work and its worth-less-ness

i read this very interesting article as i had a few hours and more to kill..
http://www.zpub.com/notes/black-work.html
this article.. reminded me of so many things i believe in... like work isn't really the be-all-end-all.. it also reminded me of a very old article...
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
which had struck up quite a conversation a few winters back...

anyway.. some of the key lessons and questions that arose out of both the essays for me were... if we do improve in technology & advance.. why couldn't just a few ppl work towards subsistence and the rest try to do something better with their lives... how are progressing if we are all in the rat race...

and i really liked these lines.. for they finally bring to fore something i have always believed in... the uselessness of financial institutions and instruments..

i mean what person in their sane frame of mind needs all those mutual funds and bonds, the derivatives & commodity markets... nationalised and local and other such banks...

"Forty percent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted. Entire industries, insurance and banking and real estate for instance, consist of nothing but useless paper-shuffling. It is no accident that the "tertiary sector," the service sector, is growing while the "secondary sector" (industry) stagnates and the "primary sector" (agriculture) nearly disappears. "

then the lil thought about how nero would've actually turned out alright if he was allowed to.. at a younger age... in a lesser degree to practise animal slaughter (by working in a slaughter house) thus killing his fascination over the damn thing!

point being.. as we all know.. things are curable if addressed at an earlier age and being proactive about such issues is very much possible.. it doesn't even take a genius to figure these things out...
as entertaining or interesting the lives of such freaks would be.. .we might be making much better use of our time and resources if we spent it just treating these individuals better

very similar to the kind of outlook some of us hope or expect the indian society to take towards sex and relationships amongst individuals of the opposite sex... especially in places like North India.. .maybe then we'd not have our capital as the rape capital of the country atleasT!