The Decline of Paid Employment

Slavery was an institution found in virtually all human societies in history until the modern era. Only in the last two hundred-odd years has it come to be seen as anything but an inevitable facet of life. Other similarly cruel and brutal systems, from serfdom to theocracy, have died out just as recently.

Why did these ancient institutions meet such a sudden end? For any righteous political activist growing up in the modern world, their existence must surely be seen as a terrible crime, and their end a great victory for morality.

I would however, take a much more realistic view. There is a simple truth about the world many fail to grasp, on both the left and right. One must realize that these systems did not come to an end due to any sudden moral awakening on the part of humanity. To be blunt, they ended because they became obsolete. The reason why could be summed up in one phrase - the industrial revolution.

Once more than a tiny fraction of the population could read and write, modern institutions like democracy and free markets became practical for the first time. How could you have currency or a stock market or secret ballots in an illiterate society? Such systems, we can see, are not inherently better than monarchy or feudalism in all ways. They of course have huge advantages in terms of efficiency and accountability, but they come at the cost of being sufficiently complex that they are a luxury no subsistence economy can truly afford. Only when their time has come can we confidently proclaim them 'superior'.

If we look at history, we can see that society has progressed through a number of stages to reach where it is today based on the technologies and resources available at the time. Marxists talk of the different 'modes of production' that humanity has passed through over time, like steps up a ladder. Just as we have progressed from horses to helicopters, from campfires to nuclear reactors and from canoes to battleships, the way large, advanced societies are organised sees similarly vast leaps take place. 

While definitions vary, there are generally seen to have been five different modes of production throughout history - tribal, ancient, feudalism, capitalism and finally socialism.

Tribalism - or 'primitive communism' refers to the organisation of hunter-gatherer humans into small bands who more or less share their resources and the burden of labor communally. The 'ancient' mode of production refers to the first  large, organised societies, where there was a specified hierarchy and different people specialized in different roles, ones usually determined by birthright. Slavery also traces its origins to this period.

This was followed by the 'feudal' mode of production, generally seen as a step above slavery as people are generally no longer considered one another's property. Rather, there was a somewhat more even balance of power between landlords and serfs, wherein the latter would rent land from and work for the former in return for military protection. 

In the last few hundred years we've then seen the development of capitalism, a system that, despite its flaws, is miles ahead of those before it. Working in a capitalist's factory for money rather than on a lord's land for protection certainly improved the bargaining power of the lower classes and improved social mobility, but it was not the end of the journey. From the 19th century onward, we've indeed witnessed the modern economy make a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism. 

While dogged neoliberals may remain deliberately blind to these changes, they should be obvious to everyone else. The size of the public sector of nearly all western economies has shot up dramatically in the past hundred years, now averaging 43% of GDP among OECD nations, and still rising. Government spending on everything from education and healthcare to pensions and welfare has never been higher, and this is despite the end of communist party monopolies over power in Russian and eastern Europe.

Over the same time period, the average number of hours worked by individuals has been steadily declining. It was as high as 60 hours in industrialized countries in the late 19th century, but declined to about 40 hours in the aftermath of WW2. It was 35.5 hours here in Australia as of 1978, and is just 33 hours today. Even this figure is quite high among western countries, with it being as low as 26 hours in Germany and under 30 hours in a number of others. In response, western countries have been gradually decreasing their working weeks and increasing their minimum wages as the jobs market dries up. France introduced its 35 hour week in 2000, and Sweden is now trialing a 30 hour week.

This decline has largely been driven by technology. Pre-industrial revolution anywhere from 95-99% of the population in a society had to be devoted to subsistence farming simply to produce enough food to feed itself. The industrial revolution put an end to this system however, and today in western countries only about 2% of the population works in agriculture. The reasons why should be self evident - a single worker driving a combine harvester can perform the work of a thousand peasants armed with nothing more than blades and sticks.

Despite this massive change in the nature of the employment market, other jobs for workers have generally been found so far. The period from roughly 1850-1970 saw the value of the industrial sector of the economy peak in western countries. A combination of outsourcing and improved technologies now sees the services sector predominate however, with the largest modern employers in the US being retail, accommodation, professional, technical and administrative services. Developing countries like China are still in the earlier phase, with 40% of that country's GDP driven by the industrial sector, compared to 20-25% in most western countries, but they are bound to catch up in another generation or two.

The result of all this so far is that we are working far less in paid employment, and instead devoting our time to other activities. Some 30% of people in western countries now have college degrees for instance, meaning they are well into their 20s before they properly enter the workforce in the first place. Volunteerism has also seen a rise in recent years. The number of volunteers in Australia doubled between 1995 and 2010, with unpaid labor now contributing $14 billion to the economy, and rising. Also worth noting is the more than $300 billion Americans gave to charity last year, and the record global foreign aid budget of $130 billion in 2013. Clearly then, the lack of a direct financial incentive does not stop everyone from working. There are plenty of people out there who want to contribute to our society one way or another, rather than turning into the proverbial couch potatoes people on welfare are generally perceived as.

Unemployment worldwide has remained high since the great recession of 2009, averaging 10% in Europe, and with youth unemployment more than double that figure. Not only is the unemployment rate up, but underemployment has also increased dramatically. The latter figure refers to those who are already working part-time or casual and are able and willing to work more, yet are unable to find such work. Australia's unemployment rate may be only 6%, but total underemployment is over 13%.

Even in places where the jobs market has somewhat recovered - America being an example with unemployment now having fallen back below 7%, those jobs are generally very low paying, minimum wage positions that are little better then unemployment. The country is long overdue for a minimum wage increase anyway, and with polls showing 70-80% of the population supporting such a measure, it is bound to happen soon.

In short, despite the confident predictions of many economists, unemployment has often not decreased following the crisis, even with renewed growth in the economy. Many of those jobs are, it seems, gone for good, and are not coming back. Such is the downside of new technologies. The average consumer today can expect to shop at a supermarket without any interaction with a human, using a self-serve checkout instead. Tickets at train stations are routinely bought from and validated by machines as well, and when one wants to access information, people are vastly more likely to go to Wikipedia - a non-profit website, then walk into a library.

The trend should be clear - in more and more areas, less and less labor is being required, and where there is labor, it is increasingly voluntary.

This is a long-term trend that shows no sign of reversing. There are many other breakthroughs on the horizon that will further stress the jobs market. Self-driving cars, already being tested by Google, will have a major impact. About half a million jobs in Australia are primarily based around driving a vehicle of some kind - truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, and so on. This is not to mention those that work in car insurance offices or repair shops, which will also see major cutbacks. Then there's train drivers, pilots, street sweepers, pizza delivery boys, construction workers, laborers of all kinds and yes, indeed, perhaps even the man driving the combine harvester through the fields...

We can expect that most of these jobs will disappear over the next 20-50 years. What happens to these workers is a serious question - where will they go?

While for the time being the market may provide, that will not be the case forever. Few jobs will be safe from the march of technology indefinitely, and it is this that will truly kill the free market as an institution. Paid work will eventually be replaced by two things - machines and other forms of automation, and volunteerism. A description of a truly socialist society is one where people are not coerced, through force or poverty, into performing jobs they do not want to do. This has previously been described through phrases such as - "if people do not want to go down coal mines, then we shall not mine coal..."

While impractical before now - with slavery, serfdom and sweatshops having been required to sustain the lifestyles of the affluent, this kind of society is gradually taking shape. Ultimately there will only be two kinds of labor - that done by people who are willing to perform jobs freely as they desire to do so, and that done by machines and other forms of automation. Just as slavery came to an end in the 19th century, paid employment, or 'wage slavery' as it has rightly been described, will continue to decline dramatically over the 21st century. The result will be a dramatically expanded welfare state as most people simply stop working once their labor is no longer needed.

The time-frame for this change is hard to predict, but I would hazard a guess of over the next fifty to a hundred years. It may also be unwise to try and accelerate such a change too quickly. As said above, these things depend on context. Despite its merits, implementing universal suffrage was impractical in most countries before the 20th century as the vast majority of the population was so poorly educated. Within a relatively short period of time however, this changed, and most of the world's monarchs swiftly fell from power in just a few decades.

The Communist revolutions that swept over much of the world in the early-mid 20th century can also best be described as 'premature' despite achieving a great deal in ending feudalism and lifting the living standards of millions of people. In hindsight, it seems society was not yet advanced enough for selfishness to be kept at bay, eventually causing the Soviet Union to collapse under the weight of its own inefficiencies, corruption and paranoia.

A more local example could be something like Prime Minister Bob Hawke's re-election pledge in 1987 that - "by 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty..." In accepting such a policy as good, one is not necessarily saying that for all the previous governments up until that point to not have such a policy was fundamentally bad. Rather, the key point is that the timing was right, that by the 1980s Australia was a wealthy enough society that it could afford such a social luxury.

I would like to quote a work of fiction here as well. In Martin Scorsese's film 'The Aviator' about the life of Howard Hughes, there is a scene where the titular character is dining with a wealthy family. When the discussion turns to politics, the head of the house proclaims "We're all socialists here. We don't care about money..." to which Howard Hughes replies "Well, that's because you have it."

At the time, its portrayed as a real zinger against a group of arrogant, self-proclaimed socialists, and it is. But thinking it through to its logical conclusion, one realizes - the wealthier the world gets, the less need there is for greed and selfishness. In many third world countries if you get pulled over by the police, all you have to do is hand them a few dollar bills and they'll let you on your way. If you tried that in a first world country however, where the police are actually properly paid, it would be a sure way to get arrested. Only when we're sufficiently wealthy that no one in our society has to starve or sleep under a bridge - a state we are rapidly approaching, will human nature truly be tamed. At this point, socialism easily becomes the most practical system. In a post-scarcity economy, what need is there for greed and selfishness?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the way capitalism is going to end. Not with the rumble of Russian tanks, or with Hammer and Sickle banners hanging over Times Square, but with the building of machines to perform out dirty work for us, reducing labor costs so dramatically than only people who will work for free will even be considered. Welfare spending, paid for on the backs of our silicon servants or through charity, will provide for the population. While it may seem jarring, one should not be scared of such a future. The vast majority of the population will finally be able to achieve what has previously only been reserved for the tiny minorities that are the landed gentry and wealthy capitalists - the right to not have to work for a living. 

There is truly no greater right. People will finally be able to fully devote themselves to what they wish to do in life - be it learning, volunteering, travelling or any of a thousand different types of leisure. Menial labor will shrink to a minimum. It is a future that certainly sounds better than working in a dreary office or dangerous work-site for forty hours every week. I realize also that in saying all this, people may make accusations that I'm advocating laziness, and assert that to live off welfare is undesirable. On the contrary, I'd say working in a sweatshop fourteen hours a day is what is undesirable.

The bottom line is that - provided society does not collapse in the near future due to some external factor such as climate change, the depletion of fossil fuels, a nuclear war or anything to that effect, most of the population will eventually be permanently unemployed. Indeed, boredom may soon become the greatest long-run problem humanity will face. Any society that can say that about itself however, is probably the best it is possible to create.