I saw this bouncing around Facebook, and I would like to endorse the underlying philosophy:
For those of you still using text-based browsers (hey, remember Lynx?), here we have Buckminster Fuller making a point about work and responsibility in a high-tech society. Namely: maybe people don’t have to work. Maybe, if machines become really good at producing the basic necessities of life, rather than bemoaning a loss of jobs we should celebrate our liberation from the toil of labor.
As a practical matter, I recognize that this might be hopelessly utopian. It amounts to saying that we should have fairly high taxes, and redistribute most of the money as a minimal income to every person. Nothing wrong with working and earning additional money, but everyone would get their personal share no matter what, and in principle that might be enough to live on. Maybe John Rawls was pointing toward something like that, but the social will is nowhere near making it happen. I can even imagine a utilitarian argument against it, based on the supposition that letting people learn and loaf and enjoy themselves rather than working for a living would lead to less innovation and competition, which in turn would make the world a less enjoyable place. I’m not sure if that’s right, but it’s at least non-obvious that work should be gradually phased out.
But nevertheless the spirit is admirable, and that’s what I want to endorse. There’s nothing morally wrong with the idea that people should spend their time in non-productive pursuits rather than working to earn extra income. It’s not “socialism,” since we’re not changing the free market or the ownership of the means of production. It would just be nice to live in a world where people did challenging things because they wanted to, not because they were forced to in order to survive. Maybe someday.
@FrankL what you say is preposterous. The idea that only genetically similar humans can cooperate is appalling, and certainly without any biological foundation. I will end my brief foray into the comments section.
Andrew – That’s not what I said. I said that the extreme case of communism, is impossible, not that human cooperation is impossible. Evolution is not all about competition, it’s about competition AND cooperation. The squirrels and the nut trees cooperate, the bees and the flowers cooperate. But cooperation that does not benefit both parties will not persist, and by benefit, I mean to make more reproductively fit. That’s the advantage of a free market. When an economic transaction is made, both parties believe they are benefiting, because if they don’t, they are free not to make the transaction. When one or both do not feel that way, but are forced into the transaction anyway, one or both are under evolutionary pressure to subvert the system. And the forcing entity must expend more time and energy to counter that subversion with even more force, or else back off.
And please, “preposterous” and “appalling” are not arguments. Maybe my argument is full of holes. Please point them out.
As a musician I have seen what technology can do over the last 20 years or so, yes on the one hand it has decimated the industry- music that was once easily monetizable can now be freely distributed and it’s undoubtedly a problem in a capitalist system where musicians still have to ‘earn a living’, even if it was often the unscrupulous Colonel Tom Parker types who took the lions share.
But on the other hand maybe the music digitalization revolution was just born a little to early, alone in an all too hostile enviroment. An early glimmer of an emergent economic model, a poor fated guine pig first to the plate as music is so easily digitized/synthesized and distributed, too extreme a mutation to survive. Indeed other industries have understandably prepared better for the digitization of their wares ie the kindle.
None the less, they may be fighting a losing battle in the long term. A future where heat/food etc may (eventually) become ‘free’ or next to through developments in technologies (solar panels/nano etc) is not entirely inconceivable. A musician in this enviroment will be far less aggrieved that the rewards for him are increasingly non financial (still has all those ego boosting things like acclaim, applause groupies etc!).
It would probably require a ‘critical mass’ of these emergent ‘liberations’ from work/resources for a game change situation for how we all live rather than the painful and mostly negative process it turned out for the music industry.
This transition to a post capitalist system where work becomes inessential for basic survival may be a distant dream and we certainly need better political and economic solutions in the interim (I’m reminded of George W’s frequent citing of ‘new technologies’ as a solution to the climate change he clearly didn’t believe in in the first place- well yes George, it’s a nice thought). The next 50 years or so could be a very bumpy ride if population and climate change predictions prove to be accurate, solutions political and technological are needed.
“It would just be nice to live in a world where people did challenging things because they wanted to, not because they were forced to in order to survive. “
You’ve got it backwards. Most people doing challenging things, you for example, are doing them not because the are forced to, but because they can afford the luxury. Yes, you might get a Caltech salary, but who paid for your education?
Most people in the world have to work to live, but most of them don’t do challenging things. Even those who could rarely manage to jump off the treadmill and survive.
Some feminist bloggers would say that this is a case of not noticing your privilege (though, of course, not male privilege here).
@Garrett: Well, having healthcare linked to work is better than having no healthcare at all. How it is actually organized varies from country to country (the US being notoriously bad in this respect). Someone has to pay for it. If you don’t have true socialized medicine (i.e. paid for out of taxes), then this is the next best thing. Someone has to pay for it. Of course, if you don’t like having it linked to your work, then pay for it yourself if you are rich and if not, move to a country where it is organized differently.
I think we are shaped by evolution to seek challenge. Many people do not find challenge in their work, but few people work at an unchallenging job all day every day. Raising a family, hunting, fishing, contending with some informal heirachy at work or at home, these all qualify as challenges.
Regarding healthcare, the US situation has been totally mucked up by pharmaceutical company and insurance company lobbyists in bed with politicians who smell blood. How much better would it be if the free market were to set healthcare prices? Pharmaceutical companies could not monopolize the drug trade, insurance companies could come up with any plan they want, charge whatever they want (and die if they are not competitive with other companies, or if they welch on their commitments!), and the government could collect taxes and pay those premiums for poorer people and those with pre-existing conditions. But noooooo – the government has to “fix” the market by requiring insurance companies to insure everyone at the same rate, which causes younger, healthier people to opt out, so premiums go up, more opt out, and it spirals out of control. Price signals are destroyed, nobody knows what anything “really” costs. Instead of backing off, the dumb-ass answer is to force (“mandate”) everyone to buy insurance, further screwing things up. Now there is relentless pressure for the young to subvert the system, the old to play it, and everyone in the middle to look elsewhere (e.g. US-trained doctors in India – $5000 for a heart bypass operation. The cost of a dental crown in the US is more than the price of a round trip ticket and crown work in Brazil, again by US-trained dentists). What’s the next move? Intense scrutiny of everyone (at taxpayer expense), and what, a Berlin wall to prevent people from going abroad? The control freaks LOVE it. The path to totalitarian hell is paved with socialism’s good intentions. A free(er) market does not mean people dying in the streets, it means the cost of saving them is clear, above board, and practically minimized.
Notwithstanding the point that one in ten thousand people would be far less likely to make a technological breakthrough if work wasn’t turning the cogs, I’m with the spirit of this until the last paragraph where we find out that people should ‘go back to school …’ Apart from the utter abhorrence of such an idea, if we want people to think, school is the last place they should be sent.
But what will we eat?
Read Daniel Quinn.
We work because we must have currency to purchase food. This entire system can be unravelled if we simply stop putting food ‘under lock and key’.
If you want to take upon a philosophical pursuit, then you must practice responsible philosophy. You cannot simply read a passage and agree with it. You must question it. If work is a problem, why do we work? What purpose does it serve? If we can agree that it is a strange construct whose usefulness is nearly up, then we must explore where it came from in the first place.