‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
blog.longreads.com
blog.longreads.com
A useful question today: when do we hit "peak office"? At some point, the demand for office workers and office space should max out. More of that work is being done by computers, of course. In particular, new companies tend to have much smaller office staffs than older ones.
We passed "peak paper" a few years ago, much to the annoyance of the paper industry. (Packaging usage is up, but paper documents are way down.) Why hasn't "peak office" been reached yet?
Increased flexibility in working arrangements is good, but it doesn't change the nature of the work that is done.
I would guess that office work will grow and be around for quite a good while yet. Nothing really substitutes for having a team of people face-to-face together in one place.
In many ways, I feel like "employment" is far too similar to high school, when it should be more like college -- define a task or project, set up periodic meetings to go over it (like class or lab in school), provide a place to work on it collectively (like a computer lab or library in school), but don't define where and how the work is to be done -- unless the worker can't figure it out himself and frequently fails to complete the task!
(and that, I think, is the root of the problem -- some people can't discipline themselves enough to do work on their own, so no one gets to....)
The "post-peak-paper" world was well known and forecast for decades before it actually happened: people would replace paper documents with electronic documents.
The post-peak-office question is trickier. There's a general feeling that "computers" will replace most jobs, eventually. But then what? Do only some people work, in either a Star Trek utopia or a "Beggars in Spain" dystopia? Do people do something else, that doesn't involve offices?
Right now, while you might argue that automation and productivity gains reduce the need for office work to "get things done", the savings are ultimately just spent on more office work: advertising and the financial sector.
> Automation is reducing the need for human labor, and at
> some point there will simply not be enough jobs to go
> around
Despite a 300% increase, and the most mind-bending increase in automation and productivity until then, there are still enough jobs to go around.
At the end of the day I too am reasonably optimistic, but your comparison the the events of the 19th century are too simplistic.
Today? Tea shops, bubble teas. Gourmet kebabs made from organically grown meat. Breakfast bars with 150 varieties of breakfast to choose from and combine in one tasty bowl with hand squeezed udder milk. Weekend breaks in scenic spots with cable cars and a robot serving you breakfast. Local organic wild vegetables cooked in various ways.
Each one of these is true today, employs orders upon orders of mechanization and automation to get the job done, yet exist and are mainstream.
Yet they require human interaction at some critical parts, be it construction, testing, maintenance, on-going quality control, or increase in scope of function.
The comparison with luddites in the 19th century was not simplistic, it was spot-on: the luddites didn't realize the possible growth of the non-land-owning and non-hereditary base of power which, at that time, was sparse and dependent on the favour of classes above.
Absolutely.
the luddites didn't realize the possible growth of the non-land-owning and non-hereditary base of power which, at that time, was sparse and dependent on the favour of classes above.
Again, absolutely agree. However I disagree that we can necessarily extrapolate anything useful from that fact. I just don't see it as a given that we'll see the same level of job growth coming out of this bout of "creative destruction" over the next 50 years. As you pointed out even our leisure activities are requiring less and less workers even as their variety might be growing. We're going to have to find a fundamentally new source of employment or the numbers just don't balance out.
But as I said, I'm an optimist at heart and I think we'll be fine, but I also suspect the we have to fundamentally rethink things like the meaning of "full employment" and the nature of the 40 hour work week.
Bear in mind that the definition of "middle class" has changed.
Back then, all business owners were deemed "middle class", including people who own or manage large businesses. The term "upper class" was reserved for nobles and other hereditary landowners.
Nowadays, large business owners are synonymous with "upper class". Nobody would call someone like Warren Buffett or Sumner Redstone "middle class" nowadays, but that term would've been applied to them in the 19th century.
The actual statistics beg to differ with you. And the trend is not our friend, either.
Here's 1880-1995:
file:///Users/petersergeant/Downloads/unemploymentbackto1881_tcm77-267536.pdf
And then 1992-2015:
However, that may be taken over by robots at some point. Then, I don't know.
There might be only one restaurant worker per 10 office workers. Probably much less.
So remove the office workers and tell all of them to become busboys. Unfortunately, there being no office workers means no revenue, or at least a 90% drop. Unfortunately you went from 1 dude in the busboy labor pool and 1 busboy job, which works pretty well, to 11 dudes in the busboy labor pool and 1 job (until the revenue crunch hits and it goes to zero). Unfortunately the old busboy who can do no higher level work than being busboy is probably going to be replaced by the most aggressive unemployed MBA former office worker, and in former years the ten office workers paying taxes could afford some unemployment for an unemployed busboy, or even 10 unemployed busboys, but no longer, so its a life of crime ... or revolution, after all there are 9 equally unemployed and unhappy former office workers whom "the system" isn't working for them anymore.
The TLDR is the service sector is not an engine of wealth creation. We can sell each other refinanced mortgages or backrubs or life coaching all day in a circular fashion, but its never going to pay any bills and will grind to a halt soon enough.
That's a post-office world, and one which will come before our concept of work as the necessary foundation of an existence is eliminated (though on a long enough time frame, that's probably coming too).
Because most offices are staffed by people working for arrogant old people who can't imagine getting through life without staff, because they themselves are not actually capable of doing anything. [Disclaimer: I am both arrogant and an old person, but do not fulfill the requirements for "arrogant old person" because I actually know how to do stuff.]
This is a generational shift. I'm old enough to remember when a certain class of older executive would become enraged when they saw a scientist or engineer in their business unit typing at a keyboard. In their world, secretaries typed up the long-hand notes that scientists and engineers wrote. It wasn't so long ago.
Likewise, the notion that an executive today might book their own travel, or pay their own bills (because really, it's all a couple of mouse-clicks and hardly a significant distraction from thinking the Deep Thoughts[tm] that execs are paid to think) is still anathema to many executives older than their late 40's.
As they retire we will hit "peak office", but not before. My bet is somewhere in the 2025-2030 range.
Still I find that in many areas the amount of office work needing to be done is related to the amount of regulation the industry is burdened with. I know what because of SOX deal with two sets of auditors quarterly whose staff size alone is dozens of people. There is still a great deal of paper work that is required to be in the files of overlapping government agencies in different forms and even at specific times of the year. All that takes people. People to create, people to review, people to certify, people to validate the certification, and people to validate a process that creates the documents is all observed. Then we can add in all the outside agencies which act on or in parallel.
So, pare down regulation and you will pare down office
How are these supposed to be handled, without socially enforced conduct agreements, enforced by an overarching party?
No libertarian has ever explained this to me without hand waving and appeals to doctrine.
I apologize for not explaining my point well the first time. I hope this is more clear. I'm not a libertarian, and didn't intend to write something that looks like pro-libertarian propaganda.
With contract enforced conduct agreements, enforced by a dispute-resolution organization, who tracks your reputation upon which people and other courts will decide whether to enter contracts with you.
No libertarian has ever explained that to you? Robert Nozick explained that to me.
And there are many situations where a collective 'reputation' system isn't an appropriate tool - such as when a party has the resources for self-sufficiency (or simply considers the reputation drop 'worth' it), or no contract is being undertaken in the first place. You essentially ignored the tragedy of the commons. >And< the sale of the market.
I want to thank you for your response, but with all due respect, this sounds like exactly the dogmatic handwaving I was referring to. Perhaps things aren't being explained to me in a way I am able to understand? Aside from the fact that a governing body is a government, exactly how does a reputation system prevent the tragedy of the commons? How does it prevent the sale of the market - ie - it's own co-option?
Again, with all due respect, I can't help feeling that libertarianism is inherently short-sighted and hypocritical political view, driven more by cognitive dissonance and the effect of desire on perception inherent to human psychology. I very open to being disabused of this perception, if someone can address the two issues I have brought up.
You simply can't have, and also not have, a government, no matter how enforcement is performed.
I'm not sure I understand your two objections as I can't see an example of how the free market with its reliance on private property fails to address the tragedy of the commons.
Why does this stuff sound myopic and hypocritical to you? And where is the cognitive dissonance? If you could exemplify I'd appreciate it as I'm curious to understand your point of view now.
I can tell you I see a lot more cognitive dissonance in Yellen's saying that she will raise interest rates but never doing it, than I see in Praxeology's acceptance that incentives steer human motivation.
In a piece for the New-York Enquirer in 1848, he wrote, “It is particularly recommended to those of sedentary habits, to undergo the training which is to be found [on Crosby near Bleecker].” As if responding to the satire of people like Walt Whitman, Tailer argued that after regular exercise “narrow and contracted chests are soon turned into broad and expansive ones, and the puny limbs of him who is not accustomed to exercise are soon changed into well developed and finely formed ones, and he imperceptibly finds himself re-established in health and strength.”
CrossFit, 1850 style.
This is a nice piece of writing. It's a pity that it's technically wrong. While it's true "clerks" have become less significant, "office" has pretty much always been at a fairly high level of use[1]. There's a quote that seems accurate here[2].
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=clerk%2Coffice...
[2] When Geldermans told me that Anquetil always moved his water bottle to his back pocket during climbs, so his bike would be lighter, I began paying attention. I noticed that in all the old pictures of Anquetil climbing, his bidon is always in its holder. That’s straining at gnats. Geldermans’ story strikes to the soul of the rider, and is therefore true. Those pictures are inaccurate.; "The Rider" - Tim Krabbé.
Examples of other, more common uses:
Sermons on the Person and Office of the Redeemer
Lectures on the Nature and End of the Sacred Office
If a coroner be remiss in coming to do his office...
The Office of Holy Week in Latin and English
And, though it be the office of Bishops and Presbyters to instruct...
...shall not be obliged to serve the office of sheriff.It does seem interesting that the level of usage stays so similar even if the actual way the word is used changes, though.