Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

Sharing and Generosity: the Future of Society

Network technology is fundamentally changing social relationships and dynamics toward the human needs of sharing and generosity.  As we witness and participate in the breakdown of the current social order, it's possible to envision a totally new future for humankind, in which society will be less rigid and formed based on communities coming together as collectives working toward shared goals that impact all humanity.

Why Can't We Face Reality?

Once again, we have employment data that shows fewer working Americans, and once again, we've immediately gone into denial.  The private sector isn't hiring, because they are not making their money off of exploiting labor time, but rather by exploiting capital.  Yes, it will help to strengthen manufacturing industries that are more dependent on labor, than service industries that are more dependent on brand, but this is a long term prospect -- one that's unlikely to be accomplished in a decade.  In Empowering Cities Through Service, Dr. Judith Rodin and NYC Mayor Bloomberg write:

Henry David Thoreau wrote that, "City life is millions of people being lonesome together." Viewed from afar, city life can indeed appear impersonal and isolated. But that view, to turn a rural cliché on its head, misses the trees for the forest. Most cities are really a collection of local neighborhoods, with their own identity, their own traditions, their own sense of community. And the values that are traditionally associated with small towns -- looking out for your neighbors, pitching in at local events, supporting civic causes -- are finding new footing in America's cities, thanks in part to President Obama's call for "a new era of service." In 2009, New York launched NYC Service, a program designed not merely to increase volunteering, but also to direct volunteers to the city's toughest problems -- and measure our success in addressing them. In just over a year NYC Service helped the city train over 50,000 New Yorkers in CPR, administer 160,000 H1N1 vaccinations, educate 4,400 students on emergency preparedness, send 3,500 care packages to New Yorkers in the Armed Forces serving overseas, and paint over 225,000 square feet of roof tops with reflective paint to help buildings reduce their carbon footprint. And our team of 175 specially trained AmeriCorps VISTA members -- the NYC Civic Corps -- mobilized more than 50,000 volunteers who served more than 700,000 of their neighbors. New York City was able to do more, better, and faster thanks to the help of volunteers, who often worked alongside city personnel to extend the reach and impact of city government. And especially during these tough budget times, having extra sets of hands is enormously valuable.

Well, what if we simply changed the paradigm of employment/unemployment?  Cities like NY could spearhead a movement that turns what has been considered "unproductive" labor into productive labor simply by paying "volunteers".  How are we going to have full employment in the new economy?  It's not likely that we will without a change to our attitude about what can and should constitute employment itself.  Wouldn't it be more productive to have a citizenship fully engaged in working for the betterment of our communities, rather than comprised of millions of discouraged workers?  Wouldn't a safety net of paid work that improves communities be better than living in denial?

Growing Disparity in the New Economy

One of the most under reported stories of the financial crisis is its impact on the disparity between African-Americans and whites.  Last fall, I had the fortune to hear Congresswoman Maxine Waters speak on the issue of how the mortgage foreclosure crisis would likely impact African-American communities by striping them of years of hard earned gains, and making it difficult if not impossible to rebuild.  But recently, Brandeis University published findings depicting an even more disturbing account showing a fourfold increase in the wealth gap between whites and blacks created over the last 23 years.  From 1984 a 20K disparity between blacks and whites ballooned into a 95K gap by 2007.  In real terms, this 75K differential is a child's college tuition or the savings to weather a job loss.  So, African-American communities were clearly in crisis before the crisis.

The disconnect between income and work that has culminated in the recent financial crisis has no doubt influenced this trend, and will no doubt widen the gap.  Since in our neoliberal capitalist society money is no longer primarily generated from labor, but rather money begets money to extreme degrees, the luck of birth will increasingly be the determining factor in an individual's future, unless we turn this tide and collectively figure out ways to stand against this type of social order.

The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold

White Families Now 95K Richer Than African-American Families on Average, According to New Study

Don't Blame the Dream of Homeownership

Be an Entrepreneur or Just Look Like One

Last year was a fabulous one for entrepreneurs, at least according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity released last month by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. "Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment," the foundation reported, "2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups reached their highest level in 14 years -- even exceeding the number of startups during the peak 1999-2000 technology boom."

From:  Friday's Job Numbers, and What They Won't Tell Us About America's Growing Anxious Class by Robert Reich

The problem of forced entrepreneurship or self-employment is eventually going to have to be addressed. If you're looking for an actual job (in the old fashioned sense of work performed in exchange for a regular paycheck, and benefits including health insurance and retirement provisions), you're not very likely to find one even as the economy "improves".  The reality of employment today is that it is unreliable - whether you're employed by a company or by yourself.  The crisis of our times could be described as security.  There's a small and shrinking class of Americans, who feel a sense of security; most of us feel the ground constantly moving under our feet.

Robert Reich's proposed policy solution of a government assisted two year transition from employment to self-employment that he dubs "earnings insurance" only partially addresses the problem.  It only provides a solution for workers who are in transition, rather than offering an elixir for the crisis of security effecting the well-being of the country.  Jeremy Rifkin provides a better solution in his classic, The End of Work.  "Basic income" coupled with governmental support of the "unproductive" labor which occurs in the form of much needed community building activities that have been considered volunteer activities in the past will be necessary to stem the crisis.  The sooner the American public gets used to the idea that things will never return to how they were before, and the sooner we stop denying that high unemployment and self-employment are here to stay, the more likely we will be to stay ahead of the curve and provide a high standard of living to our citizens.

Distributing Politics and the Future of Democracy

In a fascinating new study entitled "A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right" researchers affiliated with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society found that left-wing and right-wing bloggers use technology differently.  Left-wingers are more likely to choose a collective approach and form sites with multiple bloggers and that allow reader participation than right-wing bloggers who tend to favor individual blogger sites. 

In some ways this isn't surprising because the major ideological distinction between left and right is how the collective and individual are valued, but what does this mean for the future of the internet?  And even more importantly, what does this mean for the future of democracy?  Can an individual use the power of the internet to influence politics more powerfully than in previous media environments such as print and television?  What are the differences in the ways an individual can impact power using network technology?  Is the internet just more of the same media power structure in a new form?  Or will it develop in a way that allows individuals a new form of power that enables greater social impact by the individual?  Can we envision a society with a new form of democratic public sphere in which power is distributed more equally because our individual voices are more powerful? 

It seems to me that if the left continues to dominate the blogosphere, it may be possible to develop a society based on a decentralized power structure.  It seems to me that the battles we are fighting today - from health care reform to Wall Street reform and to net neutrality - are over how power is distributed across the network of the new political economy we see taking form.

A Tale of Two Blogospheres

New Study: Liberals More Open Than Conservatives Online

The Sociology of Political Blogs: An Interview with Yochai Benkler

Critical Themes Wrap Up

The 2010 Critical Themes Conference was a huge success, and I'm glad to say that I was able to present some ideas that look at neoliberalism as part of the technological revolution unfolding before our eyes.  Here are a few links to articles I've written that are published online, as well as the complete video I excerpted during my presentation.  I will continue to post thoughts and articles as I work on the project over the next year.

Related articles online:

The Fiction of Unemployment Numbers

Progressives Need a Narrative that Resonates

Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine?

Let’s Not Pivot to Jobs

Complete video from presentation:

Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine?

via www.washingtonmonthly.com

In this cogently written article, Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation raise the issue of why the "elephant in the room" of corporate consolidation is not being debated within public discourse. Although it's not obvious when you're shopping at Bloomingdale's that you're actually shopping at Macy's, which now owns Bloomingale's, or that when choosing between milk brands you're actually only choosing between labels, I don't think this is a sufficient explanation for why consolidation has not been more discussed in the news or why the issue of corporate consolidation is not top of mind for the American public. I think the next step for collective inquiry is to ask why we have come to adopt an ideology that does not perceive this obvious undermining of the free market as problematic.

The article points out that in the past new technology has increased jobs, and uses this point to refute the relevance of technology to job loss. While I'm not sure if it's accurate to say that new technology has historically increased jobs, setting this point aside, I do feel that the article narrowly perceives technology only as a sort of tool that impacts efficiency.  Whereas technology can also be perceived as having a programmatic effect on human consciousness.  For example, the ability to read silently rose with the technology of the printing press, and industrialization changed our perception of time.  Once we perceive technology as potentially having a programmatic quality, we can pose the question of how new technology may be at the root of ideological change toward a social Darwinist belief that the "elephant in the room" deserves its social position of invisible domination.

Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine? - Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman

How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America - The Atlantic (March 2010)

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

via www.theatlantic.com

Don Peck closes his thoughtful, informative and well-researched article on the future of the American labor market with a call:

"We are in a very deep hole, and we’ve been in it for a relatively long time already. Concerns over deficits are understandable, but in these times, our bias should be toward doing too much rather than doing too little. That implies some small risk to the government’s ability to continue borrowing in the future; and it implies somewhat higher taxes in the future too. But that seems a trade worth making. We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic—and indeed a moral—responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets even worse."

However, this important call will not be heard until progressives change their narrative.  The current narrative - that we need to somehow restore the free market system to its previous glory by stimulating the economy with government spending has been met with deep rooted resistance, culminating in the formation of a new party - the Tea Party.  In spite of it's members being amongst the most hard hit by the recession, their ideology resonates with ideas about freedom and the American dream.  A new progressive narrative must emerge - one that clearly articulates the labor crisis as a result of changing labor value in a new attention driven economy.  Though Peck articulates the social crisis this change has brought on, and makes a strong call for the government to do all it can to fix the problem by reducing unemployment, the other side of what government must do is not stated.  The government must establish a permanent safety net for the unlucky citizens who have been abandoned by this economy.  Health insurance reform is mandatory.  And a "basic income" will need to be established to increase consumer spending, eliminate the unemployment insurance bias against those with non-traditional jobs who have been equally impacted by the recession, and reduce rising inequality, which goes hand-in-hand with high unemployment and declining productivity.

Robert Reich: One Free Market System for Wall Street, Another Free Market System for Main Street

In the midst of this paralysis, the President was asked about the giant pay packages of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($17 mullion for 2009) and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs ($9 million). "First of all, I know both those guys," Obama said. "They're very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That's part of the free market system."

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Another aspect of this issue is the question of whether a free market system exists, or has ever existed in the United States in spite of all the talk. Many people (for example The Tea Party) don't seem to fully appreciate that the consensus amongst economists is that a true free market economy has never existed in America, because if it ever did, it would have been a failed economy that would have sent us to the bottom of the heap in short order. The term "free" sounds good, but in reality there are no "free" markets, the invisible hand of politics always comes into play.

Of course, restructuring mortgages may be an expedient policy to prevent the housing market from further tanking, but there's no way to make such a policy fair to the many people who passed on bubble home ownership because they were more conservative financially.  Reconciling ethics and pragmatism in this case seem impossible.  And to retain the myth of the free market, pragmatism has to lose.

The Fiction of Unemployment Numbers

Immediately after the jobs report came out yesterday saying that unemployment had dipped to 9.7% from 10%, the administration took the opportunity to state, albeit cautiously, that employment, and the economy in general, are improving.  But if you look at the numbers carefully, you find out that there are multiple flaws with this analysis.  First, the change was due to an adjustment to the total number of jobs - so there was no actual change – just a change to the figures.  In other words, things were .3% less bad than initially thought.  So, the same number of people were unemployed, the numbers just better reflect that group.

But, an even bigger flaw in these numbers is how irrelevant they are now that there is a middle category between employed and unemployed:  namely the self-employed.  Because many turn to self-employment when their actual employment options have run out, and because self-employed people are lumped in with the employed, these numbers quickly become a mish-mosh.  Those counted as employed range from the traditional full time worker with benefits to self-employed workers selling products and services from home, but not making a sustainable living off of their “businesses.” 

Finally, last night on The Ed Show, an economist admitted this fact.  Peter Morici, an economics Professor at The University of Maryland, pointed out that employment statistics change more based on the number of people looking for work than based on the actual quantity of people working.  So, if you worked one hour last month, you’re counted as employed.  Anyone can state that they are self-employed, and after unemployment benefits have run out, there’s no reason to continue to categorize yourself as unemployed.

And there’s another problem.  Many people, who were categorized as self-employed before the crisis, were commission only salespeople.  The entire economy slid, and obviously if larger businesses have been struggling to sell products and services, the little guy is even worse off.  It’s safe to say that many self-employed people, for example real estate agents, have become unemployed in the sense that they can no longer make a living within their industries, yet they may continue to trudge along because they cannot collect unemployment benefits anyway.  Therefore, they are completely ignored in labor statistics.

Employment has changed radically over recent years due to the growing population of freelancers and so-called self-employed workers.  This growing category of workers receives no access to benefits, such as health insurance and retirement savings plans.  They are completely ignored by politicians, because they are not counted.  While it was exciting to hear an economist speaking frankly about this reality on national television, until the self-employed are accounted for in labor statistics, the numbers will remain a convenient fiction.

I’ve begun exploring how self-employed workers fit into the new economy in my essay, Self-Employment in the Age of Knowledge – it’s a work-in-progress, but you’re free to take a look.

Download Self-Employment in the Age of Knowledge.pdf

Links:

• Labor Market Shows Signs of Reawakening in New Data

• Unemployment drops to 9.7% despite more job losses

• Unemployment Rate Drop Is Good News But It's Likely To Rise Again

• Labor Market Shows Signs of Rebirth in New Data

• After Escaping Jobless Rolls, Trauma May Linger 

• Groundhog's Day Budgeting: Again, Obama Underfunds Job Growth