End of Capitalism and future of work
The State could provide everything.
In Ancient Mesopotamia, the Temple Complex had gardens, farms, workshops, foundries.
In Classical Greece, the State controlled the gold and silver mines, minted the coinage. The coinage used to pay the military who used to pay for provisions. The traders and merchants and farmers used the coinage to pay taxes to the State.
In Medieval Europe the State created and regulated markets through the issue of Charters.
Post-2008, we are now post-capitalism.
We see capitalism has failed, the signs are everywhere, offshore tax havens, food banks, skewed wealth distribution, beggars on the street, wages have flat-lined workers have not shared in the growing economy, pollution, loss of natural habitat, global warming, break up of EU, increasing risk of wars for raw resources, all kept afloat on a sea of debt through quantitative easing.
The market has failed to function.
The market self-regulates and yet it failed to regulate the banks, the banks had to be bailed out by the State.
Price is a signal in the market. If marginal cost of information goods tends to zero, the market cannot function.
Robots can replace most jobs. The only reason they have not so far is because wages have been driven so low.
Classic example is the automated car wash replaced by a bunch of immigrants with dirty rags and a bucket of dirty water.
Worse still, as Paul Mason describes, workers being turned into human robots.
A month ago I met somebody who organizes trade unions at a warehouse. She was getting the minimum wage and worked on a zero-hour contract. The company could call her at any time on a very short notice, or not call her at all. One time they called her by accident. She arrived and they paid her for the exact amount of time it took to get there and then go home. She quit but not because of that, but because they asked her to wear a Go-Pro camera and a GPS unit on her arm to better manage her movements. This use of automation is crazy and it seems obvious that this warehouse could be entirely automated. People don’t need to do this work. They do because wage levels and trade union rights are so minimal in this country it is cheaper to employ a person rather than a machine.
Post-capitalism we could go one of two ways.
A world of Uber, Deliveroo, soul-destroying, temporary, zero-hours McShit jobs.
Or we could have open coops, collaborative commons, a sharing economy.
Companies like Uber and Deliveroo can easily be put out of business. Create properly regulated open coop platforms. If these are developed as open source, they can be replicated, adopted, adapted across other cities.
There is for example a black cab app for London. If open source, other cities can use, if an open coop platform, the taxi drivers have a say in how it is used, share the wealth it produces, if an open coop, those who hail the taxi have a say and share the wealth created, as does the community in which it is embedded.
Collaborative commons should not be restricted to the provision of goods and services, it has to be extended to social and political space. Ordinary citizens have to seize control of Town Halls, open up to public participation, network with other citizen-controlled Town Halls.
