Would it be irrational to sideline the concept of labour, from the workplace of the future? Especially given the fact that some forms of physical labour will remain necessary, that are repetitive, difficult, and even dangerous. Fortunately, however, these kinds of labour are no longer needed in the quantities they once were.
Nevertheless, nations which lack economic complexity, continue to expect their citizens to perform an excessive amount of physical labour, in relation to more desirable forms of work. As Timothy Taylor recently noted, for instance, children still bear too much of this burden. Alas, for some nations, better forms of organizational capacity are needed, which can finally give these populations more hope for the future.
For advanced nations, however, the conceptual environment for labour is quite different, and has been for some time. Here, the challenge is to insure that no group of individuals should be left out of economic participation, or else expected to perform all of the work of a society which is necessary, but not intellectually stimulating. In particular, when physical labour becomes the primary economic choice for older citizens (as other skills become less relevant), the result is akin to the child labourer who bears too extensive a daily burden, to realistically pursue a well lived life.
Why has the concept of labour, proven so confusing? In developed nations, the work that a majority of individuals seek (when they have the chance to do so), is not just a matter of necessary production. Meaningful work includes many activities which also function as forms of personal, time oriented consumption. In order to gain such work, individuals became willing to expend considerable sacrifice and human capital investment. This fact alone, helps to explain why it isn't helpful to place stimulating and desirable work, in the same framing as mind numbing yet necessary work.
One reason it is important to distinguish these categories separately, is that people are often well compensated for work they already wanted as a form of psychic consumption. While there is nothing wrong with this, more people need a chance to partake in work as psychic consumption, even if and when they aren't compensated via high incomes. Many of us would be more than willing to perform such work with minimal monetary compensation, whenever internally shared costs of assets and time based services (defined equilibrium), make it possible to do so.
The work that is especially sought in the near future is less about labour, and more about improving how we experience shared time with others in workplaces and marketplaces. An important feature of time based services, is that production and consumption are part of the same "package", or service product. Likewise, the practical often blends with the experiential, in terms of what is sought by all who are involved in the process.
Part of abandoning the concept of labour, includes acknowledging the fact that our time is a scarce and hence precious resource. Today's institutions treat aggregate time potential as excessively abundant, which is why they can't tap into time based resources so as to allow this natural commodity to come into its own.
Even though formal education attempts to improve the quality of the time we offer to others, these institutions weren't constructed so as to make use of one's personal time offerings in a broadly relevant framework. Instead, both not for profit education and for profit education, were constructed to gain profits as the primary marketplace in which human capital investments could be purchased. The problem? A lack of organizational platforms in workplaces and marketplaces, which could consequently make full use of these extensive personal commitments.
More platforms for human capital potential, are greatly needed. And by recognizing the reality of desirable work as a form of consumption, we can also safely sideline the concept of labour, so that future work might finally be conceived and applied in more meaningful terms.
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