LEARN THE ISSUES
"Advocating Economic & Personal Change" |
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Boredom at Work People have been complaining of boredom at work since the start of the industrial revolution. For now, first of all, let me simply remind you that the economic system under discussion, that I am advocating we change, is called "capitalism." That's "CAPITAL-ism." There's a huge clue right there as to the nature of this system. You'll notice that the system is not called Joe-ism, or Mary-ism, or Henry-ism, or Linda-ism. It's called capitalism because the system is based on capital, which means plant, equipment, labor, natural resources, and anything else relevant to conducting business operations to produce profit for an owner. The capitalist system is not about you (or me), which means that it is not based on your needs, your wants, your desires, your preferences, your comfort, or your happiness at work, or at home. Your boredom at work is principally rooted in the rule of capitalism dictating that production costs for each company be kept as low as possible, because if the product or service costs less to produce or provide, the consumer can be charged less money and will find that product or service attractive relative to its competitors. To keep production costs as low as possible, production must be "standardized," meaning that each part of the production process must be done in the exact same way all the time. This is why during the early years of capitalism Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. Each worker doing a highly circumscribed (i.e. limited) task or series of tasks and nothing more, in a specific way with no decision-making by the worker involved is understood as the best way to lower the cost of the work. So, as a worker all you might do all day long is turn a screw with a screwdriver, or if you're lucky maybe you'll turn a few screws. But that's it; that's all you'll do, and you'll usually have no say whatsoever in how the work is done--the boss, acting on behalf of the owner or perhaps the boss is the owner--will tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. It's all about keeping costs low, so more customers will buy the product, so profits can stay high for the company selling that product. In other words, your work is structured for the benefit of the owner and the efficient use of his capital. It's CAPITAL-ism, remember? In assessing or otherwise thinking about your boredom at work, I might caution that, as you may have noticed, the capitalist ruling class has been methodically introducing computers and robots into the workplace for years now, and the pattern continues unabated. You, and me, will likely be replaced by a computer or robot as soon as one is available that can properly do our work. When workers are bored they can make mistakes. Machines don't suffer boredom and don't tend to make mistakes, in any case. So, now you know why you are bored at work. It is principally because one of the iron laws of capitalism is that the owner, to maximize profit and in same cases just to remain in business, must always seek the cheapest and fastest way to get the work done, which these days, in fact, is to have a computer or robot do it. Employers who must still use human workers must ensure that the worker emulate a computer or robot, that is, a machine, as closely as possible. Accordingly, the owner must ensure that one worker is not assigned too many jobs, or too much to think about, and simply does the prescribed job in the prescribed manner; this will help ensure that as much work as possible gets done as fast as possible. This way the product or service can be priced as low as possible, which makes it more attractive to consumers in the marketplace. If you are unhappy about your boredom at work, and don't want your children and their children to suffer the same fate, if you want a system based on people, based on you and me, you must join together with me and other like-minded people to transition from capitalism to a Cooperative system, which would indeed be based on people--that's almost its entire point. Based on people, the enjoyment of the work would be, and indeed without the pressure of competition and the profit mandate, could be structured (i.e set up) to allow for human enjoyment and fulfillment. More to come on this topic. |
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