Do we really need jobs?

[Disgustipated]

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

It's an opinion piece on CNN. While I don't agree with most of it, it has gotten me thinking. My first instinct was this was commie propaganda. I kid, I kid. But I did get the impression. But he raises some good points. Has technology improved to a point that there just isn't enough work for humans to do? I'm surprised it has taken this long actually. They kept saying machines will replace humans, but it never seemed to happen until now. Although I think cheap overseas labor has more to do with unemployment than machines/technology.

But I do feel he has some valid points. I really don't think I will ever see less than 7% unemployment during my lifetime. This joblessness we have now will be the new norm I believe. My city currently has over 13% unemployment. We did top 14% last year. There simply is no work for anyone, and I don't believe there ever will be. China will completely demolish what's left of the U.S economy. Our glory days are gone. We will have to deal with unemployment figures Europe has had to deal with all these years. Soon we will be like Europe.

One thing I have noticed, is many people are unemployable. I have seen it with my own brother. He has no job skills, and gets fired from every job he had. He is certainly not the only one. As much as I detest socialism, I fear the only solution is to provide food and housing for all these people. The government should create special housing projects for the rejects of society so they do not become homeless. Yes, I am saying the government should financially support the 9% unemployed we have in the U.S. Although I'm against giving them straight cash for a variety of reasons I won't get into now (which does mean I don't support extending unemployment benefits anymore). The government should provide shelter and food only. This way there is at least some incentive for them to try to improve themselves and find a job.

The question is, who will pay for this? The people who work of course. Which means the inevitable tax increases. What other choice do we have? Let everyone become homeless? Kill them? These people will never find jobs.

Soon the entire post office may be out of business. That's 10's of thousands of jobs lost. Post office workers have no job skills. They have no hope of finding any other job. What do we do about them?

Is this guy crazy? Am I crazy? On second thought, don't answer that. I know I am crazy. Does this article have any merit? Am I fool to believe him? I do know he's exaggerating one thing in his article. Google cars are no where near operational yet, they are in no danger of replacing taxi cab drivers any time soon. But the time is coming.

I'll quote the article for those too lazy to click the link.

The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology's slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That's 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms.

We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks. But the real culprit -- at least in this case -- is e-mail. People are sending 22% fewer pieces of mail than they did four years ago, opting for electronic bill payment and other net-enabled means of communication over envelopes and stamps.

New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs.

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.

And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs -- as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there's something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned.
U.S. companies unpatriotic not to hire?
Obama to unveil $300 billion jobs plan
Postal service on verge of collapse?

I am afraid to even ask this, but since when is unemployment really a problem? I understand we all want paychecks -- or at least money. We want food, shelter, clothing, and all the things that money buys us. But do we all really want jobs?

We're living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That's because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that's even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings Video to get the empty houses off their books.

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?

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.

The communist answer to this question was just to distribute everything evenly. But that sapped motivation and never quite worked as advertised. The opposite, libertarian answer (and the way we seem to be going right now) would be to let those who can't capitalize on the bounty simply suffer. Cut social services along with their jobs, and hope they fade into the distance.

But there might still be another possibility -- something we couldn't really imagine for ourselves until the digital era. As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products.

We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This sort of work isn't so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another -- all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.

For the time being, as we contend with what appears to be a global economic slowdown by destroying food and demolishing homes, we might want to stop thinking about jobs as the main aspect of our lives that we want to save. They may be a means, but they are not the ends.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Douglas Rushkoff.

 

[Cutlass]

We need jobs because we have no real welfare state as an alternative.

 

[Disgustipated]

A welfare state will need to be created soon out of necessity.

Unless Obama intends on extending unemployment benefits indefinitely.

 

[emzie]

A welfare state will need to be created soon out of necessity.

Unless Obama intends on extending unemployment benefits indefinitely.

Is there a difference?

 

[Disgustipated]

Is there a difference?

good point.

The only problem I see about having a large portion of the populace without jobs, especially with the younger generation, is youths causing problems because they have no jobs. You see it in the riots in London, and other European cities. This is what I would worry about here, if our young people had no job to go to. I actually do believe jobs help keep young people out of trouble. Teenagers with too much time on their hands is a dangerous thing.

 

[Cutlass]

A welfare state will need to be created soon out of necessity.

Unless Obama intends on extending unemployment benefits indefinitely.

We're in the process of dismantling the welfare state that we used to have. So good luck with that creating one.

 

[Disgustipated]

We're in the process of dismantling the welfare state that we used to have. So good luck with that creating one.

How so? What could lead you to believe we are dismantling our welfare state?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It depends on how we define jobs. We need the ability to work to support ourselves, but this does not mean that we need to be hired employees. We should ideally move to a more Georgist system that grants everyone access to enough natural capital to be his or her own boss if he or she so desires.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well if people dont have something to do they'd have more time to think up bad things to do.

 

[Narz]

I like Rushkoff, I read his book Life Inc.

I personally hate jobs. I've had almost two-dozen of them & they mostly suck. I prefer working for myself much more.

 

[kramerfan86]

Honestly the concept makes sense, but at the same time it goes counter to what our politicians are currently trying to do which is reduce the sort of aid that would be needed for this mindset to come true.

 

[Archbob]

It depends on how we define jobs. We need the ability to work to support ourselves, but this does not mean that we need to be hired employees. We should ideally move to a more Georgist system that grants everyone access to enough natural capital to be his or her own boss if he or she so desires.

That does exist, there are lots of good business that you can pursue without much capital. I happen to be self-employed doing one of these things.

People want everything handed to them, they don't like to think or look for it themselves.

 

[kramerfan86]

That does exist, there are lots of good business that you can pursue without much capital. I happen to be self-employed doing one of these things.

People want everything handed to them, they don't like to think or look for it themselves.

That sounds nice but in reality there are a finite number of ideas that will actually catch on and work. You cant expect that all of the millions of unemployed can come up with an idea that actually works and is business worthy, there simply arent that many potential enterprises out there. Not to say there arent some, but that isnt a practical solution to the problem the article points out.

 

[Eat_Up_Martha]

I think that technology completely eliminating the need for human services is probably a good thing. With all of our basic needs filled by a self-sustaining automated system people would be able to pursue their passions without need to work at a gas station just to make ends meet. That's not to say that people won't work, but that they will do work that is fulfilling and exciting to them. And passion breeds the highest levels of quality.

EDIT: I realize this is a bit tangential to the main thrust of the OP, but who doesn't love a little Utopianism every now and again?

 

[GenMarshall]

With a high unemployment. We need jobs NOW!!

 

[Tani Coyote]

Once machines are overseas, that is when the jobs will really dry up.

For much of history, jobs have been important, as jobs allow us to get away from the subsistence, lackluster economy of hunter gathering. Someone grows your food for you, so you need to pay them somehow. So you find some other job you can do to get those goods from them, or you work for someone else who gives you goods, which you exchange for the food. Thank goodness for currency eliminating the cumbersome barter.

I'd say we need jobs in the economic status quo, but we did without them once and we can do without them in the future, once the technological revolution has made labor obsolete. That is probably when the closest thing to communism will come about.

Either way, welfare will no longer just a humanitarian effort. It will be a necessary economic one, because we simply can't employ everyone, and people who can't eat tend to do nasty things.

 

[Tahuti]

With a high unemployment. We need jobs NOW!!

The reason jobs are necessary is because the provide income. But would you actually need jobs if income is a given?

 

[nonconformist]

In a sense, yes, but in another, no.

The idea that we need to work to so much as survive means that we impart much more value to an arbitrary job, than we do to the real important things in life; i.e family, friends, and enjoyment.
The investment that is put into working, just for the right of having a use, or food, deprives many people of reasonably basic things in life; up until recently, it was fairly unusual for the father to be involved in the childrens' lives at all, and in some cases is still the case.

The tradeoff for this is elevated stress and self-destruction caused by the enforced competition of a capitalsiitc society.

Far be it from me to endorse the USSR D), but they really had the right idea as far as employment goes; ensure 100% employment, and pay for a full day's work, but in that sense, people only work a few hours every day.

 

[jtb1127]

How is the government going to support a majority of the population on welfare? Is it just going to be printed?

 

[Verbose]

But I do feel he has some valid points. I really don't think I will ever see less than 7% unemployment during my lifetime. This joblessness we have now will be the new norm I believe. My city currently has over 13% unemployment. We did top 14% last year. There simply is no work for anyone, and I don't believe there ever will be. China will completely demolish what's left of the U.S economy. Our glory days are gone. We will have to deal with unemployment figures Europe has had to deal with all these years. Soon we will be like Europe.

There's a decent probability you're already worse off than Europe. Unemployment isn't a homogenous phenomenon across either the US or the EU. That said the US official figure is what, 9,1%, while the EU figure is 10%.

But then there are serious issues about comparability of unemployment statistics. How do you count? Who do you count? There's been a stream of articles about "discouraged workers" dropping under the radar of unemployment statistics being collated in the US. The most alarmist want to put the "real" figure (including "underemployed" as well) as high as 22%. Now, I'm actually pretty sure that's a total an exaggeration. Anyone got ideas as to how exaggerated compared to the official 9,1% it might be, since I strongly suspect that number to be an underestimation, no?

At the same time, in the EU streamlining of how unemployment is calculated has jacked up figure for many nations. My native Sweden is an example in point: It's official unemployment figure is currently 7,4% (July 2011). Otoh if deducting the university students, which are counted as unemployed for EU purposes, the figure drops to 4,3%. That's right, for EU unemployment purposes all univ. students should be counted. Not at all sure the US does it like that either?

Should anyone be interested Eurostat has current unemployment stats for the EU, with comparisons including the US, Japan, Turkey and few other as well:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tg...e=en&pcode=teilm020&tableSelection=1&plugin=1

Then again, considering differences in how unemployment is, it might perhaps work better to compare total employment rate?
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tg...tion=1&footnotes=yes&labeling=labels&plugin=1