Universal unemployment? Your check is in the mail. Part 2

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• You probably heard the story about that dialogue, possibly apocryphal, between Henry Ford II and the leader of the automobile workers union, Walter Reuther.
• The two men were visiting a plant and checking out at some new robotic equipment put in place to automatize Ford’s assembly line.
• -Henry Ford II: Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?
• -Walter Reuther: Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?
• To solve this increasingly ominous problem, a lot of experts in the field of economic policy are advocating for universal unemployment benefits.
• Yes, a living stipend for everyone.
• A salary simply for being a living, breathing human being.
• Why?
• Cuz, when and if automatization and robotization pulverizes most jobs as we know them, humanity will still need shelter and food.
• According to the Protestant worldview that has ruled our planet for the last century or so (at least the Western part of the planet) material success in life is proof of a righteous soul and a consequence of hard work.
• Protestantism, to some extent, has also begotten the “winner takes all” logic of many modern societies.
• If school teachers makes $45k a year and a Wall Street or Silicon Valley buccaneer makes 8 figures so be it, it’s supply & demand.
• The paradigm coming our way will call this reality into question big time.
• What will we do when there’s no more work left for human beings to do and only a handful of Zuckerbergs absorb all the wealth?
• Distributism.
• Is Mark Zuckerberg a highly productive creator of value or a lucky guy who hit the jackpot and should share the wealth?
• Is Zuck better than the rest of us or is he just some dude who happened to be at the right place at the right time?
• Oddly enough, these are not really the questions most distributists ask themselves.
• Distributism is not against capitalism nor is it socialism in disguise.
• It is pragmatism.
• In a highly automatized economy with few jobs for human beings, the hypothesis goes, the very few productive individuals will be obliged to subsidize the masses of unproductive ones.
• It’s either that or a dystopian future of global famine.
• Did I say “productive”?
• Change it for “profitable” if it makes you happier.
• My guess is that people in the automatized future will still “work”.
• Only they will do so in seemingly unproductive lines of business.
• Artists, masseuses, trainers, tattoo artists, tattoo removers, therapist and spiritual healers for pets, millions of self-fashioned lifestyle coaches attempting to make a living with YouTube videos.
• The top of the Maslow pyramid.
• Wait.
• Apart from distributism there are other ideas on the table too.
• Zuck’s fellow gazillionaire, Carlos Slim, the richest man in México, a usual presence in the top 5 of Fortune’s annual ranking of personal net worth and certainly no lefty himself, has been loudly advocating as of late for a 4×3 work week.
• Yup: the three-day weekend.
• Mr. Slim believes it might be the only way he will be able to maintain enough people on payroll to keep the economy moving with steady employment for the middle classes.
• A placebo?
• Cheating at solitary?
• Possibly, but it sounds like a clever idea to lower employee productivity while maintaining or increasing payrolls without affecting the bottom line.