Bucky on 'work'

Well…who is going to staff all the schools?

wv wrote:

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” – Buckminster Fuller

Actually I agree with all that. There will come a time-if we are not already there-where it will become universally recognized that there are too few jobs for the number of people around. The key to the future will be how to address that.

There is a pattern I’ve noticed in many a futurist, though I know next to nothing of Mr. Fuller. Just the quotes here, etc. So . . . I have no idea if this applies to him or not.

Most seem to be operating under the assumption that we’ll make technological decisions for the good of all, etc. etc. . . . Rather than the way we do now, with the personal desires of business ownership being first and foremost on the list, and the needs, much less the quality of life, of the masses at best an after-thought.

We work for them. We are a business cost for them. We make goods and provide services so they can get rich, not so our lives are improved. If this somehow also brings about positive change for non-ownership, it’s all too rare, and never without costly consequences to the planet otherwise. As in, the personal desires of ownership are starkly at odds with the needs (much less the desires) of the masses.

So before we can even begin to think about a workless future, we’re going to have to wrest control of the economy away from the tiny percentage that owns and controls it now. Because we’re kidding ourselves if we think they’ll automate our jobs out of existence and then prevent our devastation as the largest army of unemployed in history.

In short, the economy should be organized by us and for us, not by them and for them. That’s the only way the human race will be able to navigate the robotization of the economy. And since we’ll be organizing it for our own purposes, instead of to make a few individuals rich, we’ll also be able to control when, where, how, why and how fast automation goes.

Ideally, we end permanent work schedules for anyone who doesn’t want them. If people do, that’s an option for them as well. We cross-train from the earliest possible age, so we all know the Big Picture and can handle most jobs along the way. We all train for mental and physical work, so we don’t polarize society into blue and white collar hierarchies. Endless retraining throughout life. Life-long learning without cost to citizens. The widest possible array of choices at all times, and teachers at all times. Choices. The only time a choice would be made for us would be when local communities have a shortage here or there, and then we’d temporarily fill it — via lottery.

Just tossing around a few ideas above. IMO, it’s absolutely necessary to rethink economics. Who does it serve? If it doesn’t serve all of us, and as close to “equally” as possible, I see it as an epic failure right off the bat.