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That is the question … may I offer “post-work” as the answer?
The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting are catchy names for the phenomenon that the less delicate are calling “no one wants to work!” What’s going on here?
As we’ve discussed, disruptive events will often accelerate changes that were already underway. In the case of work, Covid accelerated a shift to less working that was already happening. There has been a long-term trend to less work on average in the formal economy (captured in time use studies). I know a lot you are like “wait, what?” We talked about warriors, giggers and bots as a framing for today’s workforce. The warriors, an overall shrinking segment, are working more and more; the giggers, a growing segment, are working less and less. The bots are beginning to work more. And many are just not working at all. The impulse is and will be to find way to get people back to work. Various forms of carrots and sticks will be tried.
Here’s where post-work comes in. Instead of trying to force people to do what they don’t want to do, what if we re-thought our approach to work? Instead of full employment as our goal, which it has been for a long time … what if we flipped it and made full unemployment our goal? What if we went with the flow of where people want to go, that is, working less? What might we do:
- We could do small tactical things like shortening the work week and lowering retirement age.
- We could do sensible things like improve the safety net for those not working or between jobs?
- We could encourage automation …. provided we improved the aforementioned safety net?
- We could start implementing something like a universal basic income.
- We could simplify our lifestyles so we don’t need to work and buy stuff we don’t really need.
In my After-Capitalism research, a post-work future emerged as one of three guiding images of the future. Instead of fighting what people want to do, let’s work with it … by making it okay not to work. – Andy Hines
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