Do you
mean that Mitch Daniels might take a summer off to work in the fields picking
fruit with migrant workers?
Rumsfeld
might work as a janitor at Wal-Mart?
Wolfowitz
arise in the middle of the night to bake bread for the morning rush
hour?
Eliot
Abrams work in a retirement home, changing beds and bringing food
trays?
John
Poindexter work as a receiving clerk in a county
jail?
Condi
Rice to stand in a factory sorting tomatoes for canning all
day?
Dick
Cheney pump gas, check tires, wash the
windshield?
George
Bush, as fit as he is, haul garbage cans and throw them onto a
truck?
Wonderful
idea. - Karen
The
economies that arise from comparative advantage and specialization lead to
great productivity, at the same time it cuts of off and makes us
insensitive to those many tasks that are done by others so that we may
continue to do our specialized job in this economic productive
beehive.
Maybe
people should rotate and do other things if only to realize the enormous
complexity and interdependency of society. Even if such knowledge comes
at the cost of lowered measured productivity but heightened awareness of our
basic interconnectedness.
arthur
My comments about
cleaning toilets in various posts about the changing nature of work have begun
to be taken too literally.
Arthur Cordell
wonders whether there is something Freudian in the analogy, and points out
that a much more unpleasant task for him is completing his tax
return.
This will do just as
well as an example, except that those who help you complete your tax returns
are generally seen in a better light than those who help you clean your
toilet.
The principle is the
same, however. These are both kinds of work which need to be done.
One way to do them (the very old fashioned way) would be for everyone to do
them for themselves. This is highly inefficient, which is one of the
major reasons why societies move to a system in which labour is more
specialised - ie you train to become an accountant and as a result become
better at a particular kind of work, completing tax
returns.
Some people think
that until we reach the ulltimate in this sort of specialisation we won't have
fully implemented capitalism. These people point out that outsourcing
domestic activity has created all the industries which currently exist, and
that there is about 40% of human activity which is still done domestically and
that outsourcing this represents the next great hope of an economic
revival.
This may be true,
but as I say to the greatest Australian exponent of this way of thinking -
thanks Phil, but I want to wipe my own arse.....
Whether or not
outsourcing everything is the future of work is not
the real question I am addressing here. It certainly represents one
alternative, and as near as I can see one which achieves my fundamental
objective (which is to create a world which has a viable place for
everyone).
It certainly,
however, does not represent the sort of world I would prefer to live in.
As I colourfully said above, some things I want to do for myself. I
don't want to be defined simply as a 'doer of things for
others'.
Back to toilet
cleaners. In our modern world people are defined by what they do for
others (after our name, the first thing we are asked for when we are
introduced is 'what we do'). Hence, we have people who are defined as
toilet cleaners (or, for Arthur's benefit, tax
accountants).
The fact is all of
these people are more, so much more, than this simplistic definition of
themselves. But we focus so much on this job approach to work that it
hard for us to see behind the 'job definition' which first confronts
us.
And then, as has
happened in recent years, when there aren't enough jobs to go around, we
define people as jobless and that's a whole other ball
game.
So, when I talk about
cleaning toilets I am not talking about a job, I am talking about work which
needs to be done and looking to find a model for how it might be got done in
the most preferred way.
Charles
Brass
Chairman
the futures foundation
PO Box 122 Fairfield 3078
Australia
phone 61 3 9459 0244
the mission of the
futures foundation is
"...to engage all Australians in creating a better
future..."
