Are jobs obsolete?

The last paragraph suggests a new organisation for a company: one where people can job share high value jobs, in return for an average salary.

Here's an example. Let's say I am capable of earning $160,000 a year, if I work 5 days a week in a role that is optimally suited to my skills. The problem is that this role leaves me with little time for my family (or other projects) and an excess of money. What I really want is to work 2 days a week for a salary of $64,000.

The above is hard to do in the current employment system. The closest options seem to be:

1) Take part time work. Typically part time work pays a much lower hourly rate, so to get my $64,000, I'm having to work 5 days/week. No gain, only pain.

2) Go into contracting. Fine for a single person, but too unstable with dependents.

3) Work for some number of years, then quit for a number of years. Demolishes the CV, making it hard to return to work, and leads to an unbalanced all or nothing relationship with the family.

4) Doesn't seem to exist.

Option 4) might be a company that specialises in allowing high value people to work limited hours, at what they do best. It would require a new way of organising things.

a) Systems to eliminate the "fixed cost" of employing someone, allowing many people to be employed in place of one, at the same cost.

b) Systems to allow multiple people to efficiently time share on a task.

c) Systems to allow people to rapidly pick up where they left off on a task.

d) Systems to allow a person to remain up to speed on a discipline, even with restricted working hours (ie. reducing the fixed cost to the employee).

It would be interesting to see how such a company would go competing against traditional a company of full-time employees. Assuming the negatives a)-d), above, could be solved, the benefits would be:

i) A fresh, productive, low stress, "burn out free" workforce.

ii) With some flexability of hours by healthy workers, the elimination of holes in the workforce, due sickness or unexpected events.

iii) The ability to very rapidly bring extra resources to bear (eg. some people work 4 days/week) under special circumstances.

iv) A larger employment pool, by including people who would would normally be precluded from full-time work. (How to make the model work well while not eliminating those who want a full-time job.)

Points a)-d) would seem to be fodder for a start-up, which would dog food its own system. The selling point could a competitive advantage, delivered by points i)-iv).

EDIT: formatting + spelling

PCs dropping from $10000 to $300 are not representative of almost anything about the last 30 years. Holding up PC prices or CPU speeds as an example of general economics is particularly contrived.

    To wit: the recession and slow recovery of the last 
    couple of years are just that, a recession and slow 
    recovery--they aren't a harbinger to the end of   
    capitalism or conventional labor or employment.

The recession and slow recovery are what we make of them. The future is not already determined. There may or may not be the end of capitalism, but that doesn't say anything about whether that's a goal we should pursue.

Even though Rushkoff believes that automation is killing jobs, he doesn't believe that the alternative he proposes is inevitable. He just invites us to consider it.

…No. The evidence strongly supports this.

It’s a fundamental principle of ecology that an increase in food production causes an increase in population. But what may not be intuitive is that these two increases need not happen in the same place, and often do not.

Contraception is irrelevant. Our population is not growing as quickly in the developed world as it is elsewhere, but it is still assuredly growing. It always will grow, as long as we are human and there is enough food to allow it.

We produce enough food each year to feed every person on the planet. If we were to continue producing exactly as much food each year as we did the last year, then our population would, necessarily, cease to grow.

I am not trying to be “fashionably cynical”, nor cold-hearted. I don’t think we’re “reproducing uncontrollably”. I am advocating that some people must starve to death because it is more humane than the alternative of producing ever more people each generation to starve to death. Surely you can understand why I argue such a seemingly untenable position, even if you aren’t comfortable agreeing.

Let us put it this way. As automation increases and there are cheaper and greener ways to harness and use energy. What we are likely to see is change of goals in life.

We may no longer strive for food, clothing and shelter. Many things may come automatically. But we will have to still work to make a living for many things like medicine, travel, vacations etc but the basic stuff may all come at cheaper prices.

There will still be 'rich' and 'poor' people. People will pay for greater things. The poor will no longer strive for basic survival, but they will have to strive for luxury.

The whole point is the definition of poverty and luxury will change. And we are likely to have better standards of living at the lowest levels.