Starting from Me - Towards a Low-Energy Consumption Society

Author: (Denmark) Norgaard
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features:
3.2 Creative Labor
On the one hand, laborers produce food, building materials, furniture, clothing, and other goods. On the other hand, they also provide various services through other forms of labor, such as education, defense, waste disposal, etc. At the same time, the continuous improvement of technology also provides positive support in reducing time and effort. Technology is not a new phenomenon. Thousands of years ago, technologies such as stone axes and ceramics reduced the difficulty of work, making it easier to obtain food, clothing, and housing. Especially in the past century, the amount of wealth created by individuals has gradually increased. A century ago, most people in Denmark were involved in food production, but now only 5 out of every 100 people are employed and directly engaged in food production. Agricultural mechanization has freed up thousands of people, allowing them to join urban industrial production. Mechanization and automation have continuously increased the productivity of urban industries, causing more people to move away from industrial work and into service industries, such as kindergartens, hospitals, insurance companies, restaurants, schools, entertainment, public administration, publishing, banks, and television stations. And the automation in these fields will mean that even more people will lose their jobs in the future. What does this mean—leisure or unemployment? Mechanization and specialization have enabled each worker to produce more and more goods. So far, the growing level of public and private consumption has still been able to keep pace with the increasing production level. The question is whether the level of consumption will continue to grow in the future. If the answer is no, it means we must stop increasing the level of mechanization and automation, or increase leisure time. If we choose the latter, we can achieve this through the unemployment of more laborers or by reducing working hours so that more willing workers can participate in work.
3.3 The Social Value of Work
We should remember that production is not the only purpose of work. Unemployment often makes people feel lost, even if they receive reasonable unemployment benefits, because they lose a sense of belonging and social responsibility. Most unemployed people feel that their lives are meaningless because they do not belong to the socially recognized category of workers (regardless of what kind of work they do). This social need has brought many troubles to many unemployed people.