Full Employment, Cyberian Style

From time to time, visitors to Cyberia will notice plain beige bicycles parked on streets, in front of buildings, and at other locations. Sometimes, visitors are surprised to learn that these bicycles are free for use and taking.

Communities in Ordinaria have experimented with free bicycles, but you have to go to Cyberia to find this idea carried to its fully impractical conclusion. As they often say in Cyberia, a bad idea worth doing is worth carrying to its totally irrational conclusion.                                                                                                                                                  http://www.ibike.org/encouragement/freebike.htm#PROGRAMS

If you dig a little deeper, you will find modest factories in various locations in Cyberia. On the door, each factory displays a sign: DREARYWHEEL.

With the non-profit DrearyWheel Company, Cyberia creates mostly full employment, encourages low-cost environmentally responsible transportation, and encourage healthy exercise program all without coercion or didactic preaching. You're already familiar with Cyberia's Oh, Well, slogan; now meet their Not Bad motto. (Believe me; a lot of lives would have been spared over the centuries if people had just been willing to settle for Not Bad instead of a lot of other more striving slogans.)

Many people in Ordinaria believe that business and manufacturing enterprises should be profitable and pay their own way. While there is much to commend this philosophy (and most businesses in Cyberia do indeed pay their own way), an obsessive dedication to this concept is often counter-productive.

For example, Ordinaria itself often violates this principle by frequently engaging in wars as a system of full employment. Wars do employ a lot of people as soldiers, medical personnel, diplomats, spies, defense contractors, etc., but wars are a hugely wasteful method of creating employment, and are generally considered rather tacky by the average Cyberian citizen. For that matter, while you may have bought the occasional surplus AK-47 for your personal use, it's really hard to park a surplus aircraft carrier at your boat dock.

The DrearyWheel bicycle and manufacturing system was designed by the Industrial Engineering Division of the Cyberian Department of Mad Science, (a significant organization in Cyberian Society). The bicycles are plain, boring, and functional. No one would ever want one for appearance, style or features. However, if you want to get from point A to point B (and the two points are in reasonable pedaling range, of course), the DrearyWheel bicycles will get you there in a dependable fashion.

Everything operation on the DrearyWheel assembly line is simple, comprehensible, idiot-resistant, and interchangeable. Someone who wishes to work at a DrearyWheel plant simply fills out a simple registration form (basically indicating life above the vegetable level), receives an ID code in their personal data system (to be explained in another episode), and begins working on the line. The assembly process has been rationalized and simplified to a degree that anyone can begin working at more or less immediately, following fairly obvious and self evident instructions posted in icon  and written form (in several common languages).

Once someone has registered with the DrearyWheel organization, they come to work (at any time they please--factories operate on a 24-hour basis) find an open spot on the modular assembly line, and get to work. When they wish to stop, they check out and receive a cash payment on the spot. There are no quotas or deadlines to meet--remember, it operates on the Not Bad principle.

Many people in Ordinaria do not fit well into the conventional workaday economic system. Such people often end up as welfare recipients, homeless people, and criminals. Some lack education and skills job skills; others bridle at regular hours or officious supervisors or stringent dress codes. In Cyberia, The DrearyWheel organization suits such people well; most can earn a subsistence living without compromising their principles (or lack thereof). DrearyWheel also suits part time workers (such as college students), or for that matter, younger students who feel like skipping classes or dropping out of school entirely.

Although the DrearyWheel organization is designed to run as simply and non-managed as possible, it does require a few supervisors and technical maintenance people. As it promotes from within, it does offer modest upgrade paths for people who wish to improve themselves slightly while still keeping to the simple DrearyWheel life style.

Because DrearyWheel bicycles are so boring and dreary, they do not disrupt normal business operations. Cyberia still contains regular bicycle manufacturers who manufacture sexy, stylish, feature-laden bicycles for sale, entertainment, competition, status rivalry, etc. DrearyWheel does not impact their business.

Of course, DrearyWheel does cost Cyberia some money to subsidize; however, it not only reduces most of the need for welfare, it modestly reduces air pollution, fuel consumption, and traffic crowding, as well as encouraging a bit of exercise. As they say in Cyberia, Not Bad.