Work in the future

I was going to post this on the UBI thread but it goes into wider and broader areas of thought

https://www.dw.com/en/do-we-need-to-work-less-to-save-the-world/a-53742751

Ecologically minded proponents of UBI say it would give workers greater power to reject jobs that are bad for their own wellbeing or that of the planet. It would also grant financial Independence to those who do vital unpaid labor and give more of us the opportunity to engage in activities like volunteering, community gardening and grassroots organizing of resources outside the market economy.

UBI is also put forward as a solution to people being put out of work by technological developments such as artificial intelligence, as seen in arecent video by Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, who proposes funding UBI through dividends from corporate profits rather than taxes on labor.

With more time to invest in each other and our environment, we might be less drawn to “compensatory consumption” — buying stuff to make ourselves feel better, be it status symbols or treats to lift our spirits when we feel burned out and short on the human connection that provides more sustaining mental health benefits.

Philipp Frey of the German Center for Emancipatory Technology Studies  authored a  study suggesting that to prevent climate collapse, Europeans should go down to a nine-hour working week.

“What’s our main focus?” Frey asks. “Is it to satisfy human needs using as little ecological resources as possible? Or is [the economy] organized in such a way that pushes maximum turnover and corporate profits?”

Frey says he was surprised by the optimal working hours based on emissions his calculations produced. Cutting our working hours so drastically might be good for the climate but he doesn’t believe it would be economically sustainable.

Instead, he advocates a redistribution of the kind of work we do, alongside a managed reduction of the working week toward 20 or 24 hours — a level studies suggest is also optimal for workers’ health and productivity.

According to the UN, 41% of all the work done worldwide is unpaid: Caring for children and the elderly, domestic work and collecting water, for example. Amaia Perez Orozco, an economist with the feminist XXK Collective in Bilbao, says this figure doesn’t include activities like subsistence farming that would bring the share of work happening outside the market economy to more like 50%.

These activities are essential to sustain society — and keep the economy running — but they don’t generate profit and are largely left to women.

“We value jobs that are more profitable for capital accumulation more than we value jobs that are profitable for the sustainability of life,” Orozco said, adding “so we have a completely distorted way about thinking about the value of jobs.”

In a system gearing toward profit and growth, we reward work that turns resources into products and waste, and neglect the human and ecological “nutritious base,” as Margarita Mediavilla, professor of systems engineering at the University of Valladolid in Spain, calls it.

“Collapse happens when the base weakens and the system tries to keep growing,” Mediavilla said. “Our society has already entered a pattern of collapse and a pattern of over-exploitation.” COVID-19, she adds, “increases even more our fragility, and shows the pattern of collapse even more clearly.”

Mediavilla says traditional societies aimed to work only as much as necessary to meet the needs of the population and cared for the natural resources on which their livelihoods depended. In contrast, today’s “junkie economy,” hooked on cheap oil, cheap labor and cheap resources, “needs to produce more and more in order for people to have a decent living.”