But it is no longer universally dismissed. Jacques Delors, president of the European Community’s Executive Commission, predicts that a prime challenge of the next decade will be “a whole new relationship between the citizen and leisure time.” Here and there in European think tanks and universities, scholars are toying with scenarios in which previously unthinkable levels of unemployment would become permanent. Their conclusions: that the result would not be merely social and political turmoil; it would make nonsense of existing concepts of work, money, dignity, prestige, even “value.” It would demand a new social contract.
To such theorists, the European and American experience since 1973 is evidence that the no-more-jobs scenario is plausible. To the astonishment of most experts, some Western European nations have proven that they can support double-digit joblessness over an indefinite period without a serious breakdown of social order. If 10 percent, why not 25 percent? Or 50 percent? At least so far, some countries have been able to substitute computers for employees and provide a minimal income for those left out. And labor-saving technologies are still in their infancy. Like shorthand typists and bus conductors, many steel-and autoworkers could soon disappear. New materials like heavy-duty ceramics will obviate the need for much routine maintenance and repair. Even the much-lauded “service sector” will not be spared. Increasingly efficient lawn mowers will allow one worker to trim hundreds of acres of grass in a morning.
To be sure, mainstream economists and politicians dismiss the radical scenario sketched above as either far off in the future or just plain kooky. They insist that employing most work-age citizens is not only desirable but attainable. As the popular slogan has it: “We can’t afford unemployment.” But the fact is, if the radical view is right, we can afford unemployment. Full employment, based in effect on permanent subsidies to those doing needless jobs, is what we cannot afford. The dole will be cheaper than artificial salaries. Already in the early 1970s, German economists at the University of Kiel were talking about a fully “mature economy,” in which every family already owned a house, color-television set and VCR-where new sources of demand did not exist. That situation could arise in some Western European countries and Japan. It is a more remote prospect for the United States, where social and geographical mobility provide room for more growth and jobs. But distant as the prospect may seem, we need to begin thinking through .he implications of an utterly new kind of society, where only research scientists, artists, entertainers and athletes would be sure of finding useful work." For a lot of ordinary citizens, lolling on the beach could become a full-time job.
The vision is both beguiling and horrifying. Consider H. G. Wells’s “The Time Machine.” A late-Victorian time traveler arrives in England in A.D. 802700 and finds a new race of Britons, whom he calls the Eloi, utterly enchanting in their graceful idleness. It is only after a few days that he discovers a second race of underground slaves who run the furnaces and produce the goods to keep the upper world going. But this slave race, the loathsome Morlocks, get their revenge and then some. When they are hungry, they simply slaughter a few of the soft and defenseless Eloi, like cattle, and eat them.
