Dear futurework and others,
I am delighted that we (on the futurework list) are getting onto the
issue of work, and welcome all of the thoughtful posts people have made
on that subject. Also with the recognition that Theobald was writing
about the issue 30 years before Rifkin, although the latter has
achieved greater notoriety.
For those who don't know, Theobald's current thrust (ongoing for 10
years or more) is that it is the very success of the old paradigm which
has created theproblems we now face, and that massive change is
essential if we are to survive. He is therefore promotiong individual
and community resilience and adaptibility to the inevitable but
unforeseeable changes which are continuing to occur faster and faster.
I think that the quest for "jobs" is barking up the wrong tree. There
is clearly vast amounts of work that needs to be done, from building
houses to (especially) providing community for the young, the old and
the alienated, but most of it is "uneconomic".
Old paradigm businesses are caught up in a feeding frenzy, swallowing
each other up and spitting out workers, who are then sometimes rehired
for much lower wages and no benefits (see the article appended to this
post).
The effect of this has been to multiply inequality beyond all bounds,
massively shifting wealth from the poor and the middle class to the
rich. According to the Nov. 2 McLean's (p. 69) in 1973 (just about the
peak of general prosperity) the income of the richest 10% of Canadians
was 21 times that of the poorest 10%. In 1996 it was 314 times that of
the poorest 10%!!!!!!
As Jay Hanson points out, we cannot satisfy everyone's material desires
(even if we did accrete a few additional planets). As Gandhi said,
there is enough gor everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed
(which is limitless). The new society must focus on quality of life
rather than quantity of stuff. That means better communication and much
richer interpersonal relationships but far less consumption on the part
of the rich countries and classes. I see this not as a hardship but as
an opportunity to greatly increase human happiness. I have never
noticed a correlation between wealth (as opposed to lack of
necessities) and happiness.
Far fewer people are needed to produce the THINGS we need. Food,
clothing, shelter, etc. can be and are being produced by machines with
little and decreasing human intervention. Even many "service" jobs are
being eliminated or shuffled onto the "consumer" (and thus
"externalized"), including not only gas pumping and restaurant service,
but even answering the telephone, so there is no real hope of
traditional employment there, either. The next area of automation will
be "professionsl services". Even much traditional work, such as the
development of LINUX and indeed the writing and editing that I and many
others do on listrservs is now being done voluntarily and
cooperatively. The real problem we face is one of distribution rather
than jobs.How do we distribute stuff equitably?
Over a century ago, Henry George said that those who sequestered and
benefitted from monopolies for their private use and profit, starting
with land, the greatest natural monopoly and government licences which
exclude the unlicenced from various industries, must pay fair market
rent to the rest of society for the resources they thus monopolize. He
also extended the principle to patents (exclusive of reasonable
compensation to the inventor), and I would argue that it could be
extended to most large-scale manufacturing, which has been heavily
subsidized by tax breaks and outright grants from the public purse. All
of these activities could and should pay rent to society, the bulk of
which could be distributed to everyone as 'earthshares', which would
provide a basic income for all. Those who want more income would be
free to pursue traditional careers or to go into business for
themselves, but everyone, being freed from the fear of need, would be
able to do what many already are doing- performing a huge variety of
volunteer work from communicating on the Web to feeding and counseling
their neighbors in need.
Rifkin seems to want to bring the volunteer sector into the market
economy. I think we need to free people from the market so that they
can get on with the real work that needs to be done. This is largely
what happened in aboriginal and even medieval society. It took much
less than full time "work" to supply human needs (except where the rich
were appropriating most of the fruits of people's work for themselves)
so people spent a large part of their time celebrating feast days or,
as one aboriginal woman put it, "making things', by which I believe she
meant things like pots, songs, and stories.
Now machines have made it possible for everyone to enjoy a much more
comfortable lifestyle, complete with many electric conveniences and
universal electronic communication. We can enjoy conversations with
people all over the world as easily as people once communicated around
the village fire-pit. It is only lack of imagination which prevents us
from enjoying a life of productive leidure rather than building or
envying masssive and useless accumulations which condemn most
non-accumulators (and many accumulators as well) to lives of
unprecedented stress and angst.
If we merely continue to put people out of "work" without creating
alternative methods of distributing the necessities of life, we will
have a permanent and growing underclass which will continue vie for
part time, catch as catch can work for bare daily subsistence-- until
that undeclass finally rises up and probably smashes everything (as
many are doing in Indonesia even as I write)-- which won't really help
anyone.
Caspar Davis
A legal battle over whether MICROSOFT CORP legally can fill its
offices with contract workers who are not eligible for company
medical benefits or Microsoft contributions to employee savings
plans heated up this week with another complaint filed in U.S.
District Court in Seattle. Ten current and former contract workers
at Microsoft are seeking class-action status to sue Microsoft for
"misclassifying" thousands of on-site workers as "temporary agency
employees" and "independent contractors," despite doing what they
say is the same work as Microsoft employees. The contingent
workers, who call themselves "perma-temps", may work full-time for
years but do not receive Microsoft benefits, from stock options to
paid maternity leave. (Reuters 09:45 PM ET 11/18/98) For the full
text story, see
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2557188137-d61
