Economic Personalities for our Grandchildren
November 18th, 2012 | Published in Political Economy, Work | 5 Comments
Given the [origins](http://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/introducing-saint-monday/) of my blog's name, I've avoided posting on Mondays. But I don't get paid for doing this, and so this was a misbegotten impulse for the reasons I explain below.
Yesterday I heard two interviews that helpfully recontextualize some common economic arguments about money and motivation, and provide another angle on the discussion of jobs in my [last post](http://jacobinmag.com/2012/11/hostess-and-the-limits-of-the-private-welfare-state/). The first is [with singer Chris Cornell](http://www.npr.org/2012/11/18/165213392/armed-with-age-and-experience-soundgarden-returns) of the recently re-formed Soundgarden, talking about what got him into music:
> I got a GED based on Catholic school seventh-grade education, really. I didn't make it that far. I have all those regrets now. ... I just kind of went into the blue-collar workforce at a really young age and discovered music, in terms of being a musician, around the same time. The good news is, I was probably 17 when I knew that's what I was going to do with the rest of my life, no matter what that meant. Even if that meant that I had to be a dishwasher or a janitor to support being in a band that I love and writing music that I love, I would be happy with that. So I feel fortunate. In spite of my lack of education, I didn't lack direction.
The second was with the writer Fran Lebowitz, on [Jesse Thorn's show "Bullseye"](http://www.maximumfun.org/bullseye/bullseye-jesse-thorn-fran-lebowitz-karriem-riggins-and-mark-frauenfelder). After Thorn asks her about the erratic appearance of her work, Lebowitz relates that she loved to write as a young woman, but developed crippling writers' block once she began to get paid to write. She posits that she is "so resistant to authority, that I am even resistant to my own authority." She later declares herself to hate work and be incorrigibly lazy, but the earlier comment hints at a more complex explanation. Transforming writing into an economic compulsion seems to have undermined intrinsic motivation, consistent with a long line of research in [behavioral economics](http://www.danpink.com/books/drive).
There's nothing particularly original or shocking about these interviews. We all know that people are motivated by much more than money. Just today, I saw two posts on this theme, from [Nancy Folbre on child-rearing](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/of-parents-puppies-and-robots/) and [Matt Yglesias on people who take reductions in income in return for job satisfaction](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/11/19/job_amenitiy_value_the_most_neglected_subject_in_economics.html). Yet according to the hegemonic common-sense form of economic reasoning, neither of these people should exist. If you want someone to do something, the common argument goes, you should give them a financial incentive. But Cornell isn't motivated by money, if we take him at his word (and even if he really wouldn't have kept at it without stardom, there are many others who do.) And Lebowitz is actively *de*-motivated to write by getting paid for it, illustrating the adage that the best way to ruin something you love is to
make it your job.
It's people like this that I'm thinking of when I say that with reductions in working time and something like a generous [Universal Basic Income](http://www.usbig.net/index.php), we would begin to [discover what work people will continue to do](http://www.peterfrase.com/2010/02/do-they-owe-us-a-living/) whether or not they get paid for it. That's not to say that all work can be taken care of this way; it's hard to imagine an inverse of Chris Cornell who takes a day job as a rock singer to fund his passion for dishwashing. But we can at least start asking why we don't make an effort to restrict wage labor to areas where it actually incentivizes something.
This relates to a topic Mike Konczal brings up in his [new *American Prospect* article](http://prospect.org/article/great-societys-next-frontier), about the debate between proponents of the UBI (like me), and those like the sociologist Lane Kenworthy who prefer policies that are tied to participation in wage labor, like the Earned Income Tax Credit. Kenworthy worries about the disincentive to employment that a UBI would create, but I'm more interested in the way that it would open up space for people to do socially desirable but non-remunerated things (and also to reconsider how we distribute the burden of socially desirable but personally unpleasant work). We already have *too much* wage labor, from this perspective, so we shouldn't be so worried about getting more of it. So I agree, in a sense, with Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute of all people, who [says we should champion](http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/bad-arguments-libertarianism-merit) "a system where productivity allows people to be artists,
record store clerks, or even bums." Of course, Burrus calls that system "the free market", where I would locate it in something rather different.
It's because of people like Cornell and Lebowitz, perhaps, that I don't worry as much as Keynes did, in ["Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren"](http://marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our-grandchildren.htm), about how people will find ways to use their expanded leisure time. He posed it as humanity's "permanent problem---how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure . . . to live wisely and agreeably and well". It's a theme recently brought up anew by Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky and his philosopher son Edward, who return to ancient philosophy's preoccupation with defining the good life in their fascinating (yet maddening) book [*Enough*](http://www.amazon.com/How-Much-Enough-Money-Good/dp/1590515072). But I ultimately have a lot of optimism about what people are capable of, and I believe a socialist future would, among other things, bring us more music and literature from the Chris Cornells and Fran Lebowitzes than does the system we live
in now.
November 19th, 2012 at 2:44 pm (#)
Peter. Don’t ever stop writing.
Have you considered studies of lottery winners as an answer to the question of “what work people will continue to do whether or not they get paid for it?” Unfortunately most of these studies are focused very narrowly on wages, wealth and occasionally subjective happiness.
Clearly a UBI creates a very different social context from an individual winning the lottery, but your argument seems to be that working class people are constrained from doing creative things due to the necessity of engaging in wage work. If there really is a large amount of latent self-expression (whether it takes the form of art or of working in a record store), we should see that in lottery winners. On the other hand, if lottery winners just do a lot of consumption until they are out of money, your premise that there is a substantial amount of work people will do without getting paid for it needs some reconsideration.
Know of any such studies? If not, will somebody do one?
November 19th, 2012 at 2:51 pm (#)
I don’t know of a study that looks at quite this issue, which I agree would be quite interesting. There are studies, however, that show that winning the lottery doesn’t have the negative effects sometimes ascribed to it, especially if the sum won isn’t incredibly massive: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/03/30/will-winning-the-lottery-ruin-your-life/
November 19th, 2012 at 3:39 pm (#)
“[T]he best way to ruin something you love is to make it your job.” That’s been my experience. The main problem is that once it’s your job, “it” isn’t really your job. What’s really your job is managing and meeting the expectations of whoever is paying you, which are rarely of the form, “Just do what you like.”
“[I]t’s hard to imagine an inverse of Chris Cornell who takes a day job as a rock singer to fund his passion for dishwashing.” True, but washing dishes might be a great job for a robot. I know you know this, but it’s missing from objections along the lines of, “OMG, if we had a UBI, who would wash our dishes?!” Even now, with existing technology, robots could do many jobs that are done by people merely because there’s a vast supply of poor people. I found it darkly amusing to read recently that Foxconn has replaced some people with robots in its electronics factories; it’s darkly amusing, because fully 25 years ago, before the great free trade bonanza, NeXT computers were built at a factory in Fremont, CA “staffed” mostly by robots. Of course, given the currently widespread assumption that only people who are either employed or wealthy should be allowed to enjoy food, shelter, etc., advances in robotics are a potential menace to much of the world’s population. However, that’s a political choice, not an economic necessity.
“I believe a socialist future would, among other things, bring us more music and literature from the Chris Cornells and Fran Lebowitzes than does the system we live in now.” Undoubtedly.
December 10th, 2012 at 11:12 pm (#)
You know, when I was in high school I was introduced to the “good news” by Alfie Kohn, a teacher turned education scholar with an interest in motivation and debunking the myths surrounding extrinsic motivation schemes in society like performance pay, grades, and behaviorially-targeted rewards.
Saw an interesting, but problematic documentary on the worker-coop movement last night at a free screening in town. It’s called “Shift Change”. It focuses a lot on those aspects of “better work” that Kathi Weeks challenges inasmuch as they appear as unalloyed good, and makes frequent appeals to increased competitiveness and ability to stay afloat during crises. It would be much too easy to get hung up on the higher-up in Mondragon deriding those young people who think “only in terms of leisure and free-time” or the countless times that someone praised hard-work in that film, because there is much to be inspired about by the way that cooperatives transform “hard work” into an orientation toward solidarity, which frankly is hard work in the world we’re in.
December 11th, 2012 at 12:05 am (#)
It’s also interesting to note that exploration, especially of space, isn’t raised more often as the kind of outlet for human energy not channeled so thoroughly through economic production. Creativity is the buzz-word, but I think that part of why Star Trek works as utopian vision is that much of that “creative energy” is put into exploration AND maintenance. While drama and music or holo-deck adventures are not rare pursuits for people in Star Trek, they are still cast more as hobbies than sources of identity – except touchingly in Data’s character, a paradox of technological worklessness and a unblushing worker-bee.
In Deep Space Nine, Jake Sisko’s decision to NOT follow in his father’s foot-steps and join Star Fleet is met with resistance not completely dis-similar to what “creative” types face today by parents when they eschew “gainful employment”. He wants to be a writer, after all, and he’s ultimately supported in his decision. I don’t think this is a bad thing though. The latitude that someone like Jake has to do what he wants is actual and not formal, though it’s still something marginal in terms of work-norms.
Or think of Guinan or Nelix, two characters who’s roles in Star Trek stand in contrast to their practical necessity – they are managers of ship eateries, sometimes mixing drinks, even though practically everything anyone wants is replicated, and performing affective labor (even though there’s a “ship’s counselor”). They are explorers of a different, more spiritual sort, but have no place on the ship if they are not fixed to a “job”.