our obsession with jobs might trap us – everything could look like healthcare, still using fax machines when email and text exists.
“sorry I know this is possible via AI but we have our manual spreadsheet guy, following regulation 1284”
Leaving aside the word “AI”, because it’s not clear how expansive the use case for current AI really is, there’s a point here and it’s an important one.
He’s exactly right about our obsession with jobs, but I’d state it a different way:
It’s our obsession with distributing resources through money gained by jobs. A pre-requisite of speedy technological adaptation is people knowing they won’t be hurt by it.
Recently we had the longshoreman’s strike. The issue that caused the strike is machines replacing workers. Longshoreman jobs are some of the few blue collar labor jobs that pay well. If the longshoremen lose them, most will never get a job again that pays as well.
But the issue isn’t the job. It’s the money. And the money is just a proxy for resources: housing, food, heat, cold, transport, medical, entertainment and so on. No money and your life is shit, and probably short. Not much money means misery in most cases.
Labor; which is to say the proletariat, people who have to sell their labor to survive, embrace technological change when it benefits them, when it doesn’t hurt them, or when they have no choice.
During the industrial revolution people were forced off the land thru enclosure. They worked in factories 12 hours a day, for 6 1/2 days a week because they had no choice.
After WWII in America, people flooded off the farms into the cities and suburbs because jobs that provided a better standard of living for less work were abundant.
(This blog is for understanding the present, making educated guesses at the future, and telling truths, usually unpleasant ones. There aren’t a lot of places like this left on the Web. Every year I fundraise to keep it going. If you’d like to help, and can afford to, please Subscribe or Donate.)
This lesson goes far beyond workers. No one wants change that hurts them. One of the main factors stalling industrialization in most countries was that most land couldn’t be bought: it was controlled by nobles or the Crown and they didn’t sell land if they could help it. The land was the basis of their wealth and power. Until they either perceived otherwise or they lacked the power to keep their land, they wouldn’t sell. (The game Victoria III, while not a very good game, is great for modeling this. Play Japan or Dai Viet and you will FEEL this: sheer hate of reactionary landowners holding you back.)
There was also the issue of money: for most of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages you couldn’t borrow large amounts of money, in part because the Church was against lending at interest and the Church was powerful. (There were other reasons, Economists include them in their hand waving of “primitive accumulation of capital” which is why sociologists, anthropologists and historians have written most of the important literature in the area.)
If you want change, whether technological or social, you either have to get people to be OK with it (for it, or not mind) or you need to remove their power to resist.
It is that simple.
Purple Library Guy
A lot is about money, but I don’t think all of the objection to tech change and particularly job loss is about the money as such. If you look at longshoremen, they’re among the few workers that still have both work that is important and useful, and the structural power that goes with having control over whether that work happens. Many of them are probably pleased to have jobs that aren’t bullshit.
But also, they know that if someone said “OK, here’s a deal, you can stop working and we’ll still give you the money, hell we’ll give you more” that would be a short term fix, because NEXT time someone came for their money they’d be powerless to do anything about it. They’d have lost their role in society and the power a union gives that role, and they’d be helpless just like all the non-union slobs already are.
mago
“non union slobs”, guessing that’s sarc, but could easily be otherwise.
I mean we’ve got our deplorable basket cases and so forth, but they’re walking talking sentient beings seeking happiness no matter how deluded they may be in the pursuit thereof.
Robin Williams— who offed himself—said be kind, because you don’t know what the other person is going through.
That’s worth contemplating.
Soredemos
Never expected to see Victoria III referenced here. Now do Kaiserreich.
Dan Kelly
Warning: This post may seem somewhat ‘schizoid’ to some. It’s rather rational to my irrational mind.
——————————
“But the issue isn’t the job. It’s the money.”
This is where you are lost Ian. Or, as you like to announce to others: You’ve lost the plot.
The ‘job’ is also a way of life, an identity, a whole host of immeasurable things. It’s not just the money. At all.
But that’s tough for people who see everything in terms of measurement and numbers.
And how quickly people can calculate such things is the modern measure of intelligence…which you fare very very well in. You yourself told us as much when you announced that it’s been very rare in your lifetime that you’ve ever been in the presence of someone smarter than you.
Apparently it does happen though.
As for this Paul Millerd you’ve linked to, he describes his life thusly:
My Story of:
-Prioritizing a connection with work
-Losing my “edge” & a better source of motivation
-Following the “long, slow, stupid, fun way”
-Leaving money on the table & unplanned sabbaticals
-Authoring new work scripts
There’s nothing new here and, alas, when it’s all said and done he still needs ‘money’ for ‘work.’
Please buy his book.
—————————–
I want to preface what I’m about to write with the caveat that I have no love for the Catholic cult any more than the Jewish cult or the Protestant cult or the Hindu cult or the Buddhist cult. Or the atheist cult for that matter, as atheists are often more fervously devout than relgionists. Or the Communist cult or the Marxist cult or the Capitalist cult or the Socialist cult.
No ists or isms for me. Helps me think at least a little more clearly.
Now, with all that said, I want to focus on one very important pargraph in your piece:
“There was also the issue of money: for most of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages you couldn’t borrow large amounts of money, in part because the Church was against lending at interest and the Church was powerful.
The Church was not against lending and borrowing.
—————————–
My uncle – who attended Catholic School in the 1950’s along with my father – said the movie ‘Heaven Help Us’ is a documentary.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=ehgfdZeigFI&listen=false
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=ro45NVM3Mo4
—————————–
“If you want change, whether technological or social, you either have to get people to be OK with it (for it, or not mind) or you need to remove their power to resist.”
So, this is a little frightening.
We might first ask WHY are ‘they’ resisiting?
Because ‘they’ just don’t like change at all and if it weren’t for things like bloody warmongering revolutions we’d all be backwards peasants?
[The people making these statements don’t seem to see themselves as part of the grand ‘we’ that they use at other times – ‘we’ and ‘they’ (and ‘you’) are used selectively in the interest of the argument]
Us and Them, Me and You.
But we’ve already gone down that road to some degree. The much scarier proposition is this one:
“or you need to remove their power to resist.”
Oh? How would you propose going about doing this Ian Welsh?
————————-
“you will FEEL this: sheer hate of reactionary landowners holding you back”
Reactionary landowners.
As opposed to FEELING and LIVING the sheer hate of usurious lender control – which inevitably leads to wholesale societal surveillance. From cradle to grave you must remain viable to lenders.
—————————–
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Bronson_Cutting#_5aeeefff6da5ed0b96602f0783860f5d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronson_M._Cutting
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Huey_Long
https://web.archive.org/web/20200615000538/https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-witch-hunts-tea-party-history-mother-jones/
Geoff Dewan
“or you need to remove their power to resist.”
Oh? How would you propose going about doing this Ian Welsh?
I’m not Ian but my reply would be, Standard Operating Procedure would be by force: removing their freedom or simply killing them. Crude but effective. Pretty old story.
Perhaps I misunderstood your question and you wanted to know a more humane way of removing their power to resist. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll come to mind. Certainly worked in the 70’s
Purple Library Guy
I think there’s a misunderstanding of Mr. Welsh’s post going on . . . he’s not ADVOCATING removal of people’s ability to resist, he’s DESCRIBING how the world works. Tech change happens when it’s OK for people or when they can’t do anything about it.
@mago I wasn’t thinking of the word “slob” as invective–I suppose it can be in some contexts, but I was thinking more like when you see something bad happen to someone and say “that poor bastard”–“bastard” is certainly an insult sometimes, but not there.
mago
PLG. Got it.
someofparts
Reminds me of a point that Michael Hudson made, that the Chinese support globalization and Americans do not because in China, leadership shared the wealth it produced with the general population whereas in American, the privileged kept all the wealth for themselves. So Chinese proles see globalization as making them wealthier and American proles have experienced globalization making us destitute. People accept change or not depending on how the perceive it will impact them.
elkern
I’m strongly ambivalent about Labor Unions. I don’t mean the weak, “meh” version of “ambivalent”; I have strong positive AND negative opinions about Unions.
On the one hand, Unions deserve immense credit for wresting power from the Robber Barons of the 19th century, improving the material position of all working classes, and making the New Deal possible. Union workers and organizers sacrificed their lives to give us “weekends”!
But Unions also cause problems. In NeoLibEcon terms, they create “distortions” in “markets” ((all praise to the Invisible Hand)). Jobs – work functions – which can only be done in a specific location tend to become more expensive than those which can be moved to places where people are willing – or can be more easily coerced – into accepting lower wages. Factories could be moved to China , but Hospitals, Grocery Stores, and Police Departments couldn’t. Local taxes and living expenses go up – and local wages stay flat – but cheap plastic toys are real cheap at the Dollar store at the edge of town, just past the rundown building where Chapman’s Hardware Store useta be…
Municipal workers are resented because they have relatively stable jobs which pay relatively well; and of course, GOP propagandists working for Think Tanks funded by Zillionaires have amplified this into “Government IS the problem”.
This blends into a common political problem with Unions – the Archie Bunker thing. Material comfort leads people toward a more “conservative” framework – in the technical sense of “leave well enough alone” – which makes it easy to for reactionary political forces to get people with “good Union jobs” to fear the poor more than the Rich.
Perhaps the worst example of this (in the US at least) is that Unions have too often opposed National Health Care programs. And lack of National Health Care is a significant factor making US Labor – and therefore US products – more expensive than foreign competition…
The OP explores one common case where Unions resist technological change – where the work process really could be improved by massive capital investment replacing human workers with machinery. But Unions have also commonly resisted tech change at a different scale. US Auto workers have resisted EV options; Oil & Gas workers vote against Renewable Energy.
I guess I’ve come to view Unions as a band-aid solution to systemic problems. We – Humans – need larger-scale organizations to deal with the interconnected threats we face (Climate Change, Oligarchy, etc).