IMPACT COMMUNICATION
AND INNOVATION
AND INNOVATION
A recent experiment was concluded in Finland: for two years, 2,000 people were chosen to receive 560 euros as part of a test for the future implementation of a universal basic income system. Upon concluding the study led by Olli Kangas, a professor at the University of Turku, researchers found that the results were, in fact, ambiguous: while this basic income was not enough to live on in Finland, the recipients also showed no change in terms of labor market participation.
The idea was for this basic income to boost the self-esteem and optimism of the recipients, while being paid without the bureaucracy of other forms of assistance (such as unemployment insurance), which require the applicant to go through various procedures and provide proof of eligibility. As proponents of basic income argue, it is precisely the fact that these subsidies have limitations and rules that causes recipients to experience high levels of stress and prevents them from accepting, for example, a higher-paying job that would, in total, exceed the threshold for receiving the benefit. However, as one of the participants in the Finnish test, Tuomas Mujara, commented, not only did people not stop looking for work, but they also didn't stop working because "the security of a minimum income doesn't make anyone lazy."
In reality, what was observed was an improvement in how the recipients took care of their own health, both physical and mental, and the population also experienced an improvement in their well-being. According to Mujara, the main result perceived during the test was a sense of "freedom," which certainly has to do with the fact that the minimum income is an extra amount that provides more financial security and, therefore, a greater sense of freedom. But it also has to do with the fact that the experiment did not focus on bureaucracy and proof of eligibility, since everyone, without exception, received this minimum income. And this is where some critics focus: would it be fair to pay the same amount to a retiree who has worked their whole life and to a young person who has never worked or even studied?
On the other hand, more and more young people are working long hours of up to 18 hours a day and taking pride in this type of behavior. More than a personal choice, these young people are, in reality, being encouraged by a market logic that tells the same story of productivity as the First Industrial Revolution, only with a more cool —instead of factory floors and machine soot, we have palm-leaf wallpaper, flavored water, and free beer.
If, on one hand, people like Bill Gates propose taxing robots as a way to generate enough funds to finance a universal basic income project, we see that this type of initiative would have as one of its outcomes the possibility of not even needing to work anymore or, more likely, being able to direct one's efforts and knowledge toward something that is relevant to the individual. Work, therefore, ceases to be linked to the need for survival and, finally, becomes related to the fulfillment of personal purpose.
However, what is happening today with millennials, who were once considered less hardworking, is that not only have they been working excessively, but they also take pride in this exhaustion, in the style of the Auschwitz entrance gate: work sets you free. With the exception of those who are part of the FIREmovement, what we see in the report by Erin Griffith for The New York Timesis that co-working companies like the multi-billion dollar WeWork are subverting the logic by wanting people to love Mondays and do what they love.
But despite having offices located in high-traffic areas, or even their distinct architecture and HR strategies, some people, like Griffith, are immune to the hype: "Never at the start of a work week, in the morning coffee line, on a crowded subway commute, never when I open my endless email, have I paused, looked to the heavens, and whispered: #ThankGodIt’sMonday."
Interestingly, during an event with a co-working representative, I had the opportunity to hear them state that 85% of people like going to the office to meet others, chat, and network. They said people prefer leaving home to have that office experience. I laughed and said I must be part of the 15% who hate leaving home and do just fine with working remotely. But, really, even though there are movements like Officeless that help workers and companies make their activities more remote, it is still the exception to the rule.
And just as our schools have also, for the most part, not abandoned their factory-like logic of training workers, many companies continue to reproduce a labor and productivity strategy similar to the beginning of the last century. If we are seeing more and more technologies and services capable of automating our tasks and jobs, how can we continue to repeat the same mistakes that once led the Luddites to want to break the machines, fearing they would take their jobs away?
What is happening now, however, is that while some journalists may feel threatened or offended when they glimpse the latent possibility (already applied in newsrooms like that of the Washington Post) of using artificial intelligence to write articles, in my case, I am more than happy: no self-respecting journalist deserves to be writing short blurbs in an inverted pyramid scheme, worrying about SEO to keep the page at the top of Google search results. If, in college, many glorify investigative work and the dirty shoes of Gay Talese, now is the time.
But the reality is that content producers like the One37pm page, which has a business-focused newsletter, end up disseminating a mindset and a lifestyle to be followed. In its description, the site calls itself ambitious, tough, and hardworking, or, as in the original English, "hustle." According to the page, this lifestyle is based on "a live performance that intensifies your creativity... an intensive session that gets your endorphins running... a visionary who expands their way of thinking." That is, as Erin Griffith explains, it means that living this way is to be constantly in work mode, whether you are at a concert or the gym: everything has the purpose of being an inspiration or a means to an end to return to work.
For Ryan Harwood, CEO of one of the companies backing One37pm, it is no longer enough for young people to simply like their job: they need to love it and promote it on social media, blending their profession with their own identity. And, as Griffith comments, it is no wonder that LinkedIn ended up creating its own version of Snapchat-style stories for its network, which is specifically focused on business. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make this distinction, and, apparently, business owners and companies are more than inclined to reinforce this standard.
Also as a step toward encompassing even more of its clients' needs beyond offering a desk and a chair for rent, WeWork is in the process of transforming into The We Company as a way to reflect its expansion into the residential real estate and education sectors. According to Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork, "the company intends to encompass all aspects of people's lives, from both a physical and digital perspective."
In other words, as Griffith describes, the ideal client for this new venture would be someone so passionate about the WeWork aesthetic and premise that, in the end, they would want to live in a WeLive apartment, work out at the Rise by We gym, and take their children to the WeGrow school in the morning. But this is not necessarily a new proposal, given that some companies in Silicon Valley already offer daycare and other similar services to employees based there. Gyms, too, are sometimes part of large corporate complexes, even in Brazil. However, the idea here is to scale this up and make it accessible to more people.
But is it really worth fully embracing this corporate world and absorbing it as part of your routine beyond work? Works of science fiction like High Rise might suggest otherwise. And if, in the past, within the traditional models of the workday with set start and end times, it was possible to separate personal life from work, today freelancers no longer enjoy either the relative stability of a full-time job or the "ease" of separating professional life from personal life without having to make an extra administrative effort. The question that remains in this existential paradox created by the logic of hustle culture is: if I love my job and I love what I do, then what is the problem with not separating it from my personal life?
What Griffith argues, however, is that this hustle culture is not inspirational, but rather exploitative. According to David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Basecamp platform, "most of the people who are sustaining the hustle mania are not the people who are actually working. They are managers, they work in the financial sector, and they are owners." Hansson, who published the book in October It doesn’t have to be crazy at work, not only offers technology that organizes and manages teams and projects remotely but also argues that long working hours are neither productive nor helpful for creativity. These myths that reinforce overwork are, as he defines it, a way to maintain the immense wealth generated by a small elite group in technology.
And just as if it were a hipster version of Soviet posters that exalted labor, hustle culture can also function as a way to engage people in a quasi-religious sentiment—hence the connection to some of the premises of Protestantism, since the logic of the hustle ends up replacing prayer with productivity, and this, ultimately, is dehumanizing.
For Aidan Harper, who created a campaign to reduce workdays called 4 Day Week, hustle culture is almost like a cult that seeks to convince workers to corroborate their own exploitation, just with a slightly different message. "It's as if Elon Musk were your high priest. You go to church every day and worship at the altar of work."
The consequences of this? Griffith brings up the case of Jonathan Crawford, an entrepreneur from San Francisco who gave up his relationships and gained over 40 lbs while working at Storenvy, his e-commerce startup. His only opportunities for socializing were at networking events, his reading was always about business, and nothing he did could fail to have a return on investment for his company.
After leaving that lifestyle behind, Crawford began working from home at a new investment firm. As a lesson learned, he encourages his colleagues to pursue activities outside of work, such as reading fiction, watching movies, or playing video games. Although it may seem simple, for these people, it is a quite radical and important piece of advice, as the logic of total dedication to business ends up disqualifying the possibility of doing anything unrelated to work.
And what does this have to do with the universal basic income experiment? It relates to what beneficiary Tuomas Mujara argued: a basic or minimum income is not enough to live on alone, but it can serve as a supplement for workers who, as a result, feel more capable of taking care of themselves and thus delivering better results. It is not, therefore, about the number of hours worked or the money received, but about how to achieve a balance where it is possible to live a more dignified life and emancipate oneself from work that is closer to a punishment and a sacrifice for survival than something that could truly become a passion and add something to the individual beyond just financial return.
If new technologies are changing how we will operate in the job market, our attitude toward it must also adapt so that we can adjust our role as workers to the wealth we can and need to generate. We must stop living a life based on consumption to fill voids and start consuming based on a re-evaluation of things. We would then begin to consume based on needs we actually have, rather than those we acquire artificially, for example, through advertising or social conventions.
But as long as we continue to produce new fashion collections every season and new cell phone models every year without major technological changes, we are doomed to keep buying smartphones that cost seven times the minimum wage and that, in practice, are sustained primarily at a symbolic level, despite sabotaging us financially. More than thinking about financial solutions like the universal basic income proposal, we need to rethink our priorities and the way we absorb and accept the values that the market offers us and that, consequently, also regulate us.
