Are Jobs on Their Way to Becoming Obsolete? And Is That a Good Thing?

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe

Are Jobs on Their Way to Becoming Obsolete? And Is That a Good Thing?
Do we have it backward when we call for job creation? Could we instead radically rethink our economy to benefit everyone?

September 12, 2011 |


Media theorist and author of Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back Douglas Rushkoff ruffled some feathers this week when he dared, at CNN.com of all places, to ask that question. It seemed, perhaps, gloriously insensitive to the plight of unemployed workers, of union workers at the U.S. Postal Service, who are struggling like so many others to stay afloat in an uncertain economy while they're demonized in the press as greedy for wanting a decent job.

Yet Rushkoff also raises points worth considering, particularly for those of us trying to articulate, in the wake of massive failures of the economic system we've lived our whole lives with, some sort of alternative to the cycle of boom, bust, bailout.

He argues that perhaps we're going about it backward when we call for jobs, that maybe it's not a bad thing that technology is replacing workers, and points out that actually, we do produce enough food and “stuff” to support the country and even the world—that, in fact, we produce too much “stuff.”

He alternately harkens back to a past before jobs, when many people worked for themselves on a subsistence level, and forward to a future where we are all busy making games and books and communicating with one another from behind computer screens, with the hours we have to work dwindling. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152383/are_jobs_on_their_way_to_becoming_obsolete_and_is_that_a_good_thing/

[Demeter]

1. I'd Say PAYING People for the Work they do Is Passe

There's no lack of work in this country, but strangely enough, we peons are expected to do it for love....like housewives of the 50's. Or inheritable servants, serfs, they called them.