[zygomega]

A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'. The current structure presumes that the right to receive a proportion of economic goods of a society should be strongly associated with employment. But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity, the 'right to work' ethic concentrates power in the hands of the managerial classes in charge of job placement, who are very good at inventing new ways to pretend that this is all economically beneficial.

The truly horrendous problem with all of this is that our standard of living is statistically quite high so the system is sustainable for a long while, until it eventually collapses under it's own weight of pointlessness.

[task_queue]

'Right to work' is a specific term used in the US to designate labor legislation used to cripple unions and shouldn't be confused with a general 'right' to employment.

The choice in terminology had me very confused on the first read.

[saym]

> But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just wondering if there's any research that's quantified this idea. I have no idea how you qualify meaninglessness and economic productivity.

[parasubvert]

"But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity"

That's highly debatable (the word "most", specifically). I've heard the argument before, but there is a reason we have labor productivity statistics that try to quantify this.

"A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'."

This isn't just a fault line, this is the foundation of market economics for the purpose of human welfare. You participate in the economic system by trading your resources, e.g. land, labour/time, capital, and knowledge.

At first glance, we seemingly never have enough time in the developed world, so lack of jobs implies there seems to be a problem in the distribution and renewal of knowledge.

If a market can't work for the world's exchange problems, we're currently fucked as to a lack of functional and pareto efficient alternatives.

[zygomega]

> there is a reason we have labor productivity statistics that try to quantify this

Productivity measures have been pretty screwed since services became the dominant labour form. If my dog groomer decides to charge me an extra 20% then her productivity has gone up by 20% - she is now producing an extra 20% of services per hour.

> But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity

I have no proof of this at all - just an anecdotal gut feel. For every content producer where I work, we have 2 agile coaches, a LEAN coach, 2 marketing types (who are probably the really productive workers - promoting and protecting an established brand monopoly), 5 ops and dev supporters (in an unreachable call centre somewhere in the world), and then an endless pyramid of middle and upper management overseeing all this process. Within this context, no one every got a pay upgrade by volunteering to reduce the size of their empire.

And, also within this context, there is a lot of unhappiness that I put down to lack of meaningful labour output making the world a better place. Meanwhile, my leisure time productivity has exploded - I consume whatever media I want in whatever form I want whenever I want. I'm at the lower socio-economic end of my tiny middle-class ecosystem but my diet would be the envy of the kings of yesteryear.

My point being is that we already have too much stuff in the world, and the existing system of trading labour for putting food on the table just encourages more stuff. I would agree that we are far from pareto efficient and are, in fact, trapped in a scheme where scarce resources like primary goods and human time are wasted. But I have no idea what the solution might look like.

[parasubvert]

> Productivity measures have been pretty screwed since services became the dominant labour form.

That's not accurate. Productivity is at its most basic a measure of aggregate output for hours worked. That works for any kind of economic activity as it all boils down to dollars vs. time/person (blending in management and administrative overhead).

> If my dog groomer decides to charge me an extra 20% then her productivity has gone up by 20% - she is now producing an extra 20% of services per hour.

That's not how it works. Presumably if your dog groomer did that, she'd either be really good, or you'd switch groomers. Or if there were a scarcity of groomers, you might choose to groom your dog less often.

The amount of money made for the hours worked has to be viewed in aggregate as part of the overall market. If all businesses in a region raised their prices by 20%, and worked the same or less hours, that would be a sign that there's been a gain in productivity, because it eliminates opportunity cost and marginal utility tradeoffs and looks at the complete domestic market for all goods and services in an area.

> I have no proof of this at all - just an anecdotal gut feel. For every content producer where I work, we have 2 agile coaches, a LEAN coach, ...

I feel you. There are countless individual cases of waste and overhead in the private and public sectors. But I think this has almost always been the case in organized human endeavours. Think about the 1960s and 70s where there were football field sized rooms of typists, or layers upon layers of "strategic planners" (GM used to have a hierarchy 21 levels deep). Or the pervasiveness of sustenance farming in the early 1900s vs. the productivity of today's farmers. It really has gotten better.

In our industry for example, where I work (Pivotal) we do extreme programming and carry that philosophy of smaller teams, customer speaks with one voice, to content and product design. We will pair on each role, one from our company and one from the customer, so on a given mobile app, web content project, or web app (and I mean real commercial ones, from brands you probably know): 2 product managers, 1-2 designers, 4 developers/ops of which one is the anchor, maybe up to 2 part time QA. Maybe some support marketing people surrounding this team, and maybe 2-3 senior execs/managers around it between the customer and our own management. That's it. We can get a lot done in a few months.

I have also seen teams of 120 people attempt to do the same amount of results of our small teams in double the time.

Productivity stats mix the both and weigh down the whole sector, but imagine when the small team approach becomes widely used? This is what we are seeing more and more with IT outsourcing where the traditional outsources are getting slowly squeezed. It'll take many years, but it's hard to unsee better ways of working.

I agree that capital and headcount represents power in many large organizations but with the appropriate competition incentive and leadership, agility and time to market and cost are usually what lead to coups to the old order.

> Meanwhile, my leisure time productivity has exploded - I consume whatever media I want in whatever form I want whenever I want. I'm at the lower socio-economic end of my tiny middle-class ecosystem but my diet would be the envy of the kings of yesteryear.

I think that statistically in the USA, leisure time is mostly flat / slow growing the past few decades, and actually shrinking for those with more education as they work longer hours . Some interesting data here: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/how-did-...

This seems to correlate with my theory in the OP that we have a knowledge distribution problem in the labour market. Fewer people know certain specialized things and need to work longer because of it.

> My point being is that we already have too much stuff in the world, and the existing system of trading labour for putting food on the table just encourages more stuff... But I have no idea what the solution might look like.

One person's stuff is another person's food - even if there is waste, someone does have to actually make/harvest/move/package/market the stuff eventually. But I get your point.

[dan00]

> This seems to correlate with my theory in the OP that we have a knowledge distribution problem in the labour market. Fewer people know certain specialized things and need to work longer because of it.

This might be the case, but I also think that the more complex work gets, it gets harder to split it between multiple people without a lot of organization, so it's "easier" if one person just works longer.

[nosuchthing]

Modern (market/captial) economies aren't an all or nothing system; tax law, regulations, and social programs are very influential and the diversity among policies for various 1st world countries show the "market" economics is a fluid force that is channeled through the framework of rules we create and modify.