Sunday, December 31, 2000		Article

FUTURE OF WORK

The question is how to substitute quality of life for dependence on money — reversing the tendency to force consumers up the market by progressive conversion of luxuries into necessities.

THE future of work and the employment dilemmas are some of the most pressing issues that the world has to face. This is going to be more significant in the coming years. It is possible that fruitful approaches to the dilemmas of employment lie outside efforts to understand present and future economic activities. Whilst it may be useful to "stimulate economic thinking in new directions", it is unclear whether economists are necessarily equipped to respond to the concrete challenge following such stimulation. The "previously hidden aspects" may at present lie openly in the territory of other disciplines (with their own limitations) who themselves have difficulty in focusing their skills in response to these same challenges.

New understanding of wealth

It is only through a thorough understanding of what the process of wealth creation in today's world entails that an updated definition of the notion of productive work can be arrived at. This is fine, although equivalent attention could usefully be given to the manner in which poverty is created -- both in its material and, more interestingly, in its immaterial sense.

But then the "notion of employment itself, i.e. remunerated work, is only a part, albeit an important part, of what must be understood by 'productive activities'"

"Employment" is tied to remuneration, so that by definition all those who are not remunerated are "unemployed" and vulnerable to the stigma and loss of self-esteem associated with that term.

An initial orientation is given to "productive activities" which may prove fatal to any efforts to reach an understanding of the framework appropriate to transcending the dilemmas of employment.

Employment dilemma is a concept which on the one hand reflects the enormous potential for developing productive activities we require to enhance the wealth of nations and the people the world over, and on the other, the contradictions arising from an inadequate understanding of the means whereby to produce and benefit from such wealth and potential. And then "it is our production, in the widest sense, not just the one linked to industrial processes of creating material goods, that defines ourselves; we are what we produce" The real challenge is to provide the people who are liable to disrupt the system with means to reinforce these dimensions in their own lives. The employment dilemma is cast unfortunately into a dilemma for those who have defined the economic paradigm (effectively to ensure increasing unemployment) -- and not in terms of reframing the dilemma for those most imperilled by the vagaries and inadequacies of such thinking.

New understanding of work

It needs to be recognised that in an important sense it is people who are the ultimate "consumers" of the theories produced by economists, whatever the delivery system through government or industry policies. As in any marketing situation, the question is to what degree the producers of such theories, or their intermediary distributors, are sensitive to the needs of the consumers. It might be argued that such consumers have legitimate reason to be dissatisfied by an environment in which "more people are unemployed in industrialised countries than at any time before" and when there is every prospect of such numbers increasing .

The mind-set of the Industrial Revolution has totally excluded from the notion of productive employment for global wealth [the role of] non-remunerated and self-production-consumption activities.

It might be asked, for example, whether a professional meeting of economists, present in their personal capacity, constitutes work. The same might even be asked of a meeting of members of the Club of Rome! If such phenomena are to be considered work, how are they to be understood as productive?

It is unfortunate that productive "work" has been artificially limited to a selection of activities in which some humans engage. The extent of such work only becomes apparent, and valued, when man-made systems must be introduced to compensate for their absence.

New understanding of employment

The current economic theory is unable to provide a conceptual framework for full employment or at least to provide any guarantees of its deliverability. There is a need to seek a compromise between the will to maintain social welfare systems by in some way providing a guaranteed income (to compensate for the undeliverability of full employment) and the dismantling of such systems in such a way that people will be driven to find a job at whatever remuneration is then possible.

A "third option", namely redefining work and

employment, in order to broaden the pattern of engagement and rewards, is not considered.

A creative approach to the situation calls for a checklist of excluded options, and the reasons for which they are excluded. The policy responses to unemployment are distinguished as: mobilising labour supply, whether

through training or subsidising employment of the hard-to-employ, or through subsidizing start-ups; developing employment-related skills through training and education; promotion of a spirit of active search to enhance fruitful contact between job seekers and potential employers; direct creation of jobs, either involving temporary work, or in some cases regular jobs in public sector or non-profit organisations.

The problem lies with the definition of productive work and employment. The narrow definitions currently favoured by economists must necessarily define increasingly large numbers of people as unemployed and not engaged in productive work. Within this logic,the only response is to find means of relieving their disadvantage in terms of the monetarized economy. There is a major contradiction in the current system which "started out to produce more in order to increase wealth, could achieve exactly the opposite, producing more scarcities. Goods [like fresh water] that become scarce have less value in terms of real wealth than when they are in virtually unlimited supply. Our economic system, however, does not account for this, because only priced goods have an economic value. Until a good becomes scarce and therefore priced, its real value is not recognised and an original amount or stock is not accounted for.

There is a need to broaden the definition of productive work and employment, as an acknowledgement of activities through which people sustain their superior subjective feeling of intellectual well-being, confidence, social recognition, etc, namely their sense of quality of life.

Based on implicit exchange values, as is typical of benevolent and voluntary work, including caring and domestic duties (activities) can be called "monetarized but non-monetized" by the report, since monetary value could be attached to them; with no implicit exchange value reference, as is typical of self-education and efforts to shift the burden of work to the customer or consumer (as in self-service situations). These are "non-monetarized" in the stricter since of the term.

Dematerialisation of products:

What "wealth" is engendered in societies, communities or families where the emphasis is on quality of life, cultural expression, and personal and community development?

Material tools and goods are prematurely defined as unable to put immaterial assets to any "productive" use. The reaction of Buddhists whose lives are dedicated to the "accumulation of merit" would be of interest on this point. The reaction of academics and socialites dedicated to (and rewarded by) the accumulation of status and recognition would also be of value.

Developing countries:

In the case of developing countries, the stress placed on severing the "historically tight bond between money and the wealth and welfare of people" is valuable, as well as the emphasis on the "next step now has to be to integrate the non-monetized and non-monetarized contributions [as distinguished above] into a more general framework" . It is argued that the non-monetarized parts "here more than anywhere else contribute to the wealth and welfare of people" But the arguments for this could as well be applied to those segments of industrialised societies that have effectively become "developing societies" in the worst sense of the term -- and are liable to become more so in the future.

In developing countries, since "the so-called productive, because monetarized, activities may be parasitic on other non-monetarized work, such as domestic services, child care, etc., it is extremely important, especially for the developing regions of the world who have still a larger proportion of such activities prevalent in their economy, to take an integrated view of their future development.

People in developing countries will only be better off in real terms, if the development of more monetarized work does not destroy more valuable, but in monetary terms, unrated activities that add to the real, but not the monetary wealth, of the society" .

Global opportunity?

Globalisation process can respond to the challenge of unemployment. "There is a message of hope in the present situation in the Service Economy which far outweighs the theory of comparative advantage. There now exists a vested interest for all producers to establish efficient local utilisation systems.

Economists have a track record of proposing new theories offering a payoff sometime. As with the promises of religions, these may persuade and placate some people some of the time, some people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. It is the unpersuaded and unplacated who are on the increase.

Delicate negotiation and compromise will be needed to strike a balance between legitimate concerns about labour rights and practices and purely protectionist considerations.

Developing non-monetarised activities

The efficiency level of monetary expansion and of the use made of money is not infinite. In a sense the encouragement of self-productive activities as a means of reducing production costs can be seen as an indication of the limits of the efficiency of the monetary system.

Either we stick with the notion that the only viable employment system is a monetarized one and as a consequence believe ourselves to be faced with an unsolvable unemployment problem,

Or we begin to accept the notion that wealth today is created in an integrated and interdependent way by the monetarized and the non-monetarized systems combined, and must therefore draw certain inevitable conclusions from that assumption.

The first option leads us to a negative conclusion: a pessimistic view of the future of unemployment on the one hand and, on the other, the idea that our capacity for creating wealth is diminishing" Whereas the second option, "based on a more optimistic view of the future, as also on a more realistic assessment of what in reality is already actually happening" sees non-remunerated and self-production options as increasingly crucial.

A principal reservation about these valuable points is the continuing assumption in the report that employment, whatever its future form, must necessarily be primarily at the service of a larger economy to which it must continue to justify itself proving itself to be productive through competitive mechanisms. There is a marked tendency to value that wealth that is most readily apparent at the collective, and typically, national level.

However, it is quite possible that a degree of "delinking" may be more appropriate to the extent that, where stressed global distribution systems fail, "employment" may usefully be associated with the smallest local communities, and above all to the individual. The "work" involved may be then far from "efficient" according to external criteria. The "products" of this work may themselves be far from tangible. How such micro-systems need to develop calls for attention. For it is at this level that safeguards against "unemployment" and social insecurity can be most effectively built. It is at this level that "deliverability" is most crucial.

Work and identity

We are much more what we produce than what we consume. People engage in other kinds of activity, notably in the form of voluntary work, which are of equivalent, if not greater, importance psychologically. "Even if these activities do not contribute directly to the monetized part of the economy, they are a valuable element that deserves recognition since they also add to the wealth and the welfare of people"

It usefully questions the policy conclusion that the key to the employment dilemma is simply a question of reducing working hours in remunerated employment. For: "this would be totally to ignore the fact that it behoves us to ensure, or at least to attempt to ensure, that all human beings perform appropriate productive activities to their material and moral satisfaction"

An important task in the coming decades for economists and entrepreneurs...will be to ascertain to what extent important activities necessary for the individual and society, when they fall out of the market because they become 'too expensive', are recaptured by self-production and voluntary activities. In other words, remunerated employment might diminish in relative terms, but this could not necessarily be said of productive activities"

Unfortunately the report fails to explore further the implications of such recognition for any reframing of the employment/work issue. The key issue is, however, how "non-remunerated" work is to be recognised in such a way that it compensates fully for the loss of monetary rewards, and may even come to be valued more than monetary rewards. Trends in this direction are to be seen in the, often abusive, use of "perks" and honours. But these merely serve to indicate that some substitution is possible. Such examples do not address the following situations, each more anguishing than the last.

Some people may choose voluntarily to be engaged full-time at "non-economic" salaries, but their psychological and social challenges in relation to those with "competitive" salaries can be very problematic, especially since little effort is made to offer them fiscal or other compensation. This is typical of those with a career in non-profit organisations who may be under continuing pressure to "rejoin" by exposure to the disadvantages they experience and devaluation of any perceived advantages; whilst people with alternative sources of monetary income may engage to some degree in voluntary work, or may be engaged full-time at "non-economic" salaries, how are they to handle the psychological and social challenges of the interface with the monetarized economy and its reward system ?. Again these may be exposed to strong pressures to "rejoin" the monetary system.

for those lacking any adequate alternative sources of monetary income, what organization of the community will enable people to survive (and thrive) -- even if they receive what amounts to a high "psychic income" through other reward systems? How are non-monetary transactions, however highly valued, to ensure the basic needs of those essentially dependent upon them?

The question is how to substitute quality-of-life for dependence on money -- reversing the tendency to force consumers up market by progressive conversion of luxuries into necessities.

Multi-layer system

A three-layer approach to work can prove effective. This means:

lSocial and individual ingenuity combined should aim to provide every human being with a minimum of remunerated productive activity", seemingly as a result of government intervention

lRemunerated work above or instead of the first layer", notably in the case of those capable of generating their own sources of income, and rendering any form of first layer government intervention unnecessary.

lSelf-production and non-remunerated voluntary activities" as "a key condition for the functioning and development of the monetarized system"

In a mind-set in which "productive", "work" and "employment" are all defined externally. Whilst this is true to an extent, it is how these are experienced by the individual concerned, and the interface between society's definition and that of the individual, which are the basis for a sustainable development, community and lifestyle -- or the source of chaotic social disruption. "Individuals would have the freedom and even the stimulus to define themselves, in terms of their own image and of society, for activities which they deploy beyond their first level of activity". It is imperative therefore that social policy consider people as human beings deserving of opportunities to 'produce themselves'" ; the question is not whether an individual is "employed" or "productive". The question is rather how to articulate the relationship between what they are able (or choose) to do and the monetarized economy. In this sense people are always "employed" and "productive", it is how what they do can be honoured and integrated into a viable, broader framework -- with monetary and non-monetary dimensions -- that is the issue.

— Barbara Sanders