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The Brave New World of Work
Beck has written a surprising and provocative book about how working is changing radically under our very noses with little serious discussion in our media or political communities. We see stories all the time about employment rates, but most people have little or no sense of the radical changes affecting the nature of work.
Work has become unstable throughout the modern world, writes Beck, a professor of sociology at the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. Skills can be suddenly devalued, jobs obliterated, social and welfare safety nets eroded. Companies merge, collapse, form and reform, often at the expense of their workers.
Fear and economic insecurity prevail among the middle-class majority as well as the underclass, writes Beck. "The United States is the only advanced country where productivity has constantly risen over the past twenty years, while the income of most of its citizens (eight out of ten) has either stagnated or declined. The average weekly earnings of 80 per cent of Americans in gainful employment dropped by roughly 18 per cent between l973 and l995, he reports, from $315 to $258 a week. At the same time, the real income of top managers soared by 19 per cent in just ten years between 1979 and 1989.
As entire industries rise or fall, as firms expand, shrink, separate, "downsize" and restructure, employees at all but the highest levels must go to work each day without knowing whether they will have their jobs or for how long. The newly unstable work society leads to the erosion of the middle-class and in our collective interest in civics. According to Beck, decline in civic participation and voting is directly tied to the decline of work society, which he says is closely linked to worker attitudes about democracy.
Is this all bleak? No, according to Beck. Although the loss of work security creates a temporary loss of security and social capital, he believes that down the road, this individuality and freedom -- much of it empowered by the same technology that has eroded work security -- will create a new kind of global citizen, one who is better informed, more communicative and civically-involved than before. He foresees a more inclusive kind of transnational society, with less nationalism and provincialism. The alternative facing the world is either collapse or political self-renewal, and he foresees the latter.
It's an interesting look at a subject that will affect almost every single American whose lives are being shaped by powerful technological forces they sense but don't quite understand. Work is a critical subject, and technology is changing it. In Brave New World of Work Beck helps us understand how and gives us some sense of how the new workplace might affect our futures.
You can purchase Brave New World of Work at Fatbrain.
I think that if our schools trained people in how to work for themselves in the world of information, the new tech would support more people than it limits.
If it was "natural" for people to use self-published informational websites for much of their research, and to pay those people, then there would be lots more useful information on the Net and many more knowledgeable people supported by the Net.
It is our culture that trains us to use technologies in conservative ways -- as consumers or in support of traditional workplace methods-- rather than to create completely new information-centered industries.
Goat sex free since 2001
I was one of the 75,000 or so laid of by Lucent Technologies. I have witnessed first hand the processes described above, and let me tell you, it isn't pretty at all. I consider it a slap in the face the way things are occuring in this economy. Gone forever (it seems) are the days when people were respected for the work that was done, as opposed to the bottom line, cut-throat corporate world we are living in now. Looking out for number 1 used to not be my highest priority, being able to go home at night knowing I did a damned good job was. Boy how that has changed. I work for myself now, as an independant contractor, and life is much better. I have been burned once, and you will never see me burned again. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
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Get ready to see your programming job get exported to India and China. Drop your mythical notions that all people in these countries know how to do is customer support.
On top of that, get ready to be "Moore's law'd'" out of most other programming jobs you might be thinking of taking - by 2015 computers will be fast enough that point-and-drool paint-by-numbers tools will be available to rapidly and idiotically autogenerate most of the code you write today with no discernable performance loss.
That said, middle class tech jobs will pay the bills nicely through 2010, after that I wouldn't get into programming for all of the tea in China, it will be a sucker's racket akin to the auto industry.
More and more people are ousted from their jobs by smart technologies.
Although I am no longer the fan of Robert Anton Wilson that I once was (despite the fact that I killed him), he spoke about this phenomenon in (IIRC) "Prometheus Rising". He felt that the increased automization of menial tasks would lead to a more educated society. Since all the "dumb jobs" would be taken over by computers, robots, etc., in order to survive people would have to educate themselves on tasks that cannot be performed by automatons.
This seems to be happening, at least to a degree, although there is another factor at work as well: cheap (nonunionized) international labor. There seems to be a point at which exploiting overseas workers is about as cheap as building a robot, sometimes cheaper.
Much like the automation efforts of the past, I don't think work will go "away" per se. It will change. The jobs will be different.
.25 an hour on an assembly line setting screws into mounts so the next guy at .40 an hour can screw them in. We do need someone to do routine maintenance and programming at 20 an hour on the machines that do the job.
We no longer need some guy to stand around for
I don't think we have in the past, or will in the future, see a dramatic decrease in jobs. What we will see is some jobs going away and some magically appearing.
Who had a job programming 50 years ago?
The fact is (just as with Lake Woebegon), the vast majority of humans are average. They prefer stability and order to chaos and "opportunity". And the other fact is that in North America these orderly, stable, average people have built the civil society that we have today (Kabul anyone? Bagota? Jo'burg?) So now the cultural and economic elite is going to destroy any hope of economic stability to "improve opportunity".
Isn't there an old proverb that goes, "Be careful of what you wish for - you may receive it"?
sPh
Down the road, he argues, this new kind of work society may actually be good for the world, creating a new kind of civil transnationalism, and enhancing our freedom and our civic lives.
Well, this looks very promising, but statistics and experience in Europe show people actually do less back to society in the form of volunteer work, societies and non profit organisations. My guess is the free work base we have laid out actually means we like our work better, but have less time and enthousiasm to do something back.
More and more people need day care for their children, health care jobs (the typical jobs-for-life) are very unattractive at the moment in the netherlands and shortages of personell are high, and costs for non-profit organisations are rising with prices so they cannot keep up with it anymore.
My point is there is also a down-side. We haven't explored the effects of this since we are in the middle of it (at least, in Europe and the US). The good thing is the typical work-80h-a-week-til-death stereotype in the US is fading, just as it has done in Europe, although it was less present there IMO. The down side of all this future will certainly surprise us.
Then Katz says the author claims that this mobile, insecure worker will become politically aware at a world level, and we'll have a whole new class of involved citizens.
I don't see how you get there from here. Where's step B?
It seems that workers may become more familiar with the global sources of their labor problems, but without the avenue of local solutions, then I don't see these people becoming political agents. More likely, they will complain about global and national problems, but be unable to think of a way to solve those problems.
In other words, a bunch of complainers, rather than folks who take action. Remind you of any online communities you know?
This sounds just like Rifkin's "The End of Work" in which he lamented the decline of ordinary labor and the rise of the "symbolic analyst" class amidst predictions of economic doom and gloom. His book was written in, wait for it... 1995. Just a few years later the tech boom put us on cloud 9. Now the business cycle has turned so doom books are becoming popular again. In fact, the publication of doom books may signal the bottom of the business cycle, just as articles featuring "the bull" or "the bear" in Time Magazine signal a turn in the stock market.
So, if you have a copy of Rifkin's book, you could probably save yourself some money on this one. Dust it off and read it again.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ha! The technology that Beck so cheerfully says will create a 'global citizen' is being increasingly (and has always been used) to further, not erode oppression.
Instant communication?
Witness the WTO meetings: All Joe and Jane Average ever saw were images of raging anarchists bent on destruction of all that is good, followed by 15 minutes of commercials for gas-guzzling SUV's they don't need, hamburgers they shouldn't be eating and diet schemes they wouldn't need if they didn't eat those hamburgers and actually got their lazy asses out of the SUV's once in a while and got some excercize.
This technology has been advancing at a dizzying rate, as has the dehumanization of the lower and middle classes has accellerated.
But so long as the tevee drones on soothing crap about Rachel and Raymond, they don't care that things are really going to hell around them.
Not 'till it knocks on _their_ front doors, and it's too late then.
"While this is a tragedy in our lifetimes, in the near future, all children will be genetically engineered to be what we would consider geniuses "
Nope, it's just too damned much fun making babies the old fashioned way
;-)
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What unionized gov't workers have done is outsourced all unionized manufacturing jobs through their hero Bill Clinton, NAFTA and GATT, anyone. That's why total union membership has stabilized, gov't workers are now the primary union members.
But gov't is being downsized, one level will be wiped out. The federal level will always be with us, but in each state, the local levels are being squeezed. In Michigan, even property taxes are collected at the state level, the county road repair is being taken over by the state, and the local elected school boards no longer decide any policy, they just implement state policy. You're not even allowed to run for the school board unless you're state certified.
I'm 30. I was one of the first people I know among my cohort to embrace the idea of becoming a mercenary for work. But over the last two years, more and more people my age, and younger are also taking that attitude: if the work doesn't suit me, I don't do it, ... and ... I decide the value of my work and my attitude and work ethic reflect that. Basically, salaried employees are slacking in response to perceived slights or injustices, or even based on what they think they are worth. Many of these things have existed among the "lazy" for many years, but they are becoming acceptable among the rank and file.
That said, I am very sad about this. To me, ideally work should be a way of serving humanity, not serving myself. I think that any job, position, industry, etc. can be looked at and done with an attitude of serving humanity. The problem seems to be that corporations are going in the exact opposite direction and the response is therefore mercenary. Corporations (stockholders) always, always end up winning as compared to their employees. The stockholders are perfect mercenaries of capital, and to me it was only a matter of time before that attitude was learned and reflected in the employees.
I haven't read this book, but I have read other similar works (e.g. Jeremy Rifkin has some stuff about this). It seems inevitable to me that in a capitalist environment this would happen. It also seems inevitable in a communist envionrment tho for different reasons. I personally think that we have to change the nature of our approach to education so that children grow up learning to serve humanity. Mind you, I'm sure lots of other people think that everyone becoming mercenary is a great thing...
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
This just goes to show the overwhelming importance of intelligence - people with low IQs can't compete in a high-tech economy. While this is a tragedy in our lifetime, in the near future, all children will be genetically engineered to be what we would consider to be geniuses [although, to their peers, the will be simply average], and the playing field will be level again.
Absolutely not in my opinion. The emphasis once more is being geared on education - good education, that you pay for. In my country they just introduced study-taxes which apply to attendees of universities.
The result of that is that people from the lower class not seldom can not afford to attend an university anymore. Hence they will be suffering from a lesser education in the future. In turn, this means that their kids will not be able to attend an university.. *draws a circle*
&& aemula C. ab stirpe interiit
As someone who has purchased 20 acres out in the sticks, and plans on being damned near self-sufficient in the near future, I always wonder why our society is so screwed up in this respect. The only people who seem to benefit in our current system is (you guessed it) big business and the wealthy. The rest will be purpetual wage slaves
I plan to give up a confortable middle-class income for the peace of mind that comes from providing for one's self, far before retirement age. I will work when I feel like it -- I don't think I'll ever want to totally leave the computer field -- and I'll barter as much as I can.
I will not be a wage slave until I'm 65!
Method of processing duck feet
Well, sure they can... as corporate executives and marketing people. ;)
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
It's a well known concept in economics that increasing free trade ("globalization") while raising the standard of living for the world overall, will result in lower average wages in the US. The other side of the coin is that it is also supposed to make things less expensive, so the lower wages don't hurt so much. I guess we'll see.
The job upheaval is a direct result of the information economy and the fluid nature of modern business. Will people in power screw someone else to make themselves better off? Duh... Get over it. It's been that way since the beginning and isn't going to change. Whining about it won't help.
The discussion is about the nature of work not the predictability of long term macroeconomic trends. Whether the world's economies become more 'global' or not and how much does not materially effect the nature of non subsistence work. That is, if you work in exchange for at least as much money as it takes to live above a subsistence level in a semi industrialized county or better.
The nature of work however IS changing. Think of it this way; all technologies tend toward less skill and more standardization. As factories have become automated now the 'art' of doing programming is becoming automated from the bottom up so that menial tasks can be handled by machines and processes. It used to be that simply re IPLing a mainframe was a big deal. Now that kind of task is handled by schedulers and error correcting code that allows for the smooth reinsertion of a machine back into the network. Eventually basic development programming such as device driver development will be done w/o humans. This will leave the creative work for only the most highly skilled and creative people to do while most of the old school programmers will be dedicated to the maintenance of automated tool building machines just like the guy who's job it is to maintain industrial robots. The skills will be very finite and the processes will consist of: alert, travel, diagnose, replace, restart, test, close ticket, next call.
I don't see any reason why the unwashed masses who sit and drool in front of the TV now won't be sitting and drooling in front of the web.
The newly unstable work society leads to the erosion of the middle-class and in our collective interest in civics. [snip]... will create a new kind of global citizen, one who is better informed, more communicative and civically-involved than before.
I'd buy the book just to see how he manages this acrobatic leap of logic. I always thought that erosion of participation in civics lead to governmental corruption and that the erosion of the middle class leads to a capitalism-based aristocracy - both of which, IMO, would tend to make joe my-wealth-does-not-grow-exponentially less interested in being a good global citizen, and more interested in kicking the crap out of those that have usurped his freedom.
"The idea of middle-class security is eroding" and "fluid, part-time, entrepeneurial, free-lance, self-directed"
Let me see now, wasn't this how work used to be before the era of big corporation and manufacturing -- i.e.: The Industry Revolution?
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
It seems to me that this type of material appears in cycles, from the industrial revolution on for sure, and probaly previous to that some chicken little decides to write a book about how changing technology is going to destroy our way of life, or dehumanize us or whatever. Not that they aren't an interesting read sometimes but this sort of babble really gets tiresome after a while. Am I the only one who feels this way?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Keep learning and diversify as much as you can. Be interested in the type of business you work for, even if it doesn't seem to apply to your job.
My employer (an insurance company) would rather have competent programmers who have a deep understanding of the insurance industry than brilliant programmers who aren't interested in the business.
There's no particular need for programmers here to have insurance certifications but the bosses take notice when you do.
... but until recently the majority of people doing IT jobs were insulated from them; I distinctly remeber a ./ discussion about the need for unions in the IT field. Most ppl seemed to think that since chances were good that the demand was higher that the workforce available unions didn't made any sense... after all, we were all part of the 'New Economy', we laught at principles made in the XIX century my a bearded german! Most ppl couldn't even graps the principle of conflict between workers and bosses... after all, if ppl want best conditions, why, the Company is going to suffer, and then they will be out of job! Crazy fools!.
Now the same thing that gave birth to this kind of distinctive thinking is coming back for revenge. With the demand/workforce balance changing, and since most ppl in IT were oh-so-damn-liberal in what regards to workers rights - after all, they didn't need to - they are suffering the *same thing* that most other workers in traditional fields have suffered for *centuries*.
It's all so new.... but only to the ones that had illusions about the true nature of the relations between a worker and the guys in charge.
It's so pitifull to see - and I know them first-hand - ppl that during the 90's laughed at other ppls problems and said that they were badly-paid, unemployed, etc, because they were lazy and unfit now being in the damn some situation they joked about then.
Transnacional society, better opportunities? You bet. Capital has no nacionality, never had, so it already know how to play that game. The mantra of "being able to work in what country I want" is not so great when there are thousands of ppl doing the exact thing you do for less money.
(oh, and yes, I'm marxist, just in case someone misses the point and 'acuses me' of such).
fsm
But what happens to a society in which no individual NEEDS to work anymore in order to ensure his survival?
(and what will we do with the landlords? :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
Machines would do all the work, and we'd lead pampered lives of luxury with a standard of living unimagined by previous generations.
Then, someone realized that if people aren't needed to do the work, rather than taking care of them and letting them live comfortable, fulfilling lives, we can just leave them out of the equation entirely. More profits to the few who are still needed to keep the machines running, and to those who actually own the machines.
The result? Mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass misery.
Human beings are becoming obsolete parts of that machine we call The Economy. Those who are still useful only serve to keep fueling the Economy to further render homo sapiens obsolete.
Once the obsolescence process is complete, there will be an extinction. But don't be too sad about it. The machines which will have replaced us will be a far superior race than we.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't want to be 'locked' into a 'job for life'.
:)
I also don't think being middle class is an 'entitlement'.
To truly make a living, I need to provide services and products other people want to pay for. *Everyone* has to live with that constraint.
Up until this decade, products could only be made laboriously, by hand, by individuals, or by factories, cheaply. You get the expensive one offs and the mass produced cheapos.
This is changing. Printers and print technology makes anyone a publisher. Websites and computers makes anyone an information and entertainment provider. Power tools and other equipment makes anyone a cabinetmaker or artisan.
It used to be that being skilled was available to only those who found a master to teach them. Today *everyone* can be skilled. Everyone can fiberglass, woodwork, paint, sew, cook, write, and carve. In a few years you can add to that list: Everyone can program, model, and make movies.
I don't know about anyone else, but standards of living has raised. I don't *have* to be an accountant for 40 years. I don't *want* to be an accountant for 40 years. I'm a QA person right now, but I look forward to a time when I'm not. I can go get a certification in architecture and I can go back to school and become an architect, and with my own hands and my own resources, build my own house. I can grow my own food. I can do *everything*
This is of course very inefficient
The point being is that being comfortable and being happy is not something that is being taken away by the eroding of the middle class. It should be as simple as maximizing yourself and figuring out in any situation, what can I offer to people as a service to get money? Information technology is helping to make that kind of search even easier than ever, too.
Of course I'll be called optimistic and unrealistic, but how else can you be? If you face the future with thoughts of doom and gloom, what's motivating you to keep walking, instead of layiing down to die?
GPL Deconstructed
Snowboarder te years ago?
Job coach ten years ago?
Your reference to Moore's Law, I don't see this being applicable to software at all--the density (perhaps rated as complexity?) of code has not doubled every 18 months. In fact, I could postulate that the sophistication of software hasn't doubled since the 1970s, depending on what metric you'd use. The kinds of tools you're talking about, smart, extreme-CASE tools, 4+GLs, etc., are years and years away, and will still have to be conceptualized, created, and maintained by good software guys, most of which (no matter the nationality) are here. Keep in mind we still have more SEI CMM Level 5 companies here than anywhere else in the world.
If you haven't read them already, I would recommend Yourdon's Decline and Fall of the American Programmer and Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer. The first was penned in the early nineties, and is a pessimistic portrait much like what you describe, outsourced coding jobs much like the automotive industry has done with blue-collar jobs. The second was written a couple of years ago, and asserts that innovation and openness to change will keep the American programmer on top for years.
BTW, this isn't a slam on our overseas bretheren, I'm not saying "US software guys are _always_ tops." (Think Torvalds and Cox!) I'm speaking in generalities: with a majority of the good engineering schools and big software companies being here, the US is a magnet for good software guys.
Yeah, there are more programmers, but it is arguable if there are more "good" programmers. Most of these new programmers are hack and slash pieces of crap like myself.
Mostly, I survive by knowing a decent amount about a LOT, which makes me very valuable to smallish operations. Who wants to buy a top notch programmer, network admin, security guru, and pc support technician for their site when they only have 35 people on site?
I think that there will remain a place for specialist programmers, as there is a need for GREAT code, not crap that works. There will also remain a place for the generalists, as not all companies can staff a full IT department. Just my opinion.
Think about how Moore's law works - by 2015 computers will be easily, effortlessly capable of running languages dumber than VB far faster than the fastest assembler is run on today's fastest machines. Of course the programs themselves will become more complex, but I suspect that the performance of dumb languages will be good enough for businesses who want to drastically reduce programmer wage costs.
Sure hand-made code will always have its panache, just like hand-made cars do. How many manufacturers still make cars by hand?
wasn't someone predicting not too long ago that, because jobs are getting scarcer and automation is becoming more prevalent, companies would start hiring people for 20-30 hour-a-week jobs at the pay scale of 40 hour-a-week jobs? and that all those people with nothing to do in their increased spare time would wind up increasing volunteerism?
maybe the two ideas will be merged. with increased automation, there's less of a need for manual labor, but the one thing machines can't do is socialize. customers always want to talk to a live person.
of course, how well you socialize varies wildly, depending on what's happening in your life these days and on your general mood. this means that you will be moving from job to job more frequently, losing more of that job security mentioned in the review.
I think there's a flaw or two in the theory, however. the book apparently tells us that we will all become more like workers in the third world, but that the internet will help democratize us more and make us more astute on world happenings. we will all magically become citizens of the world; international boundaries will fade in importance.
and yet:
here's my vision of the future: more and more people will be paid less and less. the currently privileged jobs will disappear; if you aren't an executive, you are a low-class worker. the multinationals will consolidate power, while national governments will become administrators of local infrastructure like roads, law enforcement and sewage. the insecure masses will flee into various revolutionary or religious factions. a state of perpetual conflict will break out between factions; the wealthy will tend to isolate themselves from the masses, hiring more security guards while retreating to secluded homes to create a buffer between themselves and the world they have created. the internet will become heavily censored, but there will be underground channels for each of the factions.
not very original, I realize, but hey, we've been headed that way for a very long time, and we all know it.
America leads the world in yearly work hours (1940 hours), with the except of Japan and Korea. Northern European countries have fallen from near 3000 at the beginning of the 20th century to 1500 or less now. This includes leaves and long vacations. In fact the number of American work hours have increased in the past couple decades due to more women working full time, and the overtime work ethic.
Why is this? One explanation is the Puritan morality that "work is good". This reappears in cycles- the 50s/60s Corporation Man, 80s Yuppie, 90s Dot.commer.
Another explanation is the tax and benefits structure. You dont get decent benefits until you work fulltime. To the employer, high employee overhead mans working existing employees more rather than hiring several to do the total work.
And what Joe/Jane above average saw on sites like IndyMedia.Org were images of raging anarchists bent on destruction of all that they consider evil, followed by dozens of posts/stories on how it wasn't wrong to damage those stores because they where company owned...
The mainframe computers throught 1960s had ten or more programmers per computer. 1970s minicomputers require a couple. Then came the personal computer and the mass software industry. There are now 100 million personal computers (home and business) now in the US at least, plus ten billion embedded computers in cars, appliances, traffic lights, etc. Maybe a million programmers now at the most. So we've seen a steady a drop of programmers per computer from 10 to .0001 in the past 40 years, a factor of 100,000 or a bit slower than moores law.
Drucker suggests it is happening already, and that some of the long term causes of it are the longer term aging of our society (with the attendent problems with SS), and the lack of long term prospects with a single employeer.
I think I'll have to pick up the book, since I really enjoyed Drucker's articles, and as I've indicated, I expect the conclusions to be similar, and likewise interesting.
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
Just couple of years back workers, especially IT workers were paid exorbitant salaries. Though I was not part of those fortunate millions, I could not help wonder and feel jealous when people in the IT industry and its ancillary were enjoying life as it came their way. Good pay, relaxed life, big plans and what not. Then reality hits everybody and there is chaos all around.
Employers had realised that they were not making profits and there were a lot of loose threads lying around. A part of this process was the layoffs and those close to the higher levels - people responsible for taking decisions got to keep their jobs. Sometimes even they had to take the brunt of it. Most of the times the decisions were taken in haste and scapegoats were always found.
A lot of prunning was done. Redundant jobs were done away with. Salaries were looked at with a questionable brow. Some lost their salaries altogether, a few of them had theirs cut. Maybe what we see today is the true picture. Though time will only be the judge of it, I think we should look at things around us with caution. Prepare for the bad times.
try being smarter and i'll be nicer!
Our public school system was developed during the agrarian era (e.g., summers off to work the farm). And it seems to have adjusted itself to the industrial era of jobs for life. However, the schools have not caught up with the information era because that would mean fundamental change.
School involves getting up and going to the classroom (the factory), punching in, and doing the proscribed work until age 18. Then in college you have more freedom. High school is absolete. It should be replaced with a variety of choices: community colleges and universities, trade schools, practical experience, etc.
The first few years of school should be spent learning the basics of reading, writing, and math. After that, kids should be presented with a menu of options based on their interests and apptitudes. With such a system you would get way more learning going on in the teenage years -- and less boredom and even less violence. I think that things like Columbine are partially the result of the agrarian/factory high school system that crams thousands of kids into an confined space and an obsolete learning environment.
The result of such a flexible system would be that many more students would leave school prepared for college and the real world.
The idea that everybody should work is a fairly modern one. It's become tangled up with our lives and economy in various ways that made sense at the time but are now a hindrance.
Increasing automation should make us all better off, but doesn't. The problems boil down to the concept "if I can't get a job, I won't have any money". To properly fix this we need to overhaul the way money works. The real problem is that we have a debt based economy which *forces* us to perpetually invest efficiency gains rather than enjoying them.
You're probably thinking: what the fuck am I talking about. Sorry - it's not easy to convey how this works or what's wrong with it in a few sentences and it's extremely difficult to find decent information about this online. You won't find it in most economic texts, but these are so full of holes it's a wonder that economics as a discipline has more respect than astrology.
The problem boils down to the fact that almost all money today is created in the form of debt. Extra stuff gets created constantly. As more stuff is created, either more money needs to be created or prices need to fall otherwise nobody could afford to buy it an afford to buy it. Currently money is created faster than stuff which is why we have positive inflation rates. However this money is all created in the form of debt. Governments don't make money [cash is only about 4% of money in system] - private banks *invent* money by lending out more than they borrow. When you write a check, you are effectively using a currency printed by your bank. Since interest must be paid on loans money is only loaned to those who will invest it, ie almost all the created money is targeted for investment. The monetary system keeps society on a technological conveyor belt.
So, we live in a system where the humans are being automated out of the system, but none of these advancements *can* go towards making life more pleasant or free. In fact, people must work more and more. It doesn't have to be like this, and there is a simple solution, but it'll never happen while humanity is asleep. People spend their entire adult lives trying to aquire something that they don't understand to even the slightest degree. It's funny how people can be so obsessed with money, but if you ask them where it comes from all you get is a blank stare or some irrelevent crap about the mint.
Understanding this stuff is not difficult but it does require thinking clearly about things that we normally don't think about at all, and there are lots of aspects to it - pollution, poverty, ever decreasing quality of consumer goods. An intelligent and informative book that explains this stuff and related ideas quite thoroughly is "Confronting Tyranny - The case for monetary reform" by Mike Rowbotham, but this is hard to get hold of.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
There is nothing new about these ideas except the fact that their application has become transnational and cosmopolitan in scope.
...continually... revolutionises the division of labour within society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of working people from one branch of production to another. ...(T)his absolute contradiction between the technical necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character inherent in its capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security in the situation of the labourer...(and) constantly threatens, by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands his means of subsistence, and, by suppressing his detail function, to make him superfluous....a social anarchy which turns every economic progress into a
Karl Marx, writing in ca. 1867 penned these words:
"Modern Industry
social calamity. This is the negative side.....Modern Industry,...compels society, under the penalty of death, to replace the detail worker of to-day, crippled by the life long repetition of
one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to a mere fragment of a man, by the fully
developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any changes of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers."
This is from Capital, Vol 1, Chapter XV, Machinery and Modern Industry, section 9, pp 486- 488 (my edition, at least).
Marx always thought that the positive potential of
Modern Industry to produce educated well rounded human beings would always subordinated to the necessary pursuit of short run profits inherent in the capitalistic way of doing things.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
Bekwin
This is a bad analogy. Making cars is equivalent to burning CDs--it doesn't take much expertise, just follow the template, pop the rivet, answer the wizard.
The creation of a car starts and ends short of the manufacturing line with the expert manipulations of engineers and designers. Nothing has dumbed down these guys work, if anything, it's gotten more and more complex, and more in demand, as have the tools (CAD/CAM/CAE). Saying that the phase-out of assembly programming will eventually progress to 'easy' programming is like saying the phase-out of drawing boards by CAD will someday make for 'easy' car/skyscraper/cell phone design. I don't see mechanical engineers becoming paint-by-numbers morons by 2015, so how can you apply this idea to an equally complex engineering discipline?
I dunno, what you're asking is the same thing I want.
:)
We'll see if it's possible. I don't think it's impossible
I do have to note, however, that your speech pattern 'provide for a family' is different than mine 'maximize myself'. I hope to provide for a family, but I plan to do so by maximizing myself. My skills, my values, my talent, etc.
GPL Deconstructed
Why is no one talking about the expanding gulf of earnings mentioned in the review? 80%(!!!) of Americans have their effective income reduced by 19% in about 20 years (about 1% per year average), yet the "top managers" have their income increased by 19 % in 10 years (about 2% per year). And we are talking about US of A, the most powerful state in the world, ever. We are not even talking about some other much sorrier places.
I find this trend very alarming, but not unexpected. The top dogs make the rules, and guess whose benefit are the rules for? This is really the same situation throughout the history of civilization, which is exploitation.
Exploitation?! How can that be? Why not? It is the trend in human history, it is what a person in power does to keep his advantage (in general). Except that in an "advanced democracy" like USA, the exploitation assumes a more advanced form. It is not done with guns to the head, it is done with more legal means, which is threat of loss of income. Wait till the high tech "globalization" hits you (and I think it will be much sooner that 10-15 years), and your job is now being done someone else in India or China (no disrespect to workers in that country at all!). Then you sit there and wonder: what the hell happened? Then you think and remember who benefits from all this, and who makes the rules, and how come the rules seem right, but the outcome feel so damn wrong?
There is no simple answer, really. Just interesting to watch the world whirl along. A few people get the carrot, a wast majority just keep chasing thinking that they can get the carrot. I think it helps to know what is going on, even though one can't realistically change the situation.
Cheers.
You're telling me it's impossible for a single earner to provide for a family?
Other than the fact that I don't share this ideal in the first place, I don't think it's impossible.
It just means you have to be frugal, which has been the *norm* for thousands of years.
What do I want? What do I need? What can I afford? How do I make do?
GPL Deconstructed
At the beginning of the 20th century, the vast majority of workers in the U.S. were dedicated to agrarian jobs. Obviously, within a very short time period there was massive social change as the the majority of work shifted from agricultural pursuits to industrial pursuits where it peaked at over 60% in the mid 60%. During the early part of this period, there was much public grief as everyone complained how horrible it was that people were working in factories and the sort. There was much hysterionics as various alarmists talked about the disaster in the making.
By the year 2000, less than 2% of the U.S. population was dedicated to agricultural work. Agricultural producitivity expanded something like 200 fold during this period. With the wonderful, colorfully, jaundiced lens of hindsight, of course, we know this was no disaster.
Something similar is happening now. The 1960s saw the beginning of the decline of industry in the U.S., and it's been steadily decreasing ever since.
Service jobs are beginning to rule the day, and -- just like the early 1900's -- hysterionic alarmists are espousing their doomsday predictions (n.b.: I'm not accusing the author of the book of this, just a general observation).
A close examination of the tranformation, however, yields the information that the very fastest growing sections of the service sector are the professional services. We are quickly becoming a society where specialized knowledge rules the day. Lawyers, physicians, engineers, hell even the mechanics and secretaries are workers who need to understand computers and computing.
I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, except to point out that by 2100 and most likely a lot sooner very few people will be in jobs directly attached to manufacturing. We'll be one giant service economy.
C//
I'd agree that efficiency in the economy, the key thing that drives up productivity and enables higher growth in wages, is enhanced by introducing new technologies and requiring workers to be flexible and to change what they do.
OTOH, I think that too much change in the human environment is a source of stress, with various physiological and psychological side effects that we are only beginning to understand.
None of this is particularly new, however. I think Alvin Toffler's Future Shock (30 years old now) and follow-on books discussed this in some detail.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
>
> Nope, it's just too damned much fun making babies the old fashioned way.
Y'know, science has found out how the baby-making part works, and how the fun-part works, and that you can have the fun part any time you want without the baby part, and how you can have the baby part at your leisure. Happened a few decades ago.
The decades-old separation of the baby part from the fun part already means that all we need to do is the engineering. Then you get the benefits of the better baby product without diminishing the "fun part" at all.
What if we have reached (or will be reaching) the plateau in terms of technological advancements in computing - would that cause society to settle back into some new version of the "job-for-life" paradigm, or would the contracting and freelancing continue out of habit and preference? I think that people want stability more than anything else, and that the myth of the globally-connected, civic-minded worker who is beholden to no corporation is the dream of the wealthy few with brains and education to do it themselves.
Much like the failed Chiat-Day "no office" office environment, the unfettered contract worker concept is not to most peoples' liking. The current working climate is a somewhat unfortunate result of the relentless need for updated skills, and if that ever ends things will settle down. Either that or companies will adopt the Japanese model and retrain, retrain, retrain, instead of casting off valuable organizational veterans in favor of the flavor of the month.
Was that out loud?
About 8 years ago I had a philosophical split with some of my friends: We were all into computers and programming but I was the only who was planning to take it up as a career.
They told me "All programming will be automated soon, and that which isnt will be done by $5 an hour hordes of 3rd wold programmers. Plus look how many people are enrolling in CS these days, theyll be a glut of programmers anyway..."
Well, seeing how I wasnt in it for the money really anyway, I stuck to programming while they went into law, accounting, etc...
Needless to say the dreaded programmer glut never happened, while > 50% of those CS students dropped out, leaving me with little competition, and I found myself in a high paying job doing something I would do for free.
Fast forward a decade and you hear the same arguments creeping out again. Despite the dot-com bust, I see no flagging of demand for competent programmers, and none on the forseable horizon.
Conclusion: CPU speeds will never make up for people being idiots, and knowing what to solve is harder that knowing how to solve it.
Yes, maybe a hundred thousand people will be involved in this business, displacing the millions who do the custom coding today.
Economies of scale will come to programming - it doesn't surprise me that the /. audience is in denial about this, as this board tends to be rather arrogant and pleased with itself, but its going to happen.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
And what, exactly, am I supposed to learn about the world of work in 2002 by looking at salary data from 1989 and 1995? The trend towards lower earnings for workers reversed in the latest economic boom (1995 onwards). Leaving out recent data that shows that workers' earnings are increasing, in order to "prove" that they are decreasing, is deceptive.
umm.. yeah. Right.
Hey! You want fries with that?
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Cheers,
--Maynard
Everyone here should read the collection of Economist articles, collectively named "Does Inequality Matter"?
Read it critically. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but it does seem to me to be saying: "What we've got is incredibly unfair. You, a rich Economist reader, are (rightly, even though wrongly) advantaged. If you want to keep that advantage, you've got to give to charities, because if you don't- well, it sounds like we've got a class war coming soon. We're talking widespread socialist ideas, the return of the Anarchists, and class war. So either the rich wealth keep the people happy, or they're going to try and take it for themselves."
You've got to love these patronizing arguments, adorning the pages: "Hey! Nobody is poor, because even the poor have toilets- something the kings of ages past never had! So, the poor don't really have it bad; They're just complainers." Or another one: "Don't feel so guilty about your riches; None are rich, because no one is content. That means you aren't rich! It's been stressful lately, those poor don't know anything about riches. If only they knew the pain of managing the people."
Europe forces people to contribute to the 'social good' through ridiculously high taxes.
Otherwise we'll be left with a bunch of zombies saying "The gov't will take care of it....".
Well I'll be...
First of all in europe we feel socially connected way more than in the US. Too bad you still think we are communists, but
As a matter of fact, we believe in Europe we still have some sort of saying in Europe as "people". For instance voting incidents like a certain state in the south of the US allowed to happen will certainly be very painfull to the politicians concerned at least.
The introduction and presence of rights of referendum in Europe means we can revoke decisions of the government and direclty oppose or approve of citizens, not look at the puppets in a big building perform and feel good because we aren't involved anyway.
Fact is that Europeans do have a sense of responsability towards their fellow citizens. We will not let them die unattended and say we already do so much volunteer work. We institute ourselves into a bigger organisation and arrange for them. And so for healthcare, and so for pensions, and so on. This is what ultimately makes and authorizes the existence of a real government. (no flame intended)
Been a long, long time since I read Dharma Bums, what's GORP?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
You're absolutely right to point out that only a few people are going to be benefitting from the new nature of work and the new economy. Most people aren't, and the huffy attitude of "well, you should have gotten an education and done something real in your life" doesn't cut it. First, people don't magically go away when they become unemployable through lack of job skills. No, they stick around and if they feel they've been screwed by the world, they often choose to act out violently. Second, a world full of people who do nothing but program is stupid and unrealistic - who's going to grow your food? Put it on a shelf for you to buy? Who's going to fix the potholes? Who's going to pick up the garbage?
Average people, that's who. And as someone who works with them and lives among them, I can tell you that they're getting pissed and demoralized. The only thing that's kept them from making a lot of trouble is that they've managed to hang on to enough bread and circuses to keep them satisfied, if uneasy. Take this away from them and we will see all hell break loose. I don't think people have much loyalty to the system or much obedience to their "betters" left. If times should get hard, they will cause turmoil and strife and they will be heard.
One of the ideas behind a stable, working society is that it works for the majority of people. If it stops working for them, eventually they will get sick of it and forcibly change it, or tear things to pieces attempting to do so. This is not a desirable outcome.
(Insert your obligatory "those who refuse to learn from the past" quote here)
This article, Jon Katz's usual clueless rhetoric and this book are all examples of "been there, done that."
So, why do "we're all going to be replaced with robots!!!!" fearmongers continue to get airtime? Two reasons -- First and foremost, the view that we are being replaced by machines is terribly myopic and one-directional. In reality, automation is a cyclical process. Human labor is replaced with mechanical labor, which in turn needs an INCREASED demand for human labor in the form of design, implementation, deployment, usage, maintenance, and other forms of engineering.
The second reason is simple. People listen to Katz, a well-documented idiot, and in doing so commit the mental equivalent of trying to put out a fire with a bucket of gasoline.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Get ready to see your programming job get exported to India and China. Drop your mythical notions that all people in these countries know how to do is customer support.
You did use mythical, Ars-Fartsica, so I figure YOU don't believe this, but I'm wondering who the hell at Slashdot would? Because from what I heard, two of the firms with the best software processes in the world are Indian. And a fair chunk of the programmers in Silicon Valley, in Australia and everywhere else are Indian or Chinese.
Or what? Did you think only AMERICANS knew how to program? I'm sure Linus would find that funny. And I'm sure that if the scenario you are predicting happens, the Indian and Chinese kids would be a bit miffed that we are bemoaning their chance to get a decent job for once.
I know bugger-all economics, but you seem to be suggesting the development of programming 'sweat-shops' in India and China. There are already plenty of programmers in these countries - and they are middle-class and educated, just like most of us. And they'll probably demand the same wages and standards of living.
Considering the current rate of growth in the software market in India, I'd say that if the movement of programming jobs to India was a problem for America, we'd already be seeing the effects. I didn't think we were.
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Well, if I had felt like preaching on and on about my political ideals, I would have said that this is why the world should pour zillions of dollars into education. I've had the same thought as you many times ("maybe lots of people just aren't up to it"), but I think that's selling us all a bit short without evidence for doing so. For example, in 200 years we may be able, a la The Matrix, to flash-imprint massive amounts of "foundation" knowledge like the physical sciences or the history of one's nation once the brain has reached adult maturity. Everyone can then work from there, with our usual varying degrees of success. Anyway, what I suggest is probably WAY down the road, but it is the logical end point of the capitalist way of thinking -- maximized efficiency of resource use.
I'll grant you, the difference between someone making $60K and someone making $600K is often an accident of birth... but the difference between $16K and $60K is rarely more than motivation. The "peasants" won't revolt against their economic leaders for the same reason they won't revolt against their political leaders: because democracy and capitalism allow those people who are dissatisfied with their place in the system to change it peacefully. During what other "toppled regime" has that been true?
Published a book called "The End of Work", a few years ago. I was too busy with work to read it then. Now that I am laid off, maybe I'll find the time.
Being a computer guru is also a very difficult set of skills, at least being a good one. (It's easier to hide lack of skill with computers than with music though).
But, I think you miss my whole point.
If, in the country and the world I was born in, music and art skills were highly valued, and music and art related jobs were highly paid and necessary jobs, then I would have learned as best I could any music or art skills.
If I liked computers, and there was no money in them, then I would probably take it on as a hobby at most. I sure wouldn't waste my education on computers if the skills weren't in demand.
Does this clear things up?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
All you have to do is get the appropriate sex change surgery and work really hard to please your owners and you'll survive -- as long as you don't inspire them to beat you so often that you can't adequately heal before the next beating -- at least until your too old for the plastic surgery to hold up at which point, well, you need to think about the larger happiness of those better than yourself and take that big long sleep at the end of the needle.
Seastead this.
It gets worse... after the American economy collapses, the country breaks up into several paramilitary zones, each controlled with an iron hand. Basic freedoms are revoked, censorship becomes the norm, and those with subversive ideas are imprisoned. Soon, a game show called "The Running Man" becomes the most popular television show in history...
(Honestly, that movie is really scary, just because as every day passes, I see things headed closer to the way things were in that movie.)