Smackinomica: Why we Work

[smack]

While doing research on local salaries in my jobsearch, I came to some interesting conclusions about the futility of working in a food co-op and other things. But I also realized I hadn't written any theories of work or economics in awhile, so went off on a lil' tangent. I'm reposting a section of my journal here unedited, so please take it with a big grain of salt. I often write things there that I am merely fiddling with, idea-wise. Nonetheless, I thought it might be time for us to have another discussion on "What are People For?" (Wendell Berry's book), and in this case: "What are Jobs, really?"

Have mercy on my journaling, but tear ideas to shreds!

"The world has gone crazy with work and capitalism. We could all work 25 hours a week and have the same standard of living, AND be helping other countries attain economic stability, AND be living sustainably on our planet if we really wanted to. Its what I want, and I think most of us would too, if we only thought it out.

7 x 16 = 112 non-sleeping hours a week.
7 x 2 = 14 eating hours a week (minimum).
5 x 12 = 60 working/commuting hours (average American)
-------------------------------------------------------
38 "free" hours a week, to parent, go to church, take care of our homes, friends, relatives, hobbies, civic groups, social committments, excercise, and otherwise 'enjoy' our standard of living.

Cutting work hours to 30 a week would nearly double the 'free time' we have, and is totally possible.

I've never explained 'my' theory of economics in this journal, but here goes:

As the efficiency of farming, basic infrastructure, transportation, and resource harvesting/manufacture increases, less and less people need to be employed in the essential sectors. In past cultures some of the 'extra' people became the priesthood classes, artists, or educators.

That brings us to education, if you fill in the implications of above for modern day, which I'll do below. "Education is Socialization" is one of my teaching mantra's. And true, in a complex culture, the young need increasingly complex socialization to become willing worker-bees. And also true that the most part of teaching is some form of socialization, whereby the student gets in the proper habits of any discipline, or merely the habits of a decent citizen. But also true: These can be taught in the home/community as children/adolescents play and learn naturally, provided there are elders around to guide them, and decent people around to model behavior. And also true: The socialization within a particular discipline is actually better learned through apprenticeship than through schooling. IE, one does not go to school to become a farmer or a plumber or an electrician (well, ok, you do, but you don't need to). Only 'Academia' and careers therin have as a true requisite: Academia.

So why do we have schools really?

Schools are how we keep young adults from competing in the super-saturated workforce. We can afford to have less people working, so we do, but deviously so. The 'cool' thing about this is that nobody really intended or planned for it, but it still happened as if designed by someone: "Hmm, what should we do to about the 'extra' people we have? Ah, let's postpone adulthood by 10+ years (ages 12-22+) through schooling".

At this point most people say: "No, wait, I need my Master's Degree to get that job in Civil Engineering". Yes, you do. But how long would it have taken you to learn on the job, while contributing something to your company, provided you had a company with good mentoring and training? Would it have taken: 4 years of highschool, 4 years of college, and 2 years of Graduate work? Or would it have taken 3-6 months to become useful, and another 3-6 to become able to work on your own?

I thought so.

We're looking at Ultimate, not Proximate causality here. Yes, a person 'needs' a degree to get certain jobs proximately, but ultimately the degree isn't even generally 'good' training for a specific job, let alone 'great', as could be a good internship or mentor-as-boss.

We have schools to keep people from growing up and entering the workforce 'prematurely'. Counter-intuitive as hell.

So what about the rest of economics? Well, it turns out that at the turn of the last century fully 15% of the population were involved in farming, and another 15% in essential harvesting/manufacturing of resources. Today, less than 1% are needed for farming, and less than (approx.) 5% in essential harvesting and manufacture. The lopsided upside down pyramid has gotten even fatter. Generously 10% of us feed/house/clothe/provide electricity/gas/coal/wood for the other 90% of us, who consume it in whatever quantities we wish.

Its like magic. If we have 200,000,000 Americans, we have enough essentials. If we double the population, we just make more: doughy goodness A.K.A. Essentials, and creamy filling A.K.A.: Non-essential jobs.

So what to do with the other 90% of the population?

We invent things for people to do. Just like an incompetent (or merely irritated) teacher will invent busy work for students to buy time, so too does civilization invent busy work to keep everyone employed. Let's double the essential population to be generous and include artists and writers. What good is civilization if you can't gloat in a book or statue?

What has happened since 1900: Increase in military spending and personnel, the proliferation of: the automobile, electricity, and the 10 Billion ways to use them. So we made jobs in the auto sector, the military sector, the aviation sector, the coal/gas/oil/hydro sectors. Those people gradually came from farms which were rapidly industrializing all through last century. They also came from 'homesteaders', people that contributed nothing to the national GDP but merely took care of themselves. Where else?

Gradually though, we were getting too rich, so we had the Depression, which helped us be unhappy (and not change a darn thing, or think about the future, heavens no!). Thankfully, after the 50's, we invented the computer industry, which exploded in the 80s and 90s to soak up any remaining hippies or neer-do-wells who would not contribute to the big machine. And throughout this time the nebulous Service Industry gradually overtook the Manufacturing Industry, largely replacing it (wouldn't you rather work in a hotel than a sweatshop?) and shipping the manufacturing jobs overseas while concurrently making remaining manufacturing so exceedingly efficient that Willy Wonka could make all the chocolate the world would ever need all by himself.

We made our laws more complex, to employ lawyers. We improved healthcare to make more jobs there too. We decided we liked writing more than reading or trees, so we publish more books/magazines/newspapers/journals than ever. But largely the balances have been paid in the big 3: Manufacturing Imperialism (indebting other countries to give us their wealth and our goods), the Service Industry, and the Telecommunications/Computer Industry.

This is a long way around to coming back to the point: It would be quite easy to cut the work week in half: Apprentice and Employ Young Adults (and blow up the schools), Give our Elders back their jobs as Elders, rather than everything else they do/don't do now, and reduce our vapid, rapid, insipid, moronic rate of consumption of resources by simplifying our 'standard of living'. Get rid of some of those jobs in the service industry. Get rid of some extraneus non-essential things.

But how do we do that? I leave that for the next entry. "

TWC: I'll add this if we need it. There's quite enough in here though to get us started I think. Have at it!.

-Smack

[Last_Crusader]

Surely the relatively comfortable and unnecessary jobs are necessary to preserve social order? People aren't going to accept that they are quite literally useless without the influence of modern society.

And in addition, students demonstrate they can learn by learning in schools. Who cares if the life cycle of the ringworm is unrelated to coal mining or other 'essential' tasks? The ability to discern between those who can learn and those who can't prevents wastage in terms of time and effort for any training/internship process, and so is still a valid procedure. Isn't selection (schooling) necessary to ensure efficiency in selection of candidates for apprenticeship?

[smack]

Surely the relatively comfortable and unnecessary jobs are necessary to preserve social order? People aren't going to accept that they are quite literally useless without the influence of modern society.

I don't understand the first part; How are comfortable or 'unnecessary' jobs more or less important to social order than their counterparts? As to the second, the exploration of utility and an inverted pyramid of production is not a prescription, but only a description of reality.

And in addition, students demonstrate they can learn by learning in schools. Who cares if the life cycle of the ringworm is unrelated to coal mining or other 'essential' tasks? The ability to discern between those who can learn and those who can't prevents wastage in terms of time and effort for any training/internship process, and so is still a valid procedure. Isn't selection (schooling) necessary to ensure efficiency in selection of candidates for apprenticeship?

I would agree: Schooling is a valid procedure for determining best-candidates for any given job. Likewise, a belly-flop is a valid procedure for entering the water from distance. . The perspective you describe seems to be from the employer's point of view: "How do I get the best people to work for me?", wherin one method is to see how long a person can tolerate the busy work and futility, monetary drain and irrelevence of many years in school. Sort of a "Who will make it through the Gauntlet?" sort of thing. Now, who decided it should be this way, or that this is the best way (to determine appropriate candidates)? My answer: Nobody. Its an evolved system: When a company is getting too many 'qualified applicants' they simply add in other prerequisites to the job, to thin the herd. IMO, this is asinine, because only those with the money for school, the time for school, the patience for school (most are shoddy in the US...a 'least-common-denominator' kind of problem), and the bureaucratic character to endure it will come out the other end. Its a passive process of ever-increasing-busywork, rather than an active process of seeking out the kinds of people and training them.

All of that makes sense from an employer's point of view, though incredibly inefficient and poorly targeted. Is why we have such a system in place. So I do not argue that extant conditions are 'wrong' or 'impossible'. They exist. Its the way things are. It works for somebody or it wouldn't exist, etc.. But this is not to say that better systems are not possible. For starters, someone could actually think about the process rather than merely tack onto it or react to it. We need education-system designers, from a basal level, not from a "And this year we're going to add more Finger Painting, because I read it in Deep-pockets Chopra's book!" Someone could look at the long term. Someone could find out what the people want, both employers and job-seekers. And all of us could commit to creating a system consciously and pragmatically.

It ain't going to happen. Not next year at any rate. But someday, who knows? Educational philosophers like John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Rudolf Steiner have had some impact on how we do education, while economists and deep thinkers in management have had some impact on how we do hiring.

I appreciate the directness of your query: "Isn't selection (schooling) necessary to ensure efficiency in selection of candidates for apprenticeship?" Its one that I think needs asking all the time until we come up with satisfactory answers, because while it works, while it seems a necessary inefficiency, it seems broken at the same time. Getting at the reasons for education in the first place, and for the kinds of jobs we have in the second place, may help broaden the foundation from which to rebuild answers.

[Last_Crusader]

Alright, then... Surely, though, the fact that the economy is centered on the system we have means that we cannot restructure ourselves to your proposed system because of the need for a transition with the economy 'disengaged', if you will, in which time there will be hardship which people will find hard to endure?



"Surely the relatively comfortable and unnecessary jobs are necessary to preserve social order? People aren't going to accept that they are quite literally useless without the influence of modern society."

Let me put it another way: what do the lower workers have to aspire to if the system you propose comes into effect? Although people will have a better standard of life, there will be less of an improvement in life upon promotion, and thus people will work less hard because they have the conditions that currently provide the main part of motivation to hard work by default.

[Aristophanes]

There is no such thing as 'unnecessary' work so long as it leads to innovation. The work you describe as 'unnecessary' often leads to extraordinary efficiency gains for those people you say do the 'necessary' work. A farmer armed with the latest accounting software, Roundup, the newest John Deere farm equipment, irrigation, genetically modified crops, and also the vast commercial network[apparently invisible to you] is far more productive than one who, due to a lack of 'unnecessary' workers, makes do with wooden hoes, no modern fertilizers or pesticides, genetically weaker crops, greater vulnerability to weather, no accurate means of tracking relative worth of crops and fields, and no secure/diverse marketing means.
Let me be honest with you: 'unnecessary work' is work whose importance is not understood by the sophisticates who've never had to do the job, or never thought about all the small things which enable them to do it. You discuss how the segment of the population which conducts this supposedly 'essential' work has gotten smaller, but you gloss over the reasons thereof. The advances which permit greater farming/industrial efficiency were generally not discovered with those sectors, or any sector for that matter, in mind. They were merely viewed as curiosities or 'progress,' but that 'non-essential' 99% of the population found ways to turn potentially productive technology into something useful. Farmers and industry have benefited enormously from the internal combustion engine, but it wasn't designed with them in mind. How about Watson and Cricks model of DNA and theory which had led to genetically modified crops-who planned for that? Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, was a Massachusetts university graduate with an avid interest in mechanics; I think we can all vouch for the fact that he had no intention of inventing the cotton gin when he took a job tutoring the children of a Georgian heiress.
The entire point of specialization is to maximize the value each person's 'competitive advantage' gives him; it means that the work we do is becoming increasingly more knowledge-based, and covers less and less extensive territory; but the efficiency gains are incredible.

[Carousel]

Hate to call you on this in a thread Aristophanes (you have PM's turned off) but your signature exceeds the rules.

10) Civitates will be allowed one (+1 - A total of 7) additional line of text in their signature to declare their allegiance to the patron AND their camaraderie to any brethren/sistren if they share the same patron. This extra line of text is for this specific purpose only.

Currently your signature stands at 8, and theres no allegiance sworn, so thats two lines over the limit. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to remove the last two lines and also request that you enable PM's in your profile.

Thank you - Carousel

[smack]

Aristo, good to have your haughty voice back, and I mean that sincerely, and in the better sense of the word (maybe another word would suffice instead?).

"Unnecessary Work" is where you set the pyrite in the weakness of my argument. Hmm. Well, I think you miss the point of the argument, first of all. Second of all, I agree with you about innovation. And as our 'essential jobs' (feeding, clothing, housing ourselves) have gotten more and more efficient on the backs of seemingly unrelated invention, we have a bigger and bigger 'non-essential' sector.

I don't see you disagreeing with this. You relate that progress to this point has been built largely outside the spheres one could ever have predicted. My argument is based on our situation right now. Furthermore, let us imagine if we only had 1/2 the 'inventors' rapidly advancing our essential-sector efficiencies. It would take 2x the time to arrive at the progress we'd otherwise have then, or some variation thereof (IE, having less inventors active might in some cases cause more 'wise' progress (two steps forward, no steps back), but it might also cause all sorts of complexities that would slow 'progress' more than 1/2)

What is the mad rush to progress? What would happen if we progressed more slowly and, heaven forbid, more deliberately? Would the brilliant pyres of competition be snuffed out with 1/2 the world's population? With other forms of non-progress holding us in check? Does our progress rest so delicately on the unleashed mad dog of global exploitation and growth that any hindrance would knock us fully off this razor's edge?

I really don't think so. Think of all the progress that was made before later efficiencies could have done it 'better' or 'faster'. How did Edison design the lightbulb without more understanding of organic chemistry and computer models of heat diffusion through various surfaces?

I give us more credit.

A farmer armed with the latest accounting software, ....

1. The system of food production, from seeding to your dinner table accounts for no more than 2% of our population. I do account for the commercial network, etc.. I don't account for the designer of accounting software or developer of genetically modified seeds, though it would be interesting to calculate how the efficiencies of farming ride on other efficiences.

The point is that we are more efficient farmers. Less people need be involved with food production or supporting food production. There are more people freed from this industry into other industries. If you'd like more data, I will try to dig some up. My data on farming comes from the Dept. Agriculture and US census bureau.

2. Yes, farmer's efficiencies ride on other industries. No, we don't have to keep improving our efficiencies if we don't want to. Why the rush to use every last space as a field or parking lot? (yes, that's an inordinately complicated question on feeding our world population, sorry). A third option is to continue to improve, but more slowly, sanely, and coincidentally with a different work structure.

What I think you fail to see is what drives our job market and the creation of new jobs. Future inventions don't create jobs today in 'invention'. We create jobs because A. There is a free pool of labor, and B. because we can think of additional ways to consume resources/ products, and additional service industries. We also put people in C. Improving our 'standard of living' (healthcare, excercise industry, variety of entertainment, variety of couches for the couch potatoes.....ad nauseum. The economy creates the jobs it needs to keep people employed. With a surplus of labor, new jobs are created. With a surplus of products and services, services become cheaper so that each person may spend more, consume more, be better serviced, have more things, have more modes of entertainment, and more grass to cut in their lawn.

Since we could reduce our manhours with far less impact than 1:1 on our rate of consumption and available services, why not consider it?

The answer to that is another huge thing I think. It has nothing to do with the reality of our efficiency being false.

There is one more thing I can't resist responding to:

Let me be honest with you: 'unnecessary work' is work whose importance is not understood by the sophisticates who've never had to do the job, or never thought about all the small things which enable them to do it.

Thats ridiculous. There is almost nothing to say to that. I think it speaks for itself. I guess then you'd be surprised by the varieties of jobs this sophisticate has done. My argument, if wrong, is not so because I've not dug ditches and laid brick, not rung cash registers or programmed accounting software, not planted crops or run bulldozers, not lived without running water or electricity, not waited for unemployment checks or sold goods manufactured with my own hands, not cared for food from seed to table, and so on. If its wrong, I believe its my own inability to express it with proper alacrity, my own laziness to not back it up on the words of others, on the facts, figures, and tables that would express its truth. For we are living in a mad rushing dream of our own creation. Nothing in reality necessitates it. If anything these simple facts reccommend another look at our system of work/education. That we draw some other conclusions can and should be up to us, since our 'progress' does leave us this choice, whether we see it yet or not.

[Aristophanes]

Are you going to force people not to work? Will that stop people from working just as much? It's the only way to ensure that your plan is carried out.

If you don't force people to work less some will continue to work as much or more to fill the void. The price of labour will shoot up because you have made each available hour twice as valuable, and those who continue to work the same hours will have extreme purchasing power when compared to those who don't: inflation will ensue. You will then witness people going back to the old 'regular' hours in order to still draw a living.

The issue here is that some industries require more hours put in for each product issued and will need to keep up the same level of hours in order to offer the same, or in some cases, any output at all. They [i]will[/b] be disadvantaged by a labour market which is radically different, having to hire the same number of labour hours despite the fact that the price of labour has just doubled.[by halving the work week] Other industries will benefit, but the entire balance will be upset, probably in a negative manner.

Another issue is this: no matter how you shorten the work week, some resources on this planet will still need to be consumed at the same rate as prior to the change. The negative aspect apparent in this is that labour-intensive work intended to maximize efficiency of resource use and allocation, as well as dedicated to the discovery of new resources, will be greatly reduced. The work I'm discussing is laboratory work, and understanding of its usefulness would be radically different in a world where a worker's hours are severely limited. For starters, the new economic balance would first favour those services which are required for human survival. With, at the bare minimum, only half the labour hours available, those services deemed essential would be absorbing hours similar to those they required before the change; but the difference would be that they'd be drawing those hours from a much smaller pool. This is actually true of all services and industry deemed 'non-essential' in the short term, and when you halve work weeks you aren't just halving the hours available to them. As I described earlier, 'essential work' would require similar hours to what it was experiencing before the change.
You may think that only 1% of the workforce is involved in those transactions you call 'essential,' but the truth is radically different: to ensure that efficiency, that 1%, requires myriad other organizations and individuals who often make intangible contributions from police officers to stock market traders. If those people ceased to make those contributions, the difference would be quickly felt.

There are many objections to be made, but the most pertinent is really 'why is this at all in order?'

[smack]

Keep in mind that my shortened week includes those learning a trade on the job: the adult-delayed (ages 14-24 or so), and a significant proportion of 'retirees' who currently retire too early and die of boredom. 40 years of retirement? Its your right, but often our elderly people are just cast aside when they could continue to contribute.

With 45% of Americans going to college, there may be a labor surplus in this model of a shortened work week, rather than a deficit.

Nonetheless, you raise good points to think about.

There are many objections to be made, but the most pertinent is really 'why is this at all in order?'

1. Because we have a choice I don't think we realize we have. Many of our systems, like schooling have grown and grown to absorb more and more of the labor force to keep things balanced. It is part of our culture that people go from 10 year vacations to 40 years of 40 hour weeks and then to 20-40 years of vacation. Changing that would be delicate at best, but it is changeable.

2. Our school systems are crap largely because their function is so at odds with our nature. Young people want to explore, try new things, experiment with responsibility, and define themselves within community. Instead we put them behind bars (school and jail) and find ourselves scratching our collective heads: "Why doesn't our education system turn out better citizens?" Our educational systems purpose is misunderstood. Their true function is to socialize persons and delay their entry into the saturated work force. This delay grows longer and longer (We now need Masters Degrees for what we used to need BA's for, and consequently the quality of MA's is lowered to account for those persons needing to go through that level of training, etc..etc..) and nobody stops to wonder if there is a better way. Its unconscious and needn't be.

3. Again, why work longer hours than we need to as a civilization? As efficiencies improve this only results in increasing our rate of consumption. Like bees in a beehive that have made 100 times too much honey and now wonder why they die of obesity. And so many other things. I think the question you pose well suited to an examination of our current structure, as much or more so than in examination of my hypothetical proposal. We need to question both, not neither. So I ask you your own question, in reference to the way things are now:

"There are many objections to be made, but the most pertinent is really 'why is this at all in order?'

[Count of Montesano]

Interesting posts, Smack.

I know in America, the biggest problem is the whole shareholder system, the benefit system and a lack of empathy among workers. Most employees have no stake in their own companies and little control over working hours or conditions. Shareholders want to get rich, which means they could care less about a more enlightened system for the average worker.

There is no universal healthcare system, it's all paid for by the employees. Therefore, companies would rather hire one worker at 50/hours a week and pay for one benefits package than hire two workers at 25/hours a week and pay for both workers' medical insurance. The result is the famous "ghosting" system, where salaried workers are now working 2-3 times harder for companies that downsize or refuse to hire new workers. Of course, as salaried employees they don't get overtime, so the company saves a huge amount of money by overworking employees.

Lack of empathy... being worked till exhaustion is a source of pride for Americans. Our social programs are designed to help only the most desperate, and even then people get upset about the "welfare nanny state" where queens eat steak every night at taxpayer's expense. The rich don't care and the middle class keep getting squeezed but make too much money to see any benefit. Obviously, the average American is angry that they can't afford to send their kids to college, yet they make too much money to qualify for free government loans. That makes the middle class very supicious about any new social program, since they are (probably rightfully) convinced that new programs will not benefit them but only bleed off more of their earnings in taxes.