Rethinking Labor Mobility

Jan 3, 2017 Harold James

Humans are ingenious and adaptable, but only in some circumstances; so we must continue to search for viable opportunities that allow people to participate creatively and meaningfully in the economy. To that end, we should look to history, and study what happened to the “losers” during previous periods of rapid techno-globalization.

PRINCETON – The past year will be remembered as a period of revolt against what US President-elect Donald Trump likes to call “globalism.” Populist movements have targeted “experts” and “elites,” who are now asking themselves what they could have done differently to manage the forces of globalization and technological innovation.

The emerging consensus is that people and communities displaced by these forces should be compensated, perhaps even with an unconditional basic income. But that strategy has many hazards. People who are paid to do meaningless activities, or nothing at all, will likely become even more disengaged and alienated. Regions that are subsidized simply because they are losing out may demand more autonomy, and then grow resentful when conditions do not improve.

Thus, simple transfers are not enough. Humans are ingenious and adaptable, but only in some circumstances; so we must continue to search for viable opportunities that allow people to participate creatively and meaningfully in the economy. To that end, we should look to history, and study what happened to the “losers” during previous periods of rapid techno-globalization.

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Harold James

Writing for PS since 2001
177 Commentaries

Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation. A specialist on German economic history and on globalization, he is a co-author of The Euro and The Battle of Ideas, and the author of The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm, and Making the European Monetary Union.

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Rui Dias Costa Jan 9, 2017

Thank you for the article. You make an interesting point.
Follow-up question: is the EU open borders policy a good long term solution for the challenge posed by globalisation? Do you think an ever closer union will be a realist option to face our future challenges (mobility wise)?
Regards.
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B Wilds Jan 7, 2017

James hits on something very important, however, how to deal with this issue remains unanswered. Below is a list of the world's ten most crucial problems counted down from "least to most crucial", The world must begin to address these many problems with long term solutions. Most of these are issues that center on our sustainability. This is an issue that is given far to little attention.

Sadly, politicians do a damn poor job of dealing with such things leaving us without direction. As we look at the human condition we can let fate take us where it may choose or we can take control of our future by proper planning and by guiding it as best we can. I must admit all this sometimes test my ability to be optimistic!

http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2016/12/10-worst-problems-facing-world-going.html
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Paul Friesen Jan 5, 2017

Eventually, we are going to have to ditch the idea that only those who work deserve a decent living. Is it not incredibly ironic that machines that could liberate us from the need to work could just deprive many, and eventually most of us of a way to earn a living? Yet that is what will happen unless we get rid of this mindset.

There are plenty of people both now and in the past who live without working or almost without working and who do not seem to suffer hugely. The elites of any age contain many people who have inherited their wealth and who "are paid to do meaningless activities, or nothing at all ". That is not a problem. We are going to need to introduce a basic income or a negative income tax to avoid huge problems as automation proceeds. Your job is not safe either.
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Richard Barlow Jan 4, 2017

Yeah, workers, suck it up like the well paid Prof tells you. Stop yer moanin' about havin' no money and no means to live in London or Berlin. By the way, I think you will find they were called Drumpf back in their German days.
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M M Jan 3, 2017

It is refreshing to read that the author has used the word "mobility" rather than "migration". I fully agree with the fellow commentator her eStephan Edwards on mobility. These migrants were misled and lied to to like every other citizen. They were given the impression that the promised land really existed, whilst it is only a "mirage in the desert".
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Stephen Morris Jan 3, 2017

There is, of course, a completely different way to interpret the Industrial Revolution and the "Modern Era": that it was an anomaly, and we are now reverting to the norm; we are being "refeudalised".

If in years to come some robotic historian comes to chronicle the end of the human race, they might look to the Modern Era – culminating in the 20th Century, the Century of the Common Man and Woman – as a bizarre aberration.

It is easy to forget that the Modern Era with its Modern Era values of egalitarianism, democratisation and national self-determination is . . . well . . . modern! It hasn’t been around for very long.

It is easy to forget that when viewed with proper perspective, human history up until the time of the Modern Era was a story of aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian psychopaths competing (sometimes collaborating) to attain positions of power, then using that power to dominate and brutalise their fellow human beings. We know from the historical record that these rulers showed no remorse in wasting the lives of thousands – even millions – of people they regarded as “their” Subjects.

That is the norm. That is the “base case” for human behaviour.

In that behaviour, psychopathic rulers were abetted by “sycophants” – typically timid, less dominant males – who sought to promote their own survival and reproductive prospects by allying themselves with the dominant males. Articulate sycophants often provided the “theology” of elite rule, constructing elaborate justifications for the privilege of their patrons.

In pre-modern times the ability of psychopathic elites to dominate and brutalise others was limited by:

a) the need to preserve a sufficiently large labour force to provide the raw mechanical energy to support their regimes; and

b) the limited capacity of individual human beings to kill each other, and therefore by the need to recruit and reward a circle of allies (a “praetorian guard”) which could carry out such enforcement.

Now, if that long-standing behaviour seemed to change in the Modern Era it was NOT because the psychopaths woke up one morning and said, “Oh my God!! Is that the time!? Is it the Modern Era already? Quick. We’d better start enacting social reforms!”

Human psychology has not evolved. Evolution operates over a much longer time frame. The psychopaths (and their sycophant supporters) have not gone away.

All that happened in the Modern Era was a temporary change in the environment: the demands of the industrial economy meant that it was expedient – for a time – for the rulers to make limited concessions to their Subjects.

The industrial state required the training of large numbers of Subjects to operate the complex – but not fully automated – machinery of industrial production. Having had so much invested in their training, Subjects acquired value and their bargaining power relative to their rulers improved. In the extreme, they could withdraw their labour and quickly impose greater costs on the owners of capital than they themselves suffered.

Under such conditions, the optimal strategy for rulers (and only after they had tried violent suppression and found it ineffective!) was to make certain limited concession to their Subjects. Thus we had the quintessential ideals of the Modern Era, culminating in the 20th century:

a) egalitarianism, the ideal that all people are entitled to the same basic opportunities irrespective of their ancestry;

b) democratisation, the ideal that Subjects are entitled to have some say in how they are governed; and

c) national self-determination, the ideal that self-identifying communities are allowed to choose for themselves how they will govern themselves.

If there was one ideal that characterised the 20th century it was surely that of national self-determination: from the first shots fired by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo in July 1914, through Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, through the post World War II era of decolonisation, through the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and right back to Sarajevo and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Given the opportunity, like-minded communities like to govern themselves.

But none of these concessions meant that the psychopaths had gone away. And there was never anything to say that the conditions of industrial production would last forever.

What we are witnessing now is an elite response to the post-industrial world of AI and robotics.

No longer are large numbers of Subjects required to run complex but not fully automated machinery. Now it is small numbers of very highly trained technicians required to manage the robotic workforce. Small in number, they can easily be bought off. Better still, they can effectively be reduced to the status of indentured workers through the weapon of crippling student debt. They dare not rebel for fear of their debts being called in.

As for the rest of humanity, they are now redundant or soon will be. Their rulers no longer need them. And those the earlier concessions are – as the saying goes – “inoperative”.

To be sure, the masses may get employment of a kind, especially in providing personal services. But it will be employment in the “Uber Economy”, the “Gig Economy”, of savage competition between workers with all economic rent flowing to the owners of the monopolistic market platforms.

And the New Elite are responding precisely as one would expect an aggressively narcissistic, self-serving elite to respond. They are relentlessly winding back any concessions hitherto made, while their sycophant economic theologians are busy justifying it all as being for the “Greater Good”.

Inequality is quickly returning to its historical norm, as Piketty has documented. Piketty’s U-shaped graphs show inequality of wealth in the most developed countries declining into the mid 20th century then rising steadily again. It’s the past century that was the anomaly. We are returning to a “feudal” state in which property is owned by the magnates and almost everyone else is reduced to the status of dependent serf.

Where conventional property has proved insufficient, the Elite have invented novel forms of “intellectual property” to expand the scope of private ownership.

As for democratisation, in most countries it never developed beyond “elective” government dominated by elite parties. Moneyed interests and pressure groups found it a trivial exercise to subvert that. Campaign bribery and the revolving door of jobs-for-the-boys ensure that the interests of politicians and senior bureaucrats remain aligned with those of the elite.

This past year has seen an outbreak of rebellion, but it’s unlikely to last.

In the wake of Brexit and the Trump rebellion, there is now open talk in elite circles on whether it is appropriate to allow “obviously ignorant” people to vote on critical issues. “They’re not college educated, you know.”

There is now open talk in elite circles on whether those who “receive more in welfare payments than they pay in tax” should be allowed to vote at all. Oddly, there is no suggestion that those monopolists who receive more in economic rent than they pay in tax, or those lobbyists who receive more in government contracts than they pay in tax, or those too-big-to-fail bankers who receive more in bail-outs than they pay in tax, should be similarly disenfranchised.

Remember that the universal adult franchise is modern. In most countries it’s barely a century old. There is nothing to say that the Elite won’t campaign to remove it again. Or effectively subvert it by making it difficult for lesser mortals to enrol. Or re-jig the electoral system to ensure that minor parties have no hope of election.

And even if minor parties and “outsiders” do get to be elected, they usually prove to be a disappointment. Those attracted to politics are inevitably those who yearn to exercise power. Look, for example, at the 2010 election in Britain where the Liberal Democrats were given a once-in-a-century opportunity to reform Britain’s voting system and introduce proportional representation. The party leader Nick Clegg threw it all away in return for the chance to be Deputy Prime Minister for five years.

The closer a party gets to exercising real power, the more it attracts to its ranks those who crave power.

Likewise in the US, those who threw in their lot with Donald Trump out of sheer desperation for an alternative may not have long to wait before suffering the pangs of disappointment.

In any event, the Elite are entrenching their gains by taking ever more critical decisions out of the hands of elective government altogether: the privatisation of strategic monopolies, essential services and critical databases means that elected politicians are forced negotiate with private magnates on terms dictated by the private magnates.

And finally there is national self-determination which has been eroded by the growth of undemocratic, opaque and unaccountable “neo-empires” like the EU, and so-called “trade” agreements which have less to do with trade and more to do with signing away sovereign powers to unaccountable committees of elite business interests.

Organisations like the EU may be created with the best of intentions, but no sooner do they come into existence than an “iron law of megalomania” takes hold. They begin to attract those self-same narcissistic, machiavellian individuals who are drawn to the prospect of exercising dominion over millions of other human beings. As with any empire, the Subjects soon end up suffering in the pursuit of some “greater good”. Witness the economically counter-productive brutality inflicted on Greece. Witness the “Lost Generation” of unemployed European youth sacrificed to the Eurozone fantasy.

Now, like Elites throughout history the post-modern Elite seek to weave a cloak of virtue to conceal the nakedness of their self-interest. Their theologians devise all manner of mellifluous apologia.

Elite theologians love to talk about "The Rule of Law" . . . . provided always that it’s law enacted by – and interpreted by – the Elite themselves: a cosy club of Ivy League or Oxbridge or Grandes Écoles pals who have an uncanny knack of ensring that "The Rule of Law" is always consonant with "The Rule of Privilege".

Like Anatole France we are left to marvel at that “Majestic Equality of the Law” which protects the property of both the immensely rich and the dirt poor to an equal degree.

We are left to marvel at that “Majestic Equality of the Law” which allows both the plutocrat and the poor man to bribe politicians with campaign donations or the promise of lucrative directorships.

We are left to marvel at that “Majestic Equality of the Law” which guarantees freedom of trade but not freedom to have a job paying anything more than minimal and uncertain wages.

Elite theologians love to talk in honeyed terms about the “end of borders”, but they don’t really intend to abolish borders. All they are really doing is replacing “national borders” (over which the mass of ordinary citizens might have had some control) with “private borders”: elite private property.

The Elite do not intend to rub shoulders with the plebs. They retreat to their private mansions, their private country estates, their private campuses, their private gated communities, all surrounded by private borders marked with “KEEP OUT. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted!” signs.

The Elite do not intend to stand, crushed cheek-to-sweaty-cheek with the prols on inadequate and overcrowded public transport. They whizz from their private mansions to their private offices on roads which have been tolled or “road-priced” or “congestion-charged” out of the reach of the masses. It’s rather like the Zil Lanes of old Soviet Moscow but justified nowadays by deference to that Great God, “Efficiency”.

And from behind their private borders the Elite sermonise piously on the supposed intolerance of those outside! Hypocrites blind to their own hypocrisy.

On all fronts the trend is the same: the alienation of public rights – over which the citizens used to have some say – to elite private interests.

And if all of that sounds depressing, it may be only the beginning.

Unless there is some spectacular change, at some point the Elite may decide that the continued existence of masses of redundant and increasingly disgruntled human beings is a threat to their own security.

In this past year we have seen the Chinese unveil lethal weaponised robotic “security guards” with rudimentary artificial intelligence that can be used to control “anti-social” elements. In the US we saw the first remote execution of a suspected criminal by a police robot.

If that does not send a chill down your spine, then perhaps you'd better sit up and start paying attention. The technology of robotic “pacification” is indifferent to Good and Bad. Not only do the Elite not need workers. They no longer require humans for their Praetorian Guard.

Now, some might be inclined to dismiss this as “conspiracy theory”. But here’s the thing: there is no conspiracy. There’s nothing underhand going on. There are no secrets. All this is happening in plain sight. One merely needs to look about and then remember that human psychology has not evolved.

There has always existed within the human population a small proportion of individuals who are not like the rest of us. They are aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian, possibly psychopathic, with a strong appetite for attaining power and dominating others. They may not always be apparent. One of the defining characteristics of psychopathy is “superficial charm”. The psychopath knows more about you than you know about yourself. He or she knows exactly which buttons to press to gain your confidence, your trust, even your admiration.

Had it been possible to establish genuine Democracy with the right of recall, veto, initiative and referendum there might have been some hope for the rest of the human race, some hope of effectively controlling these people. That is why elite theologians universally abhor genuine Democracy in favour of the corrupt system of “elective” government: elective government which perversely attracts the most undesirable narcissists.

Elective government provides no safeguards. It will prove no barrier to containing the psychopaths once the cost of pacification falls as a result of robotics.

You don’t need to be Einstein to see how this game must play itself out.

For most people it’s not going to be a happy ending.
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stephan Edwards Jan 3, 2017

A little lesson on internal immigration from someone who has been their. 1) The cost of moving not cheap unless you leave pretty much everything behind. Not exactly practical if you have a family. 2) A place to live. Seems simple right ? But no one will rent to someone without a job period doesn't happen. And it's awfully hard to get a job while living in your car or a motel employers like fixed addresses. Somehow "I live at the Motel Six isn't what employers are looking for. 3) And I suppose this is objective It is hard to leave everything and everyone you have ever known behind when your in your 30 - 40's. Roots go deep.
Bluntly it isn't the nineteenth century and comparisons to the 18th and 19th century are at best inappropriate at worst shading the data to reach a desired conclusion. Adaptability and flexibility professor ? Why don't you and the rest of the Iviry Tower apologists for Globalization admit you think displaced workers should accept Chinese or Vietnamese wages and conditions ????????????? Because that's what your Flexibility & Adaptabilit5y translate into!!!!!!!!!!
- Peter Schaeffer Jan 4, 2017
  
  "Why don't you and the rest of the Ivory Tower apologists for Globalization admit you think displaced workers should accept Chinese or Vietnamese wages and conditions? Because that's what your Flexibility & Adaptability translate into!"
  
  +1
  
  The "Open Society" is just a thin cloak for infinite greed. The cosmopolitan elite will accept no limits on their rapacity.
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- Curtis Carpenter Jan 3, 2017
  
  Your description of internal migration is painfully telling. Imagine, though, how desperate your situation would have to be to cause you to move to a place where you didn't know the language, or anything about how the "system" worked, or the culture in general -- and which might be life-threatening?
  
  And yet people all over the world are doing just that in record numbers. And for many of us, the answer is to build walls and razor wire fences.
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Peter Schaeffer Jan 3, 2017

Internal migration doesn’t work in the USA for a variety of reasons, all of them a consequence of neoliberalism (rule by the cosmopolitan elite). The first reason is that the low-end jobs in the thriving (relatively) parts of America are all taken by desperate, third-world, immigrants. In the 1930s (and for a long time thereafter), this wasn’t true. America enforced its immigration laws and low-end jobs went to Americans. Not anymore.

To use an important historical example, the Okies (of Dust Bowl fame) were able to migrate to California, because America restricted immigration from Mexico and elsewhere. With Open Borders (as we have now) the jobs the Okies took, are gone. Indeed, the U.S. in the 1930s went so far as deporting illegals to provide jobs for Americans. The same happened in the 1950s.

The second important point is housing. A variety of factors, notably including Open Borders, has made housing massively unaffordable in the part of America with a stronger local economy. Why would anyone move to (for example) California for a (near) minimum wage job when the only available housing is awful and absurdly expensive?

The third important point is education. The public schools in (relatively) thriving parts of America are awful. Not all of them of course. However, the schools that the children of internal migrants might attend are wretched. They are wretched because they are overwhelmed by illegals and the children of illegals. What parent would contemplate sending their children to such miserable places? Of course, the children of the neoliberal elite go to private school.

Internal migration is actually a rather good idea. However, it is de facto impossible in America and much of the west because of Open Borders. The only way to make internal migration work is to stop mass immigration.
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Henk Crop Jan 3, 2017

We should learn from history. However you base your analyses on European protestants emigrating to North America and Australia. That was a very successful but unique event. I doubt it will teach us anything to address the immigrationproblems we face in Europe today. First the numbers are very different, huge numbers of people wish now to come to Europe. Today we have a highly developed economy, which requires a diploma for almost any job. Diploma's immigrants do not have. Almost all immigrants are from moslim countries. They bring values which are not consistent with western values and cause big cultural problems. My conclusion for Europe is that immigration has to be reduced to almost nil. If this causes laborshortages, temporary labor or relocation of factories should be considered. And of course countries in Africa and the Middle East should develop their own businesses.
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Armin Schmidt Jan 3, 2017

Thinking from the theory I constructed, the current years seem marked by trend change from best-for-all moral idealism towards subgroup liberation. This subgroup liberation also has a way, that people try to liberate themselves from economic needs. Reasonable but dangerous, as in: when the consumer cuts consumption, he might get unemployed as less produce is needed.
I tried for a rule-of-thumb to somewhat safeguard the trend of subgroup liberation:
"Responsible subgroup liberation demands fairness and mutual compensation."
In some years or decades, depending on how we fare through the subgroup liberation period, following the trend of subgroup liberation could lead to excess liberation and boredom, best-for-all moral idealism could trend again. This spirit then easily creates new demands and new jobs.
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Petey Bee Jan 3, 2017

The revolutions from the discontents of the industrial age had other remedies not mentioned here.

#1: reduction in working hours. We can do more of this. If the problem is unemployment, the arithmetic is straightforward - reduce hours worked per person. Yes it is inefficient in a sense, but insufficient efficiency is not the current problem - stability and security are. One gives up efficiency for stability/security all the time all the time.

#2: increase bargaining power of labor vs capital. Same comment with efficiency as above.

#3: as a response to economic malaise, or to soak up excess resources - building infrastructure and public works. Today's political crisis is the fallout from the 2008 economic crisis. (set up by years of deregulation, but an economic crisis nonetheless) This avenue hasn't been exhausted.

#3-1/2 Embracing adaptability and flexibility? In the positive sense, yes. But business minded readers may interpret this term as a euphemism used to describe an exploitative labor environment. That would be an unfortunate misunderstanding, since that is what led to the current situation. In the positive sense, however -- it means subsidizing education more heavily. (hint: aging population. Train more nurses, medical aides, and if the AMA doesn't excommunicate you, more docs too.)

No new ideas so far, lots of options already.
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Jose araujo Jan 3, 2017

I think there is a basic concept you don't seem to grasp, social revolutions allways pre-date Inovation, and its what makes it possible for technology and progress to develope. Renaissance, Humanism, the revolution on the 60’s and 70’s.

Innovation and progress comes from diversity and by making sure all have opportunities to develope.
- Curtis Carpenter Jan 3, 2017
  
  By some accounts, the Renaissance was the result of the 14th century plagues in Europe which substantially decimated the population. And in most books, that sort of mass death event doesn't count as an "innovation."
  
  Still, there may be an important lesson there that Mr. James has omitted from his analysis. Reduce the human population by 25% and many of today's problems would disappear.
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Jose araujo Jan 3, 2017

" People who are paid to do meaningless activities, or nothing at all, will likely become even more disengaged and alienated."
Any prove, our are you just making up stuff to prove your point?

"Regions that are subsidized simply because they are losing out may demand more autonomy, and then grow resentful when conditions do not improve." Again, making up stuff?
- Stephen Morris Jan 3, 2017
  
  I too would like to see some evidence for this. Are we to believe that Ireland, for example, would be better off today had it been forced to remain part of the United Kingdom? Are we to imagine that the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would be better off today had they remained British colonies? Would Singapore be better off today had it remained a province of Malaysia? Would Taiwan be better off today had it remained a province of mainland China? Would the Czech Republic be better off today as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Would Switzerland bet better off today as part of the Hapsburg Empire? Would Norway be better off ruled by Sweden?
  
  It is not a question of "autonomy" but of outright independence. Given the opportunity (which is sadly rare) communities display a consistent preference for self-government. Those which achieve self-government - and are forced to fend for themselves - are often spectacularly successful.
  
  Is it impossible to imagine an independent Scotland regaining the spirit of entrepreneurship for which it was once famous?
  
  The Imperialists are like overbearing parents who refuse to grant their children any autonomy. Except, of course, that in the case of communities seeking self-determination there is no parent-child relationship. It is merely an Elite exploiting those whom it can.
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- Peter Schaeffer Jan 3, 2017
  
  JA,
  
  "Regions that are subsidized simply because they are losing out may demand more autonomy, and then grow resentful when conditions do not improve."
  
  If you doubt the truth of this (apparently you do), three words should suffice. Brexit, Renzi, Trump.
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