Gail and Keith have both made thoughtful
contributions to this particular thread, and I am stimulated to
continue.
I suspect that many of those who have not entered
the conversation have stayed silent because they believe this is just a rather
meaningless word game.
Gail to some extent perpetuates this view by
talking about voluntary work as different from employment, and Keith talks
about working for himself as different from employment. I guess these
are differences, but they are not what I am getting at (at least not
necessarily).
Work as a societal activity is now what one
days to 'earn' the money which is indispensable in acquiring the real
necessities of life. (for those reading this particularly carefully, I
would have preferred to use the word employment at the beginning of this
sentence, but it would just increase confusion.
One of the five economic solutions (to which
Keith agreed with at least three) is to increase the scope of the market
economy, which will mean that even more of what one does and needs will need
to be acquired through money - and hence more work will be
needed.
Even volunteers need money to acquire what they
need, so if they don't get paid for their volunteer activity they need to have
money guaranteed from some other source (work done earlier from which savings
have accrued, a partner who supports them or (increasingly in the western
world) from a government handout).
So what? All this is obvious.
Well, some people critique all this by wishing to
reduce our need for money to acquire what we need - perhaps we could all
become self sufficient again, perhaps the state might take control and dish
out to us all according to some formula, perhaps nano robots will be able to
make anything we want out of virtually nothing at virtually no cost - and
there seems to be some merit in the objective (even if I don't support some of
the examples I have given - my preferred option, as I have explained
In other posts is the creation of local
currencies which are another way of decreasing dependence on an increasingly
scarce (and usurious) national currency.)
However, this is not my main
argument.
Human beings have to do something with their
time. We all have exactly 168 hours a week to fill in, each and every
week - and this has not changed in four billion years.
In the last couple of hundred years we have
divided these hours into two irreconciliable categories - work and non-work -
and for much of the past two centuries a good life was defined as one with as
little as manageable of the former (providing the money was there)
and as much of the latter.
This might have been the definition, but the
reality was more complicated - men worked a lot then engaged in various
activities which helped them recover to work a lot again the next day - and
what women did was defined as neither work nor non-work, but since they didn't
really count no-one noticed this anomaly.
For the last thirty years there has been an
inadequate amount of this kind of work to go around, and (the five economic
solutions not withstanding) there seems little likelihood that sufficient will
ever exist again (and a bloody good thing I say). Which raises the
question, how will a good life be defined in the future.
Whatever the answer to that question, and I
propose one at the end of this, I venture that people will in the future want
to feel that a significant proportion of their 168 hours is devoted to
something they feel to be useful, productive or helpful - or to use one
word - sustainable.
If "work" (now in talking marks because I really
mean employment) can't fill the time (however much time we think it should
fill) what will.
Well, I have my answers to that question - but I
don't believe them to be prescriptive. I would enjoy an interchange with
others who have come to the same conclusion - ie that employment cannot
provide a solution to our present problems with work - and are interested in
exploring alternatives.
For me, the alternatives will involve a much more
vibrant local community (by which I mean the network of people and resources
close to us) than currently exists - mostly because nationals systems simply
can't measure let alone control needs and wants at the local
level.
In my future for work, everybody has at least one
community with which they can identify and within which they can sustain
themselves. There will still be plenty of people who interact within
many communities and many of the current economic systems will continue to
very very useful in facilitating this interaction. But they will be
meaningless at the local community level which is where sustainable strength
will be based.
Charles Brass
Chairman
Future of Work
Foundation
phone:61 3 9459 0244
fax: 61 3 9459 0344
PO Box
122
Fairfield 3078
www.fowf.com.au
the mission of the Future of Work Foundation
is:
"to engage all Australians in creating a better future for
work"
