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A
shorter workweek would create more jobs and could help stop the unsustainable
cycle of rampant consumption and resource wastage.
Pollution
mounts. It's time for us to collectively
climb off the hyperconsumption-hyperproduction treadmill. Our environment and biosphere -- some see it
as "Mother Nature'; the ancient Greeks called her Gaia -- can no longer
accommodate unrestrained consumption and production. By continuing to ignore this increasingly obvious
truth, we permit the murder of the very thing that keeps us all healthy and
alive: our "Mother' Gaia. Therefore, somehow, we must collectively find
a way to focus our production on the goods and services we most need, and somehow begin to pare back most all the rest. This means gradually bringing to an end much
of, if not most all of, the production of the most superfluous. But how many people would lose their jobs in
this transition? Obviously millions would,
-- unless . . unless we somehow succeed in making the transition to the 21-hour
workweek, so that the work that remains can be shared, and so that the burden
on Gaia can be greatly reduced.
As Michael Coren at FAST Company recently
said, "To
save the world -- or even just make our personal lives better -- we will need
to work less."
As
Coren points out, a 40-hour week in factories once was necessary, but is no
longer. Most of us have more "stuff'
than we know what to do with. Hence
storage lockers costing anywhere from $50 to $150 or more per month have
sprouted up everywhere. Most garages are
stuffed to
the gills, even as garage sales proliferate.
But so does pollution and global climate change proliferate. This means that our workaholic behavior and
madcap rates of consumption are totally out of step with what should be our
most fundamental human priorities and the kind of steady-state economy we need.
To
lay the foundations for a "steady-state" economy -- one that can
continue running sustainably forever, this recent paper argues that it's time for advanced
developed countries to transition to a new normal: the 21-hour work week.
This
does not mean a mandatory work week
or some kind of leisure-time police, says Coren. People could choose to work as long, or
short, as they please. What we're
talking about is resetting social and political norms re: the freedom to work fewer hours per
week, if you want -- without having to be subjected to the
penalties (such as no benefits) that today accompany such a choice.
This
is to say that the day when 1,050 hours of paid work per year becomes the
"new standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade
unions, employees, and everyone else" (50 weeks a year times 21 hrs./week
equals 1050 hours) . . is not far off -- nor should
it be.
Gaia
is telling us that three days a week, for 7 hours each, or four 5-hr. days, is
plenty. And let's face it, with all of
today's computerized technology and automation, there's no longer nearly enough
work to keep the large majority of us busy 40 or 50 hours a week, which is the
amount of work-time most employers try to squeeze out of us, to generate the
profits they crave. But the only way to
keep that many people that busy is to
somehow con most of them into buying and consuming a whole lot of crapola that
they don't really need. And think of the
cost, in terms of pollution, resource wastage and global warming, that results
from that! Not to mention the heart
attacks and strokes from overwork, lack of exercise, and compensatory greasy-food-&-alcohol
indulgence.
The
New Economics Foundation (NEF) argues
that there is nothing natural or inevitable about what's considered a
"normal" 40-hour work week today.
Because of that traditionally imposed normality, many people remain
caught in a vicious cycle of work and consumption. They live to work, work to earn, and earn to
consume. Missing from that equation is
an important fact that researchers have discovered about most material
consumption in wealthy societies: so much of the pleasure and satisfaction we
gain from buying is temporary, ephemeral, and mostly just relative to those
around us (who, when they see what we buy, and have, they also strive to consume still more, which leads to a kind of self-perpetuating
spiral). What we see on TV and in the
movies also compels many of us to buy, want and consume much more than we would
otherwise want. And when American movies
and TV programs are shown in the poorer countries, it has the same poisonous
effect there.
The
NEF argues that if we want to achieve truly happy lives, we need to challenge
social norms and reset the industrial-age time clock that's ticking in our
heads. NEF sees the 21-hour week as
integral to this for two reasons: it will redistribute paid work, offering hope for
achieving a more egalitarian society. (Right
now too many are overworked, while others must, because of that, remain underemployed or even unemployed.) The redistribution of work would give all of us, men and women alike , the time (and
the means) to enjoy the things we value but all too seldom have the time to do (at least not well) -- things such
as care for our family, travel, walk, bike, play tennis (for example), read or
continue learning -- as opposed to merely helping to speed up the
hyperconsumption-hyperproduction treadmill that is ruining our environment,
radically changing our climate, and forcing us into Mideast wars because of the
petrol we so desperately need in order to keep the capitalist treadmill going
full speed. (All those goods must not
only be manufactured, they must also be transported by petrol-burning trucks,
ships, planes and trains.) Finally, all
this crapola must eventually be driven
to the dump or the recycling plant.
As
Coren points out, creating US/EU (EuropeanUnion)-level living standards for the entire world by 2050 would require a six-fold increase in the size of
the global economy, with potentially
devastating environmental consequences.
So instead of growing the world economy, the US and the EU must take the
lead in recalibrating and/or reorganizing our societies to make everyone
happier and successful with less. China
opens up a new coal-fueled electrical power plant every week! But for how long can
this continue without ever worsening environmental consequences? And unless they are shown
another way, isn't the rest of Asia going to follow in China's footsteps? What will prevent that from eventually
happening? Then in South America as well? What then of global climate craziness and
extreme weather events? And at what
point does ever more violent and crazy weather (ever larger monster typhoons,
tornadoes and hurricanes of absolutely unprecedented size and destructive force)
wreak more destruction than the value of all
the extra consumer goods we are producing with all this extra work (with
which most people are now saddled)?
"The
proposed shift towards 21 hours must be seen in terms of a broad, incremental
transition to social, economic, and environmental sustainability," says
the NEF in its report.
The
challenges are great, none more so than figuring out how to make most of
society be able to live on half of their current income.
No
doubt, many will label this as "socialism' or worse. Many will object to being told that 21 hours is the new normal, or
that 40-50 hours is too much for most people to be forced into.
Remember
what John Maynard Keynes said in 1930 about the goal of future societies. He wrote that by the start of the 21st
century, we would work only 15 to 20 hours a week, and that we would be focusing
on how to win freedom from pressing
economic cares. Could Keynes prediction
come true this century? Should it? And if not, why not?
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