As an agent of economic and social change, robotization has elicited considerable concern about t... more As an agent of economic and social change, robotization has elicited considerable concern about technological unemployment. Focusing on youth, this paper makes four contributions to the debate over this labour-displacing technological change's effects. First, to clarify the magnitude of the job threat to young people, the paper accentuates the conceptual distinction between technological unemployment and frictional unemployment. Second, the possibility of persistent technological unemployment, which the young are currently facing, is linked to strong uncertainty stemming from the rapidity of invention in robotics and artificial intelligence. Third, the paper advances a plausibility-based argument about the inevitability of technological unemployment. Fourth, coping behaviour is shown to be logically compatible with rationality and well-suited to dealing with fear of joblessness. Fifth, to the extent that robotization threatens future jobs, we maintain that coping strategies are needed to help members of the younger generation. A resilience-based strategy is suggested but we believe that there may be other coping strategies complementary to our proposal. JEL codes: E24; J21; J54; J64
This essay is a response to 'Four Contexts for Philosophy of Education and its Relation to Econom... more This essay is a response to 'Four Contexts for Philosophy of Education and its Relation to Economic Policy', by Michael A. Peters. I distinguish between three types of economics: orthodox, orgasmic, and heterodox. A specifically Marxist variant of the heterodox variety is identified as being the most useful to Foucauldian educational philosophers who want to grasp how financialisation and neoliberalism intersect. To demonstrate this point I juxtapose the explanations of the recent financial crisis offered by Kliman (2012) and Foster and McChesney (2012). Foucault's governmentality theory can enhance how they conceptualize neoliberalism. By the same token, the vein of radical political economics they mine supplies the element missing from the corpus of Foucault's work and thus what Foucauldians generally also lack: a full-fledged theory of economic crisis applicable to the capitalism's current financialised phase.
Underground coal mining has long been perceived - both by the public and the people who do the wo... more Underground coal mining has long been perceived - both by the public and the people who do the work - as a unique occupation. Since Orwell's day, mining has been reshaped by the introduction of mechanised coal extraction and the ongoing incorporation of this occupation into large organisations within multinational corporations. To date, neither development has alleviated the perennial personnel problem in the mines - how to control the activities of people who work underground, far from the gaze of managers.
This article uses Peter Drucker's work vector-like, to carry the thesis of cognitive capitali... more This article uses Peter Drucker's work vector-like, to carry the thesis of cognitive capitalism into the management field. Drucker's prophetic insights into the knowledge society are juxtaposed with recent, Italian autonomist Marxist-inspired analyses of capitalism's cognitive phase. If the capacity to create knowledge – or what autonomists call the ‘general intellect’ – is becoming the key productive force, arguably there is a need for a full-blown social form of knowledge management. Our reading of Drucker thus retrieves the one worthwhile thing from the rubble of normative knowledge management. It is the idea of society-level knowledge management premised on a universal and unconditional guaranteed basic income (GBI; or social wage). Basic income represents not just a social investment in knowledge, which Drucker himself called for, but also compensation for biolabour's augmented social productivity. With Drucker as the steppingstone, we conclude, the autonomist t...
As an agent of economic and social change, robotization has elicited considerable concern about t... more As an agent of economic and social change, robotization has elicited considerable concern about technological unemployment. Focusing on youth, this paper makes four contributions to the debate over this labour-displacing technological change's effects. First, to clarify the magnitude of the job threat to young people, the paper accentuates the conceptual distinction between technological unemployment and frictional unemployment. Second, the possibility of persistent technological unemployment, which the young are currently facing, is linked to strong uncertainty stemming from the rapidity of invention in robotics and artificial intelligence. Third, the paper advances a plausibility-based argument about the inevitability of technological unemployment. Fourth, coping behaviour is shown to be logically compatible with rationality and well-suited to dealing with fear of joblessness. Fifth, to the extent that robotization threatens future jobs, we maintain that coping strategies are needed to help members of the younger generation. A resilience-based strategy is suggested but we believe that there may be other coping strategies complementary to our proposal. JEL codes: E24; J21; J54; J64
This essay is a response to 'Four Contexts for Philosophy of Education and its Relation to Econom... more This essay is a response to 'Four Contexts for Philosophy of Education and its Relation to Economic Policy', by Michael A. Peters. I distinguish between three types of economics: orthodox, orgasmic, and heterodox. A specifically Marxist variant of the heterodox variety is identified as being the most useful to Foucauldian educational philosophers who want to grasp how financialisation and neoliberalism intersect. To demonstrate this point I juxtapose the explanations of the recent financial crisis offered by Kliman (2012) and Foster and McChesney (2012). Foucault's governmentality theory can enhance how they conceptualize neoliberalism. By the same token, the vein of radical political economics they mine supplies the element missing from the corpus of Foucault's work and thus what Foucauldians generally also lack: a full-fledged theory of economic crisis applicable to the capitalism's current financialised phase.
Underground coal mining has long been perceived - both by the public and the people who do the wo... more Underground coal mining has long been perceived - both by the public and the people who do the work - as a unique occupation. Since Orwell's day, mining has been reshaped by the introduction of mechanised coal extraction and the ongoing incorporation of this occupation into large organisations within multinational corporations. To date, neither development has alleviated the perennial personnel problem in the mines - how to control the activities of people who work underground, far from the gaze of managers.
This article uses Peter Drucker's work vector-like, to carry the thesis of cognitive capitali... more This article uses Peter Drucker's work vector-like, to carry the thesis of cognitive capitalism into the management field. Drucker's prophetic insights into the knowledge society are juxtaposed with recent, Italian autonomist Marxist-inspired analyses of capitalism's cognitive phase. If the capacity to create knowledge – or what autonomists call the ‘general intellect’ – is becoming the key productive force, arguably there is a need for a full-blown social form of knowledge management. Our reading of Drucker thus retrieves the one worthwhile thing from the rubble of normative knowledge management. It is the idea of society-level knowledge management premised on a universal and unconditional guaranteed basic income (GBI; or social wage). Basic income represents not just a social investment in knowledge, which Drucker himself called for, but also compensation for biolabour's augmented social productivity. With Drucker as the steppingstone, we conclude, the autonomist t...
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