As a kid, one of the most vivid images of work was archetypal dad George Jetson working for archetypal boss Cosmo Spacely.
Work sucked
Work sucked for our hard-luck hero. George was abused by Spacely all the time — told to work long hours, invaded by videophone, and fired more than once (why he wanted to be rehired was beyond me). Family was unsympathetic. Underpaid. Overworked. Un-appreciated.
George Jetson works — generously — a nine-hour work week
Then, I noticed something. George referred to his hectic insane work schedule as “three days a week”. Wikipedia confirms this. His work day is 3 hours. Mr. Jetson works — generously — nine hours a week and is able to sustain a good life for his entire family. Good apartment, wife & kids happy, loving dog, quality rarely-malfunctioning robot maid, and — most of all — time to enjoy the life he helped build.
How nice for him, I write during my 90-minute one-way commute.
How did the Jetsons get to that life? They are beneficiaries of our economic progress. Let’s go back to the beginning. More or less literally, at least with western civilization. Roman workers didn’t have consistent days off or weekends, but there were so many religious holidays and festivals that the average Roman (non-slave) worker had about the same number of workdays as we do today. These days off were required — enforced with taxes. The Judean tradition was less Bacchanalian, and instead enforced a bit more rigor into the religious holiday — one per week.
The one day weekend is no less than 2,500 years old. Cut to the Industrial Revolution and the dawn of modern capitalism. Thanks to technology, human output was more efficient and more could be produced in less time. The two-day weekend was created by labor in the context of significantly-increased output — Ford cut the week without cutting pay a full decade before it was required. Which has to make you wonder about Spacely’s whip-cracking.
The Jetsons represent a further point on this continuum of progress — week shrinks, pay stays the same, all thanks to our fine tech friends.
Capitalism’s Pitch: Tech → efficiency → free time
So automation should eventually lead to a six hour work week. Yay!
This is what a good capitalist system sells as the benefit of automation. Tech will unleash human creativity which will enable humanity to flourish. Tech → efficiency → more free time for people.
Let’s look deeper at the first half of that narrative:
TL;DW: Machines do easy and repeated work more efficiently than us & we humans do more difficult stuff. We suck at repetitive spot-weld on an assembly line; machines don’t get bored (which is why they are going to destroy us all) and we are freed to do difficult non-repetitive stuff like customer service. Note: difficult doesn’t mean fun — consider the thinly-veiled loathing you and your customer service rep exchange.
Either way, that’s the pitch in this video: Machines = boring tireless repeated work, people = non-boring tiresome non-repeated work.
But the video is wrong.
Consider again our plucky “economist”, George Jetson. He’s gainfully employed and able to support his family with nine hours of effort. His efficiency must be through the roof. In fact, he knows he deserves to be paid more. But let’s look at the work he actually does:
The Jetsons recognized that technology’s limitation in doing complex tasks is temporary. It’s a bug, not a feature. RUDI and Rosie do complex work.
In fact, tech hasn’t merely eroded dumb jobs; it has eroded valuable jobs. Just ask Siri or your local reference librarian.
My own passing interest (I’m lying, it’s far from passing) in tech tells me this is true. Our innovations are leading us — technologically — to the Jetsons future. Not a bad thing. Rosie’s ancestor is already in living rooms and getting smarter. Why have fallible humans drive trucks (the lifeblood of our economy) when machines can do it? Why not leave the annoying job of switching phone lines to a tireless robot? Oh wait — we do.
People are cheaper than machines
As technology marches on, like Astro (or rather, poor George) on the treadmill, people do less complex work, so we inevitably end up like George, doing basic work. Wouldn’t it be better if the work people did was simple and easy?
But will a business pay us the same (or more) to do less work in less time?
Businesses know what slaveholders knew: people are cheaper than machines for easy work. If you aren’t sure, consider the number of human hands that touched the device you’re reading on before you paid for it. Then consider how much money they collectively made for it. Finally, consider how much slaveowners cared about their property dying versus, say, how an employers of a phone company feels about one of those workers dying.
What’s my point?
First, but not foremost:
The future is where complex work isn’t done by people
RUDI (George’s sentient computer work-spouse) does the work. George pushes one button a few times for a couple hours a day. This is actually happening in our world and will continue to do so.
Second, and foremost:
This isn’t our capitalism
No contemporary capitalist business would pay a single individual a family’s (upper?) middle-class wage for what amounts to button mashing. I probably press the “X” on my Xbox controller that much per week, and I paid them for that pleasure.
In our capitalism, we intuitively know that simple jobs with low effort pay low. Data entry is cheaper than data analysis. We’re asking computers to do more analysis every day. What would we pay a human to mindlessly type stuff in?
In our society, Mr. Spacely is either tremendously stupid or tremendously generous. He gets nearly no benefit from Jetson (other than the likely catharsis of someone to yell at), at presumably decent expense. George isn’t one of his society’s overpaid executives — he’s paid overtime and Spacely dangles the “VP” carrot to motivate him. With Cogswell’s occasional attempts at poaching our hero, there’s likely a third option: despite outward resemblance to our capitalism, it cannot be.
Who pays for the stuff?
Here and now, businesses won’t pay people to do almost nothing. A smart company will build itself a robot or cheaper worker to do George’s job. So, if George and equivalent workers are unemployed or paid commensurate with the skill of pushing one button repeatedly for 3 hours a day, who could afford to buy stuff? Stuff is being made, but who pays?
Let’s consider two businesses currently trying to change autonomy.
Volvo seems to like humans (or at least, humanity, in theory). They know machines are safer at driving on the roads than humans. And they’re building cars that will help us live the Jetsons life. Press a button, put your legs up, and get to work safely. Note: not literally.
Uber hates humans (humanity), but human labor is the cheapest commodity to provide their most profitable good. But humans are also the biggest point of failure. Their app is the product — connecting X that some want with the Y that others provide. They profit by claiming employees aren’t employees, yet they rely so heavily on humans to do the connecting. Uber hates this hypocrisy. Their endeavor is to remove humans from work using the same tech Volvo wants to use for humans.
If Uber represents the future of work — and they are trying to remove humans from workforce — then people won’t get paid (well). If people don’t have money, who will pay Volvo for their product? Surely fewer people.
How does a society — with businesses unwilling to pay sustainable (for humans) wages — sustain the humans? Whither the dream of Tech → efficiency → free time?
The success of capitalism’s sales pitch relies on providing a level of freedom and luxury that — increasingly — businesses are unwilling or unable to provide. We either need something to fill the gap, ie, government… or need to recalibrate our system outside government.
George Jetson’s income is not about degree of difficulty
George Jetson pays for stuff with money to afford a decent lifestyle, doing a fantastically easy job. His output alone cannot possibly create that outcome in our society. How is this possible? Because in George Jetson’s world, regular-person compensation is unlinked from effort (like today with CEOs and billionaires and banking execs, but for real normal people who do actual work instead). Something pushes compensation away from rent-seekers and toward labor. Something ALSO props up the value of human labor and depresses the value of automation.
This market distortion isn’t bad. Humanity matters. The markets exist for us anyway. [I’ve been asked to add a “citation needed” here.]
We bought into capitalism’s promise, and it may have done a lot of great things [I’ve also been asked to add a “citation needed” here]. At the very least, capitalism assisted by political will helped to solve the extreme poverty and hunger problem. One of the next problems is human stagnation.
Concretely, productivity is at an all-time high in the U.S. but people aren’t better off than they were 40–50 years ago. The opposite, in fact. We’re working more, wages are stagnant, and it’s harder to buy stuff the machines produce.
How can our society sustain humans?
It’s unsustainable. The personal credit crisis is evidence. We’re regressing from the goal of less work, more leisure. People are working 3 Jetson-months per week to afford less than George gets.
If the fruition of capitalism’s promise is post-human in the workplace (ie, automation), but isn’t post-human in the marketplace (ie, pay), then people will be left behind. That’s happening now. People do more, get less, and don’t have time to pursue happiness — they’re too busy working to eke by.
This isn’t unsolvable. With revision, capitalism could potentially solve the problem and get us closer to a Jetson future. If it doesn’t happen, we needn’t look to Marx to find out what happens next: we instead should reflect on why “sabotage” is named for a classical French peasant shoe.
