how is this for
unlocking the creative?

Unpaid jobs:
The new normal?

While businesses are generally wary of the risks of using unpaid labor, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis,

FORTUNE -- With nearly 14 million unemployed workers in America, many have gotten so desperate that they're willing to work for free. While some businesses are wary of the legal risks and supervision such an arrangement might require, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right.

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative,*"

says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. "From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it's huge. Especially if you're a small business."

In the last three years, Fallis has used
about 50 unpaid interns for duties in marketing, editorial, advertising, sales, account management and public relations.

She's convinced it's the wave of the future in human resources. "Ten years from now, this is going to be the norm," she says.

Why do people work for free?

read her creative reply here
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/25/unpaid-jobs-the-new-normal/

for mine its make them feel bad
call them bludgers etc

use peer presure
to create slaves

from wage-slave
to welfare/slave

creative thinking
eh whot?

wait till it becomes a mass deduction production

live in food camps
work in the lields
sleep in the barn

avoid thinking too much
about how come everyting is so cheap

*No doubt you picture me in flowing dresses, dripping and rattling with beaded trinkets, candles ablaze and incense wafting with the strains of sitar music in the background*

Nope, not at all Poirot. More like around the change of life
age, in jeans, little or no make up, in a country cottage
around Bridgetown or similar.

Poirot
H and Y are good at the odd stir up but seem like good blokes, just don't give them any ammunition. :)

Still think Yabby needs to go on 'Farmer Wants a Wife' speaking of voyeuristic TV shows. C'mon Yabs what about it? Or will we see you cooking up a mean roast lamb on Masterchef?

Lexi,

Thanks for your input on this thread - I seem to have become a little sidetracked entertaining the boys: )

Speaking of our cultural heritage - Yabby says that other species teach their young - and, of course, that is true, but what other species are capable of the level of manipulation that homo sapiens sapiens habitually undertakes?

Our neo-cortex has pushed us far beyond merely instinctual behaviour and yet instinctual behaviour remains intrinsic to our behaviour.

Perhaps as we have advanced to our present level, there has arisen an incompatibility between our instinctual and our intellectual endeavours - Keostler likened the human condition to one of a horse and rider without any connection between them.

Squeers,

Toy Story is wonderful - and my other favourite by Pixar was Monsters Inc - they do it so well.

OUG

Your example may have worked in a close-knit inclusive community that nurtures and values all its members - not a fair system in the modern paradigm.

(You seem to have homed in on an "R" sounding word.)

Yabby

Close...though not spot-on....but enough to get you a pass mark :)

Dear Yabby,

The idea that we do not have instincts is difficult for some people to accept, because it seems to run contrary to
"common sense." One reason for the difficulty is that the word "instinct" is often used very loosely in ordinary speech.

People talk about "instinctively" stepping on the brake or "instinctively" mistrusting someone, when these actions and attitudes are in fact, culturally learned. Another reason is that much of our learned behaviour is so taken for granted that it becomes
"second nature," to us. The behaviour seems so "natural" that we lose the awareness that it is learned, not inherited.

We do have some genetically determined types of behaviour, of course, but these are simple "reflexes" - involuntary muscular responses, such as starting at an unexpected loud noise, throwing out our arms when we lose our balance, pulling back our hand when it touches a hot surface. We also have a few inborn, basic drives - organic urges that need satisfaction, such as our desires for self preservation, for food and drink, for sex, and perhaps for the company of other people.

But the way we satisfy these drives is learned through cultural experience. Most people, of course learn to fulfill their drives in the way their culture tells them to. But we're not programmed to satisfy them in any particular way. If we were, we would all fulfill our drives in a rigid, identical manner. In fact, unlike all other species, we can even override our drives completely. We can ignore the drive for self-preservation by committing suicide or by risking our lives for others. Protestors can ignore the drive for food and go on hunger strikes, even if it means starvation. People can live out their lives in celibacy. Hermits can override the drive for human contact and so on. One of the most liberating aspects of the sociological perspective is that it strips away myths about our social behaviour, showing whar seems "natural" or "instinctive" as usually nothing more than a cultural product of a specific human society at a particular moment in history.

Dear Poirot,

Thank You for this thread. I'm enjoying it very much. You've kept all of us greatly entertained. The inputs have all been very interesting. BTW - I also loved Toy Story and Monsters Inc.
And, just a bit off subject here - did you every see the film,
"The Last Station," starring Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Tolstoy's wife - Sofia? I think you'd enjoy it - it's available for rental on DVD.