hvactec
VIP Member
Im not sure if this is just serendipity at work, but just after I wrote my piece on the human economy I stumbled on a couple other pieces that tie into what Im trying to say really absurdly well. As a reminder, heres what I was driving at:
Jobs are great, but welfare should be used to thwart the inherent economic uncertainty of a capitalistic, global society. People should not lose their insurance just because theyve lost their job. Universal healthcare would go a long way toward allowing people to be more independent, more entrepreneurial, and less risk-averse in their private ambitions. I think that in the emerging service economy with more and more people working outside of the normal constraints of office and industry jobs, as freelancers and contractors this will become even more important. Far from discouraging work, the right kind of welfare can do just the opposite.
Ill call it the Human Economy for lack of a better term, but I envision a world where the old status quo relationship between boss and worker is largely a thing of the past, where free markets and smart welfare programs and a green infrastructure combined with personal technology and peer-to-peer interactions create a truly vibrant, innovative economic future.
So I want to say a lot more about the next two pieces, but I need to collect my thoughts a bit more first. Briefly, though, Douglas Rushkoff has an interesting piece over at CNN on the jobless economy. He asks:
The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with career be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?
Alex Knapp does a good job bringing Rushkoff down to earth a bit, noting that the piece suffers a little too much from what I think of as information class myopia, in which writers about technology, who spend most of their days involved with gadgets and electronic media while creating intellectual property for a living confuse their own experiences with universal ones.
For a more grounded take on the concept of full-employment without focusing on creating new jobs, I recommend this piece by Peter Frase. In a response to Will Wilkinson, who is arguing for a move away from wage labor toward a more casual, deregulated market, Frase writes:
read more A More Human Economy: The Jobless Future and the Medium Chill
Jobs are great, but welfare should be used to thwart the inherent economic uncertainty of a capitalistic, global society. People should not lose their insurance just because theyve lost their job. Universal healthcare would go a long way toward allowing people to be more independent, more entrepreneurial, and less risk-averse in their private ambitions. I think that in the emerging service economy with more and more people working outside of the normal constraints of office and industry jobs, as freelancers and contractors this will become even more important. Far from discouraging work, the right kind of welfare can do just the opposite.
Ill call it the Human Economy for lack of a better term, but I envision a world where the old status quo relationship between boss and worker is largely a thing of the past, where free markets and smart welfare programs and a green infrastructure combined with personal technology and peer-to-peer interactions create a truly vibrant, innovative economic future.
So I want to say a lot more about the next two pieces, but I need to collect my thoughts a bit more first. Briefly, though, Douglas Rushkoff has an interesting piece over at CNN on the jobless economy. He asks:
The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with career be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?
Alex Knapp does a good job bringing Rushkoff down to earth a bit, noting that the piece suffers a little too much from what I think of as information class myopia, in which writers about technology, who spend most of their days involved with gadgets and electronic media while creating intellectual property for a living confuse their own experiences with universal ones.
For a more grounded take on the concept of full-employment without focusing on creating new jobs, I recommend this piece by Peter Frase. In a response to Will Wilkinson, who is arguing for a move away from wage labor toward a more casual, deregulated market, Frase writes:
read more A More Human Economy: The Jobless Future and the Medium Chill
