Rich Penney - The Contradictions of Capitalism - Australia Z-Day, 2017
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Today we're here to listen to Rich talk about
the contradictions of capitalism, so let's
Invite you to welcome Rich
Thanks so much
ok, first thing's first, you see
one of my points in this presentation
is going to be that I am a little bit disorganized
and proof of this is that the computer has gone into
night mode with...
And I forgot about this because, you know, it's still synced to Canada
time so I'm just fixing that now before we start
and here we go! Ok.
There we go
You ever seen Signfeld, you know, Creamer? that's me
OK!
There is a wonderful line from a
musician in Canada, his name is Mathew Good and he so aptly
summarized the plight of millennials. Here it is
right now: "I did it on Ritalin. I got me
some good grades. Now I work me the night shift
Where I pull and pull and pull til it hurts."
Thanks so much for having me, by now you all know who I am, my name is Rich Penny
I wrote the Justice Keeper saga. Today i'm gonna
be taking you through a talk called "The Contradictions of Capitalism"
And I am going to be telling you a little bit about my own
personal story to help illustrate how I learned
about these contradictions. Now there are a few things that you need to
Understand about me: one is that I live with a condition
called "Keratoconus" which basically means that my
corneas are warped and my eyesight has
deteriorated. On top of that,
I have an impaired motor cortex which both affects
my ability to move around and also my organisational
skills. So, all that being said
Let's start with contradiction number 1: You can have any
job, just not the one you want.
Ok. So, I create universes,
that's what it means to be a novelist. Universes
with form and structure, Universes with their own unique physics,
with characters very vivid and lifelike, they've been mentioned in
several reviews. I could have an idea for a
television series and within about an hour i would
have every episode of every season plotted out
and in fact, last night during a social event
I began to realize that my story was very, very similar to
Peters, just replace "musician" with "novelist"
I didn't pursue
Story writing in the form of script writing or novel writing
because I was told all my life that writers
don't make a lot of money. So, let's just take a moment
and take a look at some basic free market logic here.
The "Invisible Hand" naturally allocates material rewards
to people whose goods and services are most in demand.
So, if you get payed more, it must mean
you do more good, right? well
let's examine that. This is data from the bureau of labor statistics
in the United States
In 2007, roughly 5% of Americans were
unemployed. By 2009 that number
dropped to 10%. Average salary
for an investment banker: $71500
for a fast food worker it's only $19500
So I'm guessing, then, by market logic,
destroying the economy is worth more to society
than serving people food.
This equation of dollar signs with worth is something we see
everywhere. This is an article from bestdegree.com
10 degrees managers don't want to see. Can I
just direct your attention to that paragraph in the upper left?
Music therapy majors learn
how a variety of musical styles can help facilitate
healing and ease suffering in patients.
Ok, so.. oh yeah.
how exactly do you use that when filling out an accounting report?
That's the important sentence there. So, the implication here is
Clear, right? don't be a music therapy major,
be an accountant, because accountants make money, i just have one
small question for you: what if you're a
shitty accountant?
More to the point, what if you're a shitty accountant, who
happens to be a musical genius? The exact kind of
musical genius who can see patterns in melodies and use those
patterns to bring relief patients who are suffering. See
maybe it's true that society needs 50 accountants or even
500 accountants for every one music therapist but
what's more valuable overall? one single terrible
accountant or one single brilliant music therapist?
The market doesn't account for these things.
Which brings me to contradiction number 2: The Market prides
itself on " diversification of labour", but talents often go to
waste because they can't be monetized.
"Be an electrician." This was the advice from my
10th grade math teacher. One small problem with this
you can choose a "stable" career, like electrician, if you're terrible
at it you still won't succeed.
now the Idea that there might be a biological basis for skill
That we can't all be equally good at everything,
wow... See what I mean? Clumsy!
The idea that we can't all be equally good at everything
is somewhat inathemate of the free market, because in the
free market you're supposed to adapt to whatever's in demand
so if you're a taxi driver and you get displaced by automation
you're supposed to go to such and such technical institute and get retrained
as a computer programmer. But,
unfortunately there is evidence to suggest a biological
basis for skills at least to a limited degree. This is a study
by Ariel Starr, Melissa Libertus and Elisabeth Brannon
of Duke University. they wanted to see whether children
with a natural number sense went on
to do better in math class their experiment was fairly simple
they would show children cards with a series of dots on them
and the only difference would be the size of each dot
And they would do this with infants about 6 months old
and they would show the infant 4 or 5 cards with the same
number of dots and then a new card with a different number.
Now some of these infants would notice and they would react,
others wouldn't. And what our researchers found, was that the infants
who reacted went on to be children who did better in math class.
Here's their research: "Given that
the correlation between number sens acuity and math achievement
holds into adulthood, and given that adults in math-literate
societies have, on average slightly higher
innate number sense than adults from cultures without
systemic count lists, it seems likely that there are
bidirectional influences between number sense and math achievement.
Nevertheless, the present finding that number sense
acuity in infancy predicts number word knowledge and
math scores in early childhood suggests that the influence of
number sense acuity on math achievement precedes
exposure to verbal counting and math education.
This finding is therefore most consistent with the hypothesis
that number sense acuity has a causal influence on math achievement.
So to break that down to you in simple terms; If you
practice with mathematics, you will develop a better number sense
over time. But if you're born with a naturally high
number sense, you're probably going to do better in math class
Similar studies can be done with music.
This is research performed by Miriam Mosey
of the Carolinska Institute
in Sweden. She wanted to see if there was a genetic
basis for musical talent, and she did this by
Having twins perform with musical instruments
One twin would practice and the other one wouldn't. I don't have time to take you through
the whole article, but can we just (you probably can't see it), but
can we just direct your attention to that bottom paragraph?
Two twins could have an equal level of musical ability,
no matter how much more one twin practice compared to the other.
In one instance, a twin practiced
20.228 hours more than his
brother, but still had the same musical ability
as the other twin.
Yeah. So, unfortunately, in the
Market whether or not you are capable of
thriving in a certain career is never factored into the
calculation of whether or not you should have access to basic
resources for survival. Not... it's a sad
reality but there are some people who will never be skilled
mathematicians, there are some people who will never be skilled musicians
And there are some people who will never be skilled accountants. This
diversity is actually a good thing, because
our wide range of talents allows us to come
together and build things together and build things together and build things together, but unfortunately
Capitalism doesn't look at you and your individual
strengths and deci- and give you an opportunity
to apply those strengths, rather you have to adapt
to whatever happens to be in demand, and which brings me to
contradiction number 3: Capitalism glories in individualism
but it treats people as interchangeable cogs in a machine.
Workers who are displaced through automation or outsourcing
can be retrained for new jobs. That's the story we're always told.
Low-skill work get's automated, allowing people
to move on to more high skill professions.
That's the myth, unfortunately it's just not
true. This is data from David Atur M.I.T.
This graph is fairly simple, each one of these collored curves
represents a different decade. Everything above the red line is
job growth, everything below is job losses
On the left hand side we have low-skilled, low-paying
jobs, and over here on the right we have high-skilled
high-paying jobs. So what is this graph telling us?
Well if you look at the blue curve, which represents the 1980's,
you see a dip in low-skill,
low- wage jobs, and growth in high-skilled,
high-wage jobs. So, great, right? Unfortunately
If you look at the two most recent decades
Symbolized by the yellow and green lines, you have the exact
opposite phenomenon. An explosion in low-skilled
low-wage work, very minor work
growth or even losses in high-skilled
high-wage work. This is Atur's research
Figure 5 contributes three nuances
to the occupational polarization story above.
First, the pace of employment gains and low-wage
manual task-intensive jobs has
risen successively across periods. Second
the occupations that are losing employment share
appear to be increasingly drawn from higher ranks of the
occupational skill distribution. For example
the highest ranked occupation to lose employment share during the 1980's
lay at approximately the 45th percentile of the
skill distribution. In the final two subperiods
that rank rose still further to above the 75th
percentile, suggesting that the locus of displaced
middle-skill employment is moving into higher-skilled territories
Third, growth in high-skilled, high-wage
occupations, those associated with abstract work, decelerated
markedly in the 2000's, with no relative growth
in the top two deciles of the occupational skill distribution
during 1999 through 2007, and only a
modest recovery from 2007 to 2012
Now, i'd be remiss if I didn't
tell you that David Atur is somebody who believes there's always
going to be enough jobs for everybody.
I happen to disagree with his conclusion, but even if
he were correct, what would seem to be indicated here
is that the kind of work that will be available to people will be
low-skilled, repetitive, menial
soul-crushing work.
Now, the standard myth that we always hear
again and again and again, is that any job is better than no job
Unfortunately, in terms of mental health, that's
just not true. People who are employed
in engaging creative work, tend to become
very well off in terms of mental health. But people who are
employed in menial repetitive jobs tend to be worse
off than those who are unemployed.
This is data from a team of researchers lead by
Peter Butterworth, of the center for mental health
research at the Australian national University
I'm just gonna read you the conclusion
Overall, unemployed respondents had poorer mental health
than those who were employed. However the mental health
of those who were unemployed was comparable or
superior to those in jobs of the poorest psycho-social
quality. This pattern has been evident in
perspective models: those in poorest quality
jobs showed greatest decline in mental health
greater decline in mental health, I should say, than those who were unemployed.
Now, why is this the case? Well often, if you happen to work
in a low-skilled, low-wage job,
you take a lot of abuse from customers or from
your bosses. Now, when I was in these positions myself,
I was frequently told that I was just supposed to
let it roll off me like water like a duck's-
water of a duck's back, you just don't let it bother you. You just
decide that you're not upset. Unfortunately the
human brain doesn't work that way. Emotional
and physical pain light up the same center of the brain,
so a job, where you are payed to be told that you're
worthless all the time really isn't all that different from
a job where you're payed to be punched in the face.
The claim that workers who are displaced through automation
and outsourcing can be retrained for new jobs fails to ask the
questions of whether these workers will benefit from the new jobs. And
as always, it depends on the job. Which brings me to
Contradiction number 4: People who don't work are
a drain on the system, but we have to create jobs.
Now, this one's tricky and not everyone,
sometimes I tell it to people and they don't quite get why it's a contradiction
So just as kind of a curiosity of mine, hands up if you can see why that's
a contradiction... Ok so,
a few people, let me break it down for you.
If it's true that people who don't work are a drain on the system
It means there's an enormous amount of work to do and
not enough people to do it. But if it's true
that we have to create jobs it means that there are plenty of
people and there's not enough work for all of them. Well
which one is it? These two things can't exist at the same time
Which brings me to my story. These are the various jobs
I've had throughout my adult life. This is what your life
looks like if you don't pursue the vocation
you actually want and simply drift aimlessly from one
thing to another because you have to make money somehow.
I was one of the people who experienced a significant decline in
mental health due in no small part to repetitive, demeaning work.
Why is that the case? well for one thing, I'm a night owl
This is an article by live science, that breaks down what that means
People span the range of those who are very early risers to very
late setters and this is genetically determined, says Frederick Brown,
A professor of psychology at Penn State.
To a certain extent, behavior and environment- say, routinely
pumping iron in a well-lit gym toward midnight- can shift
can shift our built in dispositions. But for those of us squarely
in one chronotype camp or the other, in the end,
the body is boss. If you're a morning type person
you can't become an evening type and vice-versa
I don't have time to take you through the whole article,
I really recommend it, it's a wonderful read, but let's just
look at that highlighted paragraph there.
Brown and Arand believe that one's unavoidable preference
for morning or evening should not be considered bad or
unhealthy. Society, they agree, should be more
accepting of inherent sleep-and-wake modes
particularly for night owls, for whom adhering to business hours
is arduous, I cannot tell you how true that is
I'm perpetually disorganized, as you've already
seen. I have a tendency to misplace documents
Lose files, while we were on lunch,
I lost my phone for about 20 minutes
I become increasingly flustered when I have to do
paper work. Now why is this the case? Well,
i'm not entirely clear on it to be perfectly
honest with you but according to a neurologist who treated me
it has to do with an impairment to my motor cortex. Which I've,
we have know about since I was about 5 years old. See,
your motor cortex does more than just control
how you move your body, it also controls how you make
sens of of the physical space around you, including where things
belong. All these difficulties made it very
hard for me to get work done on time when I was an office clerk
I would have to double check and triple check everything.
This is a normal aspect of my career for my entire life
As a result, in that particular job, I would stay late
an extra 3 or 4 hours after the end of my shift
to make sure everything got done. Now, one day,
My boss comes up to me, she takes me aside and she says I can't
do that anymore, because they can't afford to pay me for all those
extra hours.
So, I had to either get my work done in the
standard work day, or I was fired. So
can you guess how I handled this?
you got fired.
Well I did but that's not- that was
further along. See, I started by working for
free. I would stay late the extra 3 or
4 hours, and I would just not log them.
Well, after several weeks of this,
wow...uh.. there we go.
After several weeks of this, my boss takes me into her
office, tells me that I committed a fireable offense
accused me of falsifying payroll statements.
and basically implied that I committed fraud. Now
I broke down in tears in front of this woman.
Because i told her that the only reason I was doing it is I didn't want to be
the person who dragged down the rest of the team.
I wanted to help, I wanted to contribute, and i
wanted to make sure things got done on time. She called me dishonest and untrustworthy
And sent me on my merry way.
Shortly after this, my eyesight began to deteriorate
from the Keratoconus I mentioned. I was living with
constant nausea, dizziness, headaches
It's been corrected to a limited degree, but
I still deal with it to some extents. I sank into a deep
dark depression cause I couldn't hold on to a job for more
than 4 to 6 months, I felt like I was worthless,
of no use to anyone, and just a burden. I wanted to die.
Now, I did a lot of things to come out of that depression.
I took medication, I saw a therapist.
I learned the cause of my
fading eyesight and had it corrected to a limited degree.
And I wrote a book.
And then another book.
And then one more.
I also got involved with the Zeitgeist movement, because the Zeitgeist
movement helped me realize that I didn't need to
justify my existence, I was
perfectly entitled to exist and have access
to my basic necessities, just by virtue of
being alive. in that time, I've developed
a new philosophy, it's pretty radical, are you ready
for it? I only apply for jobs
I actually want to do
See, this is me.
Perpetually disorganized, a night owl
I have been repromanded for crying at work
more than once. Socially awkward.
Prone to boredom give
me a repetitive task, which most jobs are,
I have this tendency to zone out and start writing
novels in my head. Non-conformist, hostile to
authority, unable to multitask, that's part of the
organization thing, and now on top of all that I've got
chronic pain. Now I could maybe overcome
one or two of these things but not all of them.
In my late 20's when I was really starting to hit
rock bottom, I used to tell people in my life
that I felt like I had to completely overhaul
Does ten minutes mean I have ten minutes left?
Ok, we're gonna be done in like 2
Sorry. Easily distracted! we should put that on the list.
Ok, So, As I was saying.
I felt like I had to rehoo- overhaul my entire
personality, essentially rebuild myself from the ground up. I felt like
I had to make myself into a robot, that, you know
whatever the corporations wanted me to be
And, eventually I said that I just couldn't do it
the amount of mental strain was just killing me and the
response you always get in a situation like that is
"Just try harder."
"Go to bed at the same time every night,
you will eventually become a morning person." Wrong.
Develop a system, I love that because it's actually
not advice, develop a system and you will eventually become
organized. Wrong.
See, if you think about it, "develop a system" just means
"be organized and then you'll be organized".
I did try harder.
I, like, that- the part with the working for free was one of the many
ways I tried harder. I tried harder so much that I had a nervous breakdown.
And the truth of the matter is that I am a
shitty office worker. But I'm a brilliant
novelist, that's from a review.
I don't know if you can read it. Umm, anyway
And if you're thinking about contribution to society,
the simple reality is that I've done more
good in the last few years than I ever
did in any of my full time jobs. I get E-mails from people telling them- telling me
that my work has inspired them. I get E-mails from people
after these talks; last year
was like 300 Facebook friend requests and like 70 of them
were people that would say: Rich,
i don't know what I'm doing i feel completely alienated in this
market-system, I feel like I'm worthless and i don't know how to get by.
And I say, I know exactly how you feel cause I was like that a couple of years ago
as well.
No, I'll be perfectly honest with you
I don't make a lot of money. I make some, I have a couple
part-time jobs in addition to my novels
maybe my novels will take off, and I won't have to worry
anymore. but my family does help me out.
So the day may come, because they're not gonna be
able to do that forever, the day may come where Rich Penny is
impoverished, and where he potentially
you know, pays whatever consequences, up to and including
death as a result of that. I have understood
this and accepted this reality and realized that
there's not that much I can do to change it.
So, here's the basic crux of
everything that I've come here to tell you.
If you're a good capitalist, the thought of me being
eliminated from the market because I can't
find a way to monetize my skills, well that should make you happy
cause i'm just a drain on the system anyway.
But if somewhere deep inside you, you look at this
guy who came up here and gave this talk and, you know,
entertained you for 20 minutes and possibly made a buffoon of himself,
If somewhere you look inside you and you see,
you say, you know what? that person doesn't deserve
to have that horrible fate, then I invite you to contemplate
whether capitalism is really the system for you.
And I'll leave you with one last quote, because
last year the quotes were really popular, this is from a band called
Hostage Life, and it was ins- I put it in, cause it was inspired
by the psychopath talk.
"My cause is acquisition. Survival of the
vicious. Slaughter the competition.
If you want a better spot, destroy what they've got
And hang them high from a Windsor knot."
Thanks for having me, have a wonderful Zeitgeist day