What's wrong with work and education, and why should we strive to

useless work

Remember the prediction of economist John Maynard Keynes that we work only 15 hours a week as early as 2030? That the level of our prosperity surpass all expectations and we will exchange an impressive share of our wealth on your free time? Actually it happened in another way. Our prosperity has grown significantly, but the free time we have not sea. Quite the contrary. We work more than ever. […]

But there is one piece of the puzzle that does not gets into place. Most people do not participate in the production of multi-colored covers for the iPhone, exotic shampoos with plant extracts or iced coffee and biscuits pounded. Our addiction to consumption is met mostly robots and fully dependent on the wages of the workers of the Third World. And although the productivity of agriculture and manufacturing industry in the past decade has grown rapidly, employment in these industries fell. Is it true that our work overload caused by the desire to uncontrolled consumption?

From the analysis Graeber shows that countless people spend their entire working life doing senseless, in their opinion, work as a specialist in ring up customers, personnel director, specialist promotion in

social networks, PR manager or one of the administrators at hospitals, universities and government agencies. That kind of work Graeber calls useless.

Even the people performing it, acknowledge in fact that this activity is superfluous.

The first article I wrote about this phenomenon caused by the flow of admissions. "Personally, I would prefer to do something really useful, - said a stockbroker - but I can not put up with the revenue decline." He also talked about his "amazing talented former classmates from the master's degree in physics ", is developing technologies for the diagnosis of cancer and to" earn so much less than I did, that it It is overwhelming. " Of course, the fact that your work is an important public interest and requires a lot of talent, intelligence and perseverance, does not guarantee that you'll be swimming in money.

And vice versa. Is is a coincidence that the spread of high-paying useless work coincided with the boom in higher education and the development of the knowledge economy? Remember, making money, creating nothing, is not easy. First you have to learn a very stilted, but meaningless jargon (absolutely necessary when visiting strategic cross-sectoral symposia to discuss measures to enhance the beneficial effect of co-operation in Internet community). Can scavenge each; career in banking is available to a select few.

In a world that is becoming richer and where all cows give more milk, and robots produce more and more products, there is more room for friends, family, social work, science, arts, sports and other things that make life decent. But even in it there is more room for all sorts of nonsense.

While we obsessed with work, Work and work again (even with further automation of useful activities and the transfer of its outsourced), the number of redundant jobs will only grow. Just like the number of managers in the developed countries, which has grown over the past 30 years and has made us one penny richer. On the contrary, studies show that countries with a larger number of managers in practice less performance and innovative. Half of the 12 000 professionals surveyed by Harvard Business Review, said that their work "Meaningless and insignificant," and the same number of respondents said they did not feel a connection with their mission company. Another recent survey showed that as many as 37% of UK workers believe that they are doing useless work.

And it is not all new jobs in the service sector are meaningless - far from it. Take a look at health, education, police and fire services, and you will find a lot of people, who every night go home knowing, despite their modest income, they have made the world it's better. "As if they were told:" You have a real job! And besides all this, you have the audacity to demand the same level of pensions and health care as the middle class "?" - says Graeber.

It is possible and in another way

All this is particularly shocking because what happens in the framework of the capitalist system based on capitalist values ​​such as efficiency and productivity. Politicians tirelessly emphasize the need to reduce the state apparatus, but for the most part silent about that useless jobs continue to multiply. As a result, the government, on the one hand, cuts the amount of useful jobs in areas related to health, education and infrastructure (which leads to unemployment), And on the other - has invested millions in the industry unemployment - training and supervision, which has long since not considered to be effective tools.

The modern market is equally indifferent to the utility and quality, and innovation. The only thing that is important to him - profit. Sometimes this leads to a delicious breakthroughs, and sometimes does not. Creating a useless job after another, whether it be for work or telemarketologa tax consultant has a solid foundation: you can make a fortune without making anything.

In such a situation only exacerbates the inequality problem. The more wealth is concentrated at the top, the higher the demand for corporate lawyers, lobbyists and specialists in high-frequency trading. In the end, the demand does not exist in a vacuum: it is formed as a result of constant negotiations, determined by the laws and institutions of the country and, of course, people who manage financial resources.

Perhaps this also explains why the innovations of the last 30 years - a time of growing inequality - not quite meet our expectations.

"We would like flying cars, and instead got 140 characters" - jokes Peter Thiel, who described himself as an intellectual of Silicon Valley. If the post-war era has given us such wonderful invention as washing machine, refrigerator, space shuttle and oral contraceptives, But recently we have an improved version of the same phone that we bought a couple of years ago.

In fact, everything becomes more profitable not to innovate. Just imagine how many discoveries was not done due to the fact that thousands of bright minds squandered himself on inventing highly complex financial products, in the end which brought only destruction. Or spent the best years of his life, by copying existing pharmaceuticals so that they differ from the original was insignificant, but still sufficient to brainy lawyer could write an application for a patent, and then your wonderful public relations department will launch a brand new promotion campaign is not so new medications.

Imagine that all of these talents were not invested redistribution wealth and their creature. Who knows, maybe we would have already appeared jetpacks, underwater cities and a cure for cancer. […]

Specialists on trends

If ever there were a place from which to begin the search for a better world, it is - the classroom.

While education may have contributed to the emergence of useless work, it was also the source of the new and tangible prosperity. If we make a list of ten most influential professions, teaching activities will be among the leaders. Not because the teacher gets the rewards like money, power or position, but because the teacher largely determines something more important - the direction of human history.

Maybe it sounds pathetic, but take an ordinary primary school teachers, which every year a new class - 25 children. So, in 40 years of teaching, he will affect the lives of thousands of children! Moreover, the teacher affects the personality of the students in their most pliable age. They, after all, children. The teacher not only prepares them for the future - he is also directly creates the future.

Therefore, our efforts will pay dividends for the entire society in the classroom. But there is almost nothing happens.

All relevant discussions related to education issuesRelating to its formal aspects. Ways of teaching. Didactics. Education consistently appears as an aid in the adaptation - the lubricant that allows less effort to slide through life. During a telephone conference on the issues of education, an endless parade of experts predicts Trends future and what skills will be essential in the XXI century: the basic words - "creativity", "adaptability" "flexibility".

The focus has always competence rather than values. Didactics, not ideals. "The ability to solve problems" rather than a problem to be solved. Invariably, everything revolves around one question: what knowledge and skills students need today to succeed in the labor market tomorrow - in 2030? And it is absolutely the wrong question.

In 2030-m high demand will be savvy accountants without problems of conscience. If current trends continue, countries like Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland will be even larger tax havens where Transnational corporations can effectively evade taxes, leaving developing countries are even more disadvantaged position. If the purpose of education - to take these trends as they are, rather than break them, the key skill of the XXI century is doomed to be selfish. Not because it is required by the laws of the market and technology, but only for the reason that, obviously, this is how we prefer to earn money.

We must ask ourselves another question: What knowledge and skills our children need to have in 2030?

Then, instead of anticipation and adaptation, we put at the heart of governance and capacity. Rather than think about what we necessaryTo make a living one way or another futile activity, we can think about how we we want earn. No specialist on trends will not be able to answer this question. And how could he do it? He just follows the trends, but does not create them. Do it - our task.

To answer, we need to examine ourselves and our personal ideals. What do we want? More time for friends, for example, or for a family? On volunteering? Art? Sport? The future of education should be to prepare us not only for the labor market, but also for life. We want to rein in the financial sector? Then, perhaps, we should teach budding economists philosophy and morality. We want greater solidarity between races, genders and social groups? We introduce the subject of social studies.

If we reconstruct education on the basis of our new ideas, the labor market happily follow. Let us imagine that we have increased the share of arts, history and philosophy in the school curriculum. You can bet that will increase the demand for painters, historians and philosophers. It is just as John Maynard Keynes imagined 2030 in 1930. Increased prosperity and effort robotics finally allow us to "appreciate the purpose of the above means and prefer the good benefits."

The meaning of a shorter working week is not that we could sit and do nothing, and that we could spend more time for those things that are truly important to us.

In the end, it is society - and not market or technology - to decide what is really valuable. If we want to see in this century we have become richer, we must get rid of the dogma, if any work has meaning. And if we talk about it, let's get rid of the misconception that high earnings are automatically reflects our value to society.

Then we may realize that in terms of creating a banker be worth values.

Dutch writer and philosopher Rutger Bregman called one of the most outstanding young thinkers of Europe. In "Utopia for realists," he introduces readers to the universal basic income ideas and fifteen-hour working week. As well as evidence of their results in the possibility and necessity, offering a new perspective on the structure of society.

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