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In a wealthy society, could you buy a good job?
Let's say that the world is so wealthy that most people don't need to work. Still they might be bored. They might want to work.
What kinds of jobs could they buy? Under one view, the resulting jobs would always feel phony. The customers/laborers would never fear being fired. They would never have to try very hard, or could never feel that the enterprise really mattered. You might, for instance, buy a job as a blogger.
Under another view, markets in artificial jobs will be very advanced, a' la Total Recall. Maybe it will be only twenty hours a week, but your phony job will feel quite real. It will feel better and more important than today's jobs. Theatre, drugs, and self-deception all can be directed toward this end.
If need be, we can create a separate job in making your phony, purchased job matter (that job surely would matter). Contract to suffer twenty lashes if you screw up. Or hire a third party to start sending money to ten poor kids in India. If you are not a superior producer, the third party will stop sending the money. He will also send you photos of those Indian children, now kicked out of the orphanage and with distended bellies. Over time you will see them starve and die. Of course to accept such terms is, since you will likely work hard, an ex ante act of altruism.
I don't expect this exact outcome, but only because there are cheaper ways of buying jobs that seem like they matter. I believe we will be able to buy very good and very fun jobs. I do not fear that we will all become dissolute recipients of trust funds.
I am indebted to Megan McArdle for a lunch conversation on this topic.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 14, 2007 at 07:36 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Aren't people already buying jobs on archaeology digging vacations, mission trips to Honduras, and non profit boards? I agree with you, but I think the age of buying jobs is already here.
And that's not to mention the 18th century practice of buying apprenticeships for your kids (if poor) or military officerships (if rich).
Posted by: DK at Apr 14, 2007 8:23:22 AM
Let's say that the world is so wealthy that most people don't need to work.
Er, how would that wealth be produced in the first place? Hello?
The "jobs that matter" will always be real actual productive opportunities: these jobs will simply pay for themselves.
Posted by: guest at Apr 14, 2007 9:09:43 AM
I'm puzzled as to why is this such a puzzle -- we already have lots of people who don't have to work (retirees, teenagers, non-working spouses without young children at home). We know what these people do, so I don't see the mystery. Why wouldn't we expect these categories to grow? Kids who get their first paying job at a later and later age, people who retire (or semi-retire) earlier, and so on?
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 14, 2007 9:22:16 AM
I would bet that inhabitants of the planet 200 years ago would view many of our actual jobs today as being somewhat frivolous and unimportant to survival. Especially, perhaps, jobs which permit, nay encourage, a detached and ironic discussion of themselves.
Posted by: JPC at Apr 14, 2007 10:15:14 AM
Tyler-
Just what do you do for a living? I think you have too much free time.
Posted by: Rich Berger at Apr 14, 2007 10:43:15 AM
More seriously, this type of question goes to the question of human purpose. This seems to be an issue that atheists/libertarians have a tough time with. If the only purpose you find worthy is the feeding, watering and entertaining of yourself, then it's a genuine question about what to do next once that is taken care of. If in the future, the feeding, watering and entertaining of all the humans on the planet is taken care of with little effort, then what? In cliche form: without struggle there is no purpose. Perhaps making the rest of the solar system safe for American Idol is the big plan.
For thinking people there is no rational answer to these types of questions. And I think that may account for the heavy drinking and perpetually ironic mien of many who have come to the edge of this abyss and peeked over the edge.
Posted by: JPC at Apr 14, 2007 10:44:06 AM
I hate to say it Tyler, but this seems kind of like a question that already has an answer. To a large degree, isn't that what politics is becoming? Now certainly not completely, but certainly in the State of California being wealthy goes a very long way toward individuals buying their "dream job."
Posted by: Joel B. at Apr 14, 2007 11:27:29 AM
Actually, a similar idea was the topic of a science fiction short story I remember reading long ago.
I think it may have been called the "Midas Touch" but am not sure. The premise was simple
It imagines a society where in essence scarcity has been abolished, and the task of society
is to consume what is produced. There is so much being produced in this imagined society
that people are forced to consume beyond their satiation point. The "privileged"
members of this society are those who are not forced to consume as much as others. I would
be grateful if anyone can provide a better citation than me, because I have long wanted
to use the short-story as a teaching tool in econ classes.
Posted by: Joe at Apr 14, 2007 12:04:22 PM
i hope poverty is a problem of past by the time this era of buying jobs arrives. what a despicable world it would be otherwise.
Posted by: The Tsunami at Apr 14, 2007 1:29:53 PM
I'm going to more-or-less reiterate what JPC said because it's important.
People take jobs that add little-to-no-value. Then they claim that the NGO/Non-Profit world doesn't pay very much or that "I'm a poor graduate student." Sure, they're smart enough to go to (say) law school but then their "life wouldn't have meaning."
As more and more people are able to go into jobs that pay them a lower and lower fraction of what they could earn, you could say that they're "buying a good job" or "buying their preferred lifestyle."
In the old days you made as much as you could because dying of starvation or illness was a real concern.
Posted by: Q at Apr 14, 2007 1:43:06 PM
Isn't this what entrepreneurship, Buffett-style takeovers and the like boil down to anyhow?
Posted by: Steven Schreiber at Apr 14, 2007 1:57:23 PM
Of course, there's always politics.
Posted by: Keith at Apr 14, 2007 2:13:22 PM
No, entrepreneurship and buyouts are about making money. After all, Buffett leaves current management in place to run the companies that he buys. He's certainly not buying a job for himself when he buys a company; he's buying the cash flows. As are Blackstone, KKR, and all the others. Of course thy tend to have a much heavier hand in the day-to-day business of running the companies than does Buffett.
As far as being able to buy a good job in the ultra-wealthy future, I think it'll wind up looking a lot more like I imagine Los Angeles to be: lots of people trying to be "artists". Lots of people painting really bad pictures, writing really bad books, and acting in really bad TV shows. These are the things that, for the most part, add no value to society but make the people doing them feel like they're doing something meaningful. A very tiny percentage of the population can actually add value doing such activities. The rest of us are wasting space.
Also, I like to imagine that there will be several levels of professional athletes, ranging from the really good ones that we have today, all the way down to the fat old guys who buy a position on a team. *Side question: how much would a ticket to a Mid-Atlantic Seniors League baseball game cost? And if all of the players paid to be on the team, should it cost anything at all? And how much will a hotdog cost at THOSE games?
Posted by: Robb at Apr 14, 2007 2:24:04 PM
If the world is so wealthy, who are these poor kids in India?
Posted by: Aaron at Apr 14, 2007 2:25:00 PM
Tyler,
As you yourself have written, such a labor "market" already exists for the arts.
Posted by: Gabriel Rossman at Apr 14, 2007 2:26:41 PM
Joe: The story you're looking for is "The Midas Plague" by Frederik Pohl. It turns out this story was also the centrepiece of a collection of related stories: Midas World (I haven't read the anthology, only the original short story).
It appears the Beeb did a teleplay of the show as well.
My opinion is that Pohl's story uses the unlikely premise of a high level of consumer consumption being required to absorb the surplus goods in order to drive progress and innovation. I thought that was what the space program was for.
As for the jobs of the future, we already call them hobbies and pastimes. If I had enough of an annuity to continue my present income level indefinitely, I'd probably invest more time into the hobbies and personal interests I already have.
I don't think the Mid-Atlantic Seniors League tickets will cost anything; the players would hire the fans. Every day there are tons of marginal amateur sporting events that transpire with more participants than fans.
The scary future of a vast panoply of mediocre fine arts production is surely with us today.
I think the real question is how income distribution will work. As productivity and meritocracy rises, it may be possible that fewer and fewer more productive workers are doing the actual jobs (we can only hope they really enjoy them) while the rest of us are essentially hoping to make it into the secondary markets of somehow directly assisting or entertaining them, or assisting or entertaining the people who assist or entertain them.
"Personal Service". . . will it become a luxury good or a hobby?
WIll socialism win by default?
Posted by: Ryan Cousineau at Apr 14, 2007 4:07:25 PM
I'm not sure whether I'm more jealous that Megan had lunch with Tyler, or that Tyler had lunch with Megan...
Posted by: B.S. at Apr 14, 2007 6:51:09 PM
This question has already been answered in Star Trek. "The accumulation of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and humanity." There is plenty of space out there that needs to be investigated, and through that endeavor a deeper understanding of humanity can be attained.
Posted by: mxpwr03 at Apr 15, 2007 2:33:35 PM
Let's say that the world is so wealthy that most people don't need to work.Er, how would that wealth be produced in the first place? Hello?
Automation.
Posted by: TJIC at Apr 15, 2007 11:06:39 PM
A large part of Mr. Cowen's post is explored in the Jorge Luis Borges story "The Lottery in Babylon".
Posted by: sammler at Apr 16, 2007 4:50:05 AM
You can already buy good jobs. The canonical example is probably "race car driver", where drivers frequently have to contribute money to their team, either through bringing in sponsorship or directly. There are plenty of other jobs that you can "buy" by being rich enough to forego other much more gainful employment - non-profit boards, public interest lawyer, etc.
Posted by: Jake at Apr 16, 2007 2:11:18 PM
In such a society people would buy quant jobs, much like Paris Hilton does on Simple Life. They would be a janator or baby sitter or a farmer for a week at a time, just to give their world a feel of reality.
Posted by: natasha at Apr 16, 2007 2:59:33 PM
It would be extremely easy to set up a system where jobs are paid for but don't have the problem that "customers/laborers would never fear being fired." Presumably the risk of being fired, like the risk of losing at a video game, would be part of what you had paid for, and would, indeed, be central to the brand. It's like a poker tournament -- you pay your money and you take your chance. If you perform well, you can tell people at parties that you are a professional whatever, working for the real deal. Don't you think NBA players would do it for free if that was the only option? Assuming plenty of wealth, the status would be a draw.
Not that I find the idea plausable -- this problem would only happen if there was some kind of ceiling on wealth, either by fiat or because there was somehow nothing worth buying beyond a certain point.
Posted by: Robert Rounthwaite at Apr 16, 2007 4:45:19 PM
Tyler lost me in the first sentence. Try this instead: Imagine the world is so wealthy that you have to work really ridiculously hard and ingeniously to feel like you've contributed anything.
Posted by: Paul N at Apr 16, 2007 9:21:06 PM
TJIC, automation is a form of capital investment. Capital does not produce wealth from scratch: it is a complement to other productive opportunities.
Posted by: guest at Apr 17, 2007 6:49:36 AM
