-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 10:31 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] "Solving unemployment through new uses of time" Juliet Schor
In honor of Ray's return, I'm posting the following commentary from Juliet Schor, posted earlier this evening to her Plenitude blog: http://www.julietschor.org/2010/06/solving-unemployment-through-new-uses-of- time/ > The events of the past few years-financial meltdown of 2008, the failed Copenhagen talks and increasing climate destabilization, the BP oil disaster, and the financial crises in the Eurozone-make it clear that the business-as-usual economy is both wreaking havoc on the planet and failing on its own terms. But so far, the conversation about how to transform this economic model has been stuck in neutral. Traveling around North America discussing my new book, Plenitude, I am increasingly convinced that a key obstacle to moving forward is a lack of confidence that there is another way. To gain that confidence, we need to articulate a model of how a sustainable economy could work. REH comment to Sandwichman's bait: I agree but I also believe that they are committed to the "End of Days" and until that myth plays out, the search for happiness can only be accomplished through the myth of ownership of property. We have a 160 year story about property being the greatest pleasure (WS Jevons, etc.) that I believe is plain old pathology. Instead of seeking self knowledge and psycho physical development and personal mastery they go for capital property. I believe it is chasing a ghost and then you die. > The core insight of my model is the need to transform how people spend their time. Its first principle is to reverse the increased in time devoted to the market that has occurred in recent decades. (The US, most of the global South and some OECD countries have experienced rising hours.) In the US, annual hours of work rose more than 200 from 1973 to 2006. Longer hours raise the ecological footprint, both because of more production, and because time-stressed households have higher-impact lifestyles. Getting to sustainability will require slowing down the pace of life, which means working less. REH comment: Long unpaid hours has always been the domain of people practicing some form of research or virtuosity. Sustainability for them has been accomplished by multiple jobs. The carbon footprint of such work is usually personal sweat and whatever is required to make the workspace habitable. Today we have the marketplace using the artistic rules of the performing artist. Work and money for their own sake. (It was even articulated that way in the NYTimes magazine some time ago.) The only problem is that artistic work has a small carbon footprint while speculation in the market and manufacturing has a large one. Network marketing which is the new "thing" also uses a lot of energy for the dream of residual income. You put that together with more people being born due to declining birth control and abortion and the need for security is greater still. It seems to me that the problem here is religious and is being preached weekly from pulpits all over the nation. > Shorter hours are also key to solving the unemployment crisis. In the US, it will require 11 million new jobs to return to pre-crash levels. That breaks down to 500,000 new jobs a month for almost two years. That's an unrealistic number, unless we address hours of work. In comparison to Western European countries, where hours are much shorter, the U.S. has to generate between 6 and 20% more in Gross Domestic Production to create each new job. REH comment: Shorter hours will get you drug tested by the Republican Tea Partiers in the U.S. > The recession has gotten us started down this road. When it began the workweek stood at 34.1 hours, but by April of 2010 it was 33.3. A rising workweek is a strong desiderata of recovery for mainstream economists, but they fail to see that it makes job creation harder, contributes to stress among employees, and exacerbates ecological degradation. Declining hours could re-balance the labor market and free up time for people to engage in low-impact, self-providing activities that reduce their dependence on the market. These include growing food, generating energy, building housing, and making small-scale manufactured goods, such as apparel and household items. REH comment: They get their identity not from their culture but from their work. TV just said that the military gets its "band of brotherhood" from proselytizing war. Everyone is alone and wants brotherhood in spite of all of the churches promising it. They should try playing in a great orchestra. Or singing in a great Chorus like Keith Hudson. That is a non-polluting band of brothers and sisters as close as any life and death situation. Years ago when they tested the stress level of various jobs, the two highest emotional stresses were not the Vietnam war or a professional football team, but Airline Pilots and the Berlin Philharmonic. The greatest physical stress was the New York City Ballet filled with dancers who performed on broken bones when other professions would have hospitalized them. Frankly the problems of this life can be traced to the food where the lack of taste and sophistication makes safety, that discrimination would solve, impossible I don't grow my food but at my age I have to eat well or it makes me sick. The issue of pollution in the environment is a problem with food. Also, if I grow my food and do all of that small scale stuff you advocate, I will give up my art and my students and the cultivation of truth and beauty in the culture and life wouldn't have much interest for me personally. If I didn't have the lessons of the Natural world (Equa Usquanigodi we say) and the great works of Art I would see no reason for existing at all. That is the reason I believe I came here in the first place. > This do-it-yourself activity is highly satisfying for people, because it helps them learn new skills and allows them to be creative. It also turns out to be the catalyst for start-up businesses and second careers as people take their newfound skills and passions and earn money with them. Freeing up time from the formal market is one condition for incubating a green, small business sector. Self-providing is also part of how we can construct more economic interdependence. As people begin to do more self-providing, they barter, trade, and share on a local level. This builds wealth in social capital, which enhances well-being and security. REH comment: In our community as an act of meditation, we hand make the things that we use and wear in Cherokee ceremonials. But crafts are no substitute for the cultivation of personal mastery in one of the senses. The pursuit of personal mastery or virtuosity is isomorphic. One thing leads to another. I wouldn't have time to write this down if I were doing what you say. I've spent my time planting, building houses, furniture, making clothes and creating beautiful regalia. At my age, I want more to deal with ideas and great works of art. > Finally, the fourth principle of plenitude is that people will consume differently. With more time and less disposable income, they'll shift to buying fewer new products, and prefer goods that are longer lasting and repairable. They'll also participate more in economies of re-sale and exchange. I call that "true materialism," a consumer practice that respects the materiality of the earth. REH comment: Sounds like the reservation. Our reservations have a very high suicide rate. > Perhaps the most important dimension of plenitude, in contrast to the dominant discourse on sustainability, is that it is not a techno-fix. We do need to change the technologies we use, especially in the energy sector. But this model shows us that we can move a long way toward sustainability by focusing on how we spend our time and organize our economic lives. Shifting to slow, small-scale, low impact ways of living and producing can yield dramatic reductions in footprint, even without new technological systems. REH comment: Been there, done that. Now live five blocks from Lincoln Center, have a four star Restaurant in my building and everything I need within four blocks. A great lumber company thirty blocks away and great parks. The river is three blocks away with a beautiful park, restaurants, bike and running paths. Baseball fields to watch my grandson pitch four perfect innings of baseball. Personally I think Schor should develop herself more and then she will need and use less. In classical art less is more but that has nothing to do with being an amateur farmer. Thanks Sandwichman REH -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
