The Brave New World of Work 454
| The Brave New World of Work | |
| author | Ulrich Beck |
| pages | 202 |
| publisher | Polity Press |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | Jon Katz |
| ISBN | 0-7456-2398-0 |
| summary | The end of the work society |
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.
technology (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:technology (Score:3, Insightful)
How much are you paid to perform this service? How does it contribute to the economic welfare of your household? In broader terms, while it may be quite satisfying to you as an individual, how does it increase the welfare or economic wealth of whatever society in which you participate?
Just doing it isn't the issue; what we too often don't ask is why and what are the consequences? Ultimately, if no one adds material value to society then, regardless of the spiritual or cultural value of that society, it can not survive. There's a reason for the stereotype of the 'starving artist'. American society in particular and Western society in general is dependant upon the continual creation of new wealth. If the rewards of creating that new wealth are not seen as being reasonably fairly distributed but perhaps hoarded by an elite few, the wealth creation engine will slow or stop as unrewarded participants drop out. In the past the distibution mechanism was the periodic paycheck, along with important sundries such as affordable health care, education, markets in which to spend the wealth, and perhaps most importantly, managed expectations (a new car, a home of one's own, a chicken in every pot, college for the kids and an opportunity for one's offspring to do better for themselves.) That seems to be changing and, like all changes to fundamental societal mechanisms, the change will bring with it disruption, anger, resentment, and possibly violence. One would think that after a few thousand years of recorded history we'd have learned to manage our way through these periodic upheavals but no, here we go again.
The "NEW" Economy (Score:5, Insightful)
U wuz outsourced (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:4, Informative)
I will not diminish the wrenching horror of losing one's job. But this comment sounds exactly like ones from people who got laid off from factories in the 80s. "Whatever happened to hard work?..." "Used to be, a man could learn a trade, put in his 40 hours, and provide for his family...." What we discovered, with the advent of all these new technologies, as well as with the growth of practicing business across national borders, is that there are more efficient ways of doing things. Pidgeon-holing an individual into doing a single task for their entire working life is antithetical to the progress that capitalism values. And while, in that huge shift away from factories and manual trades in the US, many people lost their jobs, a lot of goods got cheaper for the rest of us because the labor required to make them wasn't so expensive anymore.
Assuming Katz got the point of the book right, I think the author hit the nail right on the head. We (meaning the post-industrialized nations) have seen a shift that requires everyone to be educated enough to learn whatever trade is needed at a given time. Technology now changes too fast for someone to spend 40 years fastening rivets or programming personal computers that run Windows. A society of citizens with sufficient education in science, technology and business will be flexible enough to keep up with the changing world and do exactly what our capitalist system says we should: keep getting more efficient and finding better uses of our time and resources. Until then, we will continue to experience the turmoil as seen by factory workers in the 80s and by the poster I'm replying to.
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the political change that has to take place: capitalism has to distribute profit and risk equitably; as Jon says the book points out, nobody wants to play the role of pre-appointed loser.
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:4, Insightful)
Changing technology and the need for changing worker skill does not necessitate laying off workers as you imply. From what I have read in Japan large firms hire workers based mostly on thier ability to learn and adapt and then shuffle them around. Two years they'll work in sales next two years they'll work in engineering. You don't have "programmers" and "salespeople", you have an employees for company X.
This, along with the massive diversification of keiretsus (sp?) allow companies to have a very mobile work force that can fill in the needs of technology very quickly. That way they can give jobs for life in light of changing technology. You have to remember that the same keiretsu makes everything from canned tuna to cars to stereos to construction equipment (Mistubishi, etc) and handles it's own banking. It is the keiretsus that compete.
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:2, Insightful)
I know 3rd generation utility linemen whose job security has increased in linear fashion with the rise in the tech culture. That's still a trade in the old sense; and you can certainly provide for your family that way. There are myriad other examples.
The book, if Katz characterized it properly, is probably an example of overanalysis. The world is simply too complex to say that "tech is causing societal insecurity, and that's why we're losing our jobs right and left, and we all need to be able to do all things to survive. etc."
Just look at a few of the other things that have happened in the same time frame as the tech boom of the last 50 years. The Cold War ended. Many
The political landscape is about as different from 1952 as night and day. Eisenhower would be chewed to bits these days, as would Kennedy for that matter. We used to be interested in helping our presidents run the country. We used to accept that he couldn't solve every problem, or always agree with us.
The religious landscape is different as well, with some sects returning to more fundamentalist views, and other becoming more... well, I hate to use the word, but... liberal.
Again, there are myriad other examples. Tech is only one little piece of our society. It's not even the most important, necessarily.
We (meaning us tech workers) need to show a bit more humility in the world. If the farmers quit, and the coal miners give up, the truck drivers decide to pack it in, we'll be useless and meaningless.
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:2)
Exactly. The qualities you need now and in the future are different than what you needed before. Where "hard work" and "consistancy" were once needed, motivation and flexibility are now more important.
The people who will get ahead are those not satisfied with doing the same thing every day of their lives. The ability to travel to a new job or learn a new skill will be important. Those who hold themselves back for the sake of things like security and comfort may find themselves missing out in the long run.
It's not really much of a change when you think about it. Risk-takers and self-starters have always tended to end up higher up in the food chain.
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:3, Interesting)
Go to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread with your satisfaction of doing a damned good job.
Would you be satisfied with Lucent giving you a hearty handshake and a pat on the back for doing a good job? Or would you wrap that middle-manager's necktie around a ceiling fan until he forked over a check?
Please--spare me the working-class-blues routine. You wouldn't expect anything other than a bottom-line-oriented paycheck from your employer; why hold them to a different standard?
Re:The "NEW" Economy (Score:2)
Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2, Insightful)
so... who writes the "point-and-drool" tools?
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
The last twenty people making a living programming in the US.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
Microsoft, Apple, or the linux team - in any case there aren't more than 3000 jobs in total in this group by 2015.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure that programming skill and competency and efficiency will continue to increase in all countries, but so will the demand for these services as the countries themselves need this type of work as they develop...
So, I'm not going to worry too much about the sky falling just yet.
Where are all the assembler programmers? (Score:2)
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?
Bad logic (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:COBOL (Score:2)
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.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
Network administration will be largely automated - heck you can almost do this now, so in fifteen years its a no-brainer. Added to which, the complexity of network tasks will force automation. Look at viruses and security - its almost impossible to keep up with individual virii and individual security breaches. In the next ten years we will have to build heuristic methods that can automatically detect intrusions and threats against protected resources. You just won't be able to keep a network up otherwise. Of course someone will have to write this code too, but with industry consolidation it will likely be a fifty person job at most.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
P/NP has little impact on what types of programs people write. 'P' programs often hide huge performance costs in constants, and personally I wrote the distinction off long ago as an academic curiosity.
The tools/methods generate too many false positives to not have a human in the loop.
People will continue to be in the loop somewhere - most likely tuning the heuristics, but I contend that there will be far fewer of them.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
And who's going to create these magical "point-and-drool" applications? Programmers. I've no doubt the job market will be very different in 2015 from it is today, I don't think it'll be quite as bleak as you are making it out to be.
Think about HTML. Initially, you had to write it all yourself. Then, WYSIWYG (point-and-drool) applications started coming out (FrontPage, Netscape Composer, Dreamweaver). These can make life easier for those that know HTML, and allow those that don't know it to create a web page. But it still took programmers to create the program.
Also, I think you are underestimating the difficulty of some applications. While new technology might make old skills obsolete, this will only create a need for new skills (which you'd better learn).
How's that? (Score:2)
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.
Re:How's that? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
One of the ongoing memes in American culture is our eagerness for new technology and ideas. Many Americans falsely believe that many of the worlds most important inventions were actually invented here. They weren't. The vast majority of them were invented somewhere else first and then blithely ignored. What happened here is that the invention was adopted.
The continued presence or absence of our technological eagerness and flexible predicates our future success.
This is one of the reasons I think the Japanese will fly very high indeed across the 21st century. They have an appetite for technology that exceeds even our own.
There are many cultures world wide that have this appetite now. I firmly believe that this will quite reliably predict the success of these countries through the 21st century, mitigated of course by outside influences.
The converse is also true. Look at the cultures that repudiate technology; they're practically guaranteed to remain impoverished has-been countries which any of the dominate players could roll over on a whim.
N.B.: I'm not making any claim that America is the superior culture in this regard any more. I will say, however, that we are on the list.
C//
Re:How's that? (Score:2)
More powerful CPUs make it possible to run algorithms that are not practical currently. Genetic programming, dynamic programming, and other methods for automatic optimization that require vast processing and memory requirements today will be exceedingly cheap by 2015.
Its just like general-purpose assembler programming - in 2002, you either write a compiler that creates everyone's assembler/machine code for them, or you are out of a job. The automatically generated code from a compiler is good enough to make the hand-generated assembler code impractical and costly.
Re:How's that? (Score:2)
And my point is that the people who will use the paint-by-drool tools to pump out most business logic will not be the people who call themselves programmers today. It will be lower skill and lower pay. Note that I am talking about average business problems (today solved by high priced, high skill programmers). Obviously hotshots will occupy part of the market, but that part will shrink.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
Many programming jobs are internal to companies and require a lot of communication with other workers. I doubt these jobs will be exported. Most of the work I've heard being successfully exported to India involve porting large applications sytems--either from one OS to another or one language to another.
It may be that communications are too important for externally-sold software, also. After all, Microsoft keeps all its programmers in one city. It doesn't even export jobs to Oregon.
Also, don't forget as the productivity of Indian and Chinese workers rises, the wages in those countries will rise. Japan was once a low-wage country.
That's what they said about Fortran...then COBOL... then "4GL" reporting and forms programs. Seriously!
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
You've obviously never looked at any of the credits screens hidden away in 'Easter Eggs' in M$ software. All Microsoft's OS since Win3.1 have had a good percantage of code written in Bombay and New Zeland. Whilst it's certinally true that everything is co-ordinated from one city, the donkey-work is done whereever the labour is cheapest.
programmers per computer declining? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:programmers per computer declining? (Score:2)
That works out to a decline of programmers per computer of around 25% (compounded) per year, or a halving every 2.4 years - not quite as dramatic as Moore's Law, which would be every 1.5 years. To use the original author's date of 2015, projecting out this rate of decline would mean that the number of programmers per computer should be roughly 2.37% of what it is today. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the absolute number of programmers will fall that far or even at all. If we have 42 computers in 2015 for every one that we have today, then that would require the same number of programmers as today (if the number of programmers per computer continues to decline at the same rate). Who knows how many things will have embedded computers in 2015 - in any case, I seriously doubt that there will be less computers in 2015, so even holding the number of computers constant and thereby using 2.37% as a lower bound, the number of programmers left in 2015 would still not be as dire as the original poster predicted.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
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.
Are you kidding? Moore's law doesn't touch the basic problems of computing. It doesn't help you design good user interfaces. It doesn't automatically allow you to generate readable code. I'd suggest you go back and re-read the Mythical Man Month.
Let's say we ignore the MMM and presume that Moore's law will allow programming language innovations that will make us a hundred times or a thousand times more productive than we are today. All that will mean is that we will be asked to solve problems that are a hundred or a thousand times more difficult than the ones we solve today. Processes that are batch today will be real-time in the future. Processes that are centralized today will be decentralized in the future. Processes that work on gigabytes of data today will be asked to handle terabytes in the future. People have been predicting "paint by numbers" programming since the invention of COBOL. You're just the most recent alarmist.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
When were programmers involved with interface design?It doesn't automatically allow you to generate readable code
Why most the code be readable? Can you read the code spit out by a compiler? If it runs fast enough to make business sense, people will gladly treat it as a black box.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
Laffa while you can ManagerBoy!
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
I appear to be misconstrued. I am not saying that no one will be programming - I am saying that the number of people who will make their living doing it in the US will decrease. I think the trends are already in place - programming is already moving overseas. On the technology side, garbage collected , OO languages are killing off other technologies for mainstream business use - its no stretch to think that point and drool tools for construction software written in such languages will be next.
Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015 (Score:2)
Maybe, but if for some reason you NEED a programmer who knows 1950's assembly there is no substitute for the real thing, and I imagine the few surviving could command top dollar for their return from retirement.
Think about all those COBOL systems that nobody ever dreamed would still be running today, and yet they are. Who would you rather have maintaining that code; somebody that's been hacking COBOL since 1970, or some kid who took a COBOL class at the local JC? I don't know about you, but the Ancient COBOL Master would be worth at least twice as much to me if I were in that situation.
The same thing goes for old hardware. Some folks will pay incredible amounts of money for obsolete parts because they need to be able to replace the part in an existing machine that's been doing a mission critical job for 5 or sometimes even 10 years. There's a company around the corner from me that does very well refurbishing obsolete hardware.
Certainly people wouldn't be paid much money for creating 1996 applications in 2015
But they guys who created those 1996 apps will be doing just fine maintaining them.
Robert Anton Wilson talked about this (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [everything2.com]), 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.
Re:Robert Anton Wilson talked about this (Score:2, Insightful)
India has a billion people, many of whom speak English. Many call center jobs are going over there (in my division, 1/2 of the jobs in my field are going over there and other countries in the Far East in the next 6 months). These are not menial jobs. They are complex jobs that require good English and awareness of America's financial industry laws and practices.
Whether they are union for us is irrelevant.
What is relevant is the ability to staff phone lines and processing workloads for major corporations on a 24 hour basis. Technology helps make this happen. They will process scanned in account applications, take instructions from clients, and research archives that are based on scanned paperwork. The workers there are not robots, they are intelligent human beings that are operating under wage circumstances that are so far below the United States/rest of Western World that a global economic reality regression to the mean will mean empowerment for those workers and a declining work climate for us.
I do not have advanced work skills. I am a very intelligent person who made some occupational and educational choices (music) that do not benefit my current or future employement. I am not at an entry level job in the financial industry, although it is not very far from it; it is somewhere in between. I stand to lose my job to these very talented people and it is empowering for them to do this work; it is hard to argue that they are being exploited. That is my view from the inside although it is very much a view that I would like not to have because it obviously is a detriment to my personal future.
Work doesn't seem to be going away (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Who was a webmaster 10 years ago? (Score:2)
Job coach ten years ago?
For a few, perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:For a few, perhaps (Score:2, Troll)
Re:For a few, perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)
But the overall point of my post, which you seem to have missed, is this: If you are in the top 20%, great. Go to it. Earn a billion USD. But if in the process of doing so you take away the opportunity for the middle 60% to have a rasonable stable, satisfying, productive life (e.g. the archtypical "Joe Sixpack" in his 3 bedroom ranch), then you will most likely reap the whirlwind in the form of the destruction of the stable social order. Remember that the middle 60 outnumbers you at least 3-1.
A pretty high price to pay to provide extra "opportunity" for a few at the top, I would say.
sPh
Re:For a few, perhaps (Score:2)
For the most part, I've found that I can balance my home and work lives fairly harmoniously, while still fending well for myself. Sure, it takes a great deal of effort, and I don't get to do some of the fun things I'd like to do sometimes (getting trashed on a weekend long bender comes to mind), but it's a worthwhile sacrifice, IMHO.
Re:For a few, perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, "Let them eat cake"? Sounds pretty elitist to me.
If too many of the "elite" start thinking like this, we may all get a hard lesson in class warfare. Thanks mostly to the unconstrained greed of the "elite," the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bigger than ever, and it continues to grow. There ratio of haves to have-nots is also decreasing, i.e., the number of "elites" is shrinking while the ranks of the rabble swell. If you rub their noses in your success, show them your scorn, publically declare that you don't give "two flying shits" for them, sooner or later, a bunch of them will mill together and hand you your head.
The masses are a sleeping giant. Most people may not be very ambitious by your standards, but if you push too hard, if you make them angry, they may just get up off their collective butts and decide they've had enough. No matter how superior you may think you are, when you're outnumbered 1000 to 1, you're toast.
Look at the history of the world. How many regimes have been toppled because arrogant rulers thought the peasants were powerless?
Leave room in your brave new world for the well-being of the rest of humanity, or you too may become a lesson for future generations.
What is holding the "peasants" down? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, and the masses will be more mollified (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:For a few, perhaps (Score:3, Informative)
Very true.
I rather like Ian Angell's take on it - in "The New Barbarian Manifesto", he says that yes, today's technological elite will remain mobile and today's middle class will vanish into the underclass.
The difference between Angell and Beck is that Angell (correctly, IMO) scoffs at the idea that the technological elite will be a "more communicative and civically-involved" citizen. Acting in their own (enlightened or otherwise) self-interest, such citizens may be more "global" and "better-informed", but they'll likely just relocate to wherever taxes are lowest and the underclass is kept at a safe distance.
The "hard problem" (if you're a government) will be retaining your knowledge workers (on whom your economy depends) while retaining the voting support of your service workers. Problem is, if your service workers vote themselves benefits to the point that it becomes more profitable for your global knowledge workers to leave, the knowledge workers will take off for more friendly markets, leaving your service workers with nothing to do, because nothing's being produced in your country anymore. Either way, the welfare state is toast.
Classic Angell essays: http://csrc.lse.ac.uk/angell.htm [lse.ac.uk]
Recommended Reading: PDFs of "The signs are clear: the future is inequality" and "Winners and Losers in the Information Age".
Representative quotation: "Democracy will degenerate to being the means of governing the immobile and dependent service workers."
I point out here that Angell doesn't see this as a "good thing" (as his admirers often do) or a "bad thing" (as do his detractors). His point, as an economist, is merely that such a change is inevitable, and that governments and individuals had better get ready for it.
Re:For a few, perhaps (Score:2)
She spent a few years as a maid in the US, and somehow managed to get US citizenship, learned English, made money by cooking typical Salvadoran food in her apartment for immigrants living near her. She eventually saved up enough to start a restaraunt, that became tremendously popular with the immigrant community in Washington, DC. Now she owns a chain of Salvadoran restaurants.
The key to the story here is that she could come to the US. Not everyone can. "Tyrany of place" is one of the key boundaries we need to eradicate if we are truly to seek global capitalism.
For example, the US needs to work with Vincente Fox and set up a guest-worker plan with Mexico, perhaps involving some element of background checking.
Enhancing our freedom and civic lives? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Whoa: let's see step B, please (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Sounds Like Jeremy Rifkin (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sounds Like Jeremy Rifkin (Score:2)
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.
Did you read Katz's review? This book sounds nothing like Rifkin's (which I also read). Rifkin said work was going away. Beck didn't say that. He said it would be: "fluid, part-time, entrepeneurial, free-lance, self-directed". I dunno about you but that sure sounds like the work I've been doing lately! Beck says: "Skills can be suddenly devalued,". Any CICS programmers out there? "jobs obliterated," Enron anyone? "social and welfare safety nets eroded." The "End of Welfare as We Know It?"
I don't know if Beck's book is any good but it sounds nothing like Rifkin's and deserves to be judged on its own merits.
Technology making us more civic minded! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
And what Joe/Jane above average saw... (Score:2)
Mercenaries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mercenaries (Score:2)
Back to basics (Score:2)
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!
Re:Back to basics (Score:2)
Re:Back to basics (Score:2)
Health level would be the only thing I would be concerned with by living such a life style. Happiness is the key for the rest. What use is education if you are not happy?
In my studies of economics in college I read a lot of stuff as to whether life is "better" in this industrialized society then an independent agrarian one with light trade. Frankly the only conclusive thing I could come accross was life expectancy.
If you look 200 years back being an "American" was an agrarian life and the industrial world of Manchester England and the such was "un-American". Thomas Jefferson was staunchly against industrialization and the politics and law of the time reflect that. Ironically it has come full swing and anything anti-industrialist is "un-American" (mostly due to the propoganda against the USSR + communism). If Tomas Jefferson were alive today he probably would be in utter shock and disgust.
Re:Back to basics (Score:2)
If more of our fellow countrymen were more self-sustaining, I truly believe this world would be a far better place.
Our current culture breeds indifference to our fellow man and dependence on multi-billion dollar multinational corps.
I've seen too many documentaries where "civilization" encroaching on some simpler peoples draws away the youth, until the culture all but dissapears. Is this progress?
Do you really think the US would be a bad place to live is the majority lived like modern-day Amish?
Re:Back to basics (Score:2)
Our income will be very little, by design. I do plan on a symbolic year of absolutely no income, so the Man will end up writing me a check come tax return time. (Earned income credit is a wonderful thing!) We'll sell surplus offspring (angora goats go for a pretty penny, as do miniature cows), barter with eggs and cheese, and other excess we have (but not relying on it). I'll do freelance work as a consultant, if the desire or need arises. Of course, we'll be going into this will a little savings for rainy day.
Check out Lehman's for all sorts of non-electric stuff.
We're no Luddites, but we realize our lives can be so much more with so much less than we have now.
Globalization equals lower average pay in US (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
He talks about work not economics (Score:2)
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.
Acrobatics! (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
This is not new (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Hmm more "Scare-Literature" (Score:2)
Re:Hmm more "Scare-Literature" (Score:2)
"pendulum theory"
"short-term memory"
Education is never 'over' (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Well, it's been like that for ages... (Score:5, Informative)
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
One day we'll all be out of work... (Score:4, Insightful)
But what happens [mit.edu] 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? :)
--
Re:One day we'll all be out of work... (Score:2)
Ummm...from all the futuristic sci-fi novels/movies I've seen, there won't be any.
Either global warming will have raised sea levels so that 99% of all land is underwater or mankind will have expanded its civilization into space. In either case, the landlords are unimportant.
It's the waterlords and spacelords that we have to worry about!
(my personal favorite is that mankind will delve deep undergroud to create a society protected from the harmful UV rays which kill with impunity now that there is no protective o3 layer...I suppose then well have magmalords)
The future was supposed to be great (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the interest in China? Consumers.
No one wants a nation of poor unemployed people, they want people that can affort to buy stuff.
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2)
If you ever study economics, you'll understand. The perfect economy has everyone doing an easy job and getting paid a lot to do it. We're moving ever closer to this goal in the United States, too. This book seems to ignore the fact the the average standard of living in the US has been on a steady climb for decades.
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2)
People aren't the only agents which can make purchases.
In a few years those refrigerators that connect to the internet will actually be in people's homes. They'll order replacement parts for themselves and place work orders for maintenance. Then at some point they'll get to the point where they automatically order more groceries when they detect you're running out of them.
How long will it be before the repairman who comes to service the refrigerator is actually a robot?
Once people have become obsolete, machines will buy things for themselves. On a larger scale, superorganisms such as corporate entities will undertake massive projects to further their own unforeseeable ends, consuming and producing massive quantities of stuff in the process, further stimulating the economy.
(In the future, completely automated corporations will exist, the people who used to work there replaced by AI, computers, general-purpose robots, and other more specialized machines. In fact, this is already happening, and has been happening for a long time, only people are still involved. But one day, perhaps as soon as within a century, they won't be. This is not science fiction, either; it's the extrapolation of a current trend.)
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2)
Hmmmmm....anybody here (really) familiar with corporate laws? Since a corporation is an independent 'legal entity', could someone, say, 'hack' corporate law by setting up two corporations, having one of those two corporations (and not the person who set up the corporation) buy the other from the human being who set it up, and then 'spin it off' into a completely human-free entity?
And, if such a 'human-free' entity existed, and did something 'bad', would the courts finally start revoking corporate charters again?...
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2)
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2)
This is the key point. It wasn't all that long ago that there were plenty of rural areas without indoor plumbing. Everyone has a refrigerator today, TV, VCR, even DVD and surround sound. The price per square foot of a house has gone down significantly (although people are buying larger and thus more expensive houses, with vinyl siding, for some reason).
I'm sitting here listening to a radio station in France playing the kind of techno I want to listen to, despite the fact that I am in the US. Everyone I know in their 20's drive new cars, often SUVs. My dad could only afford used VWs from the 60's.
Re:The future was supposed to be great (Score:2)
Yes, we still have horses, I know. But they've by and large been supplanted by motor vehicles.
This is the way it's been with everything. Some stuff you just can't get anymore. No one makes it. The skills are now a lost art. Why? There's better, faster, cheaper ways to do it now.
Why is it that people should be exempted from this cycle of obsolescence? It's coming, and it'll happen soon.
Before long, we'll see fully automated fast food restaurants where no employees work. You'll just go there, place an order through a computer, pay a computer, and a computer-controlled robot will prepare, package, and serve the food to you.
We'll see the same thing with gas stations, too. And once those cars that can drive themselves become a reality, we'll see fully automated cars driving themselves to fully automated gas stations, filling themselves up.
Who will own the car? Where will it drive? It'll be owned by a company. It'll deliver shipments to other companies that need the products that the first company produces, in order to produce what they produce, which will in turn be sold to other companies.
For a while it's been people and companies. Pretty soon, it'll be people and companies and robots. Then it'll be companies and robots. Then it'll probably just be companies. The robots will still be there, I suppose, but they'll all be owned by the companies, and will be thought of as "cells" to the company's "organism" and so making a distinction for them will be thought of as redundant.
A couple quick thoughts from a 'young' 25 year old (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:A couple quick thoughts from a 'young' 25 year (Score:2)
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?
Re:A couple quick thoughts from a 'young' 25 year (Score:2)
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.
what happened to less work, higher pay? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:what happened to less work, higher pay? (Score:2)
It's called globalisation, and it's already happening.
third-world workers struggle to get by and have little chance to become more knowledgable about the outside world
........
What's happened is that within a given country, reforms to capitalism have resulted in a new social mobility. The real class system is between different countries. This system can be maintained at present, because the regulation between borders of different countries is more clearly defined, and more overtly forceful than barriers between class within a country. Rich country/poor country is the new replacement for ruling class/working class.
I believe you're mistaken in your assumption that globalisation will necessarily result in the return of class divisions -- what it's more likely to do is make class divisions more visible to us because the working class will not be separated from the ruling class by oceans. BTW, I think that the regulation of immigration is such a severe obstruction to social mobility (to the extent that moving upward requires immigration) that there will not be less social mobility as a result of globalisation.
American puritanism and long hours of work (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:American puritanism and long hours of work (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd rather have the time off the Europeans have than a fat paycheck. The richest person in the world can never buy more time than the poorest person. There'll always be 24 hrs in a day.
I got a big kick once when a contractor told me about the huge kitchens they were putting into all of the new mini-mansions. He said the people never used them to cook since they were too busy working paying for the expensive house! Plus he'd come back to do work months later and the houses barely had any furniture in them because they were so in debt for the lavish home and cars. Spend spend spend!
Re:American puritanism and long hours of work (Score:3, Insightful)
Your correct, and to add to your argument I don't know about Kroea but I know in Japan that their "workplace" is not like ours. They spend a lot more hours then we do "at work", but they do not labor the entire time. From what I observed when I was in Japan they look at the workplace as almost a second family. When there's big news they all gather and watch the TV. They excercise in the morning together, etc. "At work" for them does not necessarily mean "working" as we think of it.
They have a 30 hour work week in France.
Why, then, do Americans work so damn much? Why do we have pressure to work more even though we are working so much? The only answer I can think of is Marxian with the good old "exploitation of labor", etc.
Similar but different to Economist article (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Is this the end or is there still more to come? (Score:2)
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.
Public education system developed in agrarian era (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Money creation is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
brave old world of work (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Widening income gap. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Change: From 1900 to 2000 (Score:4, Interesting)
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//
Re:Change: From 1900 to 2000 (Score:3, Interesting)
If you were to take a contemporary of the 19th century and have them examine the living standards of a contemporary of the early 21st century, they would see a world of such abundance they would scarcely be able to believe it. Imagine, if you will, a world a century from now where manufacturing productivity expanded with the same magnitude as the expansion of productivity from the last century to this one. This roughtly describes a world with 200 times the manufacturing productivity that we have today. Things, once expensive, have negligible cost.
Economics is about scarce resources. So one has to ask: what in the next century will be scarce? Contact with real live human beings will be its own commodity, I suspect. Intellectual property will be a commodity, I also suspect. And note that no matter how much automation we develop, the need to have people there to make it all work properly seems to constantly increase, rather than decrease.
These are the forces you can expect to see at work over the next few decades and throughout the century. I won't speculate on how A.I. might transform all that. That's a long way off, still.
C//
Re:Sadly, it's all about IQ (Score:2, Funny)
Nope, it's just too damned much fun making babies the old fashioned way
;-)
Re:Sadly, it's all about IQ (Score:5, Funny)
Well, sure they can... as corporate executives and marketing people. ;)
Re:Sadly, it's all about IQ - not! (Score:2, Insightful)
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*