Rushkoff: Are Jobs Obsolete?

[villager]

<snip>

Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services. By the late Middle Ages, most of Europe was thriving under this arrangement.

The only ones losing wealth were the aristocracy, who depended on their titles to extract money from those who worked. And so they invented the chartered monopoly. By law, small businesses in most major industries were shut down and people had to work for officially sanctioned corporations instead. From then on, for most of us, working came to mean getting a "job."
The Industrial Age was largely about making those jobs as menial and unskilled as possible. Technologies such as the assembly line were less important for making production faster than for making it cheaper, and laborers more replaceable. Now that we're in the digital age, we're using technology the same way: to increase efficiency, lay off more people, and increase corporate profits.

While this is certainly bad for workers and unions, I have to wonder just how truly bad is it for people. Isn't this what all this technology was for in the first place? The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with "career" be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/index.html?hpt=op_t1

[midnight]

1. According to Joe Biden.... He spoke in Milwaukee at the school for business... He said we

were now in a jobless recovery... told the business majors to do their part.... That was spring of 2010.

[villager]

2. Right, though Rushkoff means it in a way that neither Biden, nor Obama, dare enunciate

Because a certain level of compassion -- and loss of blanket corporate control -- would have to undergird this version of society...

[RKP5637]

3. I recall studying similar decades ago in sociology and economic classes, that

eventually we would be in a jobless society, for the most part. As productivity increases and increases, and now robotic assemblies, etc., etc. job creation falls off. It's a fallacy IMO for anyone to believe jobs can always be created in a traditional sense for all.

In short, these are areas that should be explored for the 21st century, but our society is in a time warp hoping 19th and 20th century solutions are also the solutions for the 21st century, and that, IMO, is way off mark.

[Blue_Tires]

19. agreed...

[Demeter]

4. There's Plenty of Work to Do

But Massah doesn't want to pay for it. We are supposed to kill ourselves working, singing spirituals all the time, for the glorification of the Obscenely Wealthy.

[raccoon]

5. Great article....some points I thought were especially good:

"We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace."

"Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff."

"The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment?"

"What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff."

I remember reading somewhere in essays/articles related to this, that one day each person might be issued a government check just for being a citizen. That's going to be one helluva hard sell in the USA.

[RKP5637]

10. What you said in your last sentence will eventually need to be done, something

like that, a sharing of the wealth and a form of contribution, in essence, a huge cooperative of sorts. But my hunch is the same as yours. "That's going to be one helluva hard sell in the USA." In fact, I'm willing to bet most of us will be long dead on DU before anything even remotely like this could come about in the US, the land of extreme greed.

[marginlized]

12. Nixon, of all people, advocated for a Living Wage in '73

by which he meant a guaranteed minimum income for all citizens.
This really does show how far to the right our country has moved.

[immoderate]

6. I have been posting about this for years.

There is not enough meaningful work to go around. Heck, a bunch of Chinese workers in a sweatshop can produce all we need. But worry not. They will eventually be replaced by machinery.

Most of what we do soon winds up in a landfill.

Resources are squandered so people can make money.

The answer came out of the Nixon administration. Negative Income Tax!

The whole jobs thing is very 20th Century.

--imm

[RKP5637]

11. Yep, 19th and 20th century solutions are being used for 21st century solutions. It just

is not going to work. In fact, I've not heard one solution by politicians that makes a lick of sense for the 21st century. What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. Creating jobs the old way just is not going to work.

I'm looking forward to Obama's speech tonight, but I don't have high hopes for much different.

I'm not bashing Obama by saying that, what I am saying is I don't think the US is mature enough to come up with real solutions yet for the 21st century for jobs/employment and especially the realization that it might not be logically doable to have a job for every person in the 21st century.

[immoderate]

15. A 6 hour work week covers all the necessities.

--imm

[RKP5637]

17. Yes, something like that would be great. Imagine if one only had to work a day or

two for necessities and could spend the rest of the time in the arts, music, etc. Generally my job ran me ragged in R&D with not much energy left.

[Klingon]

7. He's in denial

We're unable to solve this job problem, so let's pretend that it doesn't exist.

Currently, while 9% of Americans are unemployed and at least another 9% are underemployed, corporate profits reach record levels and the top fraction of a percent of Americans are hoarding trillions already. So Rushkoff's next opinion piece should be entitled "Are trillions obsolete?"

His reference to the old times when few people had actual jobs but many were still able to feed their families is comical. The world has changed so much since then that even thinking about it is a waste of time.

Some jobs could indeed be obsolete. But are we dealing with that problem the best way we can? Are those trillions part of the solution, or part of the problem?

[immoderate]

8. Let's pretend there is no other way to think.

The only answer can be jobs, so we must seek a solution even though there is none. (You got that part right.)


--imm

[Klingon]

13. Right now, jobs are the only solution

And I'm talking about this whole decade, until 2020 at least.

I've seen no other proposal that's even remotely realistic.

What's Rushkoff vision for feeding and clothing the populace? Digitally entertaining each other? Right.

I actually doubt that there exists a solution that ignores the huge wealth imbalance that I mentioned in my previous message. You don't have enough resources to feed the majority when a tiny minority basically owns everything. I don't see Rushkoff worrying about that at all, btw.

[immoderate]

14. All the real needs of the world could be met with a 6 hour work week.

The rest is make work.

The financial sector was 2% in 1970. Now they're 30% and it's all make work, that we are stuck paying for.

I don't think you can blame Rushkoff. He's the messenger.

--imm

[Klingon]

16. That's ok

Working 6 vs 60 hours is secondary to how much of your work benefits you vs how much of it benefits the fat cats.

As of now, you can work any amount of time between 1 hour a week and 168 hours a week, and still be a poor guy.

First things first: let's make sure we work mostly for ourselves. Then we're talking business hours.

[starroute]

9. Health insurance is the leading edge of this issue

We as a nation have largely tied health insurance to employment -- and keep insisting that's the only way to do things, even with fewer people employed and even with the employers themselves finding it an increasing burden. The obvious answer is to split health care off from employment via single payer.

But tying income to jobs is just as limited and ultimately unsustainable.

Put it this way: Every living human needs certain things -- food, shelter, health care, education, and entertainment. But it takes a only a small percentage of the population to provide those needs. This was already becoming obvious in the 1930s, but the invention of consumerism helped push the day of reckoning off into the future.

That short-term solution is running out, however. Not only is it destroying the planet, but it's becoming increasingly inadequate as an answer. So the only alternatives are that you either divide the work up into smaller units, with all jobs being part-time, or you have some people with jobs and a larger number not.

Right now, we've got the second situation in its most toxic form. That is, it's being used to manufacture inequality, so that people with jobs get either enough or way-more-than-enough and those without are living in a state of deprivation. But this benefits nobody but the ultra-rich, who see it as a way of maintaining their power. Meanwhile everybody else, whether employed or not, is less happy, less healthy, and less secure.

I think the eventual solution will have to be something like the guaranteed annual income. Everybody gets enough to live on. Those who want to can put in a limited number of hours at a "job" and get paid extra for their labor. Those with the skill and dedication to do those things that take full-time effort -- such as farmers or doctors -- will get that much more, though never obscenely more. And meanwhile, anybody with a creative bent will have the time and resources to make useful or beautiful objects and trade them around.

It may sound utopian -- but it's the only solution I can think of that isn't based on falsity and unnecessary suffering.

[trud]

18. yes

The OP's extract firms up what has been floating around in my brain for some time. We are moving to a semi-jobless society and we do have to provide a decent living arrangement for all citizens somehow. (Go ahead and laugh) it never was clear to me how Star Trek's moneyless society worked, but I always thought they were doing something like this.