David MacClement's essay, 3 August 1995:
When there are Too Many People for Too Few Jobs
Is Sustainable Living Possible?(even if everyone is able and willing to do what's needed)
or:
"What do people do with their time
(now that there's too few jobs for too large a number of people)"?
Next to our place|*, there's a new development [written 3 August 1995], with hammering, skil-sawing|^, and heavy trucks delivering building materials and earth-movers. These guys are typically quite happy to be doing "man's work", with a feeling of accomplishment at tne end of the day, most times, and knowing that they've met a (perhaps risky) challenge successfully.Other people, men and women throughout [New Zealand] and around the world, also value their 30 to 70 hours a week in a similar way, but in the future, with reduced consumption and longer-lasting buildings, appliances and vehicles, there will be less chance of gaining this satisfaction with one's daily activities, for an increasing number of adults.
The usual answer seems to be a combination of life-long education and the creation of enough service-industry jobs to provide at least the semblance of busy-ness for the 50% more|` people wanting work, even if they don't get _paid_ enough to live as a full member of their society.
I don't think yhe 'ordinary joe', capable or skilful with his hands and strong when necessary, will be suitable for, or get significant satisfaction out of, such "people-skills" jobs, let alone be interested in success at academic study. We're talking here of what in all past ages was called: hard, satisfying work. There just won't be anything like enough work to go around, for the huge numbers of people wanting it [at recent world population|+ growth rates].
So what will people do with their time?
In the first place, when consumption is reduced by 50% and (slightly-higher-priced) longer-lasting equipment is bought, the money needed by each person is also reduced, perhaps by 40% (0.40) in constant dollars. So the same [national] salary-and-wages bill could be spread over 67% more people {1/(1 -0.40)}, as part of the change to sustainability. { If the present jobs were split up and redistributed among 'only' 50% more workers in ~25 years, this would imply a real wage rise of 33% (67% / 50%), or 1.15% per year increase http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281%2B0.0115%29^25 }
Secondly, assuming such a neat answer doesn't apply to most of the excess people in the world, for example that the rich & powerful continue grabbing all they can, then most of the excess [people] will have to reduce their activities whether they wish to or not.
Are 'couch-potatoes' ([though] eating a lot less as well) a good thing?
[Should the nation's rulers supply] "Bread and circuses"?|~
Draft, paper found Ja.2012 prob. by IBM Selectric typewriter (typeball): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter#Selectric_III_written by_:
David MacClement, http://davd.i8.com/EFquiz_DsResponses-080515.html#up
https://davd.tripod.com/#new1 ZL1ASX http://davd.pip.verisignlabs.com
http://reocities.com/davd.geo/#earths I'm in Greenhithe North Shore NZ
^arkiv d1v9d@bigfoot.com interesting articles https://davd.tripod.com/DM
earth our home: http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200710/r194556_737903.jpg
_Footnotes_:
_|*: Greenhithe, "B" in map: http://tinyurl.com/NthnBuswayToGreenhthWalk
_|^: Skil brand, portable circular saw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skil
_|`: pick "Region Search", World, 1995 then 2034, in: http://to.ly/bQyo
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php
1995 5,703,456,064
2034 8,573,974,015 - 50% more than 1995.
_|+: World population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
_|~: Bread and Circuses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
