(2011-09-08) Rushkoff Jobs Obsolete

Douglas Rushkoff wonders whether Job Creation is pointless. Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff... People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services... The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment?... What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff... We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights (Guaranteed Annual Income). The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, Meaningful, and purposeful... We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another -- all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.

See The RICH Economy.