Free Labour: A Hypothetical
This is a little strange and curious to see what faults lie within it ignoring the practicality of applying such an idea in reality.
This is more of a thought experiment and an exploration of positives and negatives NOT a realistic proposal
Simply put, how about setting up a scheme where people only receive pay on a week on week off basis. In this sense paid labour will be more readily distributed so every job today would be divided between two people.
This is most applicable to manufacturing rather than other areas of work - an obvious problem. It would be impossible to impose such restrictions on people whose work is never immediately paid (an artist ir designer). For labour it would be required that people halt paid labour (contracted to week on week off) 50% of the time. This doesn’t mean you can stop them from taking part in endeavors that have a ‘long term’ value in terms of selling their own private produce.
I got to wondering about this idea because it would probably help a large section of society to take part in private activities simply for personal pleasure, but also as a means to profit from their passions. Would this effectively create a world fo freelancing where longterm contracts were disposed of or is there a possibility of this scheme working and effectively doubling employment.
Note: I am not looking at the practicality of this idea. Meaning it is quite obvious that such a scheme is open to exploitation. Assuming the system isn’t massively abused what other problems or benefits can you imagine arising.
Thanks
This is more of a thought experiment and an exploration of positives and negatives NOT a realistic proposal
Simply put, how about setting up a scheme where people only receive pay on a week on week off basis. In this sense paid labour will be more readily distributed so every job today would be divided between two people.
This is most applicable to manufacturing rather than other areas of work - an obvious problem. It would be impossible to impose such restrictions on people whose work is never immediately paid (an artist ir designer). For labour it would be required that people halt paid labour (contracted to week on week off) 50% of the time. This doesn’t mean you can stop them from taking part in endeavors that have a ‘long term’ value in terms of selling their own private produce.
I got to wondering about this idea because it would probably help a large section of society to take part in private activities simply for personal pleasure, but also as a means to profit from their passions. Would this effectively create a world fo freelancing where longterm contracts were disposed of or is there a possibility of this scheme working and effectively doubling employment.
Note: I am not looking at the practicality of this idea. Meaning it is quite obvious that such a scheme is open to exploitation. Assuming the system isn’t massively abused what other problems or benefits can you imagine arising.
Thanks
Comments (14)
This sounds like an emphasis on leisure time. Have you read "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell? There was also some debate once about job sharing. It's interesting that there's so little public discussion these days about leisure time. Now it's jobs jobs jobs.
Edit: I have personally seen evidence of people developing opportunities for themselves in their leisure time when they work a few days a week and make an income from it.
Quoting I like sushi
I imagine a lot more people investing their time in things that give them pleasure and satisfaction. It’s not hard to imagine the knock-on effects of that. What the consequences of having a smaller income are I’m not sure? Quite a lot of money is invested in having a job, transport, clothes, etc.
Leisure time is a difficult thing. We love our weekends and we love the public holidays. It gives us a chance to indulge in our private lives, which generally takes second place to our public life. Family and friends seem to come together more naturally in this extra time. With more time we seem to be able to balance our priorities more effectively. But anecdotal evidence suggests a problem for many retirees with the amount of time on their hands. It’s a similar situation for those on unemployment, though the circumstances have different consequences.
People seem to need something, maybe a challenge, which work supplies. Youths without direction tend to get into trouble, work, even though they might resent it, at least creates a sense of purpose.
So let’s assume only a small percentage of the population take up this leisure time and successfully turn it into an occupation that fulfils them and creates some sort of income. Where would they stand in society, how would they be viewed by the rest, as someone lucky, someone talented and exceptional, or even a separate class to be valued differently than everyone else?
Play without work very soon stops being playful.
You’ve just repeated what I said.
I have first hand experience with this in a video game fandom where I started a project that was too big for me to handle on my own and welcomed anyone else’s help with it and for decades now have “employed” dozens of volunteer creative people of all types in collaboratively creating a work of love that’s now one of the biggest things in that community.
I have a bunch of other projects that I would love to do similar things with, I just don’t know how to find the right community to help with them. My philosophy book is one of them (and I have vague aspirations that a community like this one might someday be of use in a future version of that), and I also have an absolutely enormous multipart work of fiction outlined (in 60k words just for the outline) that would take me 30 years just to novelize myself but I would ideally have a huge multi-media work of music, visual art, film, etc (the origins of the story are backstories from abandoned video game projects from over two decades ago). I could easily “employ” an army of volunteers for an entire lifetime fleshing just that project out, if there were people with the time to contribute and I had the time to manage them all. And that’s all just me, one creative person. I’ve met lots of other people with similarly big dreams that could use just as many hands realizing them.
Quoting I like sushi
If the scheme has as it primary purpose creating more employment then I think there’s a problem when you begin the scheme by reducing employment, i.e. week on, week off employment. But part of it does remind me of the people who once travelled across the country reading poetry to people who probably couldn’t read and had never heard of such things, and performing plays outdoors, or minstrels singing about love and loss, and all of them earning a small income from it while they spread something beneficial across the land.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The problem is that whatever opportunities exist for people they’re still in need of an income, and it has to be a real income, not subsidised by government.
If they worked week on, week off, they lose half their income.