How do we think about the differences between what we call work, what we actually consider work, and the work which many often go out of their way to avoid? To a degree that may seem apparent, but average retirement age structures from the last century make true differentials far less obvious, for instance. It matters not whether our jobs are really tedious, difficult or a fortunate blessing in disguise, for the retirement age speaks of a sameness in health approximations over time which nonetheless varies wildly, according to the work we actually do.
In other words, the work we actually want, we don't really consider work at all. Not only does it tend to keep us healthy much longer, the pay is mostly a bonus. What's more, the work people most enjoy is sometimes reminiscent of the play which inadvertently disappears from the schedules of too many children of the present. Increasingly, even the knowledge environments of adults don't always allow the spontaneity that was once possible. What if the process were inverted and work could recapture knowledge as prior instead of subordinate - to monetary rules which sometimes circumvent freer aspects of knowledge?
This post is not exactly linear thinking in term of work or pay structure approximations, so I'll try my best to explain. What's more this is not "change the world" stuff - it's just a mind stretch to see how people might actually include in their lives, the knowledge which became so important in the 20th century - knowledge which our institutions increasingly don't have room to use on an ongoing basis. While this line of thought underlies many of my suggestions, the idea of communities making knowledge wealth a first priority can feel a bit counterintuitive at first.
There are ways to recognize the knowledge prior in action when one sees it. In most any time frame, this is the work which people (with some mechanism of support) take on, even though it doesn't "pay" to do so. Much innovation and research stemmed from the knowledge prior before institutions took a goodly portion of this work behind their walls in the 20th century. For the sake of contrast, there are some simple ways to think about the knowledge prior.
Earlier societies utilized the knowledge prior mostly as an unpaid element alongside other activities, (especially whenever fortuitous circumstance freed up time) and it slowly contributed to the kinds of advances which made the Industrial Revolution possible. More recent adaptations of the knowledge prior were made possible, when wealth holdings once again made it possible to free up time for the greater challenges of the mind. In any circumstance, particularly valuable knowledge spreads because of its lateral use - i.e. when it is not strictly contained within institutional settings but works alongside them.
It often becomes difficult for knowledge to continue its spread in lateral terms, at historical junctures when people are paid for what they know instead of other vital components of economic activity. Sometimes education backfires for instance, because it may not view knowledge as usable or relevant outside of institutional walls. In such settings, the free use of knowledge may become questioned in other capacities. What's more, it becomes difficult for communities to harness skills wealth in terms that benefit entire groups. How then might communities make each member a miniature wealth holder to a degree that all might support one another in the free use of knowledge, so that production is not forced to create limited settings for its continued use? Part of the process depends on how supply side factors are considered as a whole.
So when I speak of lateral time use, this applies to the time we set aside in our lives for knowledge based work and decisions which are most important to us. Granted, how each individual views such time valuations is different for many reasons. What's more, the fact that we have the chance to tend to internal valuations ourselves, means we are less likely to burn out on knowledge challenges in the sense that monetary priors say it is "necessary" to do so.
Lateral time is equal time in the sense that it is our participation point of economic entry and access. Rather than an arbitrary designation of "low income" individual match with, say, low skill healthcare provider, a community has a chance to see how many want to participate over a lifetime in the actual experience of healthcare matching provisions. That's a better option than having such an important facet of life left up to chance in artificial designations of choice, through both limited provisions and societally "justified" coverage. Where a range of choice exists, most individuals would not see their options through the same lens as income level potentialities for services offerings.
People can have the option to use knowledge priors to create a greater degree of knowledge wealth, based simply on the agreement to support one another in the endeavor to make it possible. By continuing to associate resource use and (separate) product with the random scarcities they represent, skills use in time sequence can be seen as a constant in relation to other more random resource factors. Lateral time participation becomes an anchor both in a monetary and an internal time based sense as well. Even as the agreement (to use time as an equal point of entry) allows a form of internal Say's Law at local levels, the social arrangement continues to have a direct link to the external (non Say's Law) and random arrangement of scarce resources which work in normal monetary terms.
There is an instinctive aspect to matched knowledge use, in terms of what people might elect to use and benefit from. Because time is such a scarce commodity, people often choose time with others which has focused activity. Even children's play of the fifties and sixties (above link) had focus - albeit a more random sort. As a child of the fifties, the times I remember most about those years (when one could just knock on doors to ask neighbors to "come out and play") were the adult versions of life that we reenacted as children. Any present day skills sets calendars (education and work) would allow communities to put together such forms of focused "play", whether in the form of important research or community games.
One of the challenges of spontaneous work/education/play is knowing the difference between what people consider challenges or simply life responsibilities, onerous though some aspects of the work may feel at times. In terms of healthcare in particular, these elements frequently overlap, and any community would have to tease out the differences to understand the work challenges they desire and the work that is simply ongoing and necessary. The reason this is important is the fact that many low skill aspects of healthcare do not belong in a lateral time use setting, but absolutely require normal monetary reimbursement (non lateral terms) in order to take place through normal incentives.
Or, at the very least, some ongoing responsibilities could become part of a local "taxation" system - i.e. skills taxes which would also ensure a much needed skills base for participating citizens to rely upon. Also, and this is important: work which we enjoy for a period of time can quickly become onerous when we have to push beyond a set threshold for that work - a threshold that only our own physical and mental capacity can truly address. Everything about personal choice changes after certain thresholds are repeatedly crossed.
Local economies have incentive to create a supportive base for encouraging challenging work, for only a fraction of this work is actually generated today in any broad sense - whilst maintenance and tedious work is supported by absolute necessity. Fortunately, work which so often engages the knowledge prior runs the gamut to all aspects of life, and often there are opportunities to match such interests with the time of others. For local economies this can also translate into spontaneous forms of work and educational opportunity.
How do we know this is needed in the present? Many institutions - especially at local levels, are only able to offer increasingly truncated versions of the knowledge that was once available in actual product form to the public. While the internet has certainly made a difference in this regard, one problem now lies in the fact that society has yet to utilize this tool for full local knowledge integration. What that means is that local knowledge tends to be like a tree with too few branches and leaves, in that its energy is caught up in its primary trunks. By encouraging and fully developing lateral time use for knowledge, numerous local economies have the capacity to develop knowledge use in much the same manner as any desirable city location.
One important aspect of this potential is that the use of the knowledge prior allows a merge of what has been perceived as separate economies. Consider some recent arguments (per link) that broad innovation carries "too much risk" now for private industry! My readers know that I believe this to be a task for domestic summits, not for the scattered energies of government...no mercantilism necessary. Going forward, it may be the case that developed and developing nations adopt an approach which combines innovative and maintenance elements (earlier aspects of innovation that still apply) to greater effect, and lateral time use with the knowledge prior makes that possible.
Knowledge is like a wildflower. When anyone "pulls it up out of the ground" just to transplant it elsewhere, a couple of things can happen. Some knowledge flowers will do just fine - in hothouses, greenhouses (static or permanent team settings), special landscaped settings (institutions). In fact, some of those flowers will happily bloom and rapidly spread. But other flowers don't do so well. In fact, they may even die out if they are expected to live on a property where they are just not compatible with the soil or perhaps the lay of the land, and so need to be able to grow where seeds would carry them on the wind. When we honor the place that is the time of the individual as true private property, the knowledge wildflowers of the world can once again bloom.
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