The job is the economy’s way of controlling the flow of social resources. It’s a social invention, not…

The job is the economy’s way of controlling the flow of social resources. It’s a social invention, not economic. We stopped fighting Covid because jobs and viruses mostly don’t mix. Until we remove the job as the foundation of social life, nothing will change. /1

Think about it. How will the problems facing society today ever be solved by the fracturing and dilution of attention and effort across millions of different jobs and careers? What could ever coordinate all of that fractured human activity? Only one thing can. The State. /2

The thing those who made the job the centre of social life despise the most. The thing humans invented to provide the coordination that individual jobs can’t provide. The job people think the ‘invisible hand’ of the market can do it. They don’t even pretend it’s real. /3

It’s invisible. Because it doesn’t exist. Pretending that societies run themselves if you just free everybody up to do whatever they like (the market) only means those with power and wealth face no resistance to consolidating their advantage even further. /4

Try going onto Linkedin and asking everybody how they feel all of their splendid individual careers will somehow magically coalesce into urgent action on climate change, or Covid. It’s like farting in an elevator. They’re too busy focusing on building their careers,…/5

…the economy’s substitute for social aspiration. Jobs allow social wealth to be parcelled out to feudal employer barons to apportion however they like. You can make a fortune manufacturing rubber ducks, while the world burns. /end