1 00:00:01,322 --> 00:00:10,795 *36C3 preroll music* 2 00:00:19,170 --> 00:00:24,600 Herald: The next talk is by David Graeber, and he's an author, activist and 3 00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:30,390 anthropologist. And he will be speaking about his talk "From managerial feudalism 4 00:00:30,390 --> 00:00:33,490 to the revolt of the caring classes". Please give him a great 5 00:00:33,490 --> 00:00:39,590 round of applause and welcome him to the stage. 6 00:00:39,590 --> 00:00:45,600 *Applause* 7 00:00:45,600 --> 00:00:53,320 David: Hello. Hi. It's great to be here. I wanted to talk. I've been in a very bad 8 00:00:53,320 --> 00:00:58,670 mood this last week owing to the results of the election in the UK and I would 9 00:00:58,670 --> 00:01:05,409 think very hard about what happened and how to maintain hope. Ah, there we go. 10 00:01:05,409 --> 00:01:11,020 Good, good. I don't usually use visual aids, but actually assembled them. And the 11 00:01:11,020 --> 00:01:15,210 thing is, what I want to talk about a little bit is what seems to be happening 12 00:01:15,210 --> 00:01:20,530 in the world politically, that we have results like what just happened in the UK 13 00:01:20,530 --> 00:01:30,310 and why there is nonetheless reason for hope, which I really think there is. In a 14 00:01:30,310 --> 00:01:37,090 way, this is very much a blip. Probably the most... Um, and but there is a 15 00:01:37,090 --> 00:01:43,130 strategic lesson to be learned, I think. Speaking as someone who's been involved in 16 00:01:43,130 --> 00:01:48,119 attempts to transform the world, at least for the last 20 years since I was involved 17 00:01:48,119 --> 00:01:55,929 in the global justice movement. I think that there is a real lack of strategic 18 00:01:55,929 --> 00:02:03,020 understanding that there's a vast shift sort of happening to the world in terms of 19 00:02:03,020 --> 00:02:07,950 central class dynamics that the populist right is taking advantage of and the left 20 00:02:07,950 --> 00:02:12,140 is really being caught flat footed on. So, I want to make a case of what seems to be 21 00:02:12,140 --> 00:02:18,270 going wrong and what we can do about it. First of all, in terms of despairing. I 22 00:02:18,270 --> 00:02:23,420 was very much at the point of despairing. There's so many people put so much work 23 00:02:23,420 --> 00:02:28,159 that I know into trying to turn around the situation. There seemed to be a genuine 24 00:02:28,159 --> 00:02:35,250 possibility of a broad social transformation in England. And when we got 25 00:02:35,250 --> 00:02:42,780 the results, I mean, there's a kind of sense of shock. But actually, if you look 26 00:02:42,780 --> 00:02:47,450 at the breakdown of the vote, for example, it doesn't look too great for the right in 27 00:02:47,450 --> 00:02:54,620 the long run. Basically, the younger you are, the more determined you are to kick 28 00:02:54,620 --> 00:03:03,120 the Tories out. The core... Actually, I've never seen numbers quite like this. The 29 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:09,110 core... base of... electoral base of the right wing is almost exclusively old. And 30 00:03:09,110 --> 00:03:13,189 the older you are, the more likely you are to vote conservative, which is really, 31 00:03:13,189 --> 00:03:19,959 really kind of amazing because it means that the electoral base of the right is 32 00:03:19,959 --> 00:03:24,690 literally dying off - a process which they're actually expediting by defunding 33 00:03:24,690 --> 00:03:32,879 health care in every way possible. And normally you'd say, oh, yes, so what? As 34 00:03:32,879 --> 00:03:36,469 people get older, they become more conservative. But there's every reason to 35 00:03:36,469 --> 00:03:42,939 think that that's not actually happening this time around. Especially because 36 00:03:42,939 --> 00:03:47,860 traditionally people who either had been apathetic or had voted for the left, who 37 00:03:47,860 --> 00:03:55,680 eventually end up voting for the right, do so at the point when they get a mortgage 38 00:03:55,680 --> 00:04:00,210 or when they get a sort of secure job with room for promotion and therefore feel they 39 00:04:00,210 --> 00:04:05,240 have a stake in the system. Well, that's precisely what's not happening to this new 40 00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:10,010 generation. So if that's the case, the right wing is actually in the long run in 41 00:04:10,010 --> 00:04:18,519 real trouble. And to show you just how remarkable the situation is. Someone put 42 00:04:18,519 --> 00:04:25,430 together a electoral map of the UK showing what it would look like if only people 43 00:04:25,430 --> 00:04:32,650 over 65 voted and what it would look like if only people under 25 voted. Here's the 44 00:04:32,650 --> 00:04:38,810 first one. Blue is Tory. If only people over 65 voted, I believe there would be 45 00:04:38,810 --> 00:04:47,320 four or five Labor MPs, but otherwise entirely conservative. Now here's the map. 46 00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:54,500 If only people under 25 voted, there would be no Tory MPs at all. There might be a 47 00:04:54,500 --> 00:05:01,640 few Liberal Dems and Welsh candidates and Scottish ones. And in fact, this is a 48 00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:07,610 relatively recent phenomena. Here's... if you look at the divergence. You know, it really 49 00:05:07,610 --> 00:05:12,200 is just the last few years it started to look like that. So something has happened 50 00:05:12,200 --> 00:05:16,810 that like almost all young people coming in are voting not just for the left, but 51 00:05:16,810 --> 00:05:23,000 for the radical left. I mean, Corbyn ran on a platform that not just two or three 52 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:27,530 years before would have been considered completely insane and, you know, is 53 00:05:27,530 --> 00:05:31,380 falling off the political spectrum altogether. Yet, the vast majority of 54 00:05:31,380 --> 00:05:37,980 young people voted for it. The problem is that in a situation like this, the swing 55 00:05:37,980 --> 00:05:43,780 voters are the sort of middle aged people. And for some reason, middle aged people 56 00:05:43,780 --> 00:05:48,720 broke right. The question is, why did that happen? And I've been trying to figure 57 00:05:48,720 --> 00:05:57,470 that out. Now, in order to do so, I think we need to really think hard about what 58 00:05:57,470 --> 00:06:05,020 has been happening to social class relations. And the conclusion that I came 59 00:06:05,020 --> 00:06:11,100 to is that essentially the left is applying an outdated paradigm. You know, 60 00:06:11,100 --> 00:06:15,870 they're still thinking in terms of bosses and workers and a kind of old fashioned 61 00:06:15,870 --> 00:06:23,500 industrial sense where what's really going on is that for most people, the key class 62 00:06:23,500 --> 00:06:30,830 opposition is caregivers versus managers. And, essentially, leftist parties are 63 00:06:30,830 --> 00:06:35,550 trying to represent both sides at the same time, but they're really dominated by the 64 00:06:35,550 --> 00:06:42,770 latter. Now, I'm going to go through some basic political economy stuff as in way of 65 00:06:42,770 --> 00:06:48,120 background. And this is a key statistic, which is the kind of thing we were looking 66 00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:52,651 at when we first started talking about the 99 percent of the 1 percent are the 67 00:06:52,651 --> 00:06:59,500 beginning of Occupy Wall Street. Essentially until the mid 70s, there was a 68 00:06:59,500 --> 00:07:06,020 sort of understanding between 1945 and 1975, say, there was an understanding that 69 00:07:06,020 --> 00:07:13,620 as way of productivity increases, wages will go up, too. And they largely went up 70 00:07:13,620 --> 00:07:20,150 together. This only takes it from 1960, but it goes back to the 40s. More 71 00:07:20,150 --> 00:07:25,400 productivity goes up. A cut of that went to the workers. Around 1975 or so it 72 00:07:25,400 --> 00:07:30,370 really splits. And since then, if you see what's going on here, productivity keeps 73 00:07:30,370 --> 00:07:35,560 going up and up and up and up, whereas wages remain flat. So, the question is, 74 00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:39,390 what happens to all that money from the increased productivity? Feasibly, it goes 75 00:07:39,390 --> 00:07:42,870 to one percent of the population. And that's what we were talking about when we 76 00:07:42,870 --> 00:07:47,490 talked about the 1 percent. The other point, which was key to the notion of 99 77 00:07:47,490 --> 00:07:53,910 and 1 percent when we developed that, was that the 1 percent are also the people who 78 00:07:53,910 --> 00:07:58,160 make all the political campaign contributions. These statistics are from 79 00:07:58,160 --> 00:08:04,410 America, which has a unusually corrupt system, but pretty much all of them... 80 00:08:04,410 --> 00:08:09,970 Bribery is basically legal in America. But essentially it's the same people who are 81 00:08:09,970 --> 00:08:15,530 making all the campaign contributions who have collected all of the profits from 82 00:08:15,530 --> 00:08:19,480 increased productivity, all the increased wealth. And essentially, they're the 83 00:08:19,480 --> 00:08:23,170 people who managed to turn their wealth into power, and their power back into 84 00:08:23,170 --> 00:08:33,250 wealth. So. Who are these people want and how does this relate to changes in the 85 00:08:33,250 --> 00:08:41,070 workforce? Well, the interesting thing that I discovered when I started looking 86 00:08:41,070 --> 00:08:48,110 into this, is that the rhetoric we used to describe the changes in class structure 87 00:08:48,110 --> 00:08:55,000 since the 70s is really deceptive. Because, you know, since really since the 88 00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:59,440 80s, everybody has been talking about the service economy. What we're shifting from 89 00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:04,930 an industrial to a service economy. And the image that people have is that, you 90 00:09:04,930 --> 00:09:09,529 know, we've all gone from being factory workers to serving each other lattes and 91 00:09:09,529 --> 00:09:14,449 pressing each other's trousers and so forth. But actually, if you look at the 92 00:09:14,449 --> 00:09:20,730 actual numbers of people in retail. People who are actually serving food. I don't 93 00:09:20,730 --> 00:09:26,060 have a, you know, detailed breakdown here, but they remain pretty much constant. In 94 00:09:26,060 --> 00:09:30,970 fact, I've seen figures going back 150 years which show that it's pretty much 15 95 00:09:30,970 --> 00:09:35,040 percent of the population that does that sort of thing. It has been for, you know, 96 00:09:35,040 --> 00:09:41,199 over a century. It doesn't really change. It goes up and down a little bit. But 97 00:09:41,199 --> 00:09:45,870 basically, the amount of people who are actually providing services, haircuts, 98 00:09:45,870 --> 00:09:50,340 things like that, is pretty much the same as it's always been. What's actually 99 00:09:50,340 --> 00:09:55,540 happened is that you've had a growth of two areas. One is providing, you know, 100 00:09:55,540 --> 00:10:02,601 what I would call caregiving work. And I would include education and health, but 101 00:10:02,601 --> 00:10:09,029 basically taking care of other people in one way or another. In the statistics you 102 00:10:09,029 --> 00:10:13,220 have to look at education. Health is only have a category of caregiving in economic 103 00:10:13,220 --> 00:10:18,079 statistics. On the other hand, you have administration and the number of people 104 00:10:18,079 --> 00:10:24,660 who are doing clerical, administrative and supervisory work has gone up enormously to 105 00:10:24,660 --> 00:10:29,420 some degree. So according to some accounts, it's gone up from maybe 20 106 00:10:29,420 --> 00:10:37,990 percent of the population in, say, UK or America in 1900 to 40, 50, 60 percent. I 107 00:10:37,990 --> 00:10:45,199 mean, even a majority of workers. Now, the interesting thing about that is that huge 108 00:10:45,199 --> 00:10:49,360 numbers of those people seem to be convinced they really aren't doing 109 00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:55,319 anything and that essentially if their jobs didn't exist, you would make no 110 00:10:55,319 --> 00:10:59,149 difference at all. It's almost as if they were just making up jobs in offices to 111 00:10:59,149 --> 00:11:05,959 keep people busy. And this was the theme of my book I wrote on bullshit jobs. And 112 00:11:05,959 --> 00:11:10,490 just to describe the genesis of that book, essentially, I don't actually myself come 113 00:11:10,490 --> 00:11:18,471 from a professional background. So, as a professor, I constantly meet people, sort 114 00:11:18,471 --> 00:11:24,990 of spouses of my colleagues, the sort of people you meet when you're socializing 115 00:11:24,990 --> 00:11:29,519 people in professional backgrounds. Well, I keep running into people of parties and 116 00:11:29,519 --> 00:11:34,589 saying, well, who work in offices and... you know, I'm an anthropologist, right. I 117 00:11:34,589 --> 00:11:38,639 keep asking, well, what do you actually do? I mean, what does a person who is a 118 00:11:38,639 --> 00:11:44,970 management consultant, you know, actually do all day? And very often they will say, 119 00:11:44,970 --> 00:11:49,532 well, not much. Or you ask people, I am an anthropologists, what do you do? And 120 00:11:49,532 --> 00:11:53,240 they'll say, well, nothing, really. And, you know, you think they're just being 121 00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:59,020 modest, you know. So, you kind of interrogate them by a few drinks later. 122 00:11:59,020 --> 00:12:02,779 They admit that actually they meant that literally, they actually do nothing all 123 00:12:02,779 --> 00:12:07,562 day. You know, they sit around and they adjust their Facebook profiles. They play 124 00:12:07,562 --> 00:12:11,579 computer games. They were like, you know, sometimes I'll take a couple of calls a 125 00:12:11,579 --> 00:12:16,120 day. Sometimes I'll take a couple of calls a week. Sometimes they're just there in 126 00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:21,269 case something goes wrong. Sometimes they just don't do anything at all. And you 127 00:12:21,269 --> 00:12:26,149 ask, what? Does your supervisor know this? And they say, you know, I often wonder. I 128 00:12:26,149 --> 00:12:36,020 think they do so. So, I began to wonder how many people are there like this? Is 129 00:12:36,020 --> 00:12:40,550 this some weird coincidence that has happened to run into people like this all 130 00:12:40,550 --> 00:12:44,999 the time? What section of the workforce is actually doing nothing all day? So I wrote 131 00:12:44,999 --> 00:12:48,639 a little article. I had a friend who is starting a radical magazine, said you 132 00:12:48,639 --> 00:12:51,339 write something provocative, you know, something you'd never be able to get 133 00:12:51,339 --> 00:12:54,775 published elsewhere. So I wrote a little piece called "On the phenomenon of 134 00:12:54,775 --> 00:13:00,320 bullshit jobs" where I suggested that, you know, back in the 30s, Keynes wrote this 135 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:06,870 famous essays predicting that by around now we would all be working 15 hour weeks 136 00:13:06,870 --> 00:13:11,149 because automation would like get rid of most manual labor. And if you look at the 137 00:13:11,149 --> 00:13:15,289 jobs that exist in the 30s, you know, that's true. So I said, well, maybe what's 138 00:13:15,289 --> 00:13:18,800 happened is the reason we're not working 15 hour weeks is they just made up 139 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:24,749 bullshit jobs. And just to keep us all working. And I wrote this piece as just 140 00:13:24,749 --> 00:13:33,029 kind of a joke, right? Within a week, this thing had been translated into 15 141 00:13:33,029 --> 00:13:37,300 different languages. It was circulating around the world because the server kept 142 00:13:37,300 --> 00:13:42,230 crashing, it was getting millions and millions of hits. I was like, oh, my god, 143 00:13:42,230 --> 00:13:48,339 do you mean it's true? And eventually someone did a survey, YouGov, I think, and 144 00:13:48,339 --> 00:13:56,040 they discovered that of people in the UK, 37 percent agreed that if their job didn't 145 00:13:56,040 --> 00:14:00,920 exist either would make no difference whatsoever or the world might be a 146 00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:08,329 slightly better place. I thought about that. What must that do to the human soul? 147 00:14:08,329 --> 00:14:12,839 You imagine that, you know, waking up every morning and going to work, thinking 148 00:14:12,839 --> 00:14:19,492 that you're doing absolutely nothing if, you know. No wonder people are angry and 149 00:14:19,492 --> 00:14:23,840 depressed. And I thought about it, it explains a lot of social phenomena that if people are 150 00:14:23,840 --> 00:14:28,380 just pretending to work all day and then, you know, it actually really touched me. 151 00:14:28,380 --> 00:14:32,256 It's strange because I come from a working class background myself. So you'd think 152 00:14:32,256 --> 00:14:36,059 that, you know, oh, great. So, lots of people are paid to do nothing all day and 153 00:14:36,059 --> 00:14:40,019 get good salaries, like, my heart bleeds, you know? But actually, if you think about 154 00:14:40,019 --> 00:14:45,149 it, it's actually a horrible situation because, you know, as someone who has had 155 00:14:45,149 --> 00:14:51,740 a real job knows, the very, very worst part of any real job is when you finish 156 00:14:51,740 --> 00:14:56,339 the job but you have to keep working because your boss will get mad. You know, 157 00:14:56,339 --> 00:15:01,319 you have to pretend to work because it's somebody else's time. It's very strange 158 00:15:01,319 --> 00:15:07,020 metaphysical notion we have in our society that someone else can own your time. You 159 00:15:07,020 --> 00:15:12,209 know, so since you're on the clock, you have to keep working or pretend to be, 160 00:15:12,209 --> 00:15:16,389 make up something to look busy. Well, apparently, at least a third of people in 161 00:15:16,389 --> 00:15:21,819 our society, that's all they do. Their entire job consists of just looking busy 162 00:15:21,819 --> 00:15:31,269 to make somebody else happy. And that must be horrible. So. And it made a lot of 163 00:15:31,269 --> 00:15:37,080 political sense. Why is it the people seem to resent teachers or autoworkers? After 164 00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:41,959 the 2008 crash, the people who really had to take a hit were teachers and auto 165 00:15:41,959 --> 00:15:46,050 workers. And there was a lot of people saying, well, these guys are making 25 166 00:15:46,050 --> 00:15:50,350 dollars an hour, you know? Well, yeah, that's they're providing useful service or 167 00:15:50,350 --> 00:15:53,977 making cars. You're American. You're supposed to like cars. You know, cars is 168 00:15:53,977 --> 00:15:57,220 what makes you what you are if you're American. How would they resent 169 00:15:57,220 --> 00:16:03,329 autoworkers? And I realize that it only makes sense if there's huge proportions of 170 00:16:03,329 --> 00:16:08,800 the population who aren't doing anything and were totally miserable and are 171 00:16:08,800 --> 00:16:15,839 basically saying, like, yeah, but you get to teach kids, you get to make stuff. You 172 00:16:15,839 --> 00:16:20,329 get him in a car. And then you want vacations, too? That's not fair, you know? 173 00:16:20,329 --> 00:16:25,929 It's almost as if the suffering that you experience doing nothing all day is itself 174 00:16:25,929 --> 00:16:32,509 a sort of validation of... It's like this kind of hair shirt that makes you 175 00:16:32,509 --> 00:16:38,399 justifies your salary. Whereas people and I truly hear people saying this logic all 176 00:16:38,399 --> 00:16:44,083 the time that while teachers, you know, I mean, they get to teach kids. You don't 177 00:16:44,083 --> 00:16:48,269 want people pay them too much. You don't want people who are just interested in 178 00:16:48,269 --> 00:16:53,290 money taking care of our kids, do we? Which is odd because you never hear people 179 00:16:53,290 --> 00:16:59,110 say you never want greedy people. People are just interested in money taking care 180 00:16:59,110 --> 00:17:04,800 of our money. So therefore, you shouldn't pay bankers so much. Though you'd think 181 00:17:04,800 --> 00:17:09,930 that would be a more serious problem, right? Yeah. So there is this idea that if 182 00:17:09,930 --> 00:17:16,970 you're doing something that actually serves a purpose, somehow that should be 183 00:17:16,970 --> 00:17:26,930 enough. You shouldn't get a lot of money for it. All right. So so. As a result of 184 00:17:26,930 --> 00:17:33,570 this there is actually an inverse relationship, that I don't have actual 185 00:17:33,570 --> 00:17:38,680 numbers for this, but there's actually an inverse relationship, and I have seen 186 00:17:38,680 --> 00:17:44,500 economic confirmation of this, between how socially beneficial your work is and how 187 00:17:44,500 --> 00:17:50,360 obviously your work benefits other people and how much you get paid. There's a few 188 00:17:50,360 --> 00:17:54,510 exceptions like doctors, which everybody talks about. But generally speaking, the 189 00:17:54,510 --> 00:18:01,140 more useful your work, the less they'll pay you for it. Now, now. This is 190 00:18:01,140 --> 00:18:06,790 obviously a big problem already, but there's every reason to believe that the 191 00:18:06,790 --> 00:18:10,800 problem is actually getting worse. And one of the fascinating things I discovered 192 00:18:10,800 --> 00:18:17,070 when I started looking at the economic statistics is that if you look at jobs 193 00:18:17,070 --> 00:18:21,080 that actually are useful and let's again look at caregiving. Remember, the big 194 00:18:21,080 --> 00:18:26,880 growth in jobs over the last 30 years has been in two areas which have collapsed in 195 00:18:26,880 --> 00:18:30,940 the term service, but are really actually totally different. One is these sort of 196 00:18:30,940 --> 00:18:35,010 administrative, clerical and supervisory work and the other is the actual 197 00:18:35,010 --> 00:18:41,340 caregiving labour, the work where you're actually helping people in some way. So, 198 00:18:41,340 --> 00:18:47,910 education and health are the two areas which show up on the statistics. Okay, if 199 00:18:47,910 --> 00:18:53,060 you look at these statistics, you discover that productivity in manufacturing, as we 200 00:18:53,060 --> 00:19:00,980 all know, is going way up. Productivity in certain other areas, wholesale, business 201 00:19:00,980 --> 00:19:09,370 services are going up. However, productivity in education, health and... 202 00:19:09,370 --> 00:19:15,390 What's this other services? Basically caregiving in general insofar as it shows 203 00:19:15,390 --> 00:19:22,310 up on the charts, productivity is actually going down. Well, why is that? That's 204 00:19:22,310 --> 00:19:26,940 really interesting. Yeah, well, we'll talk in a moment about what productivity 205 00:19:26,940 --> 00:19:34,088 actually even means in this context. But here's a suggestion as to why. This is the 206 00:19:34,088 --> 00:19:37,630 growth of physicians on the bottom versus the growth of actual medical 207 00:19:37,630 --> 00:19:44,300 administrators in the United States since 1970. That's a fairly impressive looking 208 00:19:44,300 --> 00:19:52,800 graph there. Basically, what that sort of a giant mountain there is what I called 209 00:19:52,800 --> 00:20:00,800 the bullshit sector. There's absolutely no reason why you'd actually need that many 210 00:20:00,800 --> 00:20:08,520 people to administer doctors. And actually the real effect of having all those people 211 00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:14,900 is to make the doctors and the nurses less efficient rather than more. Because I know 212 00:20:14,900 --> 00:20:18,870 this perfectly well from education, because I'm a professor. That's what I do 213 00:20:18,870 --> 00:20:25,140 for a living. The amount of actual administrative paperwork you have to do 214 00:20:25,140 --> 00:20:31,210 actually increases with the number of administrators over the last 30, 40 years. 215 00:20:31,210 --> 00:20:35,730 You know, something similar has happened, isn't quite as bad as this, but something 216 00:20:35,730 --> 00:20:41,640 very similar has happened in America, in universities, that the number of 217 00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:48,050 professors has doubled but the number of actual administrators has gone up by 240, 218 00:20:48,050 --> 00:20:57,490 300 percent. So. Well, more than that, actually. Yeah, I mean. So, suddenly you 219 00:20:57,490 --> 00:21:02,410 have like twice as many administrators for professors as you had before. Now, you 220 00:21:02,410 --> 00:21:05,570 would think that that would mean that professors have to do less administration 221 00:21:05,570 --> 00:21:09,650 because you have more administrators. Exactly the opposite is the case. More and 222 00:21:09,650 --> 00:21:14,150 more of your time is taken up by administration. Well, why is that? The 223 00:21:14,150 --> 00:21:21,050 major reason is because the way it works is if you are hired, as you know, vice 224 00:21:21,050 --> 00:21:25,960 provost, executive vice provost or assistant dean or something like that. 225 00:21:25,960 --> 00:21:31,061 Some big shot administrative position at a virtual American university. Well, you 226 00:21:31,061 --> 00:21:34,540 want to feel like an executive and they give these guys these giant six figure 227 00:21:34,540 --> 00:21:38,400 salaries. They treat them like they're an executive. So if you're an executive, of 228 00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:42,570 course, you have to have a minor army of flunkies of assistants to make yourself 229 00:21:42,570 --> 00:21:49,830 feel important. The problem is they give these guys five or six assistants, but 230 00:21:49,830 --> 00:21:56,370 then they figure out what those five or six assistants are actually going to do, 231 00:21:56,370 --> 00:22:03,330 which usually turns out to be make up work for me. Right. The professor. So suddenly 232 00:22:03,330 --> 00:22:09,940 I have to do time allocation studies. Suddenly I have to do. I have to do, you 233 00:22:09,940 --> 00:22:15,790 know, learning outcome assessments where I describe what the difference with the 234 00:22:15,790 --> 00:22:19,803 undergraduate and graduate section of the same course is going to be. Basically 235 00:22:19,803 --> 00:22:23,597 completely pointless stuff that nobody had to do 30 years ago and made no difference 236 00:22:23,597 --> 00:22:27,450 at all, to justify the existence of this kind of mountain of administrators and 237 00:22:27,450 --> 00:22:34,250 just give them something to do all day. Now, the interesting result of that is 238 00:22:34,250 --> 00:22:40,030 that, and this is where this sort of stuff comes in, it's actually the numbers are 239 00:22:40,030 --> 00:22:44,120 there. But it's very, very difficult to interpret. So I had to actually get an 240 00:22:44,120 --> 00:22:48,190 economist friend to sort of go through all this with me and confirm that what I 241 00:22:48,190 --> 00:22:52,240 thought was happening was actually happening. Essentially, what's going on is 242 00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:57,170 just as manufacturing, digitalization is being employed to make it much more 243 00:22:57,170 --> 00:23:01,890 efficient. Productivity goes up, the number of workers go down, the number of 244 00:23:01,890 --> 00:23:05,870 payment that, you know the wages are actually going way up in manufacturing, 245 00:23:05,870 --> 00:23:10,510 but it doesn't really make a dent in profits because there's so few workers. 246 00:23:10,510 --> 00:23:16,467 So, OK, that we kind of all know about. On the other hand, in the caring sector, the 247 00:23:16,467 --> 00:23:22,620 exact opposite has happened. Digitalization is being used as an excuse to make lower 248 00:23:22,620 --> 00:23:28,860 productivity so as to justify the existence of this army of administrators. 249 00:23:28,860 --> 00:23:35,620 And if you think about it, you know, basically, you know, in order to translate 250 00:23:35,620 --> 00:23:40,421 a qualitative outcome into a form that a computer can even understand, that 251 00:23:40,421 --> 00:23:43,990 requires a large amount of human labor. That's why I have to do the learning 252 00:23:43,990 --> 00:23:47,770 outcome studies and the time allocation stuff, right. But really, ultimately, 253 00:23:47,770 --> 00:23:57,940 that's to justify the existence of this giant army of administrators. Now, as a 254 00:23:57,940 --> 00:24:02,620 result of that, you need to have actually more people working in those sectors to 255 00:24:02,620 --> 00:24:06,061 produce the same outcome. These are becoming less and less productive, more 256 00:24:06,061 --> 00:24:12,600 and more of your time has to be spent. Oh, yes. This is for the average company now 257 00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:20,360 looks like. More and more of your time ends up being spent sort of making the 258 00:24:20,360 --> 00:24:24,570 administrators happy and giving them an excuse for their existence. This is a 259 00:24:24,570 --> 00:24:28,770 breakdown I saw in a report about American office workers, where they compared 260 00:24:28,770 --> 00:24:37,510 2015 and 2016. In 2015 only 46 percent of their time was spent actually doing their 261 00:24:37,510 --> 00:24:44,950 job. That declined by 7 percent in one year to 39 percent. That's got to be some 262 00:24:44,950 --> 00:24:49,380 kind of statistical anomaly, because if that were actually true in about a decade 263 00:24:49,380 --> 00:24:55,310 and a half, nobody will be doing any work at all. But it gives you an idea of what's 264 00:24:55,310 --> 00:25:00,990 happening. So if productivity is going down, these people are just sort of 265 00:25:00,990 --> 00:25:05,030 working all the time to satisfy the administrators. So the creation of 266 00:25:05,030 --> 00:25:09,280 bullshit jobs essentially creates the bullshitization of real jobs. There is a 267 00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:13,540 huge, there's both a squeeze on profits and wages. More and more money is going to 268 00:25:13,540 --> 00:25:19,910 pay the administrators. And you need to hire more and more people. So what do you 269 00:25:19,910 --> 00:25:24,810 get? Well, if you look around the world, whereas labor action happening, basically 270 00:25:24,810 --> 00:25:30,390 you have teachers strikes all over America and professors strikes in the UK. You have 271 00:25:30,390 --> 00:25:34,460 care home workers, I believe, in France. They had nursing home workers first time 272 00:25:34,460 --> 00:25:40,020 ever on strike, nurses strikes all over the world. Basically, caregivers are are 273 00:25:40,020 --> 00:25:47,510 at the sort of cutting edge of industrial action. The problem, of course, and this 274 00:25:47,510 --> 00:25:54,590 is the problem for the left is that the administrators, who are in the basic class 275 00:25:54,590 --> 00:25:58,880 enemy of the nurses, and I believe in New Zealand, the nurses wrote a very clear 276 00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:03,570 manifesto stating this. They said, you know, the problem we have is that there's 277 00:26:03,570 --> 00:26:09,570 all of these hospital administrators, these guys, not only are they taking all 278 00:26:09,570 --> 00:26:14,280 the money, so we haven't got a raise in 20 years. They give us so much paperwork, we 279 00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:18,881 can't take care of our patients. So that is the sort of class enemy of what I call 280 00:26:18,881 --> 00:26:25,240 the caring classes. The problem for the left is that often those guys are in the 281 00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:31,340 same union and they're certainly in the same political party. Tom Frank wrote a 282 00:26:31,340 --> 00:26:37,790 book called "Listen Liberal", where he documented what a lot of us had kind of 283 00:26:37,790 --> 00:26:44,270 had a sense of intuitively for some time, that what used to be left wing parties, 284 00:26:44,270 --> 00:26:52,030 essentially the Clintonite Democrats, the Blairite Labor Party. Talk about people 285 00:26:52,030 --> 00:26:58,860 like Macron, Trudeau, all of these guys, at essentially the head of parties, that used 286 00:26:58,860 --> 00:27:06,650 to be parties based in labor unions and the working classes and by extension the 287 00:27:06,650 --> 00:27:11,720 caring classes, as I call them. But have shifted to essentially be the classes 288 00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:17,880 of the professional, I mean, the parties of the professional managerial classes. So 289 00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,650 essentially, they are the, you know, they are the representatives of that giant 290 00:27:21,650 --> 00:27:26,840 mountain of administrators. That is their core base. I even caught a quote from 291 00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:33,340 Obama where he pretty much admitted it, where he said, you know, while people ask 292 00:27:33,340 --> 00:27:39,040 me why we don't have a single payer health plan in America, would that be simpler? 293 00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:43,680 Wouldn't that be more efficient? And he said, you know, well, yeah, I guess it 294 00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:48,190 would. But that's kind of the problem. You know, we have at the moment, like, what is 295 00:27:48,190 --> 00:27:51,890 it to 3 million people working for Kaiser, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, all these 296 00:27:51,890 --> 00:27:55,430 insurance companies. What are we going to do with those guys, if we have an 297 00:27:55,430 --> 00:28:02,520 efficient system? I mean, so essentially he admitted that it is intentional policy 298 00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:11,650 to maintain the marketization of health in America because it's less efficient and, 299 00:28:11,650 --> 00:28:16,520 you know, allows them to maintain a bunch of paper pushers in offices doing 300 00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,761 completely unnecessary work, who are essentially the core base of the 301 00:28:19,761 --> 00:28:23,660 Democratic Party. I mean, those guys, you know, they don't really care if they shut 302 00:28:23,660 --> 00:28:27,580 down auto plants, do they? In fact, they seem to take his glee. They say, well, you 303 00:28:27,580 --> 00:28:30,610 know, economy's changing. You just gotta deal with it. But the moment look at 304 00:28:30,610 --> 00:28:33,890 those guys and the officers who were doing nothing are threatened, the political 305 00:28:33,890 --> 00:28:38,911 parties leap into action and get all excited. All right. So if you look at what 306 00:28:38,911 --> 00:28:47,590 happened in England. Well, it's pretty clear that the conservatives won because 307 00:28:47,590 --> 00:28:52,761 they maneuvered the left into identifying itself with the professional managerial 308 00:28:52,761 --> 00:28:59,210 classes. There is a split between the sort of labor union base, which is increasingly 309 00:28:59,210 --> 00:29:05,970 unions representing very militant carers of one kind or another. And the 310 00:29:05,970 --> 00:29:09,170 professionals, managers and the administrators, both of whom are 311 00:29:09,170 --> 00:29:17,570 supposedly represented by the same party. Now, Brexit was a perfect issue to sort of 312 00:29:17,570 --> 00:29:20,960 make the bureaucrats and the administrators and the professionals into 313 00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:25,310 the class enemy. Now, it's very ironic because of course, in the long run, the 314 00:29:25,310 --> 00:29:30,310 people were really going to benefit from Brexit are precisely lawyers, right. 315 00:29:30,310 --> 00:29:35,905 Because they got to rewrite everything in England. However, this is not how it was 316 00:29:35,905 --> 00:29:39,480 represented. It was represented your enemies. I mean, there was an appeal to 317 00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:45,240 racism, obviously, but there was also an appeal: your enemies are these distant 318 00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:53,690 bureaucrats who know nothing of your lives. The key moment in terms of where 319 00:29:53,690 --> 00:29:57,940 essentially the Tories managed to outmaneuver Labor and guaranteed their 320 00:29:57,940 --> 00:30:04,280 victory was precisely by forcing Labor into an alliance with all the people like 321 00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,970 the Liberal Democrats and the other remainers, who then use this incredibly 322 00:30:07,970 --> 00:30:13,990 complicated constitutional means to try to block Brexit from happening. 20 minutes? 323 00:30:13,990 --> 00:30:23,380 Okay, that's easy. And it was fun to watch at the time on TV were all these you know, 324 00:30:23,380 --> 00:30:29,160 like all these guys in wigs and strange people called Black Rod and, you know, in 325 00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:34,090 odd costumes, appealing to all sorts of arcane rules from the 16th century. And it 326 00:30:34,090 --> 00:30:37,850 was great drama. You know, it was like costume drama come to life on television. 327 00:30:37,850 --> 00:30:43,890 But in effect and you know, it seemed like Boris Johnson was just being constantly 328 00:30:43,890 --> 00:30:48,250 humiliated. Everything he did didn't work. His plans collapsed. He lost every vote he 329 00:30:48,250 --> 00:30:53,151 tried. But in fact, what it ended up doing was it forced what was actually a 330 00:30:53,151 --> 00:31:02,620 radical party which represented the angry youth in the U.K. into alliance with 331 00:31:02,620 --> 00:31:08,720 professional managerials, who live by rules and whose entire idea of democracy 332 00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:15,330 is of a set of rules. This is very clear in America. And again, you could see 333 00:31:15,330 --> 00:31:23,000 this in the battle of Trump versus Hillary Clinton. Clinton was essentially accused 334 00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:27,220 of being corrupt because she would do things like, you know, get hundreds of 335 00:31:27,220 --> 00:31:33,193 thousands of dollars for speeches for investment firms like Goldman Sachs, who 336 00:31:33,193 --> 00:31:36,910 obviously aren't paying politicians that kind of money unless you expect to get 337 00:31:36,910 --> 00:31:41,590 some kind of influence out of it. And constantly like Clinton's defenders would 338 00:31:41,590 --> 00:31:45,940 say. Yes, but that was perfectly legal. Everything she did was legal. Why are 339 00:31:45,940 --> 00:31:50,010 people getting so upset? She didn't break the law. And I think that if you want to 340 00:31:50,010 --> 00:31:57,700 understand class dynamics in a country like England or America today, that phrase 341 00:31:57,700 --> 00:32:02,711 kind of gives the game away, because people of the professional managerial 342 00:32:02,711 --> 00:32:09,210 classes are probably the only people alive, who think that if you make bribery 343 00:32:09,210 --> 00:32:19,640 legal, that makes it OK. It's all about form versus, against content. 344 00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:24,390 Democracy isn't the popular will. Democracy is a set of rules and 345 00:32:24,390 --> 00:32:28,811 regulations. And if you follow the rules and regulations, well, you know, that's 346 00:32:28,811 --> 00:32:33,161 fine no matter. And these guys, that kind of mountain of administrators are the 347 00:32:33,161 --> 00:32:38,120 people who think that way. And they've become the base of parties, you know, they 348 00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:44,000 are the electoral base of people like Clinton, people like Macron, people like 349 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:56,850 Tony Blair had been, people like Obama. And now. And Corbyn was not at all like 350 00:32:56,850 --> 00:33:00,540 that. He is this person who had been a complete rebel against his own party for 351 00:33:00,540 --> 00:33:04,350 his entire life, but what they did, was they maneuvered him into a position where 352 00:33:04,350 --> 00:33:08,650 there had been a Brexit vote which represented substance: the popular will. 353 00:33:08,650 --> 00:33:13,240 And he was forced into a situation where he had to, like align with the people who 354 00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:18,620 are trying to block it through legalistic regulation, essentially by appeal to 355 00:33:18,620 --> 00:33:25,720 endless arcane laws. Thus identifying his class with the professional managerials 356 00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:30,320 and a lot of my friends who actually were out on doorsteps. You know, they actually 357 00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,970 seem to think of Boris Johnson as a regular guy. I mean, this guy, his actual 358 00:33:33,970 --> 00:33:38,800 name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He is an aristocrat going back 359 00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:43,810 like 500 years. But they seem to think he was a regular guy. And Corbyn, who hadn't 360 00:33:43,810 --> 00:33:50,990 even been to college and was was sort of a member of the elite, based almost entirely 361 00:33:50,990 --> 00:33:57,360 on that. And if you look at people like Trump and people like Johnson, how did 362 00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:02,880 they manage to pull off being populist in any sense? You know, they're born to every 363 00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:09,889 conceivable type of privilege. Basically, they do it by acting like the exact 364 00:34:09,889 --> 00:34:15,230 opposite of the annoying bureaucratic administrator, who is your kind of enemy 365 00:34:15,230 --> 00:34:21,260 at work? That's the game of images they're playing, you know. So Johnson is clearly 366 00:34:21,260 --> 00:34:24,929 totally fake. He fakes disorganization. He's actually a very organized person 367 00:34:24,929 --> 00:34:30,589 according to people who acutally know him. But he's developed this persona. This guy 368 00:34:30,589 --> 00:34:35,849 is all about content over form. And he's sort of chaotic and disorganized. And so 369 00:34:35,849 --> 00:34:39,609 they're basically playing the role of being anti-bureaucrats and they maneuver 370 00:34:39,609 --> 00:34:43,679 the other side into being identified with administration, rules and regulations and 371 00:34:43,679 --> 00:34:48,110 those guys who basically drive you crazy. The question for the left, then is how to 372 00:34:48,110 --> 00:34:52,849 break with that. So I have, what is it, 15 minutes in order to propose how we can 373 00:34:52,849 --> 00:35:01,200 break...? It strikes me that that we need to kind of rip up the game and start over. 374 00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:09,490 We're in another world economically than we used to be. And perhaps the best way to 375 00:35:09,490 --> 00:35:13,390 do it is to think about what when people say their jobs are bullshit, you know, 376 00:35:13,390 --> 00:35:18,870 when people say that 37 percent of people who say, if my job didn't exist, probably 377 00:35:18,870 --> 00:35:23,210 the world be better off, I'm not actually doing anything. What do they actually mean 378 00:35:23,210 --> 00:35:26,910 by that? In almost every case, what they say is that it doesn't really benefit 379 00:35:26,910 --> 00:35:35,460 anymore. There is a principle that ultimately work is meaningful if it helps 380 00:35:35,460 --> 00:35:42,269 people and improves other people's lives. Thus caring labor in a sense has become 381 00:35:42,269 --> 00:35:46,910 the paradigm for all forms of labor. And this is very, very interesting because I 382 00:35:46,910 --> 00:35:53,599 think that to a large degree, the left is really stuck on the notion of production 383 00:35:53,599 --> 00:35:58,920 rather than caring. And and the reason we have been outmaneuvered in the past has 384 00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:03,369 been precisely because of that. I could talk about the, you know, how this 385 00:36:03,369 --> 00:36:07,380 happened. I think it really a lot of economics is really theological. It's a 386 00:36:07,380 --> 00:36:13,450 transposition of old religious ideas about creation, where human beings are sort of 387 00:36:13,450 --> 00:36:19,559 forced to feel like the story of Prometheus, the Bible, you know, the human 388 00:36:19,559 --> 00:36:26,279 condition. Our fallen state is one where God is a creator. We tried to usurp his 389 00:36:26,279 --> 00:36:29,990 position. So God punishes us by saying, OK, you can create your own lives, but 390 00:36:29,990 --> 00:36:36,329 it's being miserable and painful. So work is both is both productive, it's creative. 391 00:36:36,329 --> 00:36:43,170 But at the same time, it's also supposed to be suffering. Whereas so we have an 392 00:36:43,170 --> 00:36:48,190 idea of work as productivity. So I was actually looking at these charts. You're 393 00:36:48,190 --> 00:36:52,240 talking of the different productivity of different types of work. Now I can see 394 00:36:52,240 --> 00:36:57,430 where productivity of construction comes in. But according to this, you can even 395 00:36:57,430 --> 00:37:02,880 measure the productivity of real estate, productivity of agriculture. Okay. 396 00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:07,500 Productivity, I mean, everything is production. What does productivity of real 397 00:37:07,500 --> 00:37:12,060 estate...doesn't make any sense, you're not producing anything, it's land. It sits 398 00:37:12,060 --> 00:37:17,820 there. Our paradigm for value is production. But if you think about it, 399 00:37:17,820 --> 00:37:22,399 most work is not productive. Most work is actually about maintaining things. It's 400 00:37:22,399 --> 00:37:27,849 about care. If you think whenever I see, talk to a Marxist theorist, wherever, they 401 00:37:27,849 --> 00:37:31,869 try to explain value, which is what they always like to do. They always take the 402 00:37:31,869 --> 00:37:36,049 example of a teacup. They say, well, usually they're sitting there with a glass 403 00:37:36,049 --> 00:37:43,931 bottle, a cup. Well, look at this bottle, you know. You know, it takes a certain 404 00:37:43,931 --> 00:37:48,961 amount of socially necessary labor time to produce this, say it takes, you know, this 405 00:37:48,961 --> 00:37:53,940 much time, this much resources. It's always about production of stuff. But a 406 00:37:53,940 --> 00:38:01,870 teacup or a bottle. Well, you know. You produce a cup once, you wash it like 10000 407 00:38:01,870 --> 00:38:06,020 times. Most work isn't actually about producing new things, it's about 408 00:38:06,020 --> 00:38:13,619 maintaining things. We have a warped notion, which really, it's a very 409 00:38:13,619 --> 00:38:19,109 gendered. Real work is like male craftsman banging away or some factory worker making 410 00:38:19,109 --> 00:38:23,389 a car or something like that. It's almost a paradigm for childbirth, right? Because 411 00:38:23,389 --> 00:38:28,560 labor is supposed to be, the word labor is very interesting, right? Because in the 412 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:32,779 Bible they say, they curse Adam to work and they curse Eve have pain of 413 00:38:32,779 --> 00:38:38,270 childbirth, but that's called labor. So there's the idea that, you know, there's 414 00:38:38,270 --> 00:38:42,220 this. Factories are like these black boxes where you're kind of pushing stuff out 415 00:38:42,220 --> 00:38:47,980 like babies through a painful process that we don't really understand. And that's 416 00:38:47,980 --> 00:38:51,970 what work mainly consists of. But actually, that's not what work mainly 417 00:38:51,970 --> 00:38:57,960 consists of. Most work actually consists of taking care of other people. So I think 418 00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:03,510 that what we need to do is we need to start over. We need to realign. First of 419 00:39:03,510 --> 00:39:08,890 all, think about the working classes, not as producers, but as carers. And working 420 00:39:08,890 --> 00:39:14,250 classes are basically people who take care of other people and always have been. 421 00:39:14,250 --> 00:39:19,480 Actually, psychological studies show this really well, that you know, the poorer you 422 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:23,200 are, the better you are reading other people's emotions and understanding what 423 00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:29,619 they're feeling. That's because, you know, it's actually the job of people to take 424 00:39:29,619 --> 00:39:33,579 care of others. All rich people just don't have to think about what other people are 425 00:39:33,579 --> 00:39:40,460 thinking or they don't care, literally. And so I think we need to A: redefine the 426 00:39:40,460 --> 00:39:46,849 working classes as caring classes. But second of all, we need to move away from a 427 00:39:46,849 --> 00:39:50,920 paradigm of production and consumption as being what an economy is about is if we're 428 00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:57,070 going to save the planet, we really need to move away from productivism. So I would 429 00:39:57,070 --> 00:40:02,956 propose that we just rip up the discipline of economics as it exists and start over. 430 00:40:02,956 --> 00:40:03,876 *Chuckles* 431 00:40:03,876 --> 00:40:08,749 *Applause* 432 00:40:08,749 --> 00:40:13,340 So this is my proposal in this regard. I think that we should take the ideas of 433 00:40:13,340 --> 00:40:17,720 production and consumption, throw them away and substitute for them the idea of 434 00:40:17,720 --> 00:40:27,520 care and freedom. Think about it. You know, thank you. I mean, even if you're 435 00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:31,149 making a bridge, right, you make a bridge, as feminists constantly point out, 436 00:40:31,149 --> 00:40:34,919 you know, you're making a bridge because you care that people can get across the 437 00:40:34,919 --> 00:40:39,519 river. You know, you make a car because you care that people can get around. So 438 00:40:39,519 --> 00:40:46,359 even like production is one subordinate type of care. What we do is, you know, as 439 00:40:46,359 --> 00:40:51,300 human beings, as we take care of each other. But care is actually and this is, I 440 00:40:51,300 --> 00:40:57,329 think, something that we don't often recognize closely related to the notion of 441 00:40:57,329 --> 00:41:06,670 freedom, because normally care is defined as answering to other people's needs. And 442 00:41:06,670 --> 00:41:12,490 certainly that is an important element in it. But no, it's not just that. Like if 443 00:41:12,490 --> 00:41:16,509 you're in a prison. Right. They take care of the needs of the prisoners, usually at 444 00:41:16,509 --> 00:41:21,009 least to the point of giving them basic food, clothing and medical care. But you 445 00:41:21,009 --> 00:41:25,749 can't really think of a prison as caring for prisoners. Right. Care is more than 446 00:41:25,749 --> 00:41:32,640 that. So why isn't a prison a caregiving institution, whereas something else might 447 00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:39,560 be? Well, if you think about care, what is the the kind of paradigm for carrying 448 00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:46,400 relations? A mother and a child. Right. A mother takes care of a child, or a parent 449 00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:51,870 takes care of a child so that that child can grow and be healthy and flourish. 450 00:41:51,870 --> 00:41:56,140 That's true. But in an immediate level, you know, you take care of a child so the 451 00:41:56,140 --> 00:42:00,509 child can go and play. That's what children actually do when you're taking 452 00:42:00,509 --> 00:42:05,540 care of them. What is play? Play is like action done for its own sake. It's in a 453 00:42:05,540 --> 00:42:09,910 way the very paradigm of freedom, because action done for its own sake is what 454 00:42:09,910 --> 00:42:16,089 freedom really consists of. Play and freedom are ultimately the same thing. So, 455 00:42:16,089 --> 00:42:21,880 a production-consumption paradigm for what an economy is, is a guarantee for 456 00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:27,440 ultimately destroying the planet and each other. I mean, even when you talk about 457 00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:33,759 de-growth, you know, if you're working within that paradigm, you are essentially 458 00:42:33,759 --> 00:42:40,460 doomed. We need to break free away from that paradigm entirely. Care and freedom, 459 00:42:40,460 --> 00:42:44,319 on the other hand, are things you can increase as much as you like without 460 00:42:44,319 --> 00:42:50,599 damaging anything. So we need to think: what are ways that we need to care for 461 00:42:50,599 --> 00:42:54,259 each other that will make each other more free? And who are the people who are 462 00:42:54,259 --> 00:42:59,900 providing that care? And how can they be compensated themselves with greater 463 00:42:59,900 --> 00:43:07,520 freedom? And to do that, we need to like actually scrap almost all of the 464 00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:12,690 discipline of economics as it currently exists. We're actually just starting to 465 00:43:12,690 --> 00:43:20,280 think about this. I mean, because economics as it currently exists is based 466 00:43:20,280 --> 00:43:25,769 on assumptions of human nature that we now know to be wrong. There have been actual 467 00:43:25,769 --> 00:43:31,359 empirical tests of the basic fundamental assumptions of the maximizing individual 468 00:43:31,359 --> 00:43:35,850 that economic theory is based on. It turns out they're not true. It tells you 469 00:43:35,850 --> 00:43:40,599 something about the role of economics that this has had almost no effect on economic 470 00:43:40,599 --> 00:43:49,510 teaching whatsoever. They don't really care that it's not true. But one of the 471 00:43:49,510 --> 00:43:54,869 things that we have discovered, which is quite interesting, is that human beings 472 00:43:54,869 --> 00:44:00,359 have actually a psychological need to be cared for, but they have an even greater 473 00:44:00,359 --> 00:44:04,690 psychological need to care for others or to care for something. If you don't have 474 00:44:04,690 --> 00:44:11,010 that, you basically fall apart. It's why old people get dogs. We don't just care 475 00:44:11,010 --> 00:44:16,850 for each other because we need to maintain each other's lives and freedoms. But our 476 00:44:16,850 --> 00:44:20,660 own very psychological happiness is based on being able to care for something or 477 00:44:20,660 --> 00:44:29,010 someone. So what would happen to microeconomics if we started from that? 478 00:44:29,010 --> 00:44:33,900 We're doing actually a workshop tomorrow on the Museum of Care, which we're going 479 00:44:33,900 --> 00:44:44,450 to imagine in Rojava, which is in northeastern Syria, where there is a 480 00:44:44,450 --> 00:44:50,080 women's revolution going on, as you might have heard. But it's in places like that 481 00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:54,470 where they're trying to completely reimagine economics, the relation of 482 00:44:54,470 --> 00:45:01,369 freedom, aesthetics and value. Because at the moment, the system of value that we 483 00:45:01,369 --> 00:45:05,880 have is set up in such a way that this kind of trap that I've described, and the 484 00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:12,510 gradual bullshitization of employment, where essentially production work has 485 00:45:12,510 --> 00:45:16,200 become a value unto itself in such a way that we're literally destroying the 486 00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:23,309 planet. And in order to actually reimagine a type of economics that wouldn't destroy 487 00:45:23,309 --> 00:45:28,720 the planet, we have to start all over again. So I'm going to end on that note. 488 00:45:28,720 --> 00:45:36,339 *Applause* 489 00:45:36,339 --> 00:45:44,609 Herald: David, thank you so much. I think it's very interesting to also have some 490 00:45:44,609 --> 00:45:49,619 political views now that we mix in all sorts of technology and it goes very good 491 00:45:49,619 --> 00:45:54,980 in the theme of Congress. Please, if anyone has any questions line up by the 492 00:45:54,980 --> 00:45:58,589 microphones and we'll go for that. Unfortunately, in the beginning, I forgot 493 00:45:58,589 --> 00:46:03,500 to mention that you can ask questions over the Internet through IRC, Mastodon or 494 00:46:03,500 --> 00:46:09,020 Twitter. And remember to use the channel #borg and we'll make sure that they get 495 00:46:09,020 --> 00:46:11,720 answered. So please microphone number 1 496 00:46:11,720 --> 00:46:20,330 Q: When you when you observe the productivity in healthcare going down, do 497 00:46:20,330 --> 00:46:30,299 you have an explanation, according to new liberal thinking, why hospitals, one with 498 00:46:30,299 --> 00:46:35,079 more administrators, one with less administrators, don't have competition 499 00:46:35,079 --> 00:46:38,460 outcome that the hospital with less administrators wins? 500 00:46:38,460 --> 00:46:44,710 David: Haha, yeah. Well, one of the fascinating things about the whole 501 00:46:44,710 --> 00:46:49,849 phenomena of bullshitization and bullshit jobs is that it's exactly what's not 502 00:46:49,849 --> 00:46:53,700 supposed to happen under a competitive system. But it's happened across the board 503 00:46:53,700 --> 00:46:58,740 in every, equally in private sector and public sector. 504 00:46:58,740 --> 00:47:03,609 Q: Why? A: That's a long story. But one reason 505 00:47:03,609 --> 00:47:09,180 seems to be that, and this is why I actually had managerial feudalism in the 506 00:47:09,180 --> 00:47:22,750 title, is that the system we have, is essentially not capitalism as it is 507 00:47:22,750 --> 00:47:27,489 ordinarily described. The idea that you have a series of small competing firms is 508 00:47:27,489 --> 00:47:32,609 basically a fantasy. I mean, you know, it's true of restaurants or something like 509 00:47:32,609 --> 00:47:37,970 that. But it's not true of these large institutions. And it's not clear that it 510 00:47:37,970 --> 00:47:41,549 really could be true of those large institutions. They just don't operate on 511 00:47:41,549 --> 00:47:47,930 that basis. Essentially, increasingly, profits aren't coming from either 512 00:47:47,930 --> 00:47:53,910 manufacturing or from commerce but from rather redistribution of resources and 513 00:47:53,910 --> 00:48:01,900 rent, rent extraction. So that and when you have a rent extraction system, it much 514 00:48:01,900 --> 00:48:06,610 more resembles feudalism than capitalism is normally described. You want to 515 00:48:06,610 --> 00:48:10,390 distribute you know, if you're taking a large amount of money and redistributing 516 00:48:10,390 --> 00:48:14,970 it, well, you want to soak up as much of that as possible in the course of doing 517 00:48:14,970 --> 00:48:20,180 so. And that seems to be the way the economy increasingly works. I mean, if you 518 00:48:20,180 --> 00:48:25,700 look at anything from Hollywood to the healthcare industry, you know what you've 519 00:48:25,700 --> 00:48:29,960 seen over the last 30 years, the creation of endless intermediary roles, which sort 520 00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:36,839 of grab a piece of the pie as being distributed downwards. It's... I mean, I 521 00:48:36,839 --> 00:48:43,109 could go into the whole mechanisms, but essentially the political and the economic 522 00:48:43,109 --> 00:48:52,520 have become so intertwined that you can no longer make a distinction between the two. 523 00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:56,380 So you have a problem and this is where you go back to the whole thing about the 1 524 00:48:56,380 --> 00:49:01,319 percent. You're using political power to accumulate more wealth, using your wealth 525 00:49:01,319 --> 00:49:08,380 to create more political power. An engine of extraction whereby the spoils are 526 00:49:08,380 --> 00:49:14,480 increasingly distributed: we get these very, very large bureaucratic 527 00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:18,549 organizations and that's essentially how our economy works. 528 00:49:18,549 --> 00:49:22,040 Herald: Great thank you. A: I mean, I could talk for an hour about 529 00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:25,619 the dynamics, but that's that's basically at it. You know, you could call it 530 00:49:25,619 --> 00:49:31,059 capitalism if you like, but it doesn't in any way resemble capitalism the way that 531 00:49:31,059 --> 00:49:34,170 people like to imagine capitalism would work. 532 00:49:34,170 --> 00:49:39,000 Herald: Great. Awesome. Questions from the Internet, please. 533 00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:45,930 Q: How to best address this caregiver class when the context of the 534 00:49:45,930 --> 00:49:53,480 proletariat is no longer given to awake their class consciousness? 535 00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:58,559 A: How to address the caregiver when the proletariat is no longer what? 536 00:49:58,559 --> 00:50:03,420 Herald: Please repeat the question. Q: How to best address the caregiver class 537 00:50:03,420 --> 00:50:07,880 when the context of the proletariat is no longer given to awake their class 538 00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:10,319 consciousness? A: Given to awake? 539 00:50:10,319 --> 00:50:17,030 Q: I'm not sure what they're asking. A: Yeah. I mean the question is how do you 540 00:50:17,030 --> 00:50:25,490 create a class consciousness for that class? Yeah. Well, that is the question. I 541 00:50:25,490 --> 00:50:30,289 mean, first of all, you need to actually think about who your actual class enemy 542 00:50:30,289 --> 00:50:37,950 is. And I mean, I don't mean to be too blunt about it, but the problem we have, 543 00:50:37,950 --> 00:50:42,509 why is it that people are suspicious of the left? And people like Michael Albert 544 00:50:42,509 --> 00:50:49,799 were pointing this out years ago, that one reason that actual proletarians were very 545 00:50:49,799 --> 00:50:54,160 suspicious of traditional socialists in many cases is because their immediate 546 00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:59,700 enemy isn't actually, you know, the capitalist who he rarely meets, but the 547 00:50:59,700 --> 00:51:08,839 annoying administrator upstairs. And, you know, to a large extent, traditional 548 00:51:08,839 --> 00:51:13,940 socialism means giving that guy more power rather than less. So I think we need to 549 00:51:13,940 --> 00:51:19,080 actually look at what's really going on in a hospital, in a school. And I use 550 00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:22,640 hospitals and schools as examples, but they're actually very important ones 551 00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:29,820 because people have shown that in most cities in America now, hospitals and 552 00:51:29,820 --> 00:51:36,020 schools are the two largest employers: universities and hospitals. Essentially 553 00:51:36,020 --> 00:51:41,839 work has been reorganized around working on the bodies and minds of other people 554 00:51:41,839 --> 00:51:47,890 rather than producing objects. And the class relations in those institutions are 555 00:51:47,890 --> 00:51:54,900 not, you can't use traditional Marxist analysis. You need to actually reimagine 556 00:51:54,900 --> 00:51:59,049 what it would mean. Are we talking with the production of people? If so, what are 557 00:51:59,049 --> 00:52:03,210 the class dynamics involved in that? Is production the term at all? Probably not. 558 00:52:03,210 --> 00:52:09,369 Why not? That's why I say we need to reconstitute the language in which we are 559 00:52:09,369 --> 00:52:13,519 using to describe this, because we're essentially using 19th century terminology 560 00:52:13,519 --> 00:52:18,839 to discuss 21st century problems. Both sides are doing that. The right wing is 561 00:52:18,839 --> 00:52:23,989 using like, you know, neoclassical economics, which is basically Victorian. 562 00:52:23,989 --> 00:52:27,999 It's trying to solve problems that no longer exist. But the left is using a 19th 563 00:52:27,999 --> 00:52:31,940 century Marxist, you know, critique of that, which also doesn't apply. We just 564 00:52:31,940 --> 00:52:34,540 need new terms. Herald: Thank you. I hope that answered 565 00:52:34,540 --> 00:52:39,100 the question from the Internet. Microphone number two, please. 566 00:52:39,100 --> 00:52:46,789 Q: So, the question is basically, to what extent can technology help? And the 567 00:52:46,789 --> 00:52:52,520 subtext here is there's actually really lots of projects now whose function at 568 00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:57,769 some level is to automate management and to the extent to which that can be molded 569 00:52:57,769 --> 00:53:02,969 into removing this class that you're talking about or somehow making it too 570 00:53:02,969 --> 00:53:06,690 painful for them to exist. And some of these projects are companies but some of 571 00:53:06,690 --> 00:53:10,680 them are very independent things that have very soft Marx ideas, but with tens of 572 00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:14,559 millions in funding. A: Well, that's the interesting thing, 573 00:53:14,559 --> 00:53:20,130 that people talk about it all the time. And there's this, but this is where power 574 00:53:20,130 --> 00:53:29,250 comes in, right? I mean why is it that automation means that if I'm working for 575 00:53:29,250 --> 00:53:36,549 UPS, the delivery guy gets like tailorized and downsized and super-efficient to the 576 00:53:36,549 --> 00:53:41,900 point where our life becomes a living hell basically. But somehow the profits that 577 00:53:41,900 --> 00:53:46,849 come from that, end up hiring like, dozens of flunkies who sit around in offices 578 00:53:46,849 --> 00:53:55,530 doing nothing all day. One of the guys, when I started gathering testimonies, I've 579 00:53:55,530 --> 00:53:59,069 actually gathered several hundred testimonies of people with bullshit jobs 580 00:53:59,069 --> 00:54:02,929 or people who thought of themselves as having bullshit jobs. And one of the most 581 00:54:02,929 --> 00:54:07,519 telling was a guy who was an efficiency expert in a bank. He estimates that 80% 582 00:54:07,519 --> 00:54:11,069 of people who work in banks are unnecessary. Either they do nothing or 583 00:54:11,069 --> 00:54:18,220 they could easily be automated away. And what he said was it was his job to figure 584 00:54:18,220 --> 00:54:22,289 that out. But then he gradually realized that he had a bullshit job because every 585 00:54:22,289 --> 00:54:29,089 single time he proposed a plan to get rid of them, they'd be shot down. He never got 586 00:54:29,089 --> 00:54:34,200 a single one through. And the reason why is because if you're an executive in a 587 00:54:34,200 --> 00:54:39,079 large corporation, your prestige and power is directly proportional to how many 588 00:54:39,079 --> 00:54:43,530 people you have working under you. So, no way are they going to get rid of flunkies. 589 00:54:43,530 --> 00:54:47,329 That's just going to mean, the better they are at it, the less important they'll 590 00:54:47,329 --> 00:54:54,040 become in the operation. So somebody always blocked it. So this is a basic 591 00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:57,739 power question. You can come up with great technological ideas for eliminating 592 00:54:57,739 --> 00:55:02,390 people. People do all the time. But who actually gets eliminated and who doesn't 593 00:55:02,390 --> 00:55:09,749 has everything to do with power. Herald: Great. Thank you. And last 594 00:55:09,749 --> 00:55:11,930 question, please, from microphone number 5. 595 00:55:11,930 --> 00:55:16,129 Q: Can we maybe have one question from a non-male person? 596 00:55:16,129 --> 00:55:22,770 A: Yeah, that'd be nice. Herald: Non-male person? Sorry, I am not 597 00:55:22,770 --> 00:55:26,440 choosing questions based on stuff. We're kind of choosing all around the hall. 598 00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:29,789 Q: Ok, have fun. Herald: Please, microphone number 5. 599 00:55:29,789 --> 00:55:38,589 Q: Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I really like your description of a 600 00:55:38,589 --> 00:55:44,981 paradigm or that people are stuck on production and consumption, and that you 601 00:55:44,981 --> 00:55:50,160 would like to change the paradigm to a paradigm towards more care and freedom, et 602 00:55:50,160 --> 00:56:00,059 cetera. And for me, it kind of sounds a little vague. And that's why I myself 603 00:56:00,059 --> 00:56:07,670 think of basic income as a human right. As the actual mean to break with the current 604 00:56:07,670 --> 00:56:13,839 hegemonic, macroeconomic paradigm, so to speak. And I was interested in your point 605 00:56:13,839 --> 00:56:19,930 of view of that, of basic income. A: Well, I actually totally support that. 606 00:56:19,930 --> 00:56:29,719 I think that one of the major objections that people have to universal basic income 607 00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:34,670 is essentially people don't trust people to come up with useful things to do with 608 00:56:34,670 --> 00:56:40,550 themselves. Either they think they'll be lazy, right, and won't do anything, or 609 00:56:40,550 --> 00:56:46,440 they think if they do do something, it'll be stupid. So we're going to have millions 610 00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:50,510 of people who are trying to create perpetual motion devices or becoming 611 00:56:50,510 --> 00:56:58,390 annoying street mimes or bad musicians or bad poets or so forth and so on. And I 612 00:56:58,390 --> 00:57:03,710 think it actually masks an incredible condescending elitism a lot of people 613 00:57:03,710 --> 00:57:07,640 have, which is really the mindset of the professional managerial classes who think 614 00:57:07,640 --> 00:57:14,909 that they should be controlling people. If you think about the fact that huge 615 00:57:14,909 --> 00:57:18,819 percentages, perhaps a third of people, already think that they're doing nothing 616 00:57:18,819 --> 00:57:24,259 all day and they're really miserable about it, I think that demonstrates quite 617 00:57:24,259 --> 00:57:30,850 clearly why that isn't true. First of all, the idea that people, if given a basic 618 00:57:30,850 --> 00:57:34,619 income, won't work. Actually, there are lots of people who are paid basically to 619 00:57:34,619 --> 00:57:38,440 sit there all day and do nothing and they're really unhappy. They'd much rather 620 00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:46,440 be working. Second of all, if 30 to 40% of people already think that their 621 00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:51,820 jobs are completely pointless and useless, I mean, how bad could it be? It's like, 622 00:57:51,820 --> 00:57:55,750 you know, even if everybody goes off and becomes bad poets, well, at least they'll 623 00:57:55,750 --> 00:57:59,859 be a lot happier than they are now. And second of all, one or two of them might 624 00:57:59,859 --> 00:58:07,839 really be good poets. If just 0.001% of all the people on basic income who 625 00:58:07,839 --> 00:58:15,400 decide to become poets or musicians or invent crazy devices, actually, do become 626 00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:21,710 Miles Davis or Shakespeare or actually do invent a perpetual motion device, well, 627 00:58:21,710 --> 00:58:25,019 you've got your money back right there, right? 628 00:58:25,019 --> 00:58:28,989 Herald: Great. Thank you so much. Unfortunately, that was all the questions 629 00:58:28,989 --> 00:58:33,869 that we had time to. If you have any more questions, please, I'm sure that David 630 00:58:33,869 --> 00:58:39,280 will answer them if you come up here. Thank you so much, David, for your time. 631 00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:41,300 Please give him a great round of applause. 632 00:58:41,300 --> 00:58:44,920 *Applause* 633 00:58:44,920 --> 00:58:50,689 *Outro* 634 00:58:50,689 --> 00:59:11,000 subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2020. Join, and help us!