An except from my forthcoming book, totally first draft…
This book makes an assumption that the days of capitalism, as we know it, are numbered. The transition to the replacement will potentially be one of the most difficult and complex changes civilised humankind has ever faced. Think of the end of slavery (and slavery existed all over the world), the end of the Soviet Union, and the two World Wars. All required a new way of doing things, brought about by a crisis. None were eased into, because none were particularly predicted, or predicted ahead of time enough.
If capitalism as we know it will die, decades from now, we can start to prepare. It is however human nature to resist major change, and we will face resistance from many directions – individuals, banks, corporations, social structures and governments. Because the end result is unknown, strong backing for the change will not be commonplace. So we need to ease the change in, with subtlety.
One way of smoothing the transition is by freeing up labour, creating increased productivity and spending. I am not advocating these necessarily, but they could happen as a lesser of two evils, for a while at least.
Child Labour. Key reforms to the early industrial era were unionism, 40-hour-weeks, and the end of child labour. In America, at least, we have pretty much reversed all 3 in recent times. People are working longer weeks, unions have mostly disappeared, and teens are exploited with low wages. It is not a stretch for the minimum working age to be lowered, as an antidote to a declining population numbers. Children are (arguably) better educated than 100 years ago, (arguably) more mature and definitely have a greater desire to earn money and buy things. Lowering the minimum working age by 6 months will not seem radical to the average citizen, and could boost the economy.
Elder Labour. We have already seen this in the USA. Personally I was very surprised to see very old people still working when I last visited, and it stood out the most with store greeters, something most countries do not have. There are strong arguments for a culture that accepts elderly people can have a role in the economy, as long as it is not physically arduous. As I write this we have elderly people as all the main contenders for the next US president. We could, culturally, revert to the ancient idea of our elders being wise.
I know in my work in marketing, that my life experience is definitely of value. When on-boarding a client who builds homes, it is hard for a 23-year-old to have any understanding of what prospective customers look for, or even what a show home is. And despite popular belief, the most successful age-bracket for entrepreneurs is not 20s or 30s but 40+. So it isn’t hard to see a trend towards keeping older people in employment. Keeping in mind that many older people dread retirement.
Prison Labour – Upside Down. Again this is especially an American issue, but it is also global. We pay a lot of money to imprison people, and they are the most unproductive able citizens we have.
I am not about to suggest prison labour. It is either exploitative (unpaid), or seen as not really punishment (job, income, food, bed). The true alternative is not sending people to prison in the first place, and giving them a job instead. Australia, and the plight of the Aboriginal people, is a great example. From New Foundation:
“As of 2018, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners represented 28% of the total full-time adult prisoner population while accounting for 2% of the general population” (Wikipedia)
Propensity towards crime is not a factor of race. The over-representation of indigenous Australians in prison is a direct effect of social status, as we have also seen in the USA with African Americans.
Rehabilitation of prisoners is an area that needs to be fixed immediately – the current model is not working well. New forms of punishment and rehabilitation need to be tested, focusing on non-violent and non-abuse crimes. Specifically burglary and illicit drugs. There are more Aboriginal people in prison for robbery than non-Aboriginal people.
Burglary tends to be less lucrative than having a job, and most burglars are eventually caught. This is clearly not a career choice. Providing an alternative is surely preferable for offenders, and cheaper for the government. For example, paying the full-time wages for someone is cheaper than keeping them in prison ($110K per year).
For the same price you can give employers a free worker, and that worker can have a full-time social worker.
I would wager that 90% of young people would rather have a respectable job, than be a burglar. It pays better, it feels better, and you won’t go to prison. Add to that a counsellor or mentor, someone employed from the caring side of government, not the punishing side, and we have a great outcome.
We can literally save money, save lives, and improve the economy.
Green Labour. Create jobs to combat climate change – install solar power on roofs, plant trees, create renewable energy plants, make agriculture more sustainable in the long term and build environmentally-friendly homes.
This should have begun yesterday. We are facing a climate catastrophe that can be averted. We have unemployed people. And we have a stagnant economy. Academics and progressive politicians are advocating a Green New Deal – a modern take on the New Deal that lifted the USA out of the Great Depression.
Combine this with Modern Monetary Theory (a very complicated concept that works when done well, but sounds daft because it is basically printing more money to pay for things), and we have more employment, a better economy, and great advances in the climate change battle. This is one of the best win-win-win concepts of the modern era.
Immigration. A major part of all the ideas here is the massive differences between what we expect to happen on average, and the great variances of reality.
In theory, if everything was average, a declining population would equal negative growth, and a lowering tide would sink all ships.
Currently, advanced economies are countering a decline in natural population growth via immigration. This has many advantages, including the great combination of getting skilled workers cheaper, and those workers improving their quality of life. In general, on average.
With declining global population numbers, on average, every country will be equally quite advanced, and emigration has low appeal. Supplanting population numbers with immigrants will no longer be an option. However, in real life, this will have lumpiness. For example, I come from New Zealand, but live in Australia. Most Kiwis who live in Australia do so for economic reasons (people don’t usually leave friends and family for the weather…). Both are economically advanced countries.
Just like Ireland courted big tech businesses with low tax rates, we could see the same occurring to attract workers to particular countries. You can guarantee that, one way or another, some countries will continue to attract immigrants. If not for purely economic reasons, it could be social, around freedoms to be who you want to be. Within the billions of possible scenarios, we could see people leaving advanced yet religious economies for advanced secular economies.
Robots. I am a futurist, so I will chuck some very futuristic ideas into this discussion.
In a future where robots can perform human activity, we could perhaps attach the creation of robots to existing humans.If robots become so cheap that everyone’s employment is at risk, we could see some kind of buddy system. Every person is provided with a blank robot. They get to train it, the robot gets to learn from the person, and the person benefits from the robot’s work.
Ultimately we could have robots filling the gaps, adding to the population, and even be consumers. Obviously this is an extreme scenario.