Next up: Nov 5 - Technology and the shifting nature of work

The next Penny U will discuss the impact of technology on work. The conversation is scheduled for 5 p.m., Wednesday, November 5 in Town Hall’s downstairs cafe.

Background on the topic

*  Technology will require us to redefine our notions of work and employment.

PewResearch  Many experts believe that because of technology “the entire concept of ‘work’ will undergo a significant shift,” requiring us to redefine our notions of work and employment. This is one of many findings in a study by the PewResearch Internet Project published in August this year. (See reference below.)

The Internet Project canvassed experts and interested public and received 1,900 responses to an open-ended question on the impact of artificial intelligence and robotics on the future of jobs. While the expectation that the nature of work will change was one shared by many, significant disagreements were also found. Responses, for instance, were split almost equally between people who believe that technology will “displace significant numbers of both blue and white collar workers resulting in breakdowns in the social order by 2025,” and those who don’t expect technology to displace more jobs than it creates and who “have faith that human ingenuity will create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living” as it has since the Industrial Revolution.

The impact of technology on work has been on the minds of recent Town Hall speakers as well.

*  Offloading a task to a machine changes the work and the worker. – Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr – “Human Consequences of Technology,” October 6 – said, “offloading a task to a machine doesn’t simply offload that task, it changes the work and the worker.” Some of the unintended consequences Carr mentioned include: trusting computers (the dangers of trusting auto-correct are well known) while ignoring our own knowledge; relying more on “cut-and-paste” than thinking clearly about each action; or finding that doctors supported by electronic files tend to order more tests. It can turn us, Carr said, from “actors” to “observers.” The advantage we have as humans, he added, is that we understand the world in ways that computers cannot. We can use technology to close us off from our own understanding of the world, or we can use it as a base to move out into the world and make it a richer place.

*  We are making average people redundant. – The Baffler

The Baffler – “We are making average people redundant,” claimed key voices from The Baffler magazine on their visit to Town Hall this October. In his story of the “innovation economy” in Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Summers, Baffler’s editor-in-chief and author of No Future for You, reported that despite the broad economic promise of the innovation economy, “significant gains in jobs outside commercial science and tech have simply not materialized. The jobless rate among people without college credentials is double that of degree holders.”

*  The emerging Internet of Things could provide a ubiquitous platform for the evolution of an alternative system: a “collaborative commons.” – Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin (Town Hall, April 2014) predicted that we’re in a technology revolution so extreme in its productivity that the cost of producing goods and services will decline precipitously, leaving little room for profit and squeezing existing jobs even farther. “The triumph of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’,” he said, “will lead to its demise and to the need for a new system.” He also believes that the emerging Internet of Things, a vast neural network of sensors connecting internet addresses, could provide a ubiquitous platform for the growth of an alternative. Most economists believe, Rifkin said, that there are only two ways to organize an economy – government and private enterprise. But the “social commons” is even older than either and is already used around the world. Extensive research by Nobel Prize-wining economist Elinor Ostrom shows that through much of history, people have come together to create commons, that is, they have established democratic protocols for the self-management of common resources. Rifkin acknowledges that to get there, we’d have to navigate many challenges – income for jobs, threats of monopolization, climate change – and we have to move quickly.

Questions for Penny U on November 5

•     How is technology changing your work?

•     Could you be replaced by a machine?  How, or why not?

•     What can you do that couldn’t be replaced by technology?

•    Thinking of the impact of tech on work, where are you on a continuum between imagining a future of lost jobs and social breakdown on one end and the creation of new jobs and ways to make a living on the other ?

References

•     PewResearch study <http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs>

•     Nicholas Carr, <http://www.townhallseattle.org/nicholas-carr-human-consequences-of-technology/>

•     Salvos from The Baffler <http://www.townhallseattle.org/thomas-frank-rick-perlstein-and-john-summers-salvos-from-the-baffler-magazine/>

•     Jeremy Rifkin <http://www.townhallseattle.org/jeremy-rifkinwhy-capitalism-is-dwindling/>

Notes: Oct 6 conversation - What counts as valuable work?

The first Penny U conversation, October 2014

A group of about 20 people gathered in Town Hall’s downstairs cafe on Monday, October 6, for the kick-off for Penny U. We took up the general theme, “What counts as valuable work? How can we do more work that matters and less work that doesn’t?”

QUESTIONS

The ideas of three recent Town Hall speakers provided fodder for the conversations – Andy Stern, Robert Reich, and Naomi Klein. Questions were posed to Penny U participants that began with excerpts from their talks.

“The nature of work is changing radically. No job is safe.”

Andy Stern, former President of SEIU, January 2014

We need to do something fundamentally different… How do we get there? We need to separate jobs, work, and income. Early in the last century there were debates about whether a woman who stays home to care for a child is working or not. We need to answer that question again. Certain things are valuable in society. Are we going to allow people to gain income – maybe not a ‘job,’ but income – for doing things that we think are valuable to society, like caring for our children or reducing our carbon footprint?

Stern made a distinction between work that generates income – a “job” – and work that is valuable to society but does not gain income. He made a case for providing income for that work and had a few ideas for how it might be done.

PENNY U asked:

•   Where in your own life do you find that distinction?

•   Outside a paying job, what work do you do that is valuable in society?

“What can we do to counteract discouragement and act on our own collective behalf? 

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, September 2014

Buried in the statement – “People are paid what they’re worth” – is a moral claim that is hidden, but it is heard by people all over the country: if you are not paid very much, you are not worth very much; if you are paid huge amounts, you must be worth huge amounts in terms of society…  In fact, though, if you’re holding down three jobs, it’s not your fault. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If you are losing ground, it’s not because you’re blameworthy. There is something called an economic system. It’s organized in a certain way. Right now it’s not organized in a way that rewards most people for the work they do.

Reich argues that Americans mythologize the relationship between wages and the moral value of work, and that the increasing strain of inequality in the country creates a moral crisis for people struggling to get by.

PENNY U asked:

•   How do you see the relationship between the value of work and the wages paid for it?

•   How has this manifested in your own life? When you’re looking for jobs, when you hire?

•   How could or should the economy be organized differently in terms of compensating valuable work?

“It’s certainly easier to talk about changing light bulbs than changing the economy.”  

Naomi Klein, journalist and activist, September 2014

If we are going to respond to climate change, we need to invest seriously and on a large scale in not just protecting the public sphere but reinventing it… By responding robustly in line with what scientists are telling us, we have a once in a century opportunity to solve some of our biggest and most intractable social and economic problems. We can create countless good unionized jobs in the next economy. Every dollar invested in renewable energy, efficiency, public transit, creates 6-8 times as many jobs as that dollar would create if it went into oil and gas infrastructure. Those jobs can rebuild our ailing public infrastructure and that infrastructure will give us more livable cities, stronger communities, healthier bodies. We all know this.

Naomi Klein believes that climate change has progressed to the point where only the most radical solutions can mitigate its disastrous effects. One of these radical solutions, she believes, is a positive one: the radical reorganization of the global economy around green principles. Such an economy would transform our relationship to our jobs: foregrounding the carbon footprint of work as well as consumption, and making us rethink our communities.

PENNY U asked:

•    Is the work you do “green”? What makes it so, or not?

•    What does a green economy mean to you? What type of work might you do in this economy? Does it excite you as an idea?

CONVERSATION

New questions & memorable comments

After brief discussion of the three questions, Penny U participants divided into smaller groups, and each used one of the questions to kick off a conversation. Everyone got involved, both listening and talking, and the volume level in the room increased. Volunteer note takers and a wrap-up conversation of the whole group at the end gave us all a flavor of some of the points discussed and raised many new questions.

Why do the hardest jobs pay the least?

•    I’ve been an employee, an owner, and a volunteer. Some of the hardest work I did was as a volunteer, and I got very little respect for it. Why do you get more respect when money changes hands? 

•    What is work? Is it trading physical strength or a skill?  How do we place value on work – time, experience, knowledge, strength? What’s the relative value of a plumber, electrician, truck driver? “A judgment of me is made because I drive a truck.”

•    There’s a perception that care work is not valuable – child care, caring for aging parents, teaching.  Teachers were paid very little until they were unionized, and their pay is still terrible.  Caring for the young and the old requires being inside the family, and domestic workers have no rights to unionize.

•    Why do the hardest jobs pay the least?  This question came up in more than one group. 

•    Where would money come from to pay for work that doesn’t pay now, or doesn’t pay well?  Ideas might come from examples like the Alaska oil dividend, or Jaron Lanier’s idea of a system of micropayments that would require large companies like Amazon and Google to pay you for the use of your data, or giving ordinary people tax breaks for reducing our carbon footprint rather than giving the breaks to corporations.

•    Can we find other ways to generate income?  How about crowdsourcing like Kickstarter?

•    Whatever happened to the progressive income tax? When both the middle class and the economy were stronger, people in the highest income brackets paid as much as 90% on income over a certain, high amount.

•    Rather than try to change policy at the top, like trying to make major changes to the tax structure (which would be near impossible), we should make change at a scale we can handle – like setting up and using time banks.

Why doesn’t the value of work correspond with the wages paid?

•    Another group began by talking about value. In a city, what work has value?  The work of developers clearly does, and it’s reflected in the money they make and their role at the top, initiating the plan. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of community involvement in work to improve their own place, their neighborhood. People play clean-up for no pay. There’s no pay for community involvement. 

•    Who are the prime movers? What are the rings of influence? Usually the first person at the table sets the agenda, and after that people are reactive. And how does the “true cost” get factored in? 

•    Job “takers” are not seen to be as valuable as job “creators.”  In fact, consumers are the real job creators. And consuming is understood to be all about stuff, when actually building things is also consuming something. Consumption includes things like building and using public works projects, and “consumers” are not always consulted. 

•    Entrepreneurship doesn’t require being really rich. 

•    People/workers should be assets on balance sheets, in addition to representing a cost. 

•    The level of resource use is driven by consumers and public policy. 

•    The value of work doesn’t correspond with wages paid. Do moral issues help or hinder? 

•    The economy should be reorganized from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Collective behavior may be the key, collective action.

Can “green” become a rallying cry to change the structure of the economy?

•    The group discussing climate change and a green economy started by talking about what change does not look like: greenwashing. Similar to whitewashing, greenwashing is making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, or technology. 

•    Then they asked, “what would radical transformation look like?” Some movements toward change include assigning a value to carbon pollution. Another approach is the possibility of worker’s co-ops and other alternative systems vs. staying the course. The “divest-invest” movement (“divest from fossil fuels, invest in climate solutions”) is also part of the green picture.

•    Will change be pretty? What will people give up? 

•    What’s our emotional relationship to work? There’s an emotional dimension to work. What is motivating?  Many jobs are meaningless.  

•    Can we change the definition of profit or the definition of capitalism? 

•    At some point, cheap labor will be the only resource. As incomes rise around the world, there won’t be any cheap labor and capitalism will fail. 

•    Once change starts rolling, it grows exponentially, and ideas can move change faster. Can “green” change the structure of the economy? Can it be a rallying cry?  Critical mass is a factor in change. Social movements can lead to change, a change in the law, for one. But how quickly can change happen, especially when economics are involved? 

•    What’s the role of hopefulness vs. hopelessness in the ability of a culture to change?

When the whole group came back together, we heard quick highlights from each discussion and a few comments about the whole program. One sentiment that came up was the sense that the ideas and questions were almost too big for the time we had. We didn’t attempt a grand summary or set of conclusions and wrapped up fairly quickly in order to make way for the evening’s speaker, Nicholas Carr, on “Human Consequences of Technology.”

"Why do the hardest jobs pay the least?"

Some version this question came up more than once in conversations at the first Penny U. What work has value? Why doesn’t the value of work correspond with the pay? And can we do anything about it?

“I’ve been an employee, an owner, and a volunteer. Some of the hardest work I’ve ever done was as a volunteer, and I got very little respect for it. Why do you get more respect when money changes hands?” And another person asked, “What’s the relative value of a plumber, electrician, truck driver? A judgment is made of me because I drive a truck.”

Andy Stern, former president of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), visited Town Hall in January. Among other things, he challenged us to think about how the economy might be aligned with work that’s needed and valuable in society. “Early in the last century,” he said, “there were debates about whether a woman who stays home to care for a child is working or not. We need to answer that question again.”

A group of Penny U participants reported, “There are lots of examples of communities working together to improve their neighborhood. People play clean-up for no pay. You don’t get paid for community involvement.”

In his January talk, Stern asked, “Are we going to allow people to gain income, maybe not a ‘job’ but income, for doing things we think are valuable to society, like caring for children or reducing our carbon footprint?” And a group at Penny U asked, “Where would the money come from to pay for work that doesn’t pay now, or that doesn’t pay well?”

That is, can anything be done about the imbalance between value and work? What would make it affordable to do work that doesn’t pay? How could you gain income without relying on job pay? The Penny U group shared a few ideas:  The Alaska oil dividend was one example. Another was Jaron Lanier’s idea of a system of micropayments that would require large companies like Amazon and Google to pay you for the use of your data. And Stern said we could give ordinary people tax breaks for reducing our carbon footprint rather than giving the breaks to corporations.

Finally, the video that Edward just posted here (thanks, Gwen!) tells of another approach. Dated April 7, 2014, it opens by saying, “In Switzerland, an idea to guarantee every citizen a yearly income of 30,000 Swiss francs, regardless of other wealth or employment, has gained enough supporters to trigger a referendum.” The piece briefly covers the pros and cons of the idea, and a bit about its history and feasibility. It also includes a link to a transcript, if you’d like to read it instead. Check it out!

A few more notes from the October 6 conversation, including the text and background for each question follows in the next post.

Guaranteed Minimum Income?

Gwen Demombynes, who participated in our first Penny U on October 6th, shared this video produced by PBS News Hour on a Swiss proposal guaranteed minimum income.


If you prefer reading the transcript of the video, or want to find out more information, you can view that here. (link)

Imagining Tomorrow’s Work: Conversations about the nature and future of work

In monthly conversations this fall, Penny U asks: How are the concepts of jobs and work changing or being redefined? What kinds of work does our current economy support and not support? How much do technological changes affect this? Why do some thinkers say there’s a silver lining in today’s economic struggles, and can we believe them? What can we do?

Penny U conversations are scheduled on Monday, October 6; Wednesday, November 5; and Monday, December 8. They run from 5:30 to 7:00, usually in the downstairs cafe. Come at 5:00 when the doors open and get drinks and snacks from the cafe or order from Primo Pizza’s happy hour menu for delivery.

Penny U at Town Hall

Penny U borrows its name from 18th century London coffeehouses called “Penny Universities,” where for the price of a penny people got coffee, pamphlets, the latest news and gossip, and lively conversations on politics and science, literature and poetry, commerce and religion. The low cost led to a mingling of people from all walks of life – poor with rich – and the Penny universities became safe havens for political discussion, exchange of ideas, and civil debate.

These Penny U conversations are jumpstarted by ideas speakers on Town Hall’s stages. An underlying aim is to tie big, often challenging, ideas to our own daily lives, here in this city and region. Trusting that everyone who comes brings valuable knowledge and experience, we’ll explore ways to engage everyone in the room – by leading with questions not answers, by taking an informal approach, and by talking in small groups as well as all together. Like the early Penny Universities, over time we hope to create our own mingling of fields, incomes, cultures, and generations – a cadre of people who talk together face-to-face about things that matter, reinforcing the commons that is Town Hall.

Anne Focke & Edward Wolcher