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36C3 preroll music
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Herald: The next talk is by David Graeber,[br]and he's an author, activist and
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anthropologist. And he will be speaking[br]about his talk "From managerial feudalism
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to the revolt of the caring classes".[br]Please give him a great
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round of applause[br]and welcome him to the stage.
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Applause
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David: Hello. Hi. It's great to be here. I[br]wanted to talk. I've been in a very bad
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mood this last week owing to the results[br]of the election in the UK and I would
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think very hard about what happened and[br]how to maintain hope. Ah, there we go.
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Good, good. I don't usually use visual[br]aids, but actually assembled them. And the
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thing is, what I want to talk about a[br]little bit is what seems to be happening
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in the world politically, that we have[br]results like what just happened in the UK
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and why there is nonetheless reason for[br]hope, which I really think there is. In a
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way, this is very much a blip. Probably[br]the most... Um, and but there is a
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strategic lesson to be learned, I think.[br]Speaking as someone who's been involved in
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attempts to transform the world, at least[br]for the last 20 years since I was involved
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in the global justice movement. I think[br]that there is a real lack of strategic
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understanding that there's a vast shift[br]sort of happening to the world in terms of
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central class dynamics that the populist[br]right is taking advantage of and the left
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is really being caught flat footed on. So,[br]I want to make a case of what seems to be
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going wrong and what we can do about it.[br]First of all, in terms of despairing. I
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was very much at the point of despairing.[br]There's so many people put so much work
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that I know into trying to turn around the[br]situation. There seemed to be a genuine
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possibility of a broad social[br]transformation in England. And when we got
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the results, I mean, there's a kind of[br]sense of shock. But actually, if you look
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at the breakdown of the vote, for example,[br]it doesn't look too great for the right in
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the long run. Basically, the younger you[br]are, the more determined you are to kick
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the Tories out. The core... Actually, I've[br]never seen numbers quite like this. The
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core... base of... electoral base of the[br]right wing is almost exclusively old. And
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the older you are, the more likely you are[br]to vote conservative, which is really,
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really kind of amazing because it means[br]that the electoral base of the right is
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literally dying off - a process which[br]they're actually expediting by defunding
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health care in every way possible. And[br]normally you'd say, oh, yes, so what? As
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people get older, they become more[br]conservative. But there's every reason to
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think that that's not actually happening[br]this time around. Especially because
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traditionally people who either had been[br]apathetic or had voted for the left, who
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eventually end up voting for the right, do[br]so at the point when they get a mortgage
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or when they get a sort of secure job with[br]room for promotion and therefore feel they
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have a stake in the system. Well, that's[br]precisely what's not happening to this new
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generation. So if that's the case, the[br]right wing is actually in the long run in
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real trouble. And to show you just how[br]remarkable the situation is. Someone put
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together a electoral map of the UK showing[br]what it would look like if only people
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over 65 voted and what it would look like[br]if only people under 25 voted. Here's the
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first one. Blue is Tory. If only people[br]over 65 voted, I believe there would be
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four or five Labor MPs, but otherwise[br]entirely conservative. Now here's the map.
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If only people under 25 voted, there would[br]be no Tory MPs at all. There might be a
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few Liberal Dems and Welsh candidates and[br]Scottish ones. And in fact, this is a
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relatively recent phenomena. Here's... if[br]you look at the divergence. You know, it really
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is just the last few years it started to[br]look like that. So something has happened
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that like almost all young people coming[br]in are voting not just for the left, but
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for the radical left. I mean, Corbyn ran[br]on a platform that not just two or three
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years before would have been considered[br]completely insane and, you know, is
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falling off the political spectrum[br]altogether. Yet, the vast majority of
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young people voted for it. The problem is[br]that in a situation like this, the swing
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voters are the sort of middle aged people.[br]And for some reason, middle aged people
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broke right. The question is, why did that[br]happen? And I've been trying to figure
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that out. Now, in order to do so, I think[br]we need to really think hard about what
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has been happening to social class[br]relations. And the conclusion that I came
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to is that essentially the left is[br]applying an outdated paradigm. You know,
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they're still thinking in terms of bosses[br]and workers and a kind of old fashioned
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industrial sense where what's really going[br]on is that for most people, the key class
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opposition is caregivers versus managers.[br]And, essentially, leftist parties are
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trying to represent both sides at the same[br]time, but they're really dominated by the
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latter. Now, I'm going to go through some[br]basic political economy stuff as in way of
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background. And this is a key statistic,[br]which is the kind of thing we were looking
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at when we first started talking about the[br]99 percent of the 1 percent are the
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beginning of Occupy Wall Street.[br]Essentially until the mid 70s, there was a
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sort of understanding between 1945 and[br]1975, say, there was an understanding that
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as way of productivity increases, wages[br]will go up, too. And they largely went up
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together. This only takes it from 1960,[br]but it goes back to the 40s. More
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productivity goes up. A cut of that went[br]to the workers. Around 1975 or so it
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really splits. And since then, if you see[br]what's going on here, productivity keeps
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going up and up and up and up, whereas[br]wages remain flat. So, the question is,
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what happens to all that money from the[br]increased productivity? Feasibly, it goes
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to one percent of the population. And[br]that's what we were talking about when we
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talked about the 1 percent. The other[br]point, which was key to the notion of 99
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and 1 percent when we developed that, was[br]that the 1 percent are also the people who
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make all the political campaign[br]contributions. These statistics are from
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America, which has a unusually corrupt[br]system, but pretty much all of them...
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Bribery is basically legal in America. But[br]essentially it's the same people who are
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making all the campaign contributions who[br]have collected all of the profits from
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increased productivity, all the increased[br]wealth. And essentially, they're the
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people who managed to turn their wealth[br]into power, and their power back into
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wealth. So. Who are these people want and[br]how does this relate to changes in the
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workforce? Well, the interesting thing[br]that I discovered when I started looking
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into this, is that the rhetoric we used to[br]describe the changes in class structure
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since the 70s is really deceptive.[br]Because, you know, since really since the
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80s, everybody has been talking about the[br]service economy. What we're shifting from
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an industrial to a service economy. And[br]the image that people have is that, you
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know, we've all gone from being factory[br]workers to serving each other lattes and
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pressing each other's trousers and so[br]forth. But actually, if you look at the
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actual numbers of people in retail. People[br]who are actually serving food. I don't
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have a, you know, detailed breakdown here,[br]but they remain pretty much constant. In
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fact, I've seen figures going back 150[br]years which show that it's pretty much 15
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percent of the population that does that[br]sort of thing. It has been for, you know,
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over a century. It doesn't really change.[br]It goes up and down a little bit. But
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basically, the amount of people who are[br]actually providing services, haircuts,
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things like that, is pretty much the same[br]as it's always been. What's actually
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happened is that you've had a growth of[br]two areas. One is providing, you know,
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what I would call caregiving work. And I[br]would include education and health, but
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basically taking care of other people in[br]one way or another. In the statistics you
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have to look at education. Health is only[br]have a category of caregiving in economic
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statistics. On the other hand, you have[br]administration and the number of people
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who are doing clerical, administrative and[br]supervisory work has gone up enormously to
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some degree. So according to some[br]accounts, it's gone up from maybe 20
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percent of the population in, say, UK or[br]America in 1900 to 40, 50, 60 percent. I
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mean, even a majority of workers. Now, the[br]interesting thing about that is that huge
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numbers of those people seem to be[br]convinced they really aren't doing
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anything and that essentially if their[br]jobs didn't exist, you would make no
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difference at all. It's almost as if they[br]were just making up jobs in offices to
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keep people busy. And this was the theme[br]of my book I wrote on bullshit jobs. And
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just to describe the genesis of that book,[br]essentially, I don't actually myself come
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from a professional background. So, as a[br]professor, I constantly meet people, sort
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of spouses of my colleagues, the sort of[br]people you meet when you're socializing
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people in professional backgrounds. Well,[br]I keep running into people of parties and
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saying, well, who work in offices and...[br]you know, I'm an anthropologist, right. I
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keep asking, well, what do you actually[br]do? I mean, what does a person who is a
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management consultant, you know, actually[br]do all day? And very often they will say,
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well, not much. Or you ask people, I am an[br]anthropologists, what do you do? And
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they'll say, well, nothing, really. And,[br]you know, you think they're just being
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modest, you know. So, you kind of[br]interrogate them by a few drinks later.
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They admit that actually they meant that[br]literally, they actually do nothing all
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day. You know, they sit around and they[br]adjust their Facebook profiles. They play
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computer games. They were like, you know,[br]sometimes I'll take a couple of calls a
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day. Sometimes I'll take a couple of calls[br]a week. Sometimes they're just there in
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case something goes wrong. Sometimes they[br]just don't do anything at all. And you
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ask, what? Does your supervisor know this?[br]And they say, you know, I often wonder. I
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think they do so. So, I began to wonder[br]how many people are there like this? Is
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this some weird coincidence that has[br]happened to run into people like this all
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the time? What section of the workforce is[br]actually doing nothing all day? So I wrote
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a little article. I had a friend who is[br]starting a radical magazine, said you
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write something provocative, you know,[br]something you'd never be able to get
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published elsewhere. So I wrote a little[br]piece called "On the phenomenon of
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bullshit jobs" where I suggested that, you[br]know, back in the 30s, Keynes wrote this
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famous essays predicting that by around[br]now we would all be working 15 hour weeks
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because automation would like get rid of[br]most manual labor. And if you look at the
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jobs that exist in the 30s, you know,[br]that's true. So I said, well, maybe what's
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happened is the reason we're not working[br]15 hour weeks is they just made up
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bullshit jobs. And just to keep us all[br]working. And I wrote this piece as just
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kind of a joke, right? Within a week, this[br]thing had been translated into 15
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different languages. It was circulating[br]around the world because the server kept
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crashing, it was getting millions and[br]millions of hits. I was like, oh, my god,
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do you mean it's true? And eventually[br]someone did a survey, YouGov, I think, and
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they discovered that of people in the UK,[br]37 percent agreed that if their job didn't
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exist either would make no difference[br]whatsoever or the world might be a
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slightly better place. I thought about[br]that. What must that do to the human soul?
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You imagine that, you know, waking up[br]every morning and going to work, thinking
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that you're doing absolutely nothing if,[br]you know. No wonder people are angry and
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depressed. And I thought about it, it explains a[br]lot of social phenomena that if people are
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just pretending to work all day and then,[br]you know, it actually really touched me.
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It's strange because I come from a working[br]class background myself. So you'd think
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that, you know, oh, great. So, lots of[br]people are paid to do nothing all day and
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get good salaries, like, my heart bleeds,[br]you know? But actually, if you think about
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it, it's actually a horrible situation[br]because, you know, as someone who has had
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a real job knows, the very, very worst[br]part of any real job is when you finish
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the job but you have to keep working[br]because your boss will get mad. You know,
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you have to pretend to work because it's[br]somebody else's time. It's very strange
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metaphysical notion we have in our society[br]that someone else can own your time. You
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know, so since you're on the clock, you[br]have to keep working or pretend to be,
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make up something to look busy. Well,[br]apparently, at least a third of people in
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our society, that's all they do. Their[br]entire job consists of just looking busy
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to make somebody else happy. And that[br]must be horrible. So. And it made a lot of
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political sense. Why is it the people seem[br]to resent teachers or autoworkers? After
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the 2008 crash, the people who really had[br]to take a hit were teachers and auto
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workers. And there was a lot of people[br]saying, well, these guys are making 25
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dollars an hour, you know? Well, yeah,[br]that's they're providing useful service or
0:15:50.350,0:15:53.977
making cars. You're American. You're[br]supposed to like cars. You know, cars is
0:15:53.977,0:15:57.220
what makes you what you are if you're[br]American. How would they resent
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autoworkers? And I realize that it only[br]makes sense if there's huge proportions of
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the population who aren't doing anything[br]and were totally miserable and are
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basically saying, like, yeah, but you get[br]to teach kids, you get to make stuff. You
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get him in a car. And then you want[br]vacations, too? That's not fair, you know?
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It's almost as if the suffering that you[br]experience doing nothing all day is itself
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a sort of validation of... It's like this[br]kind of hair shirt that makes you
0:16:32.509,0:16:38.399
justifies your salary. Whereas people and[br]I truly hear people saying this logic all
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the time that while teachers, you know, I[br]mean, they get to teach kids. You don't
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want people pay them too much. You don't[br]want people who are just interested in
0:16:48.269,0:16:53.290
money taking care of our kids, do we?[br]Which is odd because you never hear people
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say you never want greedy people. People[br]are just interested in money taking care
0:16:59.110,0:17:04.800
of our money. So therefore, you shouldn't[br]pay bankers so much. Though you'd think
0:17:04.800,0:17:09.930
that would be a more serious problem,[br]right? Yeah. So there is this idea that if
0:17:09.930,0:17:16.970
you're doing something that actually[br]serves a purpose, somehow that should be
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enough. You shouldn't get a lot of money[br]for it. All right. So so. As a result of
0:17:26.930,0:17:33.570
this there is actually an inverse[br]relationship, that I don't have actual
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numbers for this, but there's actually an[br]inverse relationship, and I have seen
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economic confirmation of this, between how[br]socially beneficial your work is and how
0:17:44.500,0:17:50.360
obviously your work benefits other people[br]and how much you get paid. There's a few
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exceptions like doctors, which everybody[br]talks about. But generally speaking, the
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more useful your work, the less they'll[br]pay you for it. Now, now. This is
0:18:01.140,0:18:06.790
obviously a big problem already, but[br]there's every reason to believe that the
0:18:06.790,0:18:10.800
problem is actually getting worse. And one[br]of the fascinating things I discovered
0:18:10.800,0:18:17.070
when I started looking at the economic[br]statistics is that if you look at jobs
0:18:17.070,0:18:21.080
that actually are useful and let's again[br]look at caregiving. Remember, the big
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growth in jobs over the last 30 years has[br]been in two areas which have collapsed in
0:18:26.880,0:18:30.940
the term service, but are really actually[br]totally different. One is these sort of
0:18:30.940,0:18:35.010
administrative, clerical and supervisory[br]work and the other is the actual
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caregiving labour, the work where you're[br]actually helping people in some way. So,
0:18:41.340,0:18:47.910
education and health are the two areas[br]which show up on the statistics. Okay, if
0:18:47.910,0:18:53.060
you look at these statistics, you discover[br]that productivity in manufacturing, as we
0:18:53.060,0:19:00.980
all know, is going way up. Productivity in[br]certain other areas, wholesale, business
0:19:00.980,0:19:09.370
services are going up. However,[br]productivity in education, health and...
0:19:09.370,0:19:15.390
What's this other services? Basically[br]caregiving in general insofar as it shows
0:19:15.390,0:19:22.310
up on the charts, productivity is actually[br]going down. Well, why is that? That's
0:19:22.310,0:19:26.940
really interesting. Yeah, well, we'll talk[br]in a moment about what productivity
0:19:26.940,0:19:34.088
actually even means in this context. But[br]here's a suggestion as to why. This is the
0:19:34.088,0:19:37.630
growth of physicians on the bottom versus[br]the growth of actual medical
0:19:37.630,0:19:44.300
administrators in the United States since[br]1970. That's a fairly impressive looking
0:19:44.300,0:19:52.800
graph there. Basically, what that sort of[br]a giant mountain there is what I called
0:19:52.800,0:20:00.800
the bullshit sector. There's absolutely no[br]reason why you'd actually need that many
0:20:00.800,0:20:08.520
people to administer doctors. And actually[br]the real effect of having all those people
0:20:08.520,0:20:14.900
is to make the doctors and the nurses less[br]efficient rather than more. Because I know
0:20:14.900,0:20:18.870
this perfectly well from education,[br]because I'm a professor. That's what I do
0:20:18.870,0:20:25.140
for a living. The amount of actual[br]administrative paperwork you have to do
0:20:25.140,0:20:31.210
actually increases with the number of[br]administrators over the last 30, 40 years.
0:20:31.210,0:20:35.730
You know, something similar has happened,[br]isn't quite as bad as this, but something
0:20:35.730,0:20:41.640
very similar has happened in America, in[br]universities, that the number of
0:20:41.640,0:20:48.050
professors has doubled but the number of[br]actual administrators has gone up by 240,
0:20:48.050,0:20:57.490
300 percent. So. Well, more than that,[br]actually. Yeah, I mean. So, suddenly you
0:20:57.490,0:21:02.410
have like twice as many administrators for[br]professors as you had before. Now, you
0:21:02.410,0:21:05.570
would think that that would mean that[br]professors have to do less administration
0:21:05.570,0:21:09.650
because you have more administrators.[br]Exactly the opposite is the case. More and
0:21:09.650,0:21:14.150
more of your time is taken up by[br]administration. Well, why is that? The
0:21:14.150,0:21:21.050
major reason is because the way it works[br]is if you are hired, as you know, vice
0:21:21.050,0:21:25.960
provost, executive vice provost or[br]assistant dean or something like that.
0:21:25.960,0:21:31.061
Some big shot administrative position at a[br]virtual American university. Well, you
0:21:31.061,0:21:34.540
want to feel like an executive and they[br]give these guys these giant six figure
0:21:34.540,0:21:38.400
salaries. They treat them like they're an[br]executive. So if you're an executive, of
0:21:38.400,0:21:42.570
course, you have to have a minor army of[br]flunkies of assistants to make yourself
0:21:42.570,0:21:49.830
feel important. The problem is they give[br]these guys five or six assistants, but
0:21:49.830,0:21:56.370
then they figure out what those five or[br]six assistants are actually going to do,
0:21:56.370,0:22:03.330
which usually turns out to be make up work[br]for me. Right. The professor. So suddenly
0:22:03.330,0:22:09.940
I have to do time allocation studies.[br]Suddenly I have to do. I have to do, you
0:22:09.940,0:22:15.790
know, learning outcome assessments where[br]I describe what the difference with the
0:22:15.790,0:22:19.803
undergraduate and graduate section of the[br]same course is going to be. Basically
0:22:19.803,0:22:23.597
completely pointless stuff that nobody had[br]to do 30 years ago and made no difference
0:22:23.597,0:22:27.450
at all, to justify the existence of this[br]kind of mountain of administrators and
0:22:27.450,0:22:34.250
just give them something to do all day.[br]Now, the interesting result of that is
0:22:34.250,0:22:40.030
that, and this is where this sort of stuff[br]comes in, it's actually the numbers are
0:22:40.030,0:22:44.120
there. But it's very, very difficult to[br]interpret. So I had to actually get an
0:22:44.120,0:22:48.190
economist friend to sort of go through all[br]this with me and confirm that what I
0:22:48.190,0:22:52.240
thought was happening was actually[br]happening. Essentially, what's going on is
0:22:52.240,0:22:57.170
just as manufacturing, digitalization is[br]being employed to make it much more
0:22:57.170,0:23:01.890
efficient. Productivity goes up, the[br]number of workers go down, the number of
0:23:01.890,0:23:05.870
payment that, you know the wages are[br]actually going way up in manufacturing,
0:23:05.870,0:23:10.510
but it doesn't really make a dent in[br]profits because there's so few workers.
0:23:10.510,0:23:16.467
So, OK, that we kind of all know about. On[br]the other hand, in the caring sector, the
0:23:16.467,0:23:22.620
exact opposite has happened. Digitalization[br]is being used as an excuse to make lower
0:23:22.620,0:23:28.860
productivity so as to justify the[br]existence of this army of administrators.
0:23:28.860,0:23:35.620
And if you think about it, you know,[br]basically, you know, in order to translate
0:23:35.620,0:23:40.421
a qualitative outcome into a form that a[br]computer can even understand, that
0:23:40.421,0:23:43.990
requires a large amount of human labor.[br]That's why I have to do the learning
0:23:43.990,0:23:47.770
outcome studies and the time allocation[br]stuff, right. But really, ultimately,
0:23:47.770,0:23:57.940
that's to justify the existence of this[br]giant army of administrators. Now, as a
0:23:57.940,0:24:02.620
result of that, you need to have actually[br]more people working in those sectors to
0:24:02.620,0:24:06.061
produce the same outcome. These are[br]becoming less and less productive, more
0:24:06.061,0:24:12.600
and more of your time has to be spent. Oh,[br]yes. This is for the average company now
0:24:12.600,0:24:20.360
looks like. More and more of your time[br]ends up being spent sort of making the
0:24:20.360,0:24:24.570
administrators happy and giving them an[br]excuse for their existence. This is a
0:24:24.570,0:24:28.770
breakdown I saw in a report about American[br]office workers, where they compared
0:24:28.770,0:24:37.510
2015 and 2016. In 2015 only 46 percent of[br]their time was spent actually doing their
0:24:37.510,0:24:44.950
job. That declined by 7 percent in one[br]year to 39 percent. That's got to be some
0:24:44.950,0:24:49.380
kind of statistical anomaly, because if[br]that were actually true in about a decade
0:24:49.380,0:24:55.310
and a half, nobody will be doing any work[br]at all. But it gives you an idea of what's
0:24:55.310,0:25:00.990
happening. So if productivity is going[br]down, these people are just sort of
0:25:00.990,0:25:05.030
working all the time to satisfy the[br]administrators. So the creation of
0:25:05.030,0:25:09.280
bullshit jobs essentially creates the[br]bullshitization of real jobs. There is a
0:25:09.280,0:25:13.540
huge, there's both a squeeze on profits[br]and wages. More and more money is going to
0:25:13.540,0:25:19.910
pay the administrators. And you need to[br]hire more and more people. So what do you
0:25:19.910,0:25:24.810
get? Well, if you look around the world,[br]whereas labor action happening, basically
0:25:24.810,0:25:30.390
you have teachers strikes all over America[br]and professors strikes in the UK. You have
0:25:30.390,0:25:34.460
care home workers, I believe, in France.[br]They had nursing home workers first time
0:25:34.460,0:25:40.020
ever on strike, nurses strikes all over[br]the world. Basically, caregivers are are
0:25:40.020,0:25:47.510
at the sort of cutting edge of industrial[br]action. The problem, of course, and this
0:25:47.510,0:25:54.590
is the problem for the left is that the[br]administrators, who are in the basic class
0:25:54.590,0:25:58.880
enemy of the nurses, and I believe in New[br]Zealand, the nurses wrote a very clear
0:25:58.880,0:26:03.570
manifesto stating this. They said, you[br]know, the problem we have is that there's
0:26:03.570,0:26:09.570
all of these hospital administrators,[br]these guys, not only are they taking all
0:26:09.570,0:26:14.280
the money, so we haven't got a raise in 20[br]years. They give us so much paperwork, we
0:26:14.280,0:26:18.881
can't take care of our patients. So that[br]is the sort of class enemy of what I call
0:26:18.881,0:26:25.240
the caring classes. The problem for the[br]left is that often those guys are in the
0:26:25.240,0:26:31.340
same union and they're certainly in the[br]same political party. Tom Frank wrote a
0:26:31.340,0:26:37.790
book called "Listen Liberal", where he[br]documented what a lot of us had kind of
0:26:37.790,0:26:44.270
had a sense of intuitively for some time,[br]that what used to be left wing parties,
0:26:44.270,0:26:52.030
essentially the Clintonite Democrats, the[br]Blairite Labor Party. Talk about people
0:26:52.030,0:26:58.860
like Macron, Trudeau, all of these guys, at[br]essentially the head of parties, that used
0:26:58.860,0:27:06.650
to be parties based in labor unions and[br]the working classes and by extension the
0:27:06.650,0:27:11.720
caring classes, as I call them. But[br]have shifted to essentially be the classes
0:27:11.720,0:27:17.880
of the professional, I mean, the parties[br]of the professional managerial classes. So
0:27:17.880,0:27:21.650
essentially, they are the, you know, they[br]are the representatives of that giant
0:27:21.650,0:27:26.840
mountain of administrators. That is their[br]core base. I even caught a quote from
0:27:26.840,0:27:33.340
Obama where he pretty much admitted it,[br]where he said, you know, while people ask
0:27:33.340,0:27:39.040
me why we don't have a single payer health[br]plan in America, would that be simpler?
0:27:39.040,0:27:43.680
Wouldn't that be more efficient? And he[br]said, you know, well, yeah, I guess it
0:27:43.680,0:27:48.190
would. But that's kind of the problem. You[br]know, we have at the moment, like, what is
0:27:48.190,0:27:51.890
it to 3 million people working for Kaiser,[br]Blue Cross, Blue Shield, all these
0:27:51.890,0:27:55.430
insurance companies. What are we going to[br]do with those guys, if we have an
0:27:55.430,0:28:02.520
efficient system? I mean, so essentially[br]he admitted that it is intentional policy
0:28:02.520,0:28:11.650
to maintain the marketization of health in[br]America because it's less efficient and,
0:28:11.650,0:28:16.520
you know, allows them to maintain a bunch[br]of paper pushers in offices doing
0:28:16.520,0:28:19.761
completely unnecessary work, who are[br]essentially the core base of the
0:28:19.761,0:28:23.660
Democratic Party. I mean, those guys, you[br]know, they don't really care if they shut
0:28:23.660,0:28:27.580
down auto plants, do they? In fact, they[br]seem to take his glee. They say, well, you
0:28:27.580,0:28:30.610
know, economy's changing. You just gotta[br]deal with it. But the moment look at
0:28:30.610,0:28:33.890
those guys and the officers who were doing[br]nothing are threatened, the political
0:28:33.890,0:28:38.911
parties leap into action and get all[br]excited. All right. So if you look at what
0:28:38.911,0:28:47.590
happened in England. Well, it's pretty[br]clear that the conservatives won because
0:28:47.590,0:28:52.761
they maneuvered the left into identifying[br]itself with the professional managerial
0:28:52.761,0:28:59.210
classes. There is a split between the sort[br]of labor union base, which is increasingly
0:28:59.210,0:29:05.970
unions representing very militant carers[br]of one kind or another. And the
0:29:05.970,0:29:09.170
professionals, managers and the[br]administrators, both of whom are
0:29:09.170,0:29:17.570
supposedly represented by the same party.[br]Now, Brexit was a perfect issue to sort of
0:29:17.570,0:29:20.960
make the bureaucrats and the[br]administrators and the professionals into
0:29:20.960,0:29:25.310
the class enemy. Now, it's very ironic[br]because of course, in the long run, the
0:29:25.310,0:29:30.310
people were really going to benefit from[br]Brexit are precisely lawyers, right.
0:29:30.310,0:29:35.905
Because they got to rewrite everything in[br]England. However, this is not how it was
0:29:35.905,0:29:39.480
represented. It was represented your[br]enemies. I mean, there was an appeal to
0:29:39.480,0:29:45.240
racism, obviously, but there was also an[br]appeal: your enemies are these distant
0:29:45.240,0:29:53.690
bureaucrats who know nothing of your[br]lives. The key moment in terms of where
0:29:53.690,0:29:57.940
essentially the Tories managed to[br]outmaneuver Labor and guaranteed their
0:29:57.940,0:30:04.280
victory was precisely by forcing Labor[br]into an alliance with all the people like
0:30:04.280,0:30:07.970
the Liberal Democrats and the other[br]remainers, who then use this incredibly
0:30:07.970,0:30:13.990
complicated constitutional means to try to[br]block Brexit from happening. 20 minutes?
0:30:13.990,0:30:23.380
Okay, that's easy. And it was fun to watch[br]at the time on TV were all these you know,
0:30:23.380,0:30:29.160
like all these guys in wigs and strange[br]people called Black Rod and, you know, in
0:30:29.160,0:30:34.090
odd costumes, appealing to all sorts of[br]arcane rules from the 16th century. And it
0:30:34.090,0:30:37.850
was great drama. You know, it was like[br]costume drama come to life on television.
0:30:37.850,0:30:43.890
But in effect and you know, it seemed like[br]Boris Johnson was just being constantly
0:30:43.890,0:30:48.250
humiliated. Everything he did didn't work.[br]His plans collapsed. He lost every vote he
0:30:48.250,0:30:53.151
tried. But in fact, what it ended up doing[br]was it forced what was actually a
0:30:53.151,0:31:02.620
radical party which represented the angry[br]youth in the U.K. into alliance with
0:31:02.620,0:31:08.720
professional managerials, who live by[br]rules and whose entire idea of democracy
0:31:08.720,0:31:15.330
is of a set of rules. This is very[br]clear in America. And again, you could see
0:31:15.330,0:31:23.000
this in the battle of Trump versus Hillary[br]Clinton. Clinton was essentially accused
0:31:23.000,0:31:27.220
of being corrupt because she would do[br]things like, you know, get hundreds of
0:31:27.220,0:31:33.193
thousands of dollars for speeches for[br]investment firms like Goldman Sachs, who
0:31:33.193,0:31:36.910
obviously aren't paying politicians that[br]kind of money unless you expect to get
0:31:36.910,0:31:41.590
some kind of influence out of it. And[br]constantly like Clinton's defenders would
0:31:41.590,0:31:45.940
say. Yes, but that was perfectly legal.[br]Everything she did was legal. Why are
0:31:45.940,0:31:50.010
people getting so upset? She didn't break[br]the law. And I think that if you want to
0:31:50.010,0:31:57.700
understand class dynamics in a country[br]like England or America today, that phrase
0:31:57.700,0:32:02.711
kind of gives the game away, because[br]people of the professional managerial
0:32:02.711,0:32:09.210
classes are probably the only people[br]alive, who think that if you make bribery
0:32:09.210,0:32:19.640
legal, that makes it OK. It's all about[br]form versus, against content.
0:32:19.640,0:32:24.390
Democracy isn't the popular will.[br]Democracy is a set of rules and
0:32:24.390,0:32:28.811
regulations. And if you follow the rules[br]and regulations, well, you know, that's
0:32:28.811,0:32:33.161
fine no matter. And these guys, that kind[br]of mountain of administrators are the
0:32:33.161,0:32:38.120
people who think that way. And they've[br]become the base of parties, you know, they
0:32:38.120,0:32:44.000
are the electoral base of people like[br]Clinton, people like Macron, people like
0:32:44.000,0:32:56.850
Tony Blair had been, people like Obama.[br]And now. And Corbyn was not at all like
0:32:56.850,0:33:00.540
that. He is this person who had been a[br]complete rebel against his own party for
0:33:00.540,0:33:04.350
his entire life, but what they did, was[br]they maneuvered him into a position where
0:33:04.350,0:33:08.650
there had been a Brexit vote which[br]represented substance: the popular will.
0:33:08.650,0:33:13.240
And he was forced into a situation where[br]he had to, like align with the people who
0:33:13.240,0:33:18.620
are trying to block it through legalistic[br]regulation, essentially by appeal to
0:33:18.620,0:33:25.720
endless arcane laws. Thus identifying his[br]class with the professional managerials
0:33:25.720,0:33:30.320
and a lot of my friends who actually were[br]out on doorsteps. You know, they actually
0:33:30.320,0:33:33.970
seem to think of Boris Johnson as a[br]regular guy. I mean, this guy, his actual
0:33:33.970,0:33:38.800
name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel[br]Johnson. He is an aristocrat going back
0:33:38.800,0:33:43.810
like 500 years. But they seem to think he[br]was a regular guy. And Corbyn, who hadn't
0:33:43.810,0:33:50.990
even been to college and was was sort of a[br]member of the elite, based almost entirely
0:33:50.990,0:33:57.360
on that. And if you look at people like[br]Trump and people like Johnson, how did
0:33:57.360,0:34:02.880
they manage to pull off being populist in[br]any sense? You know, they're born to every
0:34:02.880,0:34:09.889
conceivable type of privilege. Basically,[br]they do it by acting like the exact
0:34:09.889,0:34:15.230
opposite of the annoying bureaucratic[br]administrator, who is your kind of enemy
0:34:15.230,0:34:21.260
at work? That's the game of images they're[br]playing, you know. So Johnson is clearly
0:34:21.260,0:34:24.929
totally fake. He fakes disorganization.[br]He's actually a very organized person
0:34:24.929,0:34:30.589
according to people who acutally know him.[br]But he's developed this persona. This guy
0:34:30.589,0:34:35.849
is all about content over form. And he's[br]sort of chaotic and disorganized. And so
0:34:35.849,0:34:39.609
they're basically playing the role of[br]being anti-bureaucrats and they maneuver
0:34:39.609,0:34:43.679
the other side into being identified with[br]administration, rules and regulations and
0:34:43.679,0:34:48.110
those guys who basically drive you crazy.[br]The question for the left, then is how to
0:34:48.110,0:34:52.849
break with that. So I have, what is it, 15[br]minutes in order to propose how we can
0:34:52.849,0:35:01.200
break...? It strikes me that that we need[br]to kind of rip up the game and start over.
0:35:01.200,0:35:09.490
We're in another world economically than[br]we used to be. And perhaps the best way to
0:35:09.490,0:35:13.390
do it is to think about what when people[br]say their jobs are bullshit, you know,
0:35:13.390,0:35:18.870
when people say that 37 percent of people[br]who say, if my job didn't exist, probably
0:35:18.870,0:35:23.210
the world be better off, I'm not actually[br]doing anything. What do they actually mean
0:35:23.210,0:35:26.910
by that? In almost every case, what they[br]say is that it doesn't really benefit
0:35:26.910,0:35:35.460
anymore. There is a principle that[br]ultimately work is meaningful if it helps
0:35:35.460,0:35:42.269
people and improves other people's lives.[br]Thus caring labor in a sense has become
0:35:42.269,0:35:46.910
the paradigm for all forms of labor. And[br]this is very, very interesting because I
0:35:46.910,0:35:53.599
think that to a large degree, the left is[br]really stuck on the notion of production
0:35:53.599,0:35:58.920
rather than caring. And and the reason we[br]have been outmaneuvered in the past has
0:35:58.920,0:36:03.369
been precisely because of that. I could[br]talk about the, you know, how this
0:36:03.369,0:36:07.380
happened. I think it really a lot of[br]economics is really theological. It's a
0:36:07.380,0:36:13.450
transposition of old religious ideas about[br]creation, where human beings are sort of
0:36:13.450,0:36:19.559
forced to feel like the story of[br]Prometheus, the Bible, you know, the human
0:36:19.559,0:36:26.279
condition. Our fallen state is one where[br]God is a creator. We tried to usurp his
0:36:26.279,0:36:29.990
position. So God punishes us by saying,[br]OK, you can create your own lives, but
0:36:29.990,0:36:36.329
it's being miserable and painful. So work is[br]both is both productive, it's creative.
0:36:36.329,0:36:43.170
But at the same time, it's also supposed[br]to be suffering. Whereas so we have an
0:36:43.170,0:36:48.190
idea of work as productivity. So I was[br]actually looking at these charts. You're
0:36:48.190,0:36:52.240
talking of the different productivity of[br]different types of work. Now I can see
0:36:52.240,0:36:57.430
where productivity of construction comes[br]in. But according to this, you can even
0:36:57.430,0:37:02.880
measure the productivity of real estate,[br]productivity of agriculture. Okay.
0:37:02.880,0:37:07.500
Productivity, I mean, everything is[br]production. What does productivity of real
0:37:07.500,0:37:12.060
estate...doesn't make any sense, you're[br]not producing anything, it's land. It sits
0:37:12.060,0:37:17.820
there. Our paradigm for value is[br]production. But if you think about it,
0:37:17.820,0:37:22.399
most work is not productive. Most work is[br]actually about maintaining things. It's
0:37:22.399,0:37:27.849
about care. If you think whenever I see,[br]talk to a Marxist theorist, wherever, they
0:37:27.849,0:37:31.869
try to explain value, which is what they[br]always like to do. They always take the
0:37:31.869,0:37:36.049
example of a teacup. They say, well,[br]usually they're sitting there with a glass
0:37:36.049,0:37:43.931
bottle, a cup. Well, look at this bottle,[br]you know. You know, it takes a certain
0:37:43.931,0:37:48.961
amount of socially necessary labor time to[br]produce this, say it takes, you know, this
0:37:48.961,0:37:53.940
much time, this much resources. It's[br]always about production of stuff. But a
0:37:53.940,0:38:01.870
teacup or a bottle. Well, you know. You[br]produce a cup once, you wash it like 10000
0:38:01.870,0:38:06.020
times. Most work isn't actually about[br]producing new things, it's about
0:38:06.020,0:38:13.619
maintaining things. We have a warped[br]notion, which really, it's a very
0:38:13.619,0:38:19.109
gendered. Real work is like male craftsman[br]banging away or some factory worker making
0:38:19.109,0:38:23.389
a car or something like that. It's almost[br]a paradigm for childbirth, right? Because
0:38:23.389,0:38:28.560
labor is supposed to be, the word labor is[br]very interesting, right? Because in the
0:38:28.560,0:38:32.779
Bible they say, they curse Adam to work[br]and they curse Eve have pain of
0:38:32.779,0:38:38.270
childbirth, but that's called labor. So[br]there's the idea that, you know, there's
0:38:38.270,0:38:42.220
this. Factories are like these black boxes[br]where you're kind of pushing stuff out
0:38:42.220,0:38:47.980
like babies through a painful process that[br]we don't really understand. And that's
0:38:47.980,0:38:51.970
what work mainly consists of. But[br]actually, that's not what work mainly
0:38:51.970,0:38:57.960
consists of. Most work actually consists[br]of taking care of other people. So I think
0:38:57.960,0:39:03.510
that what we need to do is we need to[br]start over. We need to realign. First of
0:39:03.510,0:39:08.890
all, think about the working classes, not[br]as producers, but as carers. And working
0:39:08.890,0:39:14.250
classes are basically people who take care[br]of other people and always have been.
0:39:14.250,0:39:19.480
Actually, psychological studies show this[br]really well, that you know, the poorer you
0:39:19.480,0:39:23.200
are, the better you are reading other[br]people's emotions and understanding what
0:39:23.200,0:39:29.619
they're feeling. That's because, you know,[br]it's actually the job of people to take
0:39:29.619,0:39:33.579
care of others. All rich people just don't[br]have to think about what other people are
0:39:33.579,0:39:40.460
thinking or they don't care, literally.[br]And so I think we need to A: redefine the
0:39:40.460,0:39:46.849
working classes as caring classes. But[br]second of all, we need to move away from a
0:39:46.849,0:39:50.920
paradigm of production and consumption as[br]being what an economy is about is if we're
0:39:50.920,0:39:57.070
going to save the planet, we really need[br]to move away from productivism. So I would
0:39:57.070,0:40:02.956
propose that we just rip up the discipline[br]of economics as it exists and start over.
0:40:02.956,0:40:03.876
Chuckles
0:40:03.876,0:40:08.749
Applause
0:40:08.749,0:40:13.340
So this is my proposal in this regard. I[br]think that we should take the ideas of
0:40:13.340,0:40:17.720
production and consumption, throw them[br]away and substitute for them the idea of
0:40:17.720,0:40:27.520
care and freedom. Think about it. You[br]know, thank you. I mean, even if you're
0:40:27.520,0:40:31.149
making a bridge, right, you make a bridge,[br]as feminists constantly point out,
0:40:31.149,0:40:34.919
you know, you're making a bridge because[br]you care that people can get across the
0:40:34.919,0:40:39.519
river. You know, you make a car because[br]you care that people can get around. So
0:40:39.519,0:40:46.359
even like production is one subordinate[br]type of care. What we do is, you know, as
0:40:46.359,0:40:51.300
human beings, as we take care of each[br]other. But care is actually and this is, I
0:40:51.300,0:40:57.329
think, something that we don't often[br]recognize closely related to the notion of
0:40:57.329,0:41:06.670
freedom, because normally care is defined[br]as answering to other people's needs. And
0:41:06.670,0:41:12.490
certainly that is an important element in[br]it. But no, it's not just that. Like if
0:41:12.490,0:41:16.509
you're in a prison. Right. They take care[br]of the needs of the prisoners, usually at
0:41:16.509,0:41:21.009
least to the point of giving them basic[br]food, clothing and medical care. But you
0:41:21.009,0:41:25.749
can't really think of a prison as caring[br]for prisoners. Right. Care is more than
0:41:25.749,0:41:32.640
that. So why isn't a prison a caregiving[br]institution, whereas something else might
0:41:32.640,0:41:39.560
be? Well, if you think about care, what is[br]the the kind of paradigm for carrying
0:41:39.560,0:41:46.400
relations? A mother and a child. Right. A[br]mother takes care of a child, or a parent
0:41:46.400,0:41:51.870
takes care of a child so that that child[br]can grow and be healthy and flourish.
0:41:51.870,0:41:56.140
That's true. But in an immediate level,[br]you know, you take care of a child so the
0:41:56.140,0:42:00.509
child can go and play. That's what[br]children actually do when you're taking
0:42:00.509,0:42:05.540
care of them. What is play? Play is like[br]action done for its own sake. It's in a
0:42:05.540,0:42:09.910
way the very paradigm of freedom, because[br]action done for its own sake is what
0:42:09.910,0:42:16.089
freedom really consists of. Play and[br]freedom are ultimately the same thing. So,
0:42:16.089,0:42:21.880
a production-consumption paradigm for what[br]an economy is, is a guarantee for
0:42:21.880,0:42:27.440
ultimately destroying the planet and each[br]other. I mean, even when you talk about
0:42:27.440,0:42:33.759
de-growth, you know, if you're working[br]within that paradigm, you are essentially
0:42:33.759,0:42:40.460
doomed. We need to break free away from[br]that paradigm entirely. Care and freedom,
0:42:40.460,0:42:44.319
on the other hand, are things you can[br]increase as much as you like without
0:42:44.319,0:42:50.599
damaging anything. So we need to think:[br]what are ways that we need to care for
0:42:50.599,0:42:54.259
each other that will make each other more[br]free? And who are the people who are
0:42:54.259,0:42:59.900
providing that care? And how can they be[br]compensated themselves with greater
0:42:59.900,0:43:07.520
freedom? And to do that, we need to like[br]actually scrap almost all of the
0:43:07.520,0:43:12.690
discipline of economics as it currently[br]exists. We're actually just starting to
0:43:12.690,0:43:20.280
think about this. I mean, because[br]economics as it currently exists is based
0:43:20.280,0:43:25.769
on assumptions of human nature that we now[br]know to be wrong. There have been actual
0:43:25.769,0:43:31.359
empirical tests of the basic fundamental[br]assumptions of the maximizing individual
0:43:31.359,0:43:35.850
that economic theory is based on. It turns[br]out they're not true. It tells you
0:43:35.850,0:43:40.599
something about the role of economics that[br]this has had almost no effect on economic
0:43:40.599,0:43:49.510
teaching whatsoever. They don't really[br]care that it's not true. But one of the
0:43:49.510,0:43:54.869
things that we have discovered, which is[br]quite interesting, is that human beings
0:43:54.869,0:44:00.359
have actually a psychological need to be[br]cared for, but they have an even greater
0:44:00.359,0:44:04.690
psychological need to care for others or[br]to care for something. If you don't have
0:44:04.690,0:44:11.010
that, you basically fall apart. It's why[br]old people get dogs. We don't just care
0:44:11.010,0:44:16.850
for each other because we need to maintain[br]each other's lives and freedoms. But our
0:44:16.850,0:44:20.660
own very psychological happiness is based[br]on being able to care for something or
0:44:20.660,0:44:29.010
someone. So what would happen to[br]microeconomics if we started from that?
0:44:29.010,0:44:33.900
We're doing actually a workshop tomorrow[br]on the Museum of Care, which we're going
0:44:33.900,0:44:44.450
to imagine in Rojava, which is in[br]northeastern Syria, where there is a
0:44:44.450,0:44:50.080
women's revolution going on, as you might[br]have heard. But it's in places like that
0:44:50.080,0:44:54.470
where they're trying to completely[br]reimagine economics, the relation of
0:44:54.470,0:45:01.369
freedom, aesthetics and value. Because at[br]the moment, the system of value that we
0:45:01.369,0:45:05.880
have is set up in such a way that this[br]kind of trap that I've described, and the
0:45:05.880,0:45:12.510
gradual bullshitization of employment,[br]where essentially production work has
0:45:12.510,0:45:16.200
become a value unto itself in such a way[br]that we're literally destroying the
0:45:16.200,0:45:23.309
planet. And in order to actually reimagine[br]a type of economics that wouldn't destroy
0:45:23.309,0:45:28.720
the planet, we have to start all over[br]again. So I'm going to end on that note.
0:45:28.720,0:45:36.339
Applause
0:45:36.339,0:45:44.609
Herald: David, thank you so much. I think[br]it's very interesting to also have some
0:45:44.609,0:45:49.619
political views now that we mix in all[br]sorts of technology and it goes very good
0:45:49.619,0:45:54.980
in the theme of Congress. Please, if[br]anyone has any questions line up by the
0:45:54.980,0:45:58.589
microphones and we'll go for that.[br]Unfortunately, in the beginning, I forgot
0:45:58.589,0:46:03.500
to mention that you can ask questions over[br]the Internet through IRC, Mastodon or
0:46:03.500,0:46:09.020
Twitter. And remember to use the channel[br]#borg and we'll make sure that they get
0:46:09.020,0:46:11.720
answered. So please microphone number[br]1
0:46:11.720,0:46:20.330
Q: When you when you observe the[br]productivity in healthcare going down, do
0:46:20.330,0:46:30.299
you have an explanation, according to new[br]liberal thinking, why hospitals, one with
0:46:30.299,0:46:35.079
more administrators, one with less[br]administrators, don't have competition
0:46:35.079,0:46:38.460
outcome that the hospital with less[br]administrators wins?
0:46:38.460,0:46:44.710
David: Haha, yeah. Well, one of the[br]fascinating things about the whole
0:46:44.710,0:46:49.849
phenomena of bullshitization and bullshit[br]jobs is that it's exactly what's not
0:46:49.849,0:46:53.700
supposed to happen under a competitive[br]system. But it's happened across the board
0:46:53.700,0:46:58.740
in every, equally in private sector and[br]public sector.
0:46:58.740,0:47:03.609
Q: Why?[br]A: That's a long story. But one reason
0:47:03.609,0:47:09.180
seems to be that, and this is why I[br]actually had managerial feudalism in the
0:47:09.180,0:47:22.750
title, is that the system we have, is[br]essentially not capitalism as it is
0:47:22.750,0:47:27.489
ordinarily described. The idea that you[br]have a series of small competing firms is
0:47:27.489,0:47:32.609
basically a fantasy. I mean, you know,[br]it's true of restaurants or something like
0:47:32.609,0:47:37.970
that. But it's not true of these large[br]institutions. And it's not clear that it
0:47:37.970,0:47:41.549
really could be true of those large[br]institutions. They just don't operate on
0:47:41.549,0:47:47.930
that basis. Essentially, increasingly,[br]profits aren't coming from either
0:47:47.930,0:47:53.910
manufacturing or from commerce but from[br]rather redistribution of resources and
0:47:53.910,0:48:01.900
rent, rent extraction. So that and when[br]you have a rent extraction system, it much
0:48:01.900,0:48:06.610
more resembles feudalism than capitalism[br]is normally described. You want to
0:48:06.610,0:48:10.390
distribute you know, if you're taking a[br]large amount of money and redistributing
0:48:10.390,0:48:14.970
it, well, you want to soak up as much of[br]that as possible in the course of doing
0:48:14.970,0:48:20.180
so. And that seems to be the way the[br]economy increasingly works. I mean, if you
0:48:20.180,0:48:25.700
look at anything from Hollywood to the[br]healthcare industry, you know what you've
0:48:25.700,0:48:29.960
seen over the last 30 years, the creation[br]of endless intermediary roles, which sort
0:48:29.960,0:48:36.839
of grab a piece of the pie as being[br]distributed downwards. It's... I mean, I
0:48:36.839,0:48:43.109
could go into the whole mechanisms, but[br]essentially the political and the economic
0:48:43.109,0:48:52.520
have become so intertwined that you can no[br]longer make a distinction between the two.
0:48:52.520,0:48:56.380
So you have a problem and this is where[br]you go back to the whole thing about the 1
0:48:56.380,0:49:01.319
percent. You're using political power to[br]accumulate more wealth, using your wealth
0:49:01.319,0:49:08.380
to create more political power. An engine[br]of extraction whereby the spoils are
0:49:08.380,0:49:14.480
increasingly distributed: we get these[br]very, very large bureaucratic
0:49:14.480,0:49:18.549
organizations and that's essentially how[br]our economy works.
0:49:18.549,0:49:22.040
Herald: Great thank you.[br]A: I mean, I could talk for an hour about
0:49:22.040,0:49:25.619
the dynamics, but that's that's basically[br]at it. You know, you could call it
0:49:25.619,0:49:31.059
capitalism if you like, but it doesn't in[br]any way resemble capitalism the way that
0:49:31.059,0:49:34.170
people like to imagine capitalism would[br]work.
0:49:34.170,0:49:39.000
Herald: Great. Awesome. Questions from the[br]Internet, please.
0:49:39.000,0:49:45.930
Q: How to best address this[br]caregiver class when the context of the
0:49:45.930,0:49:53.480
proletariat is no longer given to awake[br]their class consciousness?
0:49:53.480,0:49:58.559
A: How to address the caregiver when the[br]proletariat is no longer what?
0:49:58.559,0:50:03.420
Herald: Please repeat the question.[br]Q: How to best address the caregiver class
0:50:03.420,0:50:07.880
when the context of the proletariat is no[br]longer given to awake their class
0:50:07.880,0:50:10.319
consciousness?[br]A: Given to awake?
0:50:10.319,0:50:17.030
Q: I'm not sure what they're asking.[br]A: Yeah. I mean the question is how do you
0:50:17.030,0:50:25.490
create a class consciousness for that[br]class? Yeah. Well, that is the question. I
0:50:25.490,0:50:30.289
mean, first of all, you need to actually[br]think about who your actual class enemy
0:50:30.289,0:50:37.950
is. And I mean, I don't mean to be too[br]blunt about it, but the problem we have,
0:50:37.950,0:50:42.509
why is it that people are suspicious of[br]the left? And people like Michael Albert
0:50:42.509,0:50:49.799
were pointing this out years ago, that one[br]reason that actual proletarians were very
0:50:49.799,0:50:54.160
suspicious of traditional socialists in[br]many cases is because their immediate
0:50:54.160,0:50:59.700
enemy isn't actually, you know, the[br]capitalist who he rarely meets, but the
0:50:59.700,0:51:08.839
annoying administrator upstairs. And, you[br]know, to a large extent, traditional
0:51:08.839,0:51:13.940
socialism means giving that guy more power[br]rather than less. So I think we need to
0:51:13.940,0:51:19.080
actually look at what's really going on in[br]a hospital, in a school. And I use
0:51:19.080,0:51:22.640
hospitals and schools as examples, but[br]they're actually very important ones
0:51:22.640,0:51:29.820
because people have shown that in most[br]cities in America now, hospitals and
0:51:29.820,0:51:36.020
schools are the two largest employers:[br]universities and hospitals. Essentially
0:51:36.020,0:51:41.839
work has been reorganized around working[br]on the bodies and minds of other people
0:51:41.839,0:51:47.890
rather than producing objects. And the[br]class relations in those institutions are
0:51:47.890,0:51:54.900
not, you can't use traditional Marxist[br]analysis. You need to actually reimagine
0:51:54.900,0:51:59.049
what it would mean. Are we talking with[br]the production of people? If so, what are
0:51:59.049,0:52:03.210
the class dynamics involved in that? Is[br]production the term at all? Probably not.
0:52:03.210,0:52:09.369
Why not? That's why I say we need to[br]reconstitute the language in which we are
0:52:09.369,0:52:13.519
using to describe this, because we're[br]essentially using 19th century terminology
0:52:13.519,0:52:18.839
to discuss 21st century problems. Both[br]sides are doing that. The right wing is
0:52:18.839,0:52:23.989
using like, you know, neoclassical[br]economics, which is basically Victorian.
0:52:23.989,0:52:27.999
It's trying to solve problems that no[br]longer exist. But the left is using a 19th
0:52:27.999,0:52:31.940
century Marxist, you know, critique of[br]that, which also doesn't apply. We just
0:52:31.940,0:52:34.540
need new terms.[br]Herald: Thank you. I hope that answered
0:52:34.540,0:52:39.100
the question from the Internet. Microphone[br]number two, please.
0:52:39.100,0:52:46.789
Q: So, the question is basically, to what[br]extent can technology help? And the
0:52:46.789,0:52:52.520
subtext here is there's actually really[br]lots of projects now whose function at
0:52:52.520,0:52:57.769
some level is to automate management and[br]to the extent to which that can be molded
0:52:57.769,0:53:02.969
into removing this class that you're[br]talking about or somehow making it too
0:53:02.969,0:53:06.690
painful for them to exist. And some of[br]these projects are companies but some of
0:53:06.690,0:53:10.680
them are very independent things that have[br]very soft Marx ideas, but with tens of
0:53:10.680,0:53:14.559
millions in funding.[br]A: Well, that's the interesting thing,
0:53:14.559,0:53:20.130
that people talk about it all the time.[br]And there's this, but this is where power
0:53:20.130,0:53:29.250
comes in, right? I mean why is it that[br]automation means that if I'm working for
0:53:29.250,0:53:36.549
UPS, the delivery guy gets like tailorized[br]and downsized and super-efficient to the
0:53:36.549,0:53:41.900
point where our life becomes a living hell[br]basically. But somehow the profits that
0:53:41.900,0:53:46.849
come from that, end up hiring like, dozens[br]of flunkies who sit around in offices
0:53:46.849,0:53:55.530
doing nothing all day. One of the guys,[br]when I started gathering testimonies, I've
0:53:55.530,0:53:59.069
actually gathered several hundred[br]testimonies of people with bullshit jobs
0:53:59.069,0:54:02.929
or people who thought of themselves as[br]having bullshit jobs. And one of the most
0:54:02.929,0:54:07.519
telling was a guy who was an efficiency[br]expert in a bank. He estimates that 80%
0:54:07.519,0:54:11.069
of people who work in banks are[br]unnecessary. Either they do nothing or
0:54:11.069,0:54:18.220
they could easily be automated away. And[br]what he said was it was his job to figure
0:54:18.220,0:54:22.289
that out. But then he gradually realized[br]that he had a bullshit job because every
0:54:22.289,0:54:29.089
single time he proposed a plan to get rid[br]of them, they'd be shot down. He never got
0:54:29.089,0:54:34.200
a single one through. And the reason why[br]is because if you're an executive in a
0:54:34.200,0:54:39.079
large corporation, your prestige and power[br]is directly proportional to how many
0:54:39.079,0:54:43.530
people you have working under you. So, no[br]way are they going to get rid of flunkies.
0:54:43.530,0:54:47.329
That's just going to mean, the better they[br]are at it, the less important they'll
0:54:47.329,0:54:54.040
become in the operation. So somebody[br]always blocked it. So this is a basic
0:54:54.040,0:54:57.739
power question. You can come up with great[br]technological ideas for eliminating
0:54:57.739,0:55:02.390
people. People do all the time. But who[br]actually gets eliminated and who doesn't
0:55:02.390,0:55:09.749
has everything to do with power.[br]Herald: Great. Thank you. And last
0:55:09.749,0:55:11.930
question, please, from [br]microphone number 5.
0:55:11.930,0:55:16.129
Q: Can we maybe have one question[br]from a non-male person?
0:55:16.129,0:55:22.770
A: Yeah, that'd be nice.[br]Herald: Non-male person? Sorry, I am not
0:55:22.770,0:55:26.440
choosing questions based on stuff. We're[br]kind of choosing all around the hall.
0:55:26.440,0:55:29.789
Q: Ok, have fun.[br]Herald: Please, microphone number 5.
0:55:29.789,0:55:38.589
Q: Thank you for the opportunity to speak.[br]I really like your description of a
0:55:38.589,0:55:44.981
paradigm or that people are stuck on[br]production and consumption, and that you
0:55:44.981,0:55:50.160
would like to change the paradigm to a[br]paradigm towards more care and freedom, et
0:55:50.160,0:56:00.059
cetera. And for me, it kind of sounds a[br]little vague. And that's why I myself
0:56:00.059,0:56:07.670
think of basic income as a human right. As[br]the actual mean to break with the current
0:56:07.670,0:56:13.839
hegemonic, macroeconomic paradigm, so to[br]speak. And I was interested in your point
0:56:13.839,0:56:19.930
of view of that, of basic income.[br]A: Well, I actually totally support that.
0:56:19.930,0:56:29.719
I think that one of the major objections[br]that people have to universal basic income
0:56:29.719,0:56:34.670
is essentially people don't trust people[br]to come up with useful things to do with
0:56:34.670,0:56:40.550
themselves. Either they think they'll be[br]lazy, right, and won't do anything, or
0:56:40.550,0:56:46.440
they think if they do do something, it'll[br]be stupid. So we're going to have millions
0:56:46.440,0:56:50.510
of people who are trying to create[br]perpetual motion devices or becoming
0:56:50.510,0:56:58.390
annoying street mimes or bad musicians or[br]bad poets or so forth and so on. And I
0:56:58.390,0:57:03.710
think it actually masks an incredible[br]condescending elitism a lot of people
0:57:03.710,0:57:07.640
have, which is really the mindset of the[br]professional managerial classes who think
0:57:07.640,0:57:14.909
that they should be controlling people. If[br]you think about the fact that huge
0:57:14.909,0:57:18.819
percentages, perhaps a third of people,[br]already think that they're doing nothing
0:57:18.819,0:57:24.259
all day and they're really miserable about[br]it, I think that demonstrates quite
0:57:24.259,0:57:30.850
clearly why that isn't true. First of all,[br]the idea that people, if given a basic
0:57:30.850,0:57:34.619
income, won't work. Actually, there are[br]lots of people who are paid basically to
0:57:34.619,0:57:38.440
sit there all day and do nothing and[br]they're really unhappy. They'd much rather
0:57:38.440,0:57:46.440
be working. Second of all, if 30 to 40%[br]of people already think that their
0:57:46.440,0:57:51.820
jobs are completely pointless and useless,[br]I mean, how bad could it be? It's like,
0:57:51.820,0:57:55.750
you know, even if everybody goes off and[br]becomes bad poets, well, at least they'll
0:57:55.750,0:57:59.859
be a lot happier than they are now. And[br]second of all, one or two of them might
0:57:59.859,0:58:07.839
really be good poets. If just 0.001%[br]of all the people on basic income who
0:58:07.839,0:58:15.400
decide to become poets or musicians or[br]invent crazy devices, actually, do become
0:58:15.400,0:58:21.710
Miles Davis or Shakespeare or actually do[br]invent a perpetual motion device, well,
0:58:21.710,0:58:25.019
you've got your money back right there,[br]right?
0:58:25.019,0:58:28.989
Herald: Great. Thank you so much.[br]Unfortunately, that was all the questions
0:58:28.989,0:58:33.869
that we had time to. If you have any more[br]questions, please, I'm sure that David
0:58:33.869,0:58:39.280
will answer them if you come up here.[br]Thank you so much, David, for your time.
0:58:39.280,0:58:41.300
Please give him a great round of applause.
0:58:41.300,0:58:44.920
Applause
0:58:44.920,0:58:50.689
Outro
0:58:50.689,0:59:11.000
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