Enough For Eternity
Accept that nothing I am about to say will work without an actual control board of everything.
Know, too, that I am aware any economist will read what follows and say: You are kidding, right?
But if you can accept the one and know the other, then hold on to the following idea for a second: You pay more for a shoe that employs two people than for a shoe that employs one person.
O.K?
Yesterday I asked:
What, then, would a world of artisans, working slowly, look like?
I asked this because people who do “fast” work, whether on an assembly line or in an office mostly seem unhappy.
And because we are living longer and longer and will soon be able to make things with almost no human labor required at all and thus need to think more about how we fill our time than how we get stuff.
So . . .
Shouldn’t there be a factory of robots in every region making the basics—shoes, clothing, chairs—such that everyone can at least have what they need?
And then, instead of going to the mall for the things I want beyond what the robot factory makes—like extra cool shoes—I go to the street where all the shoemakers are and where everything is made slowly? I walk past those cobblers with whom I do not have a relationship to buy from the cobbler I know. Let’s call her Tara.
Tara runs an updated version of a renaissance workshop, a place where people train to learn a craft they can do their whole life. Five hundred ago years these workshops were necessary because it took a lot of art to fill a church and a lot of time to make that art: the tile on the floor, the frescoe on the walls, the marble that needed to be carved.
No doubt it was better to be Michelangelo or Leonardo than someone just painting a generic saint, and no doubt it is better to be Tara than one of her minions. But then again, unlike five hundred years ago, when the church was your only customer, now the whole world can be your customer.
And unlike artisans of the past, who would be put out of business by manufacturing, we don’t care about productivity but about the engagement of the world. We no longer need to fill churches, we need to fill up lives and we no longer need stuff so much as we need days of value, days which might be made valuable if spent making things . . . slowly.
Again, I know, without “growth” most of capitalism falls apart, but isn’t capitalism falling apart now anyway? In part because school, at least as elite education practices it, largely directs people to do fast work in an office? And because so much of that work, like turning a $3 pair of Nike’s into a $200 purchase, is effectively meaningless?
Sure lots of people make all sorts of things by hand today and make a living doing so. But they make expensive things or things sell to their tribe on the internet or because they make things with a particular status.
Status matters. Once the church had all the status. Then “Air Jordan” had status. I want my shoes from Tara to bring me status too.
So when I get my shoes from Tara, it is because she makes the ones I like and I am of her tribe. Just like when I watch some YouTubers and not others. But, whereas Nike does all sorts of back flips to give their shoe status via Michael Jordan and such, I hereby suggest we add a label or a notice or a QR code that tells the world my shoes are expensive not just because Tara makes a cool shoe—which is a matter of taste—but because of how many people work at Tara’s learning to make shoes.
Leonardo’s design may be your jam, and Michelangelo’s aesthetic is groovy, but Tara keeps more folks engaged in their day, and that is where true status should live.
A world of artisans looks like people who have replaced the value of having—which robot factories will do anyway—with the value of living.
Let’s make that what we pay for.