The idea of a 30 hour work week is a great stepping stone.
Let’s also remember that in News from Nowhere, Morris was writing about a world that did not have money, or jails, or organized schooling. Kids were free to do and learn what they wanted. I think I remember two kids staffing a handcrafted pipe shop where you could just walk in and obtain a pipe that you liked? Meanwhile the adults were heading up the canal to help harvest grain.
It seems his premise was that, if people weren’t out there hoarding money and flooding the world with cheap junk goods, meanwhile simultaneously stealing the majority of the value that workers create, then everyone would be living the high life.
Doing the math, I think he was quite accurate about that.
I mean, there are social/structure problems to tackle, but from a resource and human effort perspective, there is no reason why every person in the the world can not be fed, housed, and have a large amount of leisure time. We already figured out most of those logistical issues by Morris’ time, but as you pointed out, the advances have each time been usurped by those who own the means of production.
E.F. Schumacher did a fine job of pointing that out, too!
And I guess even his pal Keynes suggested we would have come to our senses by now. Remember what he wrote in 1930, quoting Macbeth? I think he gave us 100 years until we wouldn’t need you-know-what.
Heck. That would be a wildly interesting path to walk for a writing series. If you have the energy for it. I’m not sure I do :-D
Ah. Didn't mean for that to be a rant, Elle! By the way, I love knowing about what you are doing in your own life to shift the balance back in your favor. We are trying a lot of that in our life, too, and I realize writing about it and sharing it helps us all :-)
Morris was an idealist—I don't think there's a world in which nobody has to work, and yet we still educate our children and thresh hay and build bridges out of the fun for it. But I do think his ideal, a world with more leisure and artisanship, is achievable through the various ends you and those philosophers/economists have mentioned!
And thanks for the kind words about my work, I've been craving a return to more personal writing and thinking, rather than solely heavily researched, which this series is pulling me back into. I'm so glad it's resonating!
Hey, harvesting grain is work too (says a guy who has done it a lot) :-D
Yes, he over-reaches a bit in that book. But at the same time, I can imagine most of it playing out if we fostered that kind of mindset in each other. Thanks for your writing and thinking!
Hello Elle, I love the way you look into our future, when we all grasp the fact that when we use machines and technology with the purpose of getting more valueble time for ourselves and our loved ones we are in our own future. I always take our dog as a good example to look at life, doing what's necessary, playing and never overdoing. Have a lovely weekend
You will need to change the whole system of government before you can change the work week in that way. The work week is mandated by corporate interests and corporate interests are the actual employers of too many government officials.
It might look like you don't need to change the whole system of government before you can change the work week in that way... but that's like an optical illusion or a hologram or something.
Would we need to change the whole system of government? Or just the fact that it’s mandated by corporate interests? 😊
Also, it’s worth noting that the last time we changed the workweek it was precipitated by 20% unemployment. So sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better?
Great points. Broadly speaking I'm of the view that the correct reaction to a lot of this stuff will look like an overreaction. That being said, the wrong overreaction may make things worse. So yes, we need to rapidly iterate on systems of governance and government, because AI will enable this in ways we aren't evenc lsoe to approaching yet, but first we need to tear the models away from the major labs in order to prevent them from owning everything in ways we don't have good ideas about yet. They are very closely connected with a declining and corrupt hegemonic power and they are developing platforms which can accurately be described as nascent semi-infinite digital hyperslavery engines. We are so far away from where we've been with similar examples in the past, but corporate interests persist and are dominant.
Corporate interests are the system of government.
A case can be made that it's a spectrum but it's always part of it and in many examples throughout centuries of sloppy civilization corporate interests have often been the government.
You recently saw the Canadian rockies. Have you been to the East Coast? I used to live in Cape Breton and it's just beautiful. It's also home to a town called Glace Bay, which used to be a company town back when the mines were active. Everyone should visit a company town to understand what can and does happen.
What AI can and will do, regardless of how it all goes down, will make a precipitous 20% collapse in the workforce seem pale in comparison. What is the world when it's a company town because of a handful of AI companies? How do we overreact away from that? What happens when we don't.
Yes, I feel you. Corporate interests are definitely the system of government. I do hope we can eradicate it though.
I haven't been to Eastern Canada yet, I hope to! Though I know company towns struggled from being non-diversified, I do hope more diversified ones could be an option. Why shouldn't cities own equity in several of the companies that are in and serve their town? Including the data centers based there? (The subject of a talk I'm giving this fall!).
It's a time of a lot of change, but we could do some very interesting things with that change.
Thanks for another great article. I cannot refrain from mentioning that both my maternal grandmother and at least a couple of paternal aunts had sewing machines that were powered by foot. Of course, your point about how the sweat shops ultimately exploited this new technology is well taken.
On that score, we most also note that Bezos and Amazon have already deployed over one million robots, and they are now investing billions to expand the robotic work-force. This bodes very well for corporate profits but most dire for the people who work those jobs...
I read "News from Nowhere" in college and was intrigued with the concepts presented (and I've always been a time-travel fan). I just downloaded it to Kindle to read again from a much different perspective, being that it's about 50 years later and times (and I) have changed a bit.
I hope you enjoy it!!! If you want a follow-up, I highly recommend Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian novel Herland, which was a direct response to Morris and my favorite of the utopian genre.
I was just introduced to your essays from one of your other readers... Elias Crim... and I loved it. I have always appreciated Utopias... but I've also always been dubious... as utopia literally means "no place"... and our world is full of opinions and very little consensus about how we move forward together in a meaningful way. I liked your piece because it combines an awareness of the web we are all trapped in, with a vision and a small step we can each take to become more sovereign. I will continue to explore and support your work as I can... as I see what you are building, an artisanal life, backed by your contributors. Keep writing!!!
Welcome, Elias is amazing! I admit I am reclaiming the word "utopia" in my work. You're right, it was originally a pun meaning both "good place" and "no place." But I think the "unachievable ideal" is still a guiding star we should have. Think of Common Sense by Thomas Paine. It was outlandish and crazy to say "what if we didn't have monarchy and we made our own country instead?" What an unachievable ideal! But it gave us a vision worth working toward, and that kind of imagination is important. Modern thinkers might think the unachievable ideal is naive. But I think it's essential. A horizon we will always be sailing toward but never reach. That's why I'm reclaiming the tradition.
But thanks for the kind words about my work—I hope you'll find some ideas worth exploring here!
Elle, this is a great, insightful post—and I look forward to the next series pamphlet. One “small” detail you continue to neglect, however, is the mechanism of modern fiat money, as in:
”…governments could tax companies instead of incomes and fund important services that ensure our wellbeing—like healthcare, reskilling sabbaticals to retrain the workforce as needed, and guaranteed jobs at a guaranteed living wage.”
Sovereign, currency-issuing governments do NOT have to TAX anybody to “fund” any of the things you listed. Saying that governments DO need to tax to “pay for things” reinforces a profound misunderstanding that prevents us from undertaking—RIGHT NOW—many of the things you suggest in your essay. No need to be waiting for the future—only need to understand, and embrace, the mechanisms of fiat money.
Hi John, governments that can issue currency can fund a lot of stuff, as we've talked about before, but that doesn't eradicate the need to tax to provide it.
If a family pays $25,000/year for healthcare, but the government decides to issue more currency and provide it instead, now the family has $25,000 extra and so does everyone else. Suddenly trillions of dollars in the economy make everything bid up in price. That extra $25,000 doesn't get them anything extra, just everything they already had for more money. Inflation. The government doesn't need our money but it needs us not to have it. So the country has to tax.
I do think you're right though that the government could immediately fund a guaranteed jobs program this way, and that would be amazing! A more specific version would have been to split that sentence into multuple each with a different funding source and requirement. And I'll explain my corporate tax idea in greater detail in a future post, but what I really hope it does is incentivize companies to act a certain way because, when it does, the company lowers its tax bill. It's really a way to fix distribution rather than fund some kind of redistribution.
Elle, thanks for your reply to my comment. Here is a link to a recent essay I wrote on this very topic which conveys what I’m trying to get you to see. The mechanisms of Fiat Money create real opportunities, I believe, for the mission you’ve set out to achieve.
So far as inflation is concerned, no one is denying that it is an issue to be managed. To simply state, however, that governments cannot, or should not, engage in fiat spending because doing so will generate inflation is, in most cases, simply not true—and in other cases is a wild over-simplification of the issues involved.
Great essay full of positive direction on a personal level and also more collectively. How to shape the future depends not on the technology but on social organization. Thanks for providing a vision of what is possible.
WEF (yes, those Davos guys) also mentioned stakeholder capitalism. Whether it's the same vision as your stakeholder economy vision, I will leave it up to you to discuss with Mr. Schwab 😇
The idea of a 30 hour work week is a great stepping stone.
Let’s also remember that in News from Nowhere, Morris was writing about a world that did not have money, or jails, or organized schooling. Kids were free to do and learn what they wanted. I think I remember two kids staffing a handcrafted pipe shop where you could just walk in and obtain a pipe that you liked? Meanwhile the adults were heading up the canal to help harvest grain.
It seems his premise was that, if people weren’t out there hoarding money and flooding the world with cheap junk goods, meanwhile simultaneously stealing the majority of the value that workers create, then everyone would be living the high life.
Doing the math, I think he was quite accurate about that.
I mean, there are social/structure problems to tackle, but from a resource and human effort perspective, there is no reason why every person in the the world can not be fed, housed, and have a large amount of leisure time. We already figured out most of those logistical issues by Morris’ time, but as you pointed out, the advances have each time been usurped by those who own the means of production.
E.F. Schumacher did a fine job of pointing that out, too!
And I guess even his pal Keynes suggested we would have come to our senses by now. Remember what he wrote in 1930, quoting Macbeth? I think he gave us 100 years until we wouldn’t need you-know-what.
Heck. That would be a wildly interesting path to walk for a writing series. If you have the energy for it. I’m not sure I do :-D
Ah. Didn't mean for that to be a rant, Elle! By the way, I love knowing about what you are doing in your own life to shift the balance back in your favor. We are trying a lot of that in our life, too, and I realize writing about it and sharing it helps us all :-)
Morris was an idealist—I don't think there's a world in which nobody has to work, and yet we still educate our children and thresh hay and build bridges out of the fun for it. But I do think his ideal, a world with more leisure and artisanship, is achievable through the various ends you and those philosophers/economists have mentioned!
And thanks for the kind words about my work, I've been craving a return to more personal writing and thinking, rather than solely heavily researched, which this series is pulling me back into. I'm so glad it's resonating!
Hey, harvesting grain is work too (says a guy who has done it a lot) :-D
Yes, he over-reaches a bit in that book. But at the same time, I can imagine most of it playing out if we fostered that kind of mindset in each other. Thanks for your writing and thinking!
Absolutely. Ideals worth working toward for sure!
Hello Elle, I love the way you look into our future, when we all grasp the fact that when we use machines and technology with the purpose of getting more valueble time for ourselves and our loved ones we are in our own future. I always take our dog as a good example to look at life, doing what's necessary, playing and never overdoing. Have a lovely weekend
This is a superb and insightful article. The link between the past learnings and modern challenge is fantastic. Thank you.
Thank you, I really appreciate that 😊
I loved this one, Elle. I really appreciate that you refuse to collapse complexity or give in to false dilemmas.
Thanks Derek, I appreciate that.
You will need to change the whole system of government before you can change the work week in that way. The work week is mandated by corporate interests and corporate interests are the actual employers of too many government officials.
It might look like you don't need to change the whole system of government before you can change the work week in that way... but that's like an optical illusion or a hologram or something.
Would we need to change the whole system of government? Or just the fact that it’s mandated by corporate interests? 😊
Also, it’s worth noting that the last time we changed the workweek it was precipitated by 20% unemployment. So sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better?
Great points. Broadly speaking I'm of the view that the correct reaction to a lot of this stuff will look like an overreaction. That being said, the wrong overreaction may make things worse. So yes, we need to rapidly iterate on systems of governance and government, because AI will enable this in ways we aren't evenc lsoe to approaching yet, but first we need to tear the models away from the major labs in order to prevent them from owning everything in ways we don't have good ideas about yet. They are very closely connected with a declining and corrupt hegemonic power and they are developing platforms which can accurately be described as nascent semi-infinite digital hyperslavery engines. We are so far away from where we've been with similar examples in the past, but corporate interests persist and are dominant.
Corporate interests are the system of government.
A case can be made that it's a spectrum but it's always part of it and in many examples throughout centuries of sloppy civilization corporate interests have often been the government.
You recently saw the Canadian rockies. Have you been to the East Coast? I used to live in Cape Breton and it's just beautiful. It's also home to a town called Glace Bay, which used to be a company town back when the mines were active. Everyone should visit a company town to understand what can and does happen.
What AI can and will do, regardless of how it all goes down, will make a precipitous 20% collapse in the workforce seem pale in comparison. What is the world when it's a company town because of a handful of AI companies? How do we overreact away from that? What happens when we don't.
Yes, I feel you. Corporate interests are definitely the system of government. I do hope we can eradicate it though.
I haven't been to Eastern Canada yet, I hope to! Though I know company towns struggled from being non-diversified, I do hope more diversified ones could be an option. Why shouldn't cities own equity in several of the companies that are in and serve their town? Including the data centers based there? (The subject of a talk I'm giving this fall!).
It's a time of a lot of change, but we could do some very interesting things with that change.
Thanks for another great article. I cannot refrain from mentioning that both my maternal grandmother and at least a couple of paternal aunts had sewing machines that were powered by foot. Of course, your point about how the sweat shops ultimately exploited this new technology is well taken.
On that score, we most also note that Bezos and Amazon have already deployed over one million robots, and they are now investing billions to expand the robotic work-force. This bodes very well for corporate profits but most dire for the people who work those jobs...
Exactly, we can see the very same pattern happening again. It's great for personal use, exploited for professional gain. But we can fix this dynamic!
I read "News from Nowhere" in college and was intrigued with the concepts presented (and I've always been a time-travel fan). I just downloaded it to Kindle to read again from a much different perspective, being that it's about 50 years later and times (and I) have changed a bit.
I hope you enjoy it!!! If you want a follow-up, I highly recommend Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian novel Herland, which was a direct response to Morris and my favorite of the utopian genre.
My mother’s looked like this.
I like this article and am commenting to prove it.
I like when you do that. I'll send you a portal soon......
I was just introduced to your essays from one of your other readers... Elias Crim... and I loved it. I have always appreciated Utopias... but I've also always been dubious... as utopia literally means "no place"... and our world is full of opinions and very little consensus about how we move forward together in a meaningful way. I liked your piece because it combines an awareness of the web we are all trapped in, with a vision and a small step we can each take to become more sovereign. I will continue to explore and support your work as I can... as I see what you are building, an artisanal life, backed by your contributors. Keep writing!!!
Welcome, Elias is amazing! I admit I am reclaiming the word "utopia" in my work. You're right, it was originally a pun meaning both "good place" and "no place." But I think the "unachievable ideal" is still a guiding star we should have. Think of Common Sense by Thomas Paine. It was outlandish and crazy to say "what if we didn't have monarchy and we made our own country instead?" What an unachievable ideal! But it gave us a vision worth working toward, and that kind of imagination is important. Modern thinkers might think the unachievable ideal is naive. But I think it's essential. A horizon we will always be sailing toward but never reach. That's why I'm reclaiming the tradition.
But thanks for the kind words about my work—I hope you'll find some ideas worth exploring here!
Marvelous!
William Morris remains such an inspiring figure--great to see your mention of him and his (Elysian) News From Nowhere!
I love him so!!! Thanks Elias!
Elle, this is a great, insightful post—and I look forward to the next series pamphlet. One “small” detail you continue to neglect, however, is the mechanism of modern fiat money, as in:
”…governments could tax companies instead of incomes and fund important services that ensure our wellbeing—like healthcare, reskilling sabbaticals to retrain the workforce as needed, and guaranteed jobs at a guaranteed living wage.”
Sovereign, currency-issuing governments do NOT have to TAX anybody to “fund” any of the things you listed. Saying that governments DO need to tax to “pay for things” reinforces a profound misunderstanding that prevents us from undertaking—RIGHT NOW—many of the things you suggest in your essay. No need to be waiting for the future—only need to understand, and embrace, the mechanisms of fiat money.
Thanks for your work!
Hi John, governments that can issue currency can fund a lot of stuff, as we've talked about before, but that doesn't eradicate the need to tax to provide it.
If a family pays $25,000/year for healthcare, but the government decides to issue more currency and provide it instead, now the family has $25,000 extra and so does everyone else. Suddenly trillions of dollars in the economy make everything bid up in price. That extra $25,000 doesn't get them anything extra, just everything they already had for more money. Inflation. The government doesn't need our money but it needs us not to have it. So the country has to tax.
I do think you're right though that the government could immediately fund a guaranteed jobs program this way, and that would be amazing! A more specific version would have been to split that sentence into multuple each with a different funding source and requirement. And I'll explain my corporate tax idea in greater detail in a future post, but what I really hope it does is incentivize companies to act a certain way because, when it does, the company lowers its tax bill. It's really a way to fix distribution rather than fund some kind of redistribution.
Elle, thanks for your reply to my comment. Here is a link to a recent essay I wrote on this very topic which conveys what I’m trying to get you to see. The mechanisms of Fiat Money create real opportunities, I believe, for the mission you’ve set out to achieve.
https://johnalt.substack.com/p/taxpayers-dollars
So far as inflation is concerned, no one is denying that it is an issue to be managed. To simply state, however, that governments cannot, or should not, engage in fiat spending because doing so will generate inflation is, in most cases, simply not true—and in other cases is a wild over-simplification of the issues involved.
Great essay full of positive direction on a personal level and also more collectively. How to shape the future depends not on the technology but on social organization. Thanks for providing a vision of what is possible.
Thanks Anthony!
WEF (yes, those Davos guys) also mentioned stakeholder capitalism. Whether it's the same vision as your stakeholder economy vision, I will leave it up to you to discuss with Mr. Schwab 😇
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/klaus-schwab-on-what-is-stakeholder-capitalism-history-relevance/
Yes! A lot of alignment here.