Work, Part 1

Some Thoughts about Work, Part 1

Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good,

in order that they may provide for daily necessities

and not live unproductive lives.

Titus 3:14

(New International Version)

            In “Driverless Cars” I speculated that someday driving would be illegal.  Maybe that won’t happen; after all, people like to drive.  But even if human piloted cars remain legal, this much is almost certain: computer-driven vehicles will prove safer, more efficient, and cheaper to operate than human driven cars, trucks, and buses.  Some people disagree; they say a driver has to be able to respond to ever changing conditions on the road, and no computer program will be able to replicate human intelligence.  Further, even if a computer could be made smart enough to replace a human driver, it would be prohibitively expensive.

            I’m not going to wade into philosophical debates about artificial intelligence.  Whether or not computers can be built and programmed to achieve “true intelligence,” my driverless cars prediction can be treated as simply that, a prediction.  Just wait and see if I’m right: Sometime in the 21^st century, perhaps in my lifetime, computer-driven vehicles will surpass human piloted vehicles in terms of safety, convenience, and cost.

            Consider one implication of my prediction, i.e., that in America in the 21^st century, perhaps in my lifetime, nearly all driver jobs will disappear.  Taxi drivers, bus drivers, long-haul truckers, bus drivers, airport shuttle operators, forklift drivers, delivery truck drivers, and many heavy-machinery operators will disappear from the workforce.  I’m no expert, but I guess that amounts to several million jobs, and at least some of them are prime examples of a vanishing species, well-paying blue-collar jobs that require no college education. 

As I write this in 2015, many of our politicians and policy leaders worry greatly about income inequality.  Since World War Two, America has lost huge numbers of blue-collar middle class jobs as manufacturers have moved their operations from the United States to countries with lower labor costs.  Is this a problem, even a crisis?  If so, political leaders disagree dramatically about what to do about it.  If I am right about driverless cars, the elimination of most driver jobs will only exacerbate the debate.

            The advent of driverless cars is thus one more example of technology eliminating traditional job categories.  Economists often point out that this has been going on ever since human beings started inventing things.  Perhaps we only became aware of the disruptive force of innovation in the last few centuries, as the pace of technological change has grown ever faster. 

            Many economists are pretty sanguine about the phenomenon.  They speak of “creative destruction.”  Someone invented machines that can weave cloth from thread, which threw the cottage weavers of England into unemployment.  The children of the peasant weavers were forced to move into industrial cities where they had to find jobs in factories, jobs that their foremothers could never have imagined.  No doubt, the economists say, many people suffered in the transition.  Workers were abused, cheated, robbed of their traditional way of life, and for a time many of them experienced material conditions (crowded tenements, polluted water, urban crime, etc.) undoubtedly worse than their parents.  But, the economists say, eventually the overall greater productivity of new technology permitted a higher standard of living for everybody.   Our 21^st century political leaders have adopted this attitude.  In the face of ever-changing technology, they urge better education and re-education for the workforce.  We can’t stop technological change, policy leaders say; but we can shape society so that people suffer less from economic disruption.  Leaders on the left say public policies can be found that will more quickly spread the benefits of greater productivity to all people.  The right replies that redistribution schemes (through taxation and social welfare policies) interfere with creative destruction; we should trust market forces to spread wealth around.

            I’m not going to wade into that debate either, at least not now.  Instead, I want to reflect on “creative destruction,” the technological elimination of jobs, from a philosophical and theological standpoint.  I think there are profound questions about work, questions that may have revolutionary implications for human life and morality.

            In his letter to Titus, the apostle Paul said that Christians needed to provide for daily necessities and not live unproductive lives.  In context, it seems that Paul wanted the new Christians in Crete to win a good reputation for the Jesus movement.  (In the 1^st century all Christians were new Christians.)  The believers should be law-abiding, self-disciplined, honest, kind, and hardworking.  In every way they ought to live so as to make outsiders think well of Christianity.

            Now, there have been and still are interpretive debates about Paul’s letter to Titus.  For example, in the 19^th century, Christians disagreed whether Paul’s instructions in chapter 2—“teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything”—was an authoritative endorsement of slavery.  Again, I’m not going to discuss such disputes.  I’m not interpreting Paul here; I want to use him as an example.  Paul’s words exemplify a very nearly universal belief about the morality of work, a belief that I think must be critically examined.  Here is the belief in a raw, unrefined form:

            The “moral law of labor”: Every person ought to work.

Even a little reflection shows that as stated the “law” overstates the case.  Some people—infants, infirm old people, people suffering from certain diseases; in short, anyone who is unable to work—have no duty to work.  Their “daily necessities” must be provided by others; that is, by those who are able to work.  So we modify the raw form:

The “moral law of labor” (revised): Every person who is able ought to work.

In his letter to Titus, Paul takes this maxim, or something like it, for granted.  He assumes that everybody knows that people ought to work.  He wants Christians to win a good reputation for the movement by living up to a commonly accepted moral platitude.  The fact that it is a moral platitude shows that some people disobey it; that Paul had to instruct new Christians to obey it shows that some of them were tempted to disobey it.
I said above that Paul’s words express a very nearly universal belief about work.  Not just in the first century, and not just in the West.  I’m confident that the positive moral value of labor is a universal judgment found in every culture throughout human history. 

At this point some readers want to object: Give me a break!  You are a philosopher and “wannabe” novelist, not an expert in anthropology.  How could you possibly know that every culture endorses some version of the moral law of labor?

I will answer that question in part 2 of this essay.  After that, I will move on to a more important question: Is the moral law of labor actually true?

           

Copyright © 2015 by Philip D. Smith.

All rights reserved.  International copyright secured.