Thank you Ian Ritchie for posting Jeremy Rifkin's remarks on "Work, Social
Capital, and the Rebirth of the Civil Society." I know that I'm being
enormously unfair to Rifkin because I've only been able to read the first
few pages of anything he's written without feeling that I'm being fleeced by
a con man. In the comments below, I may have fallen into the same trap, so
those of you who are Rifkin fans can choose between dismissing me or
forgiving me. Anyhow, here are my comments:
In his very first paragraph, Rifkin gets into typical "Rifkinese": change
must, of course, be "profound", resulting in a "radical new world". He also
rather quickly gets into nonsense, telling us that up until now we have been
living in a bipolar world in which only the marketplace and government
played a role. Soon, however, the rest of us who live in the "civil sector"
may also get to play. I'm not sure of what he is suggesting here, but
whatever it is, it will surely reshape "our very ideas of citizenship."
Perhaps he doesn't recognize that, in at least some parts of the world,
people have had the right to vote, establish political parties, and create a
variety of powerful public institutions for at least a few decades if not
much longer.
Rifkin then tells us that because of the increasing use of robotics the "...
number of factory workers in the United States declined from 33 percent of
the workforce to under 17 percent in the past 30 years, even as American
companies continued to increase production and output..." This may indeed
be so, but he implies that what is true of American manufacturing is true of
the American economy as a whole, and indeed of the global economy. He goes
further in suggesting that, because of robotics, there has been an actual
movement of labour out of work and into idleness. I would suggest that this
is nonsense. Despite robotics and a variety of other changes in the labour
market, unemployment in the US has been very low during the past decade, and
there is little evidence that it is about to rise. Indeed the current fear
is inflation, not unemployment.
It is true that robotics have displaced people out of particular jobs.
Historically, innovative technologies have always done so. But in advanced
countries which are experiencing considerable unemployment, as is Canada and
Western Europe, technological displacement has generally not been the
leading cause. Canada, for example, has traditionally relied on its
resource industries to power its economic engines. These industries have
been in a long decline during the past couple of decades. In Western
Europe, the rigidity of government and union labour policies appears to be
important.
I don't necessarily disagree with Rifkin's argument that "Over the next
quarter century, we will see the virtual elimination of the blue collar,
mass assembly line worker from the production process." But as a response I
would suggest a big "So what?" When the assembly line was initiated in the
auto industry early in this century, it displaced a substantial number of
people who had made cars in much the same manner as they had made carriages
in the previous century. Most of those displaced people and their decedents
found another place in the economy. Rifkin's problem is that he sees things
as always shrinking and ending, never beginning and expanding. What he does
not seem to recognize is that in a progressive economy old opportunities
close but new ones open. I don't know if this kind of analysis has been
done, but it would be interesting to put some numbers on how many new
opportunities the so-called computer revolution has created and how many old
ones it has actually closed. I would be rather surprised if the effect was
as negative as Rifkin implies. I would also be surprised if it was found
that fewer opportunities had been created than had vanished.
But here I run directly into some of Rifkin's most cherished opinions:
"While the "knowledge sector" will create many new jobs, they will likely be
too few to absorb the millions of workers displaced by the new technologies.
That's because the knowledge sector is, by nature, an elite workforce and
not a mass workforce. Engineers, highly skilled technicians, computer
programmers, scientists, and professionals will never be needed in "mass"
numbers to produce goods and services in the Information Age. Indeed, the
shift from mass to elite labor forces is what distinguishes work in the
Information Age from that of the Industrial Age." And that: "The reality is
that the world is polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces on
one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech
global economy; and on the other, a growing number of marginalized or
permanently displaced workers who have few prospects and little hope for
meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world."
I find two things wrong with these opinions. First, information is not a
one way street. What Rifkin seems to overlook is that there are, and always
will be, information users as well as information purveyors. Blue-collar
work undertaken on the factory floor may well disappear, at least in high
income economies, but a vast array of other kinds of work which will have to
be performed by human workers, not robots, will remain and probably expand
in the long run. At least in our lifetimes and probably even those of our
grandchildren, we will continue to need doctors, lawyers, nurses, gardeners,
prosthetists, mechanics, farmers, teachers, transportation workers,
stockbrokers, engineers, architects, insurance salesmen, politicians and a
variety of other skilled and knowledgeable people. As the kinds of skills
utilized by these people change, so will their information needs. The elite
who transmit information will have to rely on those who have knowledge to
provide it. And given the changes that are occurring in the international
economy, in health, and in other fields, new occupations will arise, new
knowledge will be needed and new methods of disseminating information will
be needed.
Second, I think Rifkin's image of a bipolar world, with one group standing
in command over here, another in abject servility over there, is as false
one. That is not how things are now, nor are they likely to be this way in
future. New technology is not locked up in some fortress to which only a
few hold the key; it is present everywhere, at work, in the classroom, on
the street, and in the home. I would suggest that, as familiarity with new
technology increases, a networking model in which everyone has an
opportunity to input and access output is far more likely than an "us versus
them" bipolar one. What may emerge as the information age progresses is a
much more connected and integrated world than we have ever experienced in
the past. This is already suggested by the expanding use and
uncontrolability of the Internet.
As noted above, in his opening paragraph, Rifkin does recognize that the
world is moving from a bipolar government-market place one to a tripolar
government- marketplace-civil sectors one, a move which probably began when
King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, if not much earlier.
I will grant that the information economy is currently dominated by a few
large players, such as Microsoft. This too is nothing new. The introduction
of any new technology usually occurs under monopoly conditions. However,
these eventually break down. Wary of public and political opinion,
governments will eventually apply anti-combines legislation. Smaller
players will eventually find ways of getting around the exclusivity of a new
technology. For example, the Linux system is now beginning to challenge
Microsoft's dominance of computer operating systems. Given such
considerations, I do not share Rifkin's concern that "While our political
leaders have embraced the Information Age, extolling the virtues of
cyberspace and virtual reality, they have, for the most part, steadfastly
refused to address the equally important question of how to ensure that the
dramatic productivity gains of the new high-tech global economy will be
shared broadly among every segment of the population." I would suggest that,
in many different ways, both our leaders and we ourselves are addressing
this question.
Ed Weick
