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Digital serfs

22/6/2018

7 Comments

 
Picture
Reeve and Serfs, Queen Mary's Psalter, 1310
One-hour jobs, cheap cab rides, cheap food deliveries … Geoff Ellis asks whether the digital economy has freed us or enslaved us.
By Geoff Ellis
 
IN MEDIEVAL times the lord of the manor ruled our days. Life was tough, but fair, as long as you grew his crops and tended his cows.
 
On a recent Saturday people gathered at a scattering of tables in Wonthaggi Library to consider our place in the digital economy and whether we had in fact gone full circle.
 
There was a time when banks were full of tellers, offices were full of clerks and newspapers were written by hard-drinking idealists. Factories were full of workers. Libraries were full of ssshhhhhh!
 
Back then, as a storeperson, I started each day with a pile of picking slips and a newspaper in my back pocket. At the end of the day I left a row of pallets and a half-done crossword for the cleaner.
 
Every day was the same, except for Fridays, when we downed pens early to sweep the floors until our wages were ready to be collected. Promptly at 3.30pm the queue formed to the left of the barred pay office window. The line moved so, so slowly. There was plenty of discussion about the weekend ahead. Once the envelope was in my hand I was gone till Monday morning. “See ya!”
 
Many of my co-workers worked Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Penalty rates and overtime put their kids through high school and university.
 
If Monday came too quickly, or the boss was an arsehole, Friday afternoon was an opportunity to search through the cards at the Commonwealth Employment Service. It was either full time employment or the beach back then. Your choice.
 
As wages and conditions improved, the counter reaction was continuous improvement – the quest to reduce the number of employees. Computers and digitisation accelerated
that trend.
 
This was evident in the library that Saturday. Banks of computers are there, alongside the books and magazines. Self-check-outs beep and the librarians are as busy as ever, though these days you can talk without being shushed.
 
Beyond that sanctuary, life’s a bit crueller than it was in the 70s.
 
Most of us are surplus to requirements. Most bank tellers have been replaced by ATMs, and clerks have been superseded by spreadsheets. Impoverished journos starve on principle. The factories are in China.
 
The CES has been privatised into Job Network service providers. Centrelink is all about on-line compliance, with robo-debt fresh in our minds.
 
So much of higher education is now digital that university buildings are almost redundant. Missed tutorials can be accessed on-line. Rather than read all those papers, keyword searches can be used to mark the content.
 
Workers have flexibility – they can do as many jobs as they can cram into a day. Online platforms such as Airtasker enable unemployed people to bid against one another for short-term casual jobs.
 
These days casual might mean an hour. Employment is more tenuous but employers are saving money. Which they pass on to the consumer.
 
What work there is is tenuous; the digital employment market doesn’t provide continuity. But if you have no money in the bank and your purse is empty, can you afford to argue about that next task, no matter how short the shift or bizarre the job?
 
Banks won't lend money if there isn't a full-time job to fund the repayments. Insecure work leads to insecure housing. The founder of Airtasker has decreed that the banks need to change their policies.
 
The upside is cheapness. In the city, Deliveroo is so cheap it doesn’t make sense to go out.
 
If you have a task that needs to be done, list it on Airtasker and wait for the lowest bid.
 
In England Uber drivers are sleeping in their cars so they don’t miss a job, but the fares are cheaper.
 
Our group discussion covered these aspects and more. One thing we discussed in detail was the effect of decreased social contact, the value of that lost interaction and how to replace it.
 
I never realised how much we learned from those people behind us in the queues.
 
The Wonthaggi ethics discussion group meets fortnightly at the Wonthaggi Library. Next meeting: Saturday June 30, 2pm. All welcome. 
​
7 Comments
Margaret
23/6/2018 09:56:16 am

A great article Geoff Ellis. I sometimes wish we could take back some of what we have left behind. Some of those changes have added more stress to our lives. We don’t live a simple life anymore and we won’t ever get it back. Life is governed by so many things out of our control to a point where we really don’t know whose making the decisions for us. Life is traveling at such a pace that we almost meet ourselves coming back. Has technology been good for us? In some ways yes in others a definite no.

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bob middleton
23/6/2018 10:44:47 am

Oh Geoff your ethics discussions sounds so depressing.
I wonder if in say 20 years from now we may look back in time and yearn for a return to these bad days of yore.

Reply
Geoff Ellis
25/6/2018 12:21:40 pm

Bob,

Some of the topics might be grim but gathering around the intellectual bonfire to warm our hearts and minds is very uplifting.

There is always another chair......

Geoff

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Pete Granger
24/6/2018 10:24:53 pm

Geoff.
Mathematically, we should gain as much as we lose in terms of the effects of technology. In reality, some gain far more than others, and this is reflected in the ever increasing disparity between rich and poor. We currently have a Federal Government proposing taxation reforms which consolidates this disparity. Apart from the housing sector, those who are losing the most make things with their hands. They are being replaced by cheaper overseas labour and now, robots and digitisation. Those who process information are next in line to be replaced by increasingly powerful digital alternatives. Historically, new industries are created and people are re-deployed. However, this replacement has increasingly become menial, poorly paid and inconsistent. Moreover, there are limits to our capacity to redeploy where the intensiveness of our physical and mental labour is being so relentlessly and comprehensively undermined by technology that otherwise enhances our lives. Our industrial currency is increasingly related to an ability to think rather than just do, to decide rather than being instructed, to innovate rather than just preserve. It is unclear where it will end other than nations will need to have the right education, the right demographics and be in a constant state of growth to have any possibility of underwriting their future requirements. Either this, or evolving digital technologies might have to be taxed in a manner which proportionally cross-subsidises the mere existence of those it makes redundant. If so, this should happen sooner rather than later to send the appropriate market signals.

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Geoff Ellis
26/6/2018 09:24:38 am

Pete,

I read this well thought out piece twice - and I fully concur, though 'the constant state of growth' bodes ill for the environment and, as you imply, those who work with their hands are falling behind - perhaps this is a good argument for a universal wage so that our 'hands on' people aren't forced to go cap in hand.

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Pete Granger
27/6/2018 09:51:55 pm

Geoff,
I doubt a ‘universal wage’ as such will work. Finland (which has plenty of spare cash) has already tried, and they appear to be scrapping it. https://news.sky.com/story/line-18-is-welfare-really-working-11344078
It tends to eliminate incentive. Take this away and human beings do the somewhat expected. Consolidate their dependency rather than independence from the state. Which, in the long-term, can be self-defeating. Perhaps Britain’s ‘Universal Credit’ is somewhat of an improvement on this. My own view is the state should underwrite employment for everyone who is unemployed, particularly as the working population is being made increasingly redundant by digitisation and globalisation. And that a ‘living wage’ is subject to reasonable performance, and is cross-subsidised by taxes commensurately applied on technologies which displace human labour. I can envisage the Abbottical response - ‘A big new (technology) tax ! So, good luck to any politician willing to dive into the deep end on this one. Hopefully, the work would be meaningful. For example building state or national infrastructure (including digital infrastructure) that delivers a long-term return to the nation rather than just the usual short term. Such a program would require a very sharp civil service. Another option is to provide a ‘living wage’ for those who are unemployed, unpaid volunteers – just so long as the work has significant social benefit. In short, tax technologies which displace human labour, and use the revenue to fund the building of long-term (not necessarily short-term) infrastructure by those made more permanently redundant by these technologies. It wont be easy, but it may become essential.

Geoff Ellis
27/6/2018 10:21:26 pm

Hi again Peter,

Didn't know Finland is going back. I agree with your points about a living wage tied to performance and, if it was up to me I'd push for "provide a ‘living wage’ for those who are unemployed, unpaid volunteers – just so long as the work has significant social benefit" as we are well down the path for this already - not so much the green army or work for the dole but volunteers at community driven projects. There are currently any number of over fifty year old workers who perform a number of volunteer hours at registered 'charities' rather than look for work and this could be expanded and formalised. Community groups, such as the Harvest Centre are well served by such volunteers and, with a little extra resourcing could provide many more worthwhile opportunities and 'work'.

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