The US experienced a generation of globalization before being hit with the reality that widespread and permanent unemployment was killing the Middle Class. But jobs weren’t simply being exported. As our minds were being enthralled by electronic gadgets, other electronic gadgets were eliminating our jobs.
Oh, there will always be some work, jobs, employment for humans, but we’re succeeding at innovation of “labor-saving” technologies to a point where we can see the possibility of billions being born to a permanent global vacation. The old warning about idle hands and idle minds reminds us there’s already enough devilish stuff going on in a semi-em-ployed world.
How to provide jobs for workers and a decent life for the unemployed and the non-workers is a worrisome concern. Earth’s population grows relentlessly as the need for labor shrinks alarmingly.
The three-quarter century experiment with Communism revealed it to be an embarrassingly awkward and inept failure. That hasn’t stopped the Big banking, Big government central planners in many countries from resorting to the same failed system that’s supposed to bring the workforce to bear, fairly and productively, on needs of the state.
The time may be near for redefining our concept of work, broadening our definition of what work is, and what kinds of contributions to society merit the benefits and rewards that society can bestow…and can afford to bestow.
We must, I think, get to a point where it isn’t merely physical labor or hours spent in a workplace that determines a person’s worth and value to society. That is a carry-over from the factory system associated with the Industrial Revolution, and punching a time clock may become a workplace memory.
The “worker” of the future may be called “societal contributor,” and his or her “work” may be works of mind, of consciousness–creative thinking, writing, posting, publishing, and disseminating ideas for activities and projects that positively, productively, constructively strengthen the social fabric, and add new purpose, beauty, and enjoyment to life that addiction’s easy and convenience can’t provide.
