Although I have to admit that I resent some of the comments that CNN’s anchor Lou Dobbs has made in the past regarding illegal immigration, his recent appearance in The Daily Show to promote his book, “War on the Middle Class “, provided great insight to what is likely the terrible sentiment brewing among middle class families in the U.S. and possibly other rich countries. After decades of abuses by corporations pursuing their global quest, these families are starting to realize how hard they are being hit:
- 10 million jobs outsourced
- 4 million manufacturing jobs lost
- wages stagnant for the past 35 years
- an education system that fails to create the opportunities it should
While corporations have only increased their position of power:
- 2 billion dollars used by corporations to influence elections & legislations
- lowest tax rates since WWII
- corporate profits at a record high, while earnings participation are at record low
- and some other facts mentioned in the previous post earth inc.
While the middle class continues to be played by corporate america, jobs continue to shift to cheaper regions of the world, corporate lawyers continue to manipulate legislation to create all kinds of tax breaks, boards of directors continue pushing the limits of productivity just to accumulate more wealth. Without being able to understand the complexity of the situation, hard working families assign blame to the masses of immigrants for taking their jobs, to foreign countries for producing cheaper products, without realizing that some corporation is behind all these problems.
Corporations dream of a very large idle class. A massive conglomerate of families with a certain acquisition power, sufficient to make them great consumers, but nothing else. Idle, because once they reach their peak as consumers they are expected to do nothing else but stay there. Unfortunatelly, as Lou’s comments make it obvious, the situation has gone so far that civil unrest is not too far away and may get all the wrong people fighting each other, Corporations looking from above wondering how to restore the idle class.
 According to Wikipedia, the original slogan “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest” was coined by Robert Owen early in the XIX century. The industrial revolution would only provide the appropriate climate for the Eight-hour day movement to become the central demand of the labour movement across the world. Labour Day (as it is celebrated in the U.S. & Canada) is the sad remnant of what was at some point a passionate struggle for what common workers thought were fair labor conditions. It’s commemoration in September is the result of some clever politician trying to diminish the historic impact of Chicago’s Haymarket riots.
But I’m not trying to revive an old working-class vs. Corporations fight. In the spirit of hackers & work culture, I’m more interested in understanding how some of our programmed habits (i.e. culture) are being deeply challenged by the mechanisms of our modern society and its obsession with the net. In the title “8 hours blog”, blogging is a metaphor for all those little things we do seeking to participate in the global village. It is appropriate that it replaces the 8 hours of recreation that our ancestors were asking for, as having a voice on the web certainly provides all the entertainment that our generation can ask for. While a few years ago critics could’ve convinced most that this participation was meaningless, it is now settled that the future of business depends largely on understanding how people create communities around small niches that, when aggregated, have an important effect known as The Long Tail, first documented by Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson. People do this by leaving breadcrumbs of wisdom throughout their electronic pathways, which are then followed by others with similar ideals or values. Whether they use blogs, comments, emails, discussion groups or any other construct of the now known as Web 2.0, the ultimate effect is that of participation.
It took several decades and an industrial revolution to get workers around the world to participate in what was at the time an important battle to achieve fair labour conditions. What should we expect when all of the sudden people are devoting “8 hours” of their day developing their sense of participation and finding they have the power to shape society? What should the mantra of this upcoming revolution be? I suspect it will have something to do with the overwhelming power that corporations exercise in our lives and the devastating impact that globalization is having on all aspects of our culture. It will likely aim to establish a fair balance between a healthy economic engine and a sustainable approach to society.
It has been a century since people organized themselves to better their society. It’s about time we re-learn from their victories. I admit I was trying to revive the old spirit of May Day after all. Happy Labour Day!
Georgetown is in fact located in Delaware, but over the last decade Guatemalan immigrants have taken over many of its neighborhoods, bringing profound transformation to the area. The full account of this evolution is given by Christopher Caldwell in “the weekly Standard” with an article entitled “Hola, Delaware!”.
I posted about a similar article in a tale of two towns about a month ago, emphasizing how these examples provide solid evidence of the power of the chicano network.
I’m thinking it would be interesting to keep a record of these symbiotic cities. Not the usual cosmopolitanism of big cities, but the quiet adoption of a predominant foreign culture by small towns.
Deborah Jaremko writes for the Oilsands Review the article “Multicultural Fort McMurray”, describing the activity that the Multicultural Association organizes in order to bridge the many cultures that converge in that region of Alberta, Canada as a result of economic opportunities.
Chinese New Year, Polynesian dancing shows, salsa lessons, stores specializing in food from all over the world, the most northern mosque in North America – it doesn’t sound like the usual description of what life is like in Fort McMurray, Alberta. There is much more to the city than the oilsands, and that’s largely because of the presence of a global culture. Drawn by the promise of stable work, many over the years have decided to not just come temporarily but to make Fort McMurray their home, raising families and sharing their traditions with the community.
The efforts of this organization exemplify he type of action that is required in other cities in order to create awareness of the fact that we are immersed in a world-wide community that no longer can work without deep knowledge of the cultural aspects that are relevant to us all.
Via the Outsourcing Blog I’m learning about the total volume of outsourcing deals currently in place, adding to $118bn per year. Any fears about jobs being shifted to cheaper countries like India and China are well founded. But building on the arguments of my previous post, I would like to make an observation that is often missed when talking about outsourcing and may have a powerful impact on how our work culture evolves in light of this trend.
Outsourcing is based on the premise that certain aspects of a job can be done by companies that specialize in these verticals and as a result of this specialization are able to optimize the processes involved. I’m not an expert, but a quick glance at the timeline of outsourcing adoption leads me to believe that it was in part an effect of the Reengineering craze in the early 90’s.
A recent discussion with a consultant in one of the big outsourcing firms led me to realize that part of their success lies in the realization that effective outsourcing is based not on transfering the same jobs from one company to another, or in the case of global outsourcing (driven by cheaper labour), from one geography to another, but on placing those jobs that are suitable to the work culture of the particular region. Using India as an example during our conversation, it became a recurring point how in most cases, the young labour force available there is mostly concerned with “survival” (referring to Linus’ Law from my previous post) which means that regardless of how pointless a particular job seems to be, many workers will be content making a minimum salary and will gladly jump at the first opportunity they have to improve their situation. I realize generalization is an easy trap and would like to make the observation that this is the case of a large number of young adults in India joining the work force, but I can’t comment on how widespread the problem is.
In North America, a work force that is content to make a living with an average job that represents no challenge will certainly face the threat of outsourcing eventually. But when a job is elevated to the realm of Entertainment it will very difficult to transfer the aspects that make such job important to a particular person to anyone else, anywhere else in the world.
This is the key to a new work culture: every community developing citizens commited to the jobs that give meaning to their lifes, not the ones that feed their families. These jobs will be protected from globalization because their significance is only relevant within their original cultural context. We are at the very early stages of such a trend, mostly because the vast majority of people still have to do whatever job will secure their day, but we’re witnessing the first generations of people emancipating from the “rat race”, shifting not out of the work pool, but into jobs that empower and enrich them as individuals.
We don’t work because we have to. We work because it is deeply engrained in our culture that one must work. In his book “The Hacker Ethic” (see sidebar), Prof. Himanen provides a very solid example of cultural anthropology when he digs for the origin of such practice, all the way back to the sixteenth century through Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”:
This peculiar idea, so familiar to us today, but in reality so little a matter of course, of one’s duty in a calling, is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. [...] Not only a developed sense of responsibility absolutely indispensable, but in general also an attitude which, at least during working hours, is freed from continual calculations of how the customary wage may be earned with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of exertion. Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling
While any original relationship between Protestant faith and the described calling to do God’s work was lost by the time the industrial revolution started, religion had an important role in the “programming” of this cultural activity in our society. Prof. Himanen builds a very convincing argument around one of the most pervasive aspects of our global culture today (work) and goes deep into forecasting how a new generation of “hackers” are challenging the ways of modern society by introducing a new ethic that has very different motivations.
1:00 a.m. It’s not unusual for me to be writing these posts late in the evening. After all, I’m also “programmed” to have a day-job which takes most of my time. But this blog exists because I’m not content with doing just that. As Linus Torvalds describes in the prologue to “The Hacker Ethic”, Linus’ Law states that there are 3 powerful motivators to do everything we do: survival, social ties & entertainment. This blog exists because I have the strong conviction that my readers, although anonymous, form a powerful social network that is ultimately helping me build on the abstract notion of a “Global Culture”, which is ultimately an intellectual exercise, or in Linus words entertainment with capital “E”. The kind that stimulates your brain and drives you to spend long hours trying to explain how everything works.
While blogging is not always this kind of intellectual exercise, the huge number of blogs (50 million, according to Technorati) points to a very important fact: increasing number of people are moving away from their mandated jobs and investing their own time to develop all kinds of personal projects that provide real entertainment. They do it because they can, because they have resolved their most basic needs in life and can afford to be distracted a few hours a day. The Protestan Ethic is becoming obsolete and no longer provides a true incentive for people to participate in the capitalist machinery. The Hacker Ethic described by Prof. Himanen provides a much better framework to explain this phenomenon.
Update: There is a fairly strong meme builging up on the web right now around the notion of quitting your day job and going solo. As far as I can tell it was initiated by Pamela Slim on her blog Escape from Cubicle Nation with her brilliant “My Declaration of Independence”. Already echoed by Kathy Sierra on her Creating passionate users.
Social Networks. If you’re reading blogs you probably have heard of them. The furor around the media would seem to indicate that they are about the revolutionize the ways of societies. They are correct, except their observation is a few decades late. In fact, the social networks I’m interested in don’t even need the Web.
While reading “The Immigration Equation” by Roger Lowenstein published in The New York Times Magazine calls for many comments to be made, its central argument around the economics of immigration is probably a much better target for other blogs with a political agenda. However, there were a number of hard facts that I found very interesting to be discussed here.
As recently as 1970, the U.S. had fewer than one million Mexicans, almost all of them in Texas and California. The U.S. did bring Mexican braceros to work on farms during the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. The program was terminated in 1964, and immigration officials immediately noticed a sharp rise in illicit border crossings [...] there was a catalytic effect – so many Mexicans settled [in the U.S.] that it became easier for more Mexicans to follow [...] with 12 million people born in Mexico now dispersed around the U.S., information about job-market conditions filters back to Mexico with remarkable speed.
You have to be impressed with the fact that this social network is capable of recruiting over half a million immigrants per year in a way that most of them will be able to make a living for a good season. Some of them will migrate with the intention of staying, but the majority will only commit to a short season with the objective of making some money that they can send home. One needs only to look at the statistics around remittances to Mexico to confirm this fact. The general pattern of migration is consistent with my previous observation about the types of migrants: explorers & itinerats. With the vast majority of immigration today being of the second type.
Even more interesting is the demographic composition of the network. Judging by their average income ($22,300 compared to $37,000 of all immigrants) we can assume that they are typically under educated. A day in L.A. will be sufficient to confirm that most low-income jobs are being done by Mexicans. And even then, their current earnings are probably much better of what they could aspire to make back home, which brings me to the key point: they are mostly computer illiterate. And yet, they are capable of running such an efficient social network. They rely on weekly phone calls made to their homes in Mexico, to their families spreading the word around town about the journeys of those up north and a nothing-to-lose attitude of those who are new to the network.
The main argument to be made is that for a social network to be efficient, it must rely not on technology but on cultural predisposition. Mexicans have a strong culture of bonding, often through very large and extended families, but also among neighbors. It’s a characteristic cultural behavior that has shaped this race for ages and will influence the way our societies evolve.
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