Jobs

[avevale_intelligencer]

To certain among my readers:

Go read this post by siderea. Read the article linked to in the post. Try to see past that dim quasi-religio-moralistic nineteenth-century sentiment that tells you that living without having a job is somehow cheating (unless you're rich, of course, in which case it's ordained by God and expected of you).

Then come back and tell me why I'm still wrong to be going on about the work-optional (or perhaps I should more precisely say job-optional) society. And why it's a bad thing that at least one government (Switzerland, that well-known society of spendthrifts and profligates) is at last considering taking a first faltering step in that direction.

Comments

[grey-lady.livejournal.com]

The post, and article, raise a valid point on 'peak jobs' that I've been thinking about for some time. At that, many of the jobs that exist today are ones whose goal is, at least indirectly, to reduce the number of jobs. (Much of the IT industry is designed to eliminate typists, clerks, accountants, the post boy, etc. etc.)

We like this, because it makes products cheap. We don't like this, because people without jobs generally can't afford the products, even if they're cheap.

I'm still trying to figure out how it would work, though, and will be watching the unfolding of events in Switzerland with great interest.

[howeird]

Am I missing something, or do those articles completely ignore the self-employed? Over on this side of the pond, a major part of the Work Ethic is if one becomes unemployed for an unacceptable (to one's self and/or one's family) time, one tries to establish an independent business. Selling matches or apples was popular during WWII. One of my grandfathers opened a shoe store, the other was a freelance roofer/carpenter. During one of my unemployments I gave lessons to seniors on how to use the Internet, and built web pages for strippers.

While I vastly prefer to be employed by a company, those jobs are indeed finite and shrinking. But that doesn't mean I have to stop working.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're absolutely right, the articles do ignore those who are currently self-employed, in the same way that they ignore tribesmen in remote portions of South America and Komodo dragons. The articles are about the vast majority of us here in the developed world who are caught in the trap of "work for a boss or starve," which is, I think you'll agree, the generally accepted standard model for life in our societies. You make starting an independent business sound as easy as kiss your hand, and perhaps for our grandfathers it was (and perhaps you had strippers beating a path to your door, in which case you lucky dog if you like that sort of thing) but while I can't speak for America, I know that over here it is extremely difficult, and I think it is to some extent deliberately made so, and I know several self-employed people who have confirmed that it is much, much harder to make a living that way than by the conventional route.

But clearly, the articles point the way to a future in which the majority of us are "self-employed" in some sense, and supported in that state by a minimal universal basic income which would solve a lot of the problems currently associated with self-employment. So I'm not sure what it is you're actually saying. Of course you don't have to stop working; nobody is going to make you. If this kind of system were adopted, the only change would be that when you weren't able to work you wouldn't have to stop eating.

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

I've been on board with this kind of concept for as far back as I can remember. So no arguments from me. :)