http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/index.html
This rubbish needs to be countered...
Yeah, I read that yesterday. Such a tired argument. This guy needs a good dose of Hazlitt or Bastiat.
"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."
So doesnt this imply that all postal services should be in the same situation since people would rather use electronic means than stamps and envolopes? If so:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-ups-idUSTRE71012W20110201
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/business/23fedex.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/22/us-fedex-idUSTRE75L0ME20110622
http://www.joc.com/air-expedited/dhl-boosts-profit-50-percent
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
Did you see the comments?:
TVPmexico
Socialism FAILED, Capitalism Too, its time for something else. TheVenusProject proposes something new! And possible. Its called a Resource Based Economy...... lots of questions and angry stuff will come to your minds, but if you give a try, you will understand that RBE its different and possible! Give a try at: thevenusproject dot com
In response to the thread title, I say: Great! But for a specific response on this sort of thinking...
Can I myself get a few links? Some of my friends are making the same arguments.
Wow, this guy is really twisted. While correctly diagnosing the role of the Elites in creating the whole concept of "jobs", he seeks - eyes wide open - to concoct a new paradigm for the Elites to use when "distributing" all the "stuff" that "society" creates. Really sick.
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.
First sentence is spot on. Artificial scarcity in labor and employment is a key component of the problem. It is created by taxation, inflation, regulation, minimum wage, government-sponsored unions, government employment, and so on. But you gotta love the undiluted collectivism from there on out. "... we lack... a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated... in a world that has already produced too much stuff."
He the blithely goes on to dismiss "communism" while re-affirming the morality of collectivism - a contradiction:
The communist answer to this question was just to distribute everything evenly. But that sapped motivation and never quite worked as advertised.
But libertarians also have the wrong answer because we will "let ... [people] ... simply suffer.":
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.
No, we don't want to 'cut social services.' We want to end the destructive practice of redistribution and allow families, communities, churches and charities to provide social services.
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.
That's exactly what you said the Elites had done to create the whole concept of "jobs" in the first place: create artificial scarcity and force people to trade within that artificial world of scarcity. "Information-based products" is just a re-amplification of artificial scarcity - they are the worst possible example of artificial scarcity. And this is your solution??
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 goes back to "a world that has already produced too much stuff." Tell that to famine-struck children in Somalia or Ethiopia.
As far as the idea of having "too much stuff", a little George Carlin is in order:
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.
Somehow, I don't see how games, novels and math puzzles are going to grow corn and beef.
And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.
Bitcoins?
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 end of every acting being is satisfaction of wants. In a free market, those without any other capital can always sacrifice their leisure in order to get goods and services, this is called laboring or taking pains. While in the employ of another, we say that the employee "has a job". For example, I give the landscaper that mows my lawn and trims my bushes a job even though I am not his "employer" in ordinary parlance. If he's on the phone with one of his buddies, he might say, "I have a job across town, I'll catch you later." But this job is not like the annuitized, regularized, highly planned form of wage slavery administered by the corporatocracy. No, it's a real job, it's working for someone who needs something done, when they need it done and only so long as they need it. That's how the labor market is in a free market economy. This 9-5 bullshit where "everybody's workin' for the weekend" is something else entirely. That these kinds of "jobs" are alien and a perversion of nature is no indictment of the natural behavior of selling one's labor in a free labor market.
As I said, this guy is one sick dude.
Clayton -
Wheylous:Can I myself get a few links? Some of my friends are making the same arguments.
You can download PDFs of two different editions of Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson here. Bastiat's "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen" can be downloaded at the resources page here. Check out "The Candlemaker's Petition" as well. That one is commentary on exactly this topic.
"A Luddite at MIT"
"Obama's Antitrust Luddites"
My "debate" with a neo-luddite (aka Venus Project spokesperson).
Basically you can look up "luddite fallacy" and find stuff as well. Also, as this is related to the "wage slavery" argument, see the resources here.
Chapter 7 in Economics in One Lesson addresses the fallacy that technology makes jobs obsolete.
Cars eliminated the buggy whip industry. Think of all those jobs that were lost at the turn of the century. Free action undertaken by consenting adults needs to be violently prevented so these effects don't happen.
Right, I agree, but the new argument is AI which replaces the need for human intelligence.
Would they rather the post office go down in flames VS Ending prohibition on businesses deilvering letters?
JJ, Thanks for posting the links! Much better than the amazon links I would have provided ;)
AI which replaces the need for human intelligence.
This is provably impossible. The argument is far too in-depth to elaborate here but search "algorithmic information theory" if you want to delve into it.