrating part is that the regulatory infrastructure is going to beat us early adopters black and blue until whomever’s in charge pulls their head out and says, “crap: we just can’t keep on as we have been; time to change all the things to reflect reality.” If they do, given our current elite class and their complete inability to understand real life.
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This is the part threatening ulcers for me. The regulatory environment makes for a crappy transition.
General Note:
I got around to setting up the avatar account, and I went ahead and stuck the full name in there. But it’s still me, no new Eamon’s wandering in, as of yet.
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I see. Good thing, too. One Eamon is about all we can handle.
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Little ol’ me? Shucks.
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And I like the avatar.
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Thanks. He’s a good dog.
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Heh. I’m getting ready to create a new account to distance myself from work, so there’s less things they will take offense to, if someone says anything.
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Is there a howto on doing that?
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The avatar? I did mine through Gravatar which these days works through a WordPress account.
There are other agencies you can associate an ID/Avatar with, but I’m not sure which are supported here. I’ve had an account with Gravatar for a while, I just hadn’t gotten around to updating the more anonymous username.
Has worked for me so far, we’ll see if any of the tech security talents scream about the danger I’m in.
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Psssst. Eamon. Remember, no one’s supposed to know you’re a dog. ;)
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Ooo…I think I felt that one.
Inevitable,wasn’t it?
:D
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But he’s a CUTE dog. Scratches Eamon’s ears. “Is him a good goggie? Is him? Now, let me see if I have some good-doggie treats.”
(RUNS)
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Dogs are faster than authors. Just an advisory.
So, you’re running to get those treats, right? Right? ‘Cause I want some treats (bourbon flavored, of a preference). Really. Now’d be good. I mean, I can wait, but what about now? Or, if you prefer, now?
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Look! Squirrel!
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Squirrel! Outta my yard!! Stay out! Silly squirrel.
Where’s Sarah? There’s Sarah! Hey, Sarah! Why you running? Gonna get the treats? I like treats…
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Eamons don’t know it’s not bacon!
Scritches ears some more.
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:D :D
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I don’t know what my dog cornered under the bush in the backyard a few minutes ago, but it was definitely no squirrel.
It may have been a cat, from the way it hissed at her, but I think it would have run off when we came outside if it were. I think it may have been a groundhog. I decided to keep her away from it anyway.
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Opossum, perhaps. My dog hates ’em. Not sure what they ever did to him.
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I suspect dogs think they’re an offense against nature. But MY stupid (not really, she’s actually pretty smart) dog won’t just go in there and rip it into shreds and be done with it. No, she goes and barks, gets all up in its grill, then jumps back when it hisses and snaps (not last night, but in the past), then moves back in to bark, rinse and repeat until I get her to disengage and come back in the house.
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Yeah, part of the symbiotic process, maybe:
“Hey! Here it is! I found it, I found it! Come poke it with a stick so we can grill it!”
*
“What? I’m not going in there. Bite that thing? They’re nasty! Poke it with your stick and skin it. Then we can grill it!”
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Just as well if it’s really a Colorado River Toad (Bufo alvarius) or in other parts of the country Bufo Marinis.
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I think we’ll leave aside skinning that one.
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On top of that, predators respond to “threat behavior”. Apparently “threat behavior” gets them to think “is that prey worth attacking” (at least alone). If a pack predator sees prey or an intruder in his territory, he’ll respond to it but not attack if it shows “threat behavior”. He’ll likely “call for assistance” from other pack members (or pack leader) before attacking. Oh dogs tend to see their “humans” as pack leader.
By the way, I’ve enjoyed watching Lilly, my beagle, on walks. She’s notices “prey animals” and acts like she’s “pointing them out” to me. Part of it is that I think she’s aware of her leash and knows that if she goes after the squirrel, rabbit, etc that the leash will stop her. With squirrels there may be an element that she knows that she won’t catch them.
Oh, funny thing, we hear about “fighting like cats and dogs” but Lilly has basically ignored cats in the yard of our old house. Even when she’s off the leash.
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Yep. I get a kick out of parsing various behaviors between the dog and I, with what cuing is going on and what expectations are. There’s a very neat dynamic of “my role/your role” that my dog plays in various situations that’s just fun to see.
As you noted, being pack animals, they have an expectation of partnership in dealing with potentially dangerous critters, which has kept both of us out of trouble a time or two.
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“Dogs are faster than authors. Just an advisory.”
House in the neighborhood I used to live in has a sign in the yard. Behind said sign is a medium sized dog. Fluffy, friendly, brown and black blob of spit and doggie grins when she’s out and about. It’s a large yard, about an acre and a half wide or so.
Long about May some years back, there was talk of a prowler in the neighborhood. Then of a thief, presently. Some folk was like to get worried.
Woke up about two, two-thirty one morning to a bit of commotion down the way. Fluffy, brown and black blob had her a mouthful of bloody black trousers. Owner of the house had a twelve gauge pointed up at an old red oak in the yard. Old red oak had a guy in it, hole in his britches, yelling “Somebody call the cops!”
The sign in the yard says “I can make it to the fence in 2.7 seconds. Can YOU?”
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:D
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Want a chewbone Eamon?
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Nah, still trying to get little bits of the last one outta my teeth…
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Amen.
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No reason not to go ahead and build it. How many job search sites are out there?
I used to support a website that did the same thing for printers and their customers. Plenty of market out there.
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yep.
Meanwhile Atlas continues to juggle. Husband and I have three “jobs” each, and son looks to be going same way.
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:) I would except my current job would call it a conflict of interest. (Oh, and I’m too busy. And now isn’t a good time. And… And… And… There is nothing in the world as addicting as a steady paycheck.)
The site I know of that is like it is taskrabbit dot com but I think they mainly do services. Mine could be services but could be more tangible things like a sweater knitted to spec or a design for a motherboard.
Oddly enough, a buddy of mine’s dad almost convinced us to develop a remote back up system for small businesses about 15 years ago. We could have been at the leading edge of Cloud computing but were too dumb (or scared) to jump on it.
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I’d ask how busy someone can be, but I started something over a year ago that I thought would take a month, and haven’t been able to finish it yet.
In a partial defense, I once threw out my work as looking totally unprofessional, and tried to do it using existing standard platforms, but then could not make them work the way I wanted, so went back to making it from scratch, which is slowly getting somewhere, but life keeps getting in the way.
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The RFP sounds great…
until you start dealing with follow-up support…
iirc, one of the reasons why Word Perfect moved so quickly to dominate the early Word Processor market was because they offered a 1(800) support line.
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That would have to be part of the RFP. And I figured we’d hold cash in escrow until the receiving party is happy. Lots of ways to do it (and make money holding other people’s cash).
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“until the receiving party is happy.”
Now there’s a measurement of deliverability. Define happy. Because the receiving party will be happy milking you for as much free labor as possible.
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Rumor says early days there was a <Mail Merge Couch at Microsoft Support. Folks knew they’d be on the phone a long long time dealing with Mail Merge and were encouraged to make themselves comfortable.
I was involved with a very expensive very poorly managed sort of Star Wars project that was being done with no single prime and very little coordination between major software, hardware and other hardware people.
It was perfectly possible to write a reasonable sounding specification and get something that met the specification perfectly so pay me and by the way this won’t do what you think it will do don’t use it – in some cases would kill people if used as supplied – answer.
Mostly a matter of unstated assumptions common to a group with tribal knowledge assuming another group shared the unstated assumptions. Sort of like finding a custom titanium fabricator who one week makes a fancy wastebasket for hi tech office styling, then a bicycle bottom end then a manifold to exhaust corrosive beyond normal experience end products from a chemically pumped laser without getting another Bhopal.
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I once wrote a program to spec, watched them up it into production — I could check the DB and see they were using it — and got back no complaints about issues.
It was scary.
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How long did it take for your fingernails to grow back?
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I hope you enjoyed the moment because it will never happen again. It’s like winning the lottery except you just wonder “What did I miss?”
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Today, such support can be farmed out to 3rd party support groups without much difficulty. See above where I said I supported a site like that for printers.
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Except that from the sound of things, you’re talking about a custom-designed piece of software for one specific client. Hiring a 3rd party to provide support for what might very well be a unique piece of spaghetti code doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence.
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Oh, I didn’t realize you were talking about the contractor. For some reason, I thought you were talking about the website. Oops.
Contractors typically have to deal with such things, and as Byron said, it would be part of the RFP, and the contract. Usually, there is some amount of time stipulated for the customer to get the support as part of the original contract, and then they have to pay for it.
But thinking about third-party custom software support… I actually work with a couple of guys who could probably make a killing doing that.
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I was thinking something simple like a fully defined java class that has to work with a pre-defined junit test in order to get paid. Test driven development would work well in this case.
Once you start getting up to the packaged app point, yeah, you need full time support. Unless you give it away for free like open source.
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In other words, we’re reverting to the old status quo. A few centuries ago, while it was acknowledged that some people worked for wages — they were supposed to be the young — the normal way was to sell what you did, including taking commissions, which is what a contract is. A mature person worked for himself, was married, and lived in his own home (in theory), and there were grave debates about whether working for wages was a form of dependence too grave to allow a functional democracy.
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yep.
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Heinlein was right. Welcome to the Crazy Years. . . .
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Those who fell were trampled by this laid back, staid, very nice middle aged crowd.
The type of folks in a crowd only matters if there’s something they can do to avoid you– by the time anyone could SEE the fallen, they’d be on top of them; if you’re tight, an tiny bit of pressure for each person can translate into a HUGE pressure at the front. (that’s what causes Christmas Special deaths– the human that’s next to something that doesn’t give, like a wall, gets crushed instead of transmitting the push forward)
We went to visit relatives in Kansas in the mid 90s and had a similar experience when a flash-flood level thunderstorm started half an hour before it was supposed to end.
We were with a pregnant cousin, and her (huge) husband went to get the car shortly before the water started going and people started stampeding.
We weren’t as tightly packed as you mention, but people couldn’t see– mom saw what was happening and did the same as your mom, dragged all three pre-teen kids and the 8 month pregnant lady to the side of a building, then stood there grabbing people and pulling them into the same lee of the human flood that we were in. (I think there was a tree near a building? I was looking at the water in the gutters– nothing to six inches in maybe two minutes.)
Three or five folks died.
Mom’s lesson for us from that was to treat crowds like water– people can’t choose to fix things, so you must act like it’s just a flow and get behind shelter. Be careful the shelter can’t become a hazard itself, too.
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Trying to leave Stefansdom (St. Stephen’s Cathedral) in Vienna after the ten AM Christmas Day Mass by the main doors, as people were streaming in for the next mass. Big mistake. I’m not claustrophobic, but it made me very tense, and I could see how if someone slipped, or someone panicked, that would have been that. When I went to the St. Stephen’s Day Mass, I came and went by the side doors without any difficulty at all.
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This is the second reason why I avoid crowds.
Scammers, pick pockets, thieves, bullies, and cops is number one.
Plus, in my life I’ve seen too many experts who were only good at convincing people they were experts.
Crowds, conventional wisdom, authority figures who needs that?
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I just looked at the Kindle books I’ve bought in the last 12-18 months. Almost all indie or Baen. My husband sometimes buys tradpub on Kindle, mysteries & suchlike, but as I show him other authors, he is making the redshift (heh). As for deadtree books — I can’t remember buying one in the last 5 years EXCEPT for a couple books that I expect will be references that I will return to, annotate, etc. over time. Is this the shape of things to come?
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that’s the only deadtree I buy. That and friends’ books, to get signed.
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The only dead trees I have bought in the last 10 years were used hard covers of favorites I happened across. (Footfall, and Shadow of Saganami … the list is that short) otherwise I long ago got in the habit of only e-books because before going with reading glasses, any reading of print left me with blurred vision. Normally, I now set my text large, and read stuff from 5 feet away.
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Technology forcing commerce to change, 200 year old philosophy forcing political change, we are truly in a house built on sand. I think we are entering another Age of Revolution. The last one ran from 1770 – 1815(political) & 1800 – 1880(technical) and rewrote both maps and society in large scale. This time both are coming together and reinforcing each other. It ought to be a wild ride.
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Yes. When tech changes fast, the blood flows.
We live in INTERESTING TIMES.
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Funny, you don’t look Chinese.
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Academia is another panic pool. Tenure-track positions are vanishing like a puddle at noon in August, none of the senoir faculty want to retire because they fear they will lose their benefits, less-than-part-time slots are becoming more common. On top of all that, you still have to publish or perish, but now the public colleges are hammering teaching ability and “return on investment” for different departments and specialties, while the grad schools still push publications and research skills. When the MOOCs (massive online open courses) appeared, first people sniffed, then people panicked, especially those in the humanities. Now it seems that MOOCs are not going to be the “salvation of the university,” but the mood is still twitchy and edgy, like a herd of cattle ahead of a big storm.
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I will apologize in advance for my moment of schadenfreude, but hallelujah and about fricking time.
Traditional academia and traditional publishing are both dinosaurs in their death throws, it’s been a long time coming, and entirely their own damn faults. Worst part is that such endings are always bloody and innocents always seem to suffer collateral damage.
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I think you are more aware of it in publishing because that is your field, Sarah. I’m an electronics engineer by day; I see the Maker movement pushing all the traditional boundaries of what we consider “engineering” in directions and avenues that cannot be easily predicted. Yes, everything seems to be moving towards the internet–but as the laws catch up with the technology (and the laws being promulgated by a left wing, reactionary government), I expect that the concept of “Internet” is going to undergo it’s own revolution, as people find new and innovative ways to connect to the Net–or bypass it entirely.
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You mean, something like this?
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/04/01/freedombone-how-to-turn-your-beaglebone-black-into-a-personal-communications-server-beagleboneblack-txinstruments-beagleboardorg/
and this:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Homebrew-WISP–Wireless-ISP/
https://www.diyisp.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=about
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Yep, like that. Look at Adafruit, Sparkfun, and any of the myriad blogs they highlight and link to. Revolution happens in the most unexpected ways and places.
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A panicked crowd becomes a beast (mob think). I try to stay out of mobs for that reason as well as I have an itching sensation every time I am in a crowd of people. Thankfully the hubby understands it and feels the same.
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I was in a crowd waiting for a festival-seating rock concert in the Seventies. Horrible, mashed-together crowd. Nothing wrong happened, no panic, thank God, it wouldn’t have taken much to cause a Who/Cincinnati, Hillsborough level disaster.
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I have had that feeling in the middle of a carnival and it wasn’t even packed. I can see how one misstep can could cause a stampede.
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People here in the US, and I suspect Canadians are much the same, have just never experienced what life is like in other places.
They deny it is even possible for things to change and impact them. They lack the imagination to see themselves in what you just described. This is New Jersey and that doesn’t happen here!
It has to hit them square in the face before it is real and they are not prepared for it and have no idea what to do.
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I recall a similar attitude in a small manufacturing city I heard of a while back. Now what was that name again…
Oh yeah, Detroit.
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When I first finished my novels, I was all about getting an agent and making it big in the traditional publishing world. The thought of going indie was like, “Ugh – only for those who aren’t good enough.” Yes, I was a snotty little jerk.
Then I started researching the industry, and I was mortified by how I saw traditional publishers treat its writers. Worse, I saw how those writers fell all over themselves in wanting to be treated that way, all for the chance to maybe get a book deal.
I also started looking more seriously at indie and was pleasantly surprised by two things – first, the changes in the industry that have made it much more feasible, and, second, the quality I found. My arrogant assumptions were shattered.
The latest dispute between Amazon and Hachette has simply reinforced my notion of how traditional houses view themselves. Hachette shows it’s more interested in itself than in serving its customers. Amazon is no angel, but as Churchill said, “If Hitler invaded Hell, then Satan would at least get a favorable mention on the floor of the House of Commons.”
There’s much more than I could detail here, but suffice to say that Hachette’s writers need to realize the old Native American maxim that when you discover you’re riding a dead horse, it’s time to change horses.
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“Ugh – only for those who aren’t good enough.”
That was always the conventional wisdom, and for the most part it was true in the days of print. Self-published was for regional cookbooks and vanity scribblings with no viable commercial potential. Then along came e-books and everything changed.
As for that old Native American maxim, as I recall common practice unless they were in a very big hurry, was to eat the dead horse, then go find or steal a replacement. Very practical folk those early Americans.
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What’s interesting to me is that it seems like some of the self-publishers who went that route before ebooks are stuck there… paying for trade paperback print runs… renting tables and selling those paper books for $15 and upward. If you go talk to them, pick up a copy and look at the cover art, accept a bookmark, and then you ask if you can get those for your ereader they give you this sort of deer-in-the-headlights stare.
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Yes.
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Oh, heck no – I do the table and the stacks of books at local events, but I have a poster listing my books as being available as Kindle and Nook editions. One more thing I ought to consider though – is having a laptop with internet connection so they could order them right then and there. Not always internet available, though.
But browsers do ask, and I often note an uptick in eBook sales after one of these events.
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Option, if you have a computer with an optical drive it can almost certainly burn both CD and DVD blanks. The CD blanks are less than a quarter a piece in bulk and have the capacity to hold several hundred books. I know it’s a waste, but I would burn a disk with a single book in both mobi and epub formats for Kindle and Nook readers. You could also include the cover graphics as a jpeg or imbed the graphic directly into the text files if you have that skill set.
Since you have the books there in front of you on the table it’s not that difficult to have a stack of CDs tucked away to offer if they want the e-version. It is one more thing to keep track of, but even in paper sleeves they stack pretty flat.
Side note, I never load a book on my Kindle via wifi. I always download to my computer then port the file over to the Kindle by way of the usb cable. In fact I don’t think I’ve had wifi turned on but the once since I initialized the beast a couple of years ago. Don’t own a Nook, but I do read epub files on my computer with the free Stanza reader software. I actually like that open book two page format better than the Kindle/mobi layout. I mention this as I keep running into folks under the impression that you need wifi to use a Kindle. Simply isn’t so.
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One indie author has custom USB drives with her cover art, loads a trilogy on there, and sells the drive at conventions for $15.
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I actually considered suggesting thumb drives, but the cheapest I could find ran on the order of five bucks each where the CDs and sleeves cost well under fifty cents a set. I’ve always been a cheap so and so, but the usb drives are a better more portable solution.
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Your solution is definitely less expensive to supply, for greater profit margin; I’m just excited by the idea of being able to sell the story container (USB in this case instead of glossy paper wrapped and glued to matte paper or a CD in a sleeve) as something shiny and sought-after by the customers, and being a piece of advertising in its own right.
Once a booth babe, always a booth babe, with a sharp eye on how best to separate the customers from their hard-earned cash (and credit.) Someday, I aspire to be a fifth-level wallet vampire, like one boothie I knew who would call out the payment method (cash, visa, visa platinum, amex, mastercard, etc) and spending limit of the custom as they entered the aisle.
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I dunno. I just checked a couple local-interest titles (the US Grant mysteries and the “Haunted Ohio” books), and they’re available for Kindle. Perhaps they’re wising up, or the smaller publishers are catching on?
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Sarah A Hoyt
Jerry Pournelle
It seems to me that there is a pervasive party line underlying many – stupid lowest common denominator – public statements. The public statements themselves as much as anything are being made to support and to signal the party line. Like public demonstrations that tie up traffic and alienate the man in the street the intent is surely team building including binding people by their actions to the team and separating the same people from the rest of their social ties.
The net effect to my eye is much like the struggle of the 70 years war
(I’d say cold war but I believe the impact of CPUSA being subservient to an unacknowledged policy e.g. Fred Pohl on policy demanding celebration for the fall of Paris to National Socialism lasted much longer and continues in some form of once internalized always present unto this day.
I’ve argued with people who are clever with words, language, music and generally amusing yet who to this day maintain as a party line that Al Gore won the popular vote in Florida and the Supreme Court stole the election – my fact is a consortium of Florida newspapers paid for the full recount neither party asked for in court and pretty well established that George Bush carried the popular vote of legal ballots by a few hundred votes – confronted with this fact people simply continue to argue by assertion. Entitled not only to their opinion but to their own facts. Tom Kratman claims to have fun doing that; I’m more saddened but compelled to say from time to time that on the contrary the facts are……)
An imposed party line requires people to be careful what is said to wait for policy signals. Being too early is as bad as being too late is as bad as being in public disagreement.
I’ll swear I see the public effects from which I infer a party line in the background.
Swarming and piling on and piñata play are easily seen and explained in any small more or less closed more or less tribal community.
In terms of the current thread there are structures that confine and channel the mob. If This Goes On opens with an agent provocateur leading the mob after the heretic (notice the name, names always matter with Mr. Heinlein). Absent structure and leadership no channeling and people can scatter in all directions. Why don’t they?
I don’t have or know of any hypothetical explanation for large numbers hewing to a narrow minded line. I don’t know and I’m asking for suggestions where policy lies today save it be internalized?
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I could make guesses judging by things I heard. Let’s say Jornoulist is not isolated.
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In one of my other activities I still regularly encounter kool-aid drinkers who will insist that the Second Amendment is a collective right that only authorizes the National Guard. That though SCOTUS has unanimously found that 2A is an individual right of the citizens.
Note: Heller vs D.C. was a 5/4 decision in favor of Heller, but the court’s independent finding on individual right was 9/0.
Once the little devils hit on a meme that supports the party narrative they are extremely reluctant to let go. Seems they are very much of a mind that if you say something loud enough and long enough then it must be the truth, facts be damned.
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One of them ‘Rules for Radicals’ maybe?
If you tell a lie long enough and loud enough if breaks on though… breaks on though to the other side….
Or maybe that was a song I heard one.
;)
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Actually rules says the opposite, strangely enough. Alinsky didn’t want to get stuck on one meme or idea to the point:
“* RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
* RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
* RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)”
http://www.bestofbeck.com/wp/activism/saul-alinskys-12-rules-for-radicals
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* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
I was Referencing Rule 10 and aplying it to the truth.
;-)
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The fact that no such statute exists in any nation that has militia/national draft… the idea that you would need the Second Amendment to allow the militia to hold they weapons they have been issued? By the way, the National Guard was instituted in 1913, though it’s always given as the collectivist excuse for the Second Amendment.
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Ah, but you sir are trying to cloud the issue with facts. Where is your compassion? Where are your warm fuzzy feelings? After all, it’s for the children! And no one ever got shot in a gun free zone. And even if our ever repressive laws cause more people to be killed, you must still give us credit because our intentions are pure.
Need I add /sarc?
I deal with such bilge as the above on an almost daily basis. But when I despair I head over here or to Baen’s Bar and recharge.
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But that single shot .22 and the cut down 243 are for the children! If you take them away the children are going to cry, and what kind of feelings will that give you?
And I swear AR-15’s are built for either midgets or young children, they certainly aren’t designed to comfortably fit an adult man.
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The AR series are very much modular guns. See e.g. any of the space guns which do fit grown men and also women as well as anything can – see frex Sergeant Sherri Gallagher and her results. See also Google images for space gun Camp Perry.
In as issued configuration there has been considerable variation over the 50 some years the AR has been standard issue. Today’s M4 – and equivalents from other makers and other nations – are a compromise weighting portability (including in and out of vehicles) and fitting users in full gear to include a good deal of body armor.
The best length of pull on a shotgun to shoot ducks during a winter storm is typically less than a shotgun to shoot birds in shirtsleeves.
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The Dick Act of 1903 formalized what became the National Guard, and recommended the term “National Guard” for the organized militia and “Reserve Militia” for everyone else.
The National Defense Act of 1916 required the term “National Guard” for all states’ militiae, and further regulated them beyond the strictures of the 1903 act.
Sorry, was I twitching just then? (The collectivist position holds water about as well as a steel sieve with the bottom cut out.)
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Mom didn’t try to run with the crowd. By main force, she gained a place near the wall and dragged me along, and flattened me against the wall, while the crowd ran by.
Experienced something similar (though not as bad) when I was a young teen. My 2 older sisters & I went to a movie when people started smelling gas. So everyone started rushing out, including down a flight of stairs, to get out of the building.
My oldest sister, who is awesome in SHTF situations, dragged us both to the wall and covered us with her body while we crab-walked sideways out of the building.
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One thing that helps in this situations is to remember you don’t have to go out the way you go in. That is a big killer.
When checking about to see the routes to escape in emergency, look for the nearest one that isn’t the one you came in by, if the one you came in by was the nearest.
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People have been flying model airplanes and helicopters for half a century. Now, put a camera on one, and it’s a (gasp!) DRONE, and must be regulated basically out of existence. The FAA is taking its own sweet time about making the rules, but you KNOW they’re going to be designed to strangle the infant in its crib.
They’re already going after that guy who produced that magnificent footage flying into a fireworks display. Not for the flight itself, but because of the message attached to the video. THAT somehow made it illegal under the rules that haven’t come out yet.
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Never mind the fact that adding the camera and modern electronics make the drone SAFER than model airplanes. Years back there was an essential ban of model airplanes here in CT because one had gotten out of range, crashed and killed someone.
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Personally, I’d like to equip one with a can of wasp spray, because even the super streaming ones can’t reach my eaves.
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*grin* and as a homage to Heinlein, nickname it after some form of bug-killer from the books?
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“Dizzy”?
(One of the Roughnecks…)
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The camera’s a bit more important than just sightseeing, though. Without that camera, you were pretty much restricted to line of sight flight. The model aircraft couldn’t safely travel beyond the line of sight of the operator. Ergo, by definition such aircraft were strictly things for hobbiests. And such aircraft were typically operated either in isolated areas with no one around, or in areas in which everyone was aware that tiny things were flying around in the air. Cities, for instance, heavily restrict the usage of model aircraft. You can’t fly them just anywhere in the region I live in due to concerns about what they might hit while they’re in the air.
Regulations will probably be overbearing (as they usually are). But at the same time, any regulations that allow their use will likely also open up urban areas for flight. Under current rules, any remote aircraft – including “drones” – are completely banned.
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It really wasn’t the camera that made that flight possible, it was the self-stabilizing flight control system on the quadcopter. Sure, the GoPro and YouTube made it possible to get it seen widely, but substantially the same flight could have happened with a skilled and lucky RC pilot and an 8mm film camera – but no one would have seen it.
And in this case, there’s really not a lot countering the sour-grapes motivation attributed to the FAA – it’s really hard to say that a quadcopter flight through the middle of an active fireworks display somehow put aircraft or people on the ground in any more danger than the vastly more dangerous lit explosives launched into the public airspace as fireworks.
Also note re the “commercial use” aspect, the FAA has been allowing commercial fireworks displays to use the airspace forever.
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It’s not exactly sour grapes, as much as officials mucking stuff up (especially the cops in Seattle, but partly also various gov’t agencies using them to bypass no-airplane-spying rules) tried to jump whole hog into some really questionable and dangerous uses, which meant the FAA had to regulate them or explain why they hadn’t when they brought a legal aircraft down.
When it was just hobbyists, it wasn’t a problem– good heavens, the ones that might be a danger outside of areas they’d already be simply asked to leave wouldn’t be in any hands dumb enough to do the usual stupid stuff that would happen if you put someone in charge of a drone they don’t own.
For once, gov’t was exercising sense– now we’ve got the EPA “allowing” “private drone use” by employees to try to bypass even that in order to spy. (Front page of the Capital Press about two weeks ago.)
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I’m a pilot. The last thing I want in my little airplane is to have an up close interaction with a quadcopter. But in reality, this has been a potential issue for years with the RC folks – some of the RC planes are basically missiles, whether they are running faux-jet electric impellers or real honest to goodness kerosene burning jet engines to reach 400+ mph really doesn’t make much difference to my Piper or Cessna. But just a couple miles north of the little field I’m starting back up my flying at there’s an official RC field, and in all the years I’ve flown in and out, and in the recent years I’ve been a board member for the local pilots organization for that field, I’ve not heard one complaint about those RC guys.
Sure, now that you can “fly” a quadrotor from your iphone, more idiots are flying them, and they are doing so outside the peer-pressure structure of the RC community that polices itself, and yes I heard about the airliner that reported an encounter with a quadcopter while on approach to LAX, but other countries are not having the attacks of the vapours that the FAA is having, and as long as the Feds aggressively go after people who do actually dangerous things, I don’t see this as a crisis that demands the FAA regulate everything down to grass level.
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Like all bureaucracies, the FAA is jealous of its power, and doesn’t want to share. In former times, they would have demonized the quadcopter users as some kooky fringe group up to no good. It’s not that easy to do when everyone has seen the YouTube videos of normal people using them for prosaic ( though still cool) purposes.
Of course, all it will take is one bad apple, or one death or dismemberment, and the cries from the statists to DO SOMETHING will be deafening. Right now, it’s just a general grumbling about people using things best left to the authorities.
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Or flown across oceans…
Click to access Model%20Airplane%20News.pdf
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I think there’s another reason why music got off lighter, and it’s simply that a smaller number, or smaller percentage, of musicians were associated with or attempting to be associated with the recording industry. I majored in music, and I don’t remember a single classmate (around the turn of the millennium) with any intention of trying to land a recording contract. The recording industry got upset by technology, but most musicians start getting paid for freelance work during high school or younger, and most of us figured on continuing on the same way more-or-less (the practical kids got music ed degrees). I think I played my first wedding at thirteen or fourteen and started teaching private students around fourteen. So the dynamic was always different–it’s that both music and writing are creative fields and the blockbusters were industry generated in both that makes them appear similar.
Maybe writers are more like composers than like musicians . . . nah, books are generally more accessible to the public than scores . . . well, likely there’s no perfect comparison.
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Yes. I tried to convey that.
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Also, from what I understand, musicians got a worse deal from record labels than authors get from publishers, so there was less fear going direct to the public, because they weren’t potentially losing as much, unless they had large tours already scheduled.
Plus, IIRC, they had a few big names who actually saw the writing on the wall and led the way.
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Waggles hand on worse deal. The deal authors get has been getting worse every year in the 15 I’ve been in.
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I recall hearing once that the members of TLC, when they were charting at #1, were only making about $50K a year each because of all the things the record company makes them pay for out of their side of the contract. (Record companies don’t seem to pay for anything, recording sessions, promotion, advertising, music videos etc all come out of the Musician’s part.)
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Also, we’ve heard publishers claim (proudly, natch) that they based their contracts on RIAA contracts from the 60s, because it was important to protect their authors.
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ehgods, yeah. Small presses are the WORST. Medium presses too. And the big presses at this point are just slavery. Seriously. Would you write a whole book for 3k?
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I’d be happy to get that in a month for one book. Month after month after month.
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http://youtu.be/zGM8PT1eAvY
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In fact some of those big names started their own record labels. Admittedly some of the first were ones deemed washed up by the big record companies, and couldn’t get a contract. But all of a sudden when old ‘washed up’ singers had songs hitting the top five and even number one, well others took another hard look. Then probably the big breakthrough in country music (and he was following someone from another genre’s example, I just can’t think of who) was Toby Kieth. The big labels blackballed him and refused to record him, so not only did he produce multiple platinum selling back to back records, but he very publicly thumbed his nose at the establishment and started his own label, and within a year or two was producing as many chart topping hits as any one of the big records, and was publicly willing to help and give advice to anyone who wished to record an indie album rather than going with any record label, including his.
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Moved down because of hitting the wall:
Foxfier,
What is the number one reason given by abused women for staying in abusive relationships?
Dependency and Codependency… and Abusers foster it.
They do– mostly by making the women BELIEVE they are worthless, helpless and so flawed that no-one else would take them.
She did eventually leave, but the mental abuse is still a major issue– and they have a son. Who she tried to make sure would get time with her husband… and is now being abused in her place, although it’s mostly in the form of neglect. (Possibly the third degree sunburn will get her something besides weekly switching.)
Every case of abuse that I know of was not actual dependency/codependency as in the victim couldn’t provide for herself, it was extreme emotional abuse making them believe they were worthless.
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Foxfier,
Ah, ok see where your coming from they actual have the slill they just emotionally beat down. I can a gree with that, but is the solution still the same? To build confidence in oneself.
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It could be broadly defined that way, yes, but the actual actions would be wildly different– there’s a massive difference between making someone believe they are self-sufficient in a marriage, especially with children, and in showing them that they’ve been lied to about how worthless they are and how they’re nothing but extra work. Frequently, the lack of monetary income– which the abuser makes sure they aren’t able to do well– is a stick used to beat the victim. They can be making every meal, cleaning everything, waiting on the other person hand and foot, buying nothing for themselves… but they believe what they do is worthless.
Part of the difference is that a single parent with kids probably cannot support them without help. Maybe if they’re old enough, but for young children abandoned by one parent? There’s a reason we have a support network, and it’s not just to buy votes.
The abused have been lied to before; lie again, and you’ll loose them– or worse, they won’t realize it’s a lie, and will take their failure to be able to fill the role of both parents as proof that their abuser was right all along, they really are broken, defective, failures.
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