Douglas Rushkoff: Why Do We Want "Jobs" Anyway?
I totally missed this bit of thinking from the other day by open source enthusiast Douglas Rushkoff. He's living in the Singularity already, so he can say that "on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need"—and we're just distributing it wrong, and "we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff." So why do we all want jobs, he wants to know! Why are we all yapping about unemployment? On… a certain level, this is technically true! Even as a world-wide community, we probably have enough "things" (rice, couches, water, fabric) for everyone. Rushkoff seems a little baffled that we're just not earning/sharing correctly. Because maybe he has never met people.
But the best part is this:
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.
Thriving! Most! Setting aside historical issues of "land-owning," which still are a central organizing force in who "has" and who doesn't have, that's pretty cheap and easy to define your thoughts to "Europe." Still, while there are at least 850 million people living there now, there were maybe 50 million people in all of Europe in 1450—and that includes Russia, Sweden and all of 3 million people in the British Isles. (Current population of the British Isles: 67 million.) Systems don't expand and contract stably to population sizes—which brings us back to land. (Ask Stalin!)
But yes, the gloried late Middle Ages! Plucking chickens! Because the Crusades had recently ended. And the Mongols had been at war from Korea to Vietnam all the way to Poland and Baghdad for 200 years. Oh and at least 1/3rd—maybe a full half— of Europe's population had just dropped dead. That would be an amazing economic boom for our times, totally promoting class fluidity and abundance, if half the population totally died! Anyone someone should totally try that theory out for a TED Talk.
Yes, sure. The central point is sort of correct? No one wants dumb jobs. No one should have dumb jobs! But there's just no other way to squeeze $8 an hour out of the people who hold the money and the land. (Although, ask Stalin about that too.)
Not everybody can be a Randian independent contractor in this mental utopia which delusional freelancers have created.
You didn't even talk about his lame opening example: postal service jobs are disappearing since nobody mails anything anymore, because of the internet. Um, hello? UPS and FedEx collectively employ half a million people, and do basically nothing but ship Amazon boxes.
@TheRtHonPM I've been anticipating Netflix's acquisition of the USPS for some time now.
There's a salient comment about how he has a job, teaching at the New School, but I have too much work to do to figure it out.
@gregorg Would that we had such "jobs".
"We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights."
Easy breezy!
@boyofdestiny Difficult difficult lemon difficult.
@boyofdestiny I like how he uses "basic human rights" as a synonym for "completely free and accessible"!
@deepomega anyone who starts classifying things that cost money to have as "basic human rights" immediately goes into the "worthless douche writing in spite of reality" category. Really? Shelter and food are basic human rights? Then who should I take to court when I don't get my shelter and food?
It is your right to buy food, to work for food, and to enjoy food. It is not your right to have it. Nature as a whole would completely collapse if animals had inalienable rights to shelter and food.
@Jasons_Johnson: "anyone who starts classifying things that cost money to have as "basic human rights" immediately goes into the "worthless douche writing in spite of reality" category." Oh, like FDR?
You don't need to take anyone to court. They're basic human rights because if you can't provide them for yourself, the government provides them for you, financed by taxes. This is not exactly an off-the-deep end idea – we already do it in a half-assed fashion through programs like WIC, food stamps, and subsidized/low cost/public housing.
To say that someone has no right to food is to say that that person has no right to live. If you want to require people to do some kind of work in exchange for basic necessities, I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is the idea that it's okay for society to just let people starve.
@SeanP But one has to choose: good food or good shelter. Hovel and dry aged steaks, organic vegetables tastefully prepared, an in season fruit for desert; or space-age bachelor pad and noodles.
Or, things being how they are, shanties and ramen for all! Except billionaires!
There's actually a good argument for how the post- Black Death prosperity for those who lived directly led to the development of printing and mass communication. (Hint: it involves more people wearing underwear!) But this is tangential to Rushkoff's main argument, which is pretty fatuous as a whole.
@Gef the Talking Mongoose are you saying that i have the black death? cuz, y'know, i'm not wearing panties.
@robloki so hott!
@RonMwangaguhunga Your lympth nodes aren't the only things that're swollen, KNOWHATIMSAYIN.
Ah yes, all those self-employed serfs. Totes forgot about them.
@jolie Can you imagine buying health insurance on the individual market on a serf's salary of three piles of mud per fortnight? No thanks!
@boyofdestiny Uch and have you seen the price of mutton lately?
@jolie It's enough to make a guy break down and cry in his mead.
@boyofdestiny There's no time for that, it's the feast of Saint Wilfrida like tomorrow and if you don't have at least four ducks to bring to the manor we are all going to jail and I am not spending another winter in those dungeons.
@jolie : God, it's like all I do lately is link to Hark, a Vagrant.
"Dammit, these people don't work!"
He has some points, but has taken it too far. It's not time to remove jobs, it's time to remove the 40 hour work week. 20 hours should be full employment.
@johnpseudonym — The Germans did this, reducing many people's 8-hour work days to 6 hours and thus greatly reducing unemployment. They could do this because, unlike the U.S., they have Single-Payer medical insurance and other forms of social insurance not hooked to their jobs. The Germans also have powerful unions, unlike workers in the U.S., which makes in more difficult to trash the lower orders there. Their experience with trashing the workers didn't work out so well in the 1930s.
However, if you look at your outgoes you will find that most of them are not for stuff, but directly or indirectly for paying the rich for being rich. The 6-hour week isn't going to solve that problem.
@Anarcissie When was this German effort? I recall that there was a French effort along these lines a few years ago, and I think the French government eventually gave up on it. Can't recall details.
@josiah I could be a dick and do that "let me Google that for you", but I'm too lazy. Anyway, after 0.5 seconds, here is what I found:
http://www.thelocal.de/money/20091125-23521.html
@Anarcissie Also because Germany is more like New York than Kansas. Funded by financial global financial instruments. My favorite part of the EU is that it shows how much harder it is to manage a meta-state.
@johnpseudonym — See page 75 of http://www.deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/End-of-Loser-Liberalism.pdf
This is an interesting book for many other reasons. However — here speaking to the majority of Awlites — it doesn't afford a lot of material for wising off.
@Anarcissie — This was actually directed to 'Josiah', but the web page screwed up the link or callback or whatever you call it.
I read "Tuesdays with Morrie" and he says to spend less time working and more time outside and then he dies.
This argument reminds me of the time Mariah Carey looked at that photo of starving Africans and marveled at how she would like to be skinny.
Postal service jobs are disappearing because the post office isn't allowed to set its own prices, so inflation constantly eats away at its revenue. Since it is legally required to deliver everywhere, even on unprofitable routes, it can't control its own expenses either — except by firing people. A bad business model is still bad whether or not there is an Internet.
Rushkoff starts with a good idea that isn't stated enough – "The idea that everybody has to have a job to be worth oxygen is stupid" – but then he does pretty much everything else wrong. I'll take it anyway.
Some of the stuff in the article is stated rather poorly, but the underlying point is pretty good. Stated plainly, he wants to tax the living shit out of rich people and give the proceeds to poor people. And that's an agenda I can get behind.
@SeanP Bullshit. Stated plainly, he thinks that the idea of "working for money" and then "spending money on goods and services" is some flash-in-the-pan idea that has outstayed its welcome. It's like he's never heard of a service economy.
@deepomega What the hell? From the article: "As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money." That's not exactly saying that "working for money" is obsolete.
Also: "Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. 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."
If that's not a call for redistributing wealth I don't know what is. I'm not sure what the "service economy" even has to do with it.
I think there's maybe an underlying emotional response here ("working for corporations sucks!") that might have some economic basis. I think there's a shift (in the upper reaches of privilege in the US to be sure [yes that includes all you unemployed writers]) to a freelance economy instead of a career economy. There's value to that! It decouples your work from people who suck, it means you have some flexibility to stop working when you can't handle your job any more, etc.! But this is not the same as a "post-job economy". Maybe the problem is Rushkoff thinks "job" means "sitting at a desk sorting mail"?
@deepomega Of course there are several things going on in this article (which is badly in need of focus – did he not have an editor?). But among the things being called for: 1) he wants George Jetson's employment situation – the one where "these 9 hour weeks are killing me". 2) he wants a fairer distribution of the fruits of labor. Of course the two things are linked.
And why not? Workers have done their part – productivity has grown exponentially over the years. So why shouldn't we be able to enjoy greatly reduced working hours, increased salaries, or both?
I agree with your point regarding the equating of "having a job" with "schlepping to the office to slave for the man".
Oh, I've got a cunning plan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r0a582B9hQ
A masterpiece. This is precisely how to deploy snark against an article that nevertheless contains some worthy ideas.
The awl said it first: http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/the-end-of-the-glorious-future