In short, capital, and capitalism, always has a tendency towards crisis by undermining the things that are necessary to sustain capitalism
Good stuff, as ever, from futurist Andrew Curry who shares an analysis from Laetitia Vitaud. The latter believes that too few people will be working in future—not because of AI, but because of:
- Insufficient childcare and support for working mothers
- Housing crisis trapping workers
- The caregiving time bomb
- Deteriorating health of workers
Curry goes through these one by one, but it’s his conclusion that I want to share here. There’s an underlying cause to all of this which is, you’ll be surprised to hear, is capitalism.
This piece is already long, so I’ll be brief, but the pattern of the last 40 years is that whole areas of care have been turned into cash machines by innovative parts of capital with the connivance of government. In short, capital, and capitalism, always has a tendency towards crisis by undermining the things that are necessary to sustain capitalism. […]
But the underlying argument here is that over a period of 50 years—and accelerating since the 2008 crisis—we have seen a process whereby increasing areas of the economy have been turned into places run according to the rules of finance capital. Initially this involved running private sector businesses according to financial rules.
As Rebecca Carson argues in her recent book Immanent Externalities, this now extendsinto all of the spaces that are essential to our reproduction as human beings. These spaces, which include housing, schools, childcare, eldercare, and health practices, have become new sources of profit. In other words, if we are going to address the issues that Laetitia Vitaud identifies, we don’t just need new institutions. We need innovation in new forms of ownership—social, public, communal, non-profit—that take these institutions back outside of financially-driven management systems.
Source: The Next Wave
Image: kate.sade