This slide says it all to me. In 1780, 80% of people did not have a Job. In fact the very idea of a Job was outside of the comprehension of most. Unless you were a peasant, how could you work using that kind of contract? Nearly all work was family centred.
By 1980, nearly everyone had a Job. It is what all politicians worry about. If you don't have one, there must be something wrong with you.
But as you see, now 40% of us don't have a Job and the news this week suggests that soon there will be more.
When I see this, I don't see "no" Jobs. I see the end of the "Job" as the normal way we work and the end of the Corporation as we know it as the giant of the economy.
In their mature phase large corporations are really simple financial organizations. Whatever makes the money is what they do. First they move the jobs to low cost areas of the world. Then they take out even that labor. Then they use IP as a revenue stream. They make products that they know are bad for everyone and protect their position by buying the regulators.
They don't do much that is useful or real anymore.Worse, many of them make the world worse. I don't think that this is a plot. I think that this is an outcome of the design. If you were a CEO you would do the same thing.
What we can do is to stop worrying about the next Job. It wont come anyway. Start working instead on recreating an economy that is based on mobilizing all of us in networks to do the things that are useful. Such as feed us. Such as house us. Such as help us get well. Such as help our kids grow up well. You know all those boring things that we did not do when we had that really important job selling sugar water or shuffling paper.
It would help as well if politicians woke up too. The Jobs is dead and the large corporation is a vulture. Get behind your people and get behind real work that is going to make your place live again.
We need a new kind of capitalism. We have the workforce - let's get to it
