Here is an excellent essay from Kevin Williamson at National Review. I’ve commented before about how that publication has become a rudderless and supercilious operation since Rich Lowry took control. In a given week, there may be two or three things worth reading on that site, most of which will be by Kevin Williamson. If he were to leave or get fired I’d have no reason to visit the site. The guy is one of the better polemicists going these days. Even when you don’t agree, you take his argument seriously. That’s a rare quality, one I wish I possessed. Anyway, he bumps into a few subjects here that I have been noodling over of late.

At the risk of doing an injustice to Mr. Loy’s argument, the fullness of which cannot easily be communicated in this limited space, it must be understood that the thing that worries him here is not optional. “Manipulating the world in order to get what we want from it” is a pretty good definition of work, which is fundamental to our lives, so much so that in most of the ancient religions it is regulated in much the same way as sex and diet. Buddhism has a very developed philosophy of work — “right livelihood” being one of the requirements of the Eightfold Path — while the Christian story of the Fall is in the end an attempt to explain why we must labor: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” What happens in the meantime? “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” The message is the same elsewhere: The literal meaning of “karma” is “work.”

The problem of work, and the related problem of unemployment, is per Mr. Loy’s observation one in which the collective experience is recapitulated at the individual level. Unemployment at the individual level often is traumatic: Economic stress is difficult in and of itself, but it also can disturb family life, may lead to isolation from one’s friends and community, and may provide an occasion for shame, even when that shame is unjustified. Because we are the richest people that human civilization ever has seen, there is no reason for anyone to go wanting for the mere essentials of subsistence; because we are the richest people human civilization ever has seen, it is very difficult to be satisfied with the mere essentials of subsistence.

There are two things here. One is the belief that work is fundamental to the human animal. The need to work is the need for purpose, not a need to labor. People have believed this since the dawn of time. My grandfather used to say that if you don’t have a reason to wake up in the morning, you won’t. Similarly, we have the other side of the coin. Idle hands do the devil’s work. People with nothing good to do with their time will find something evil to do with it. These expressions did not spring from nothing. They are the product of generations so experience, trial and error in the laboratory of history. We are social animals and to be so means having a role, a purpose, in the tribe. Otherwise, the tribe has no use for you. Banishment is an ancient punishment for a reason.

But what happens when we cross the threshold into a post-scarcity world? Yeah, I know. The Congolese and Somalis are starving and dying of the runs. The Brazillian peasantry are starving and dying too. The reason is not scarcity. The reason is these people are violent, dimwitted savages. If they were otherwise, they would have all the food and medicine they could need. Even with some portion of our population in the violent savage category, we are able to provide more than enough for everyone in the West. The savages of West Baltimore and South Philly are not starving or dying of cholera. They shoot each other and overdose on drugs, but they have enough to eat and a roof over their head.

It goes beyond just feeding the animals in our zoos. We are running out of things for honest ambitious people to do with their time. Whole job categories are being eliminated every year. In Tyler Cowen’s bean-topia, robots will do all the labor and much of the thinking. A small elite will sit atop controlling the robots. They will also make sure the robots keep the rest of us in our camps and reservations. I have my doubts about that scenario, but we are going to have to come to terms with the fact whole categories of labor are going to become obsolete for the first time in human history. It is one thing to lose the buggy whip maker. It is another no longer need doctors or farmers. Go into a modern warehouse and you don’t see a lot of people.

Capitalism is not nearly as beady-eyed and green-eyeshaded as its critics would have you believe. Imagine transporting Mick Jagger and J. K. Rowling back in time even a few hundred years and presenting to the Sun King these two English subjects, richer than pharaohs and so celebrated that neither could go to a shop or stroll down the street without causing a sensation, and then explaining that they are, respectively, a singer of songs and a teller of children’s stories — not for Her Majesty, but for the common people. We are good to our poets. And we are very good to our plumbers and mechanics and builders. It is a testament not only to our wealth but to our spirit that people in Brooklyn can use the phrase “celebrity butcher” without falling down on the sidewalk laughing. I cannot imagine going back to the 1950s and trying to explain to my father, who worked in a butcher’s shop, that there would be such a thing as a celebrity butcher, and that people would pay $85 to take a two-hour class from one.

I don’t think you need go back much further than a the dawn of the First World War. In 1914, it was impossible to become a billionaire singing ditties or writing children’s books. You could become mildly famous, as it in famous amongst your peers, by writing books. I doubt that Booth Tarkington or Eleanor Porter were getting mobbed on the streets or even recognized, despite being best selling authors. My grandfather used to point out to me that in his youth, performers were considered the scum of the earth. They were the lowest rung. Even cleaning a stable was considered more honorable than joining the circus or the theater. He’d end his rant with a point about John Wilkes Booth being an actor.

The status of entertainer was unchanged from the time of Ur through about 1930, give or take. Suddenly, mass media turned this relationship on its head. Telling jokes, singing songs, playing sports, fornicating in public and debasing yourself for the entertainment of others are now the way to riches. Even people who are bad at it get rich. Kwame Brown is a very bad basketball player. He has made $63 million dollars in the NBA. Sitcom actors who make one program end up earning tens of millions over their lifetime. This talent show culture has infected how we manage our affairs. President Obama won two elections because he belongs to a cult and reminds people of a young Morgan Freeman, an actor who often plays a president. I may be wrong, but I suspect this does not end well.

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