economics

So what do digital technologies and the Internet mean for the future of work?  That was the topic of last year’s Information Roundtable at the Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program, an annual event that brings together some heavyweight businesspeople, technologies and academics to discuss a breaking issue.

It was a fascinating discussion because so many of these issues are not probed in such depth by such diverse experts.  Once again, I was the rapporteur for the three-day gathering.  My report, The Future of Work:  What It Means for Individuals, Businesses, Markets and Governments is now available online as a pdf file.  The report focuses on the concerns of traditional businesses and startups as they grapple with the new competitive environment created by digital technologies and networks.  The report examines how the technologies are altering market structures, business strategies, the organization of work, and individuals’ work lives.

A memorable Dilbert cartoon strip features Dogbert as a “creativity consultant” who is directed by his boss to come up with some hard quantitative data.  The boss barks:  “The only way to make decisions is to pull numbers of the air, call them ‘assumptions,’ and calculate the net present value.”  The punchline:  “Of course, you have to use the right discount rate, otherwise it’s meaningless.”

That encapsulates the faux-rigor of regulatory decisions for protecting health, safety and the environment.  Ascertaining the dollar value of human life using the most rigorous science possible is a politically useful charade. 

As the New York Times recently reported, the scientifically determined value of a life at the Environmental Protection Agency has gone up from $6.8 million in the Bush II years to $9.1 million at present.  Across town, the FDA decides whether to ban an unsafe drug based on a valuation of $7.9 million per life.  In deciding whether automakers will install new safety features, the Transportation Department figures $6 million.

My colleague at the Commons Strategy Group, Silke Helfrich recently spoke at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, about how we might shift from the logic of the market to the logic of the commons.  An account of her talk can be read on her blog, CommonsBlog, here.  Below, an excerpt from her talk followed by a useful chart that contrasts how the logic of the market and commons differ. 

Helfrich's talk:

The process of privatizing gains and socializing losses is very alive (the recent bail-out of banks by taxpayers money is just one of its examples). This process does confirm an historic experience:  Within the current logic, both Market AND State tend to smash the commons. And common people have to pay for it. This is not only dramatic for being essentially unfair. It is especially dramatic because – over the long run – this kind of enclosure of the social commons undermines and even destroys the capacity of communities to govern and protect their commons.

The larger cultural campaign to fight the huge inefficiencies of global trade and foster re-localization of the economy has gotten a nice boost from a new film, The Economics of Happiness, produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture. The film, available as a DVD, describes how “going local” is a powerful way to make our economic lives and culture more stable, eco-friendly and socially benign.

Helena Norberg-Hodge, director of the ISEC, points out the madness that tuna caught off the East Coast of the U.S. is flown to Japan to be packed, and then is shipped back to the U.S. for sale. By the lights of 18th Century economic theorists, this is considered “efficient” and “rational.” Of course, the economics of global trade only work because the vast externalized costs and hidden subsidies are ignored. Companies enjoy huge subsidies to use more energy and technologies to ship more things around the world. The costs of massive unemployment, rural migrations to cities in poor countries, and ecological destruction are “off the books.”