Sorry I didn't mean to suggest that at all. When I wrote "the ills of unemployment go well beyond the loss of income" that was my way of saying loss of income is the first-order outcome of losing a job, but there are more complicated effects to consider.
The reason I focus on the other effects is that, in deciding how government/culture might rearrange itself to replace work, I think it's critical to see that work is about more than money--and the benefit of work is about more than a paycheck. It is about esteem, flow, purpose, community, a sense of meaningfulness in life, and it's not clear to me that all of those things comes with a monthly government check; so it's useful to think of ways we could replace these values in the future.
The article flat out assumes that "If John Russo is right, then saving work is more important than saving any particular job. Industriousness has served as America’s unofficial religion since its founding. The sanctity and preeminence of work lie at the heart of the country’s politics, economics, and social interactions.", and that "Most people want to work, and are miserable when they cannot."
Put succinctly, the article poses as its fundamental thesis that unemployment itself leads to social degradation. But I could find no actual supporting evidence for that claim.
The Youngstown example is just as likely a posterchild for the alternative theory: the dangers of unmitigated poverty.
Now, I grant you, social pressures likely lead people to feel shame and so forth in the face of unemployment. But that just means a cultural shift away from the idolization of work is necessary, not that we must find some way to employ those folks who might truly be unemployable.
Unemployment clearly leads to degradation, both of cities (Youngstown) and of individuals.
The question I think we're debating is whether the flow of causality goes unemployment->poverty->social degradation (this is your case, I think) or whether unemployment leads to social degradation more directly, even among people who don't currently need money (so, removing the variable of poverty) because it's a terrible blow to esteem, purpose, and community. I think there is a lot of evidence for this claim; see the section Paradox of Leisure.
I think there is a lot of evidence for this claim; see the section Paradox of Leisure.
I totally disagree.
The problem is that society, as it's structured today, does little to support the unemployed to provide the kind of social contact and meaningful activity that would offset depression and isolation.
In addition, there is a social expectation foisted upon the unemployed that they must become employed, and that expectation creates pressure, depression, and further isolation.
The fundamental issue is that we, as a society, have decided that unless you're working you're idle, and if you're idle you're useless.
Consider, there are many many retirees who manage just fine. Why? Because there's a social network put in place to support retirees... activity centers, social groups, travel clubs, etc. And a social expectation that retirees will specifically be idle!
Similar support mechanisms do not exist for the unemployed today because the unemployed are viewed as failures. Unemployment is not a valid life choice, and therefore society does nothing to support them.
This fundamentally comes down to the western idolization of work. Address that and I believe you'll address many of the psychological harms supposedly caused by a lack of employment.
If you think we should provide support mechanisms like activity centers for the unemployed, I think you'll love the fifth section of the piece where I say we should provide support mechanisms like activity centers for the unemployed!
I'm okay with disagreeing over the centrality of work. Some very smart people think that maintaining structured busy-ness is very important psychologically. Some people disagree. But it seems to me that we agree on many of the solutions, including a basic income and activity centers.
The issue IMO is mixing active and inactive yet potential population. There will be a pressure toward the inactive to contribute back. Those who accept to 'suffer' work (because you have to deal with unknowns and undesired workloads, so you may suffer) will rarely have the generosity to give to those who don't. And 'normally' inactives will feel bad about that too, unless they're cornered by society (bad access to learning and or new jobs).
>The reason I focus on the other effects is that, in deciding how government/culture might rearrange itself to replace work, I think it's critical to see that work is about more than money--and the benefit of work is about more than a paycheck. It is about esteem, purpose, community, a sense of meaningfulness in life, and it's not clear to me that all of those things comes with a monthly government check; so it's useful to think of ways we could replace these values in the future.
It is also about actually accomplishing something that needed doing. This is precisely why we want it to disappear: unfilled needs are bad.
Hi Falcolas, this is Derek Thompson, the author of the piece.
1. The quick answer is that we don't know how much of the misery of not working is from the financial shortfall of unemployment, vs the failure to meet a cultural expectation to work, vs some inherent need to feel productive, because it's just very hard to tease out the difference in reliable studies. How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a time when income is tied to work and there is a cultural expectation that everybody work?
That said, my best guess is that about half of the psychological misery of losing a job and being unemployed comes from the non-money stuff, like being bored and failing to meet a cultural expectation to work. (This is distinct from people who choose to stay home with kids, who have chosen to immerse themselves in an essential activity and often feel great pride -- and stress! -- in these jobs, even though they're not compensated with income). As I said in the piece:
"The post-workists argue that Americans work so hard because their culture has conditioned them to feel guilty when they are not being productive, and that this guilt will fade as work ceases to be the norm. This might prove true, but it’s an untestable hypothesis. When I asked Hunnicutt what sort of modern community most resembles his ideal of a post-work society, he admitted, “I’m not sure that such a place exists.”"
2. The fact that unemployed men seem to be less social overall suggests to me that their rise in leisure is about more than the daytime unavailability of peers. Because otherwise, wouldn't they just go drinking with buddies every night? This suggests, to me, some shame of being unemployed that leads to self-imposed isolation. In any case, the misery of unemployment suggests that we're just not very good, as a culture (and particularly men), at finding non-screen-based things to do with our time when work goes away.
3. Crime has fallen by A LOT in the last few decades so I didn't want to go too deep into predicting a rise in crime at a time when violent crime seems to be in structural decline. That said, for young, less educated black men, there are a variety of barriers to their participation in the labor force including racist bosses not wanting to hire them, an abundance of low-paying service sector jobs that seem feminine (they're in health care, government, and education), and the cultural and economic allure of the black market and gangs in some areas. This is a really short summary, but I think the allure of gangs and crime is very complicated.
4. One of the biggest differences between 1977 and today is certainly the decline in crime. Crime didn't spike during the Great Recession, surprisingly.
5. I thought that's what the piece was about! :) But seriously, the section labeled Government: The Visible Hand tries to address this question (or at least this question as I understand it) head on.
2. I know this is anecdotal, but when I was unemployed I often didn't socialize because I simply couldn't afford the luxury. Many social activities are fairly expensive, depending on your area, friends, and preferences.
Great point. This gets at the impossible endogeneity of the subject. Are the jobless miserable because they're poor, lonely, bored, or distraught? Well, perhaps they are lonely and bored because they can't afford to socialize. And perhaps they're distraught because they're failing to live up to a cultural expectation that, with more wealth and more redistribution, wouldn't exist. Etc etc.
One last thing, apropos of nothing except my stream-of-consciousness typing and the feeling that somebody might bring it up here, is that some people have pointed out to me on Twitter that I should have studied students or retired people, who both seem pretty happy and don't work. I don't accept the comparison. Students essentially have a job with school and a camaraderie on campus that the unemployed have lost when they lose the water cooler. (It is, perhaps, important to note that people choose to go to school in order to find a job, and what happens to college attendance if the expectation of full-time work takes a hit?) Retirees, for their part, do seem happy overall, but those with comfortable retirements are living on savings that they earned through work and they have the pride of having worked to earn their retirement. This is one of the hardest things about imagining the demise of a full-time workforce: Where else could this sort of pride come from?
You're still focused on a person only being able to gain value to society by working.
You're also conflating working to survive (our day jobs) with doing tasks or that you would can choose to do (the student attending a class, the retiree building sawhorses, the 20 something contributing to OSS, the full time homemaker). Not being required to do the first doesn't mean you're suddenly not doing the second as well.
Yeah, this came to mind as well. A night at the pub can easily run even a conservative drinker $20+, doing this every night (even when working) would be hard. And those costs appear in other activites as well - renting a field/equipment to play ball, renting a bowling lane, green fees for golf, tickets for events...
hiking, biking/rollerscating, enjoying a picnic, having friends over for card/board games, having a lan party are also valid and cheap/free alternatives :)
I regularly practice each of them and barely spend any money
hiking: I just do light hiking, and all I need is a couple of sandwiches, a backpack and my boots. And plenty of water. Plenty of hills/mountains around helps, that's true
biking/rollerscating: you can get a decent used bike for about $100
picnic: just the food, and you need to eat anyway
board games: unless you need to switch the game every week I'd say you're covered with about $50 per year. We mainly play Settlers of Catan and Chess
lan party: I guess it depends on the games, we don't do this much anymore, but we're pretty old school when we do (CS, Starcraft 1, Worms World Party)
There's probably lots of other activities like that, for example we play soccer/foot tennis on a public field, and all it costs us is the price of the ball
I'm unemployed right now and I won't do any of those. Here's why:
Hiking: Buy boots and suitable clothes. Fuel to get to suitable location.
Biking/Rollerskating: Buy equipment. Fuel to get to suitable location.
Picnic: transportation supplies. Fuel to get to suitable location.
Board games: Expensive. Fuel to get to suitable location.
Lan party: Buy games. Fuel to get to suitable location.
All it costs is fuel, utilities, rent, and food. For someone with no income, that is all I can spend money on, and it has to be justifiable. Not "Oh, I play board games every once in a while", because I don't want to have to pass up on a job interview because I stupidly spent my transportation money on board games. Or whatever else.
I hear what you're saying and I guess it applies for large cities (somewhat), but in our smaller city (~100k people) we just walk places. 15-25 minutes is just fun, especially in the warm season.
Picnics, games, sports, lan parties, we just do them at home or on the public domain
hiking and other stuff needs some transportation, we either go with public transport or carpooling
I'm not saying I understand your situation, just that you don't necessarily need to spend a lot of money (or any) to have some fun with friends.
Why doesn't a bike save you a lot of money on fuel? Keeping a car on the road is expensive, you can save on insurance too. Also you can take the bus. I know, it's a pain.
My biggest expense of a night at the pub is the cab ride to and from the pub since if I am going to drink I can't drive myself there. We don't have public transport.
1. > This might prove true, but it’s an untestable hypothesis.
Only if you attribute raising children, maintaining your house, or other activities as equivalent going to a desk job every day. I don't believe this is the case - I believe there is a pretty significant difference in doing things because you want to (raise children, beautify your house), and because it's required to put a roof over your head and food in your cupboard.
Given that, you can see if the guilt will fade just by looking at stay-at-home mothers and fathers, or by looking at retirees. Being a retiree is not much different from being unemployed, other than society (and consequently the retirees themselves) viewing them as having "earned it".
2. I agree with benaiah here - "drinking with buddies every night" would get damned expensive, even when you have a job.
3. I won't disagree with you, but it's something which needs to be investigated and addressed.
5. My reading of that section revealed a viewpoint which seems to only view the role of the government as a job creator/maintainer, which doesn't strike me as sustainable. At least, no more sustainable than just paying people directly.
For example, the government created quite a few jobs as part of "the new deal" - but where are those jobs today? Where are the workforces to maintain our bridges, our roadways, and the other parts of our failing public infrastructure? Those jobs disappeared, those workers retired or had to find another job (or were disabled by the hard labor and became wards of the state in another way).
Forcing people to work to survive seems old fashioned, and completely incompatible with the coming future of automation. We can forestall the day of 80%+ unemployment, but that will only make the drop-off that much more steep when it actually arrives. I'd personally rather we try and do something about it now, while the overall unemployment numbers are still below 50%.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to put this in earlier, but I do appreciate you taking the time to stop by and answer questions like these!
Joe, this is Derek, the author of the piece linked above. I think you make a good point. When I first heard Will explain "earning to give," a part of me considered it off-putting and radical, but I've come to see it as an expansive view of doing good, because I think there are a lot of people who (a) wouldn't be good at charitable work or (b) would be good at charitable work but are better at - and enjoy! - other work. For these people, it's inspiring to think they can make a huge difference, too.
There is always the question: What happens if you discourage too many wonderful, smart people from working at charities? And here, Will's answer would be, I think, that if that starts happening, then we should reevaluate the advice. But for now, I think, the earning to give philosophy carries tremendous upside for getting more people to think of themselves as essential contributors to charitable causes, no matter where they work.
As a counterpoint, a friend of mine was knocked by when she volunteered for a local charity. "What qualifications do you have?"
The question sounds elitist, but the point was that charities often have metric shitloads of untrained helping hands. What they need, right now, is people that know how to manage, run finances, computer networking. Advanced skillsets.
I actually think the 'earning to give' mindset would really just end up as more consciential salve rather than a new way of thinking, much like people already do with minor donations. "Working on Wall St" changes the way you think. Case in point: another friend of mine was in a relationship with a hardcore Anarchist for 5 years, and came from a poorish middle-class background herself. She'd worked shitty working class jobs. She was pretty exposed to the plight of the poor and aware of poverty issues. Then she got a job in banking. A year later she got a raise of $10k, and she was negative about it, bitching about "the government taking half in tax" and it going to "useless welfare". Complaining that despite her tax load (seriously, got a raise, and all she could do was complain), she still had to help out her single-mother sister with money. Welfare was worthless, why should she have to pay so much tax? She got a bit of a shock when I said "So... what about all those other women like your sister who don't have a sister in banking?".
And here in our software bubble, I have a friend who earns 50% more than the national average household income (average, not median). He talks as if he's poor - and I see similar when I read conversations here on HN. It's awfully common for a software developer to see someone else doing the same thing and making a few dollars more, to then reclassify themselves as 'poor'.
The point is that where you work and who you associate with change who you are and how you behave - and, ultimately, have a good chance of removing people from the pool of 'people who care' (like my banker friend above). I guess that it's not that she didn't care, it's just that she no longer saw...
I think that's a really important concern. At 80,000 Hours when we encourage people to earn to give we ensure they're embedded in the effective altruism community, take things like the Giving What We Can Pledge and so on - mechanisms by which to ensure that our future selves don't fail to live up to our ideals.
It's also worth bearing in mind that the rate of people becoming disillusioned when they do direct work in charities also (anecdotally seems to me) to be very high. Reason is that it's often very hard, often you don't feel like you're having much of an impact. Whereas if you enjoy working in the lucrative career you're in, the 'sacrifice' of donating even 50% isn't really that great, so it's potentially easier to continue in that path. I'm genuinely really unsure which has the greater dropout rate: earning to give, or direct charity work. If I had to bet I'd say it was direct charity work.
I actually already think that earning to give isn't the best path for most altruistic people who would be willing to work anywhere. This is a change of view from a few years ago. The reasons are: i) quite a few people are already very successfully earning to give and need really amazing opportunities to donate to; ii) a rising number of very wealthy people are donating most of their wealth (e.g. Giving Pledge). This means that on the margin we really need more talent to spend these donations well.
What I do think is:
- donating to highly effective charities (e.g. GiveWell recommendations) is a means by which anyone who's got a job in an affluent country can make a truly massive difference
- earning to give should be an option that's at least on the table for altruistically minded folks
- as you say, for people who would really enjoy very high-earning careers they shouldn't necessarily think "well I should do something I enjoy less because what I'm doing now doesn't have much social value." (I shudder when I see high-flying lawyers or financiers quitting and doing non-profit consulting outside their area of expertise). Via earning to give, these people really can have their cake and eat it.
- some careers are dual-benefit - e.g. entrepreneurship can generate huge social value in and of itself, and also be very lucrative
- for young people, the most important thing in the short term if you want to do good in the long term is to build skills, and you often build more skills in for-profits than in non-profits. While there, you should earn to give.
Overall I think that at the moment maybe 10% of the altruistic people who would be happy working anywhere should aim to earn to give long-term. It depends a lot on cause, though - some areas are more money-constrained; some more talent-constrained.
You are: a higher up at a very large company, whose process in some ways causes human suffering. Let's say the product, or byproduct causes cancer, and part of your job even, is to dispel the people who call your company out.
Who it better for you to,
(a Continue working the job, giving a very unreasonable amount of your salary to charity, which incidentally, attempts to research ways this human suffering
(b Work a different job that causes significantly less suffering (all jobs exploit someone/something else, let's be honest), but also causes you to make significantly less
(c Quit your career and join the Peacecorps full time, until retirement, using intelligent ways to invest in your previous earnings.
a2) Continue working the job for now, donate a substantial fraction of your income to charity, climb the ladder as rapidly as possible, and work to change the company in a direction you consider preferable if you think it's salvageable. (While there's a small set of jobs that are nearly irredeemable, such as the folks in a tobacco company or free-to-play gaming company researching how to make their product more addictive, there's a much larger set of jobs with a balance of questionable activities, with potentially some amount of influence over those activities.)
Interesting thought exercise: suppose you woke up tomorrow with the position (and requisite skills and connections) of running a company most people would consider irredeemable, such as a tobacco company. Could you, within a reasonable number of years, turn them into a well-respected company that's a net positive influence on society (and not just by dismantling them and donating the results)? I'd bet I could, within 8-10 years. (A bit less for a company for which the plan doesn't involve a few components of scientific research and advancement.)
You bet you could turn a tobacco company into something that's a net positive for society in 8-10 years? I'd like to see you try.
No, really, I actually would. I'm pretty sure it would do more good for humanity than working in computer science and donating your spare income to a cause you believe is an efficient use of your disposable income, even if you're particularly well paid or hit the startup jackpot...
I think what he was saying was if he woke up the CEO of a tobacco company and everyone he knew, all of his connections, everyone who worked at his company and, most importantly, the shareholders were on board with his plan... He could then pivot the company into something beneficial.
Right, it's not just for seed capital, it's for ramping up. Like Case said, most job creation doesn't come from a couple founders in a small office or a 50,000 person multinational company. It comes from getting out of the small office.
But that's exactly it. It's not how well you can pay attention to A and B at the same time. It's about how fast your brain goes A to B and back to A without losing acuteness.
The latter. Germany is responsible for about $280 bill. But this is a fund. We don't know how much will actually have to be footed by the govt/people when it's all over. TARP cost much, much less than its first price tag. The bailout of Greece will probably cost mcuh more than today's price tag.
They say the same thing about not being able to sleep. Get up, stretch, do something small and deliberate to clear your head (like drinking a glass of water), and then come back after you've self-corrected.
Excellent point. My 'favorite' comment on the article page is the guy who says ads don't work very well, except for the majority of people, whom he calls "sheeple."
You can't say that ads don't work and also argue that most people are too mindless to ignore them!
The reason I focus on the other effects is that, in deciding how government/culture might rearrange itself to replace work, I think it's critical to see that work is about more than money--and the benefit of work is about more than a paycheck. It is about esteem, flow, purpose, community, a sense of meaningfulness in life, and it's not clear to me that all of those things comes with a monthly government check; so it's useful to think of ways we could replace these values in the future.