Future Perfect

by Robyn Williams

  * * * *

  The values a society places on something like work are reflected in the wages it offers and how it treats the next generation of employees. The remuneration packages of Australian executives are now so obscene I wonder how those receiving all those millions can face the mirror. A seventh Toorak Tank, an eighth mansion, another vineyard-how do they keep track? How do some of them stay out of jail? Many don’t.

  If, on the other hand, you work for ABC-TV as a very highly qualified reporter, you may find yourself hired on contracts that start in mid-January and end in November. This saves the organisation from having to pay for holidays or other add-ons. It also means it can give staff the shove when it’s finished with them. The reporter, meanwhile, earns less than our mega-executive’s third assistant trainee PA (about $75,000). (American CEOs in 2006 earned 320 times average earnings-or only 120 times if you use kinder figures. Their mean annual pay was $US8.5 million and the median $US4.1 million. Don’t fret about the calculations, just feel the rage.)

  The skill and health implications are dire. Without security it is very hard to grow professionally and gain confidence. Health is also undermined in fascinating ways. Sir Michael Marmot has gained worldwide fame for his Whitehall study showing that the guys at the top fare best and that there is a direct relationship between power and wellbeing. The lowlier you are, the worse your health and longevity. This research has now been followed up by Dr Cary Cooper.

  Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at the University of Lancaster, and an American, has examined all those dire characteristics of the modern corporation-the uncertainty, shift work, overload. In a word: the stress. It is stress, he finds, that is the key to sickness that comes from trying to do your job:

  Research in the past has shown that it’s now changing. There’s been this issue a long time in the field that if you have control over your job, that is the higher up you go, the safer you are from stress, is no longer the case. The recent research is showing that people from the shop floor to the top floor are in trouble and the reason is when you get to the top you’re just as vulnerable to the axe as you are at the bottom or the middle now. So everybody is now vulnerable because of the changing nature of work. Work is intrinsically insecure now.

  Professor Cooper was talking in 2006 to Dr Norman Swan of the Health Report on ABC Radio National. The audience response to this interview was enormous.

  What we’re finding now is that most of these countries have been totally, and I guess I shouldn’t say this with my funny accent, Americanised. Totally Americanised- long hours culture, intrinsic job insecurity. Bottom line-much more autocratic management style, short-term performance, the outsourcing of activities and therefore the breaking of the psychological contract between the employer and the employee. Times have changed now, the people at the top are not safe.

  Is it not time we realised the overall costs to society of this neglect? Cooper finds it amounts to 5-10 per cent of GDP forgone or an equivalent of 30 million lost working days in the UK alone.

  As for young people, who are surely the key to the future, I find this even more distressing. It is our responsibility to keep at least some small doors open for the young talent who should form the next generation of staff. They should feel special when they are hired, secure as they serve probationary months and going somewhere as they experiment and dare to fail. But my impression is that the young are instead made to take up a mosaic of jobs, scattered in time and place, inherently without any career structure-unless they are lucky. Obviously in changing times no organisation wants to be locked into maintaining jobs that may not be needed in a decade or into employees who have long passed their usefulness. But there is, surely, a middle way that treats people like human beings instead of ciphers or liabilities.

  I am hardly surprised that ours is a drug culture. Some of these ‘substances’ may merely be stimulants kids have always indulged in. It is the nature of drugs that they are for NOW, the present. They are the negation of any sense of future. The problem may begin at school, or at college, but I guarantee it is made worse and consolidated by workplaces from hell.

  * * * *

  To lead people, walk beside them…

  As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.

  The next best people honour and praise.

  The next, the people fear;

  And the next, the people hate…

  When the best leader’s work is done the people say,

  ‘We did it ourselves!’

  – Lao Tsu, sixth century BC

  * * * *

  The Hunches of Nostradamus

  2008 Australia finally beats South Korea for longest working day in developed world. Most overtime now unpaid.

  2009 Unions in several countries close.

  2010 Australian woman claims world record for sick leave, involving 186 different ailments in one year. She attended work for only 37 days. Triumph short-lived; beaten by a New Zealander.

  2011 ABC director retires after fifteen years, having never met staff. Payout package exceeds $2.3 million and includes desk.

  2012 Average student in Australia turns out to have four part-time jobs. Attends university to sleep.

  2013 Employer organisations in OECD countries require 24-hour work agreement for efficiency of operation. Staff can be rostered as desired without overtime.

  2014 More white-collar staff required to work from home so less office space needed.

  2015 Offshore outsourcing causes unemployment to reach 50 per cent in several OECD countries.

  2016 Robots (porn industry) demand union reps.

  2017 Five senior managers in broadcasting organisation found to have been absent for two years without anyone noticing. Paid throughout. Offered package to step down.

  2018 French unions demand three-hour lunch. Discover this provision has been in place since 1956.

  2019 Industries abandoned due to climate upheaval. Minimum wage halved.

  2020 Armed forces become largest employer.

  9. The Future of Us – Our Last Century?

  We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with as much reason.

  – T.B. Macauley, historian, 1830

  How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?

  – John Lennon

  In the last days of the Commission for the Future, in 1998, we decided to do an experiment. We would invite a hundred young people from all over Australia to spend four days talking about their hopes and dreams. To our delight a bank (the National Australia Bank) agreed to fund the event and Macquarie University to host it. Speakers were lined up, including the Prime Minister, John Button, me and lots of others.

  The day arrived. So did the kids-high school seniors from the bush, posh schools, state schools, rugger buggers, nerds. At first they thought it was all a laugh, a chance to skive and play. Some stayed out late and looked trashed on Day 2. Then they just sat there. By Day 3, something had changed. We had impressed upon them that it was their views we wanted and that, from John Howard downwards, we were taking them seriously. Suddenly the game was on. All their massive fears for the future and insecurities, their wild ideas and, yes, dreams flowed out. By Day 4 many said it was the most important experience of their lives. Afterwards they sent letters saying so. And all we’d done was listen.

  Barry Jones had set up the Commission for the Future in the mid-1980s. Phillip Adams was the first chair. I succeeded him and then, as the Commission ran out of funds and became a virtual adjunct to Monash University, John Button, former (brilliant) Minister for Industry under Bob Hawke, took over. The Commission’s job, as Jones (then Minister for Science) saw it, was to lead a national debate on where Australia thought it was going. Paddy McGuinness, in an editorial in the Financial Review, called us ‘the Commission for Bullshit’. Many in the Opposition fron
t bench thought much the same. I visited John Howard in his Sydney office (these were his wilderness years), and he listened politely but said nothing encouraging. The Commission got on with its work.

  A major initiative was the Greenhouse Project. Its aim was to bring sound information about climate change to the public. This was twenty years ago! We felt that the science of climate change was looking startling and Australia could usefully prepare itself. We also gave attention to the effects of IT on the future of work, something pioneered intellectually by Barry Jones in his peerless work Sleepers Wake! We also introduced an exotic-looking Canadian called David Suzuki to Australia. Not a bad line-up when you consider it from the vantage of 2007. But the brickbats continued.

  Not from the kids, though. The Commission died shortly after our Macquarie University bash, and John Button and I still feel bad about those excited letters asking us to do something more. Where are those letters now? What happened to the youngsters?

  I remember one of them from a country town, dressed like a natty cowboy, trying to talk to a bunch of longhaired, nose-studded city sophisticates about the desirability of guns (this was in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre, in the first year of the Howard government). Jibes were followed by argument, and then came a genuine understanding of the different values and experience between town and country. It was delightful to watch.

  The Commission did some good things. It was woefully underestimated-as an organisation but most of all as an idea. Paradoxically, it came before its time.

  * * * *

  There were many attempts, as we approached the millennium, to look to what we could expect from the 21st century. Lots were replete with buzzwords, corporate-speak and hype, all of which faded to very little when you tried to tease out the content. The work I found most interesting was by a fellow I actually interviewed for the first-ever episode of the Science Show back in 1975. He was Herman Kahn, founder and director of the Hudson Institute.

  I met Kahn at the Hyatt Hotel in Vancouver. He was sitting on his bed in his underwear eating grapes, looking like a gargantuan Jewish Nero at a kosher Roman banquet. He was casually polite but characteristically acute. When I asked him why the West needed enough nuclear bombs to blow up the world hundreds of times over, he retorted that we don’t look at machine-gun belts and assume each bullet will kill a man. He was casually, analytically precise. His book, Thinking the Unthinkable, had explored this theme.

  Two years later, in 1977, came his book on the future, The Next 200 Years. It was outrageously ambitious, but typical of Kahn the number cruncher, the physicist, the conservative sceptic. When read today, exactly 30 years after it was published and decades after his death, it is a revelation and worth re-examining to see how much he was on track.

  He divided opinion into four categories. Do they apply today? They were: Convinced Neo-Malthusian, Guarded Pessimist, Guarded Optimist, Technology-and-Growth Enthusiast.

  To elaborate:

  * * * *

  Convinced Neo-Malthusian

  Current estimates show we will be running out of many critical resources in the next 50 years… Because the pie shrinks over time, any economic growth that makes the rich richer can only make the poor poorer… Proposed technological solutions to problems of pollution or scarce resources are shortsighted or illusions… All signs point to catastrophe for the medium-and long-term future… Future economic growth will hasten and increase the tragedy… Prudence requires immediate restraint… Further industrialization of The Third World will be disastrous… The quality of life ruined…

  You get the picture.

  * * * *

  Guarded Pessimist

  Excessive conservation poses small risks while excessive consumption will be tragic… If we don’t reform voluntarily, more painful political and economic changes may be imposed on us by the catastrophic events made inevitable by failure to act soon… A more cautious approach to growth seems clearly desirable… Unless we take drastic action soon, mankind may be overwhelmed by climate changes, destruction of ocean ecology, excessive pollution or other disasters.

  Not bad for 1977!

  * * * *

  Guarded Optimist

  As the rich get richer the poor also benefit… Despite some dangers, only new technology and capital investment can increase production; protect and improve the environment… With rapid progress and good management generally, even higher economic levels and an outstanding quality of life become possible… There seems to be more than enough energy, resources and space for most populations, assuming that a relatively small number of people put forth the necessary efforts and others do not interfere.

  * * * *

  Technology-and-Growth Enthusiast

  The important resources are capital, technology and educated people… Man has always risen to the occasion and will do so in the future despite dire predictions from the perennial doomsayers who have always been scandalously wrong… There is little doubt that sufficient land and resources exist for continual progress on earth… We flatter ourselves that current issues are more important and difficult than ever. Actually there is nothing very special happening. Economics and technology can provide superb solutions. No obvious limits are apparent… Man is now entering the most creative and expansive period of his history. These trends will soon allow mankind to become the ‘master’ of the solar system.

  ONWARDS!!

  So which of the four did Kahn choose as most likely to fit the future? Again I quote:

  We believe that plausible and realistic scenarios can be written consonant with a view that sees the world moving from C (Guarded Optimist) to D (Growth Enthusiast). We argue that there is both need and opportunity for growth, and that because America and the rest of the nations of the developed world do use resources so intensely, there will be stimulation, not depression, for the economies of less-developed countries.

  But Kahn gave two qualifications, again insightful: ‘We would like to stress that in no sense do we wish to play down the importance of the issues raised by neo-Malthusians or to assert that there are no serious problems.’

  One of the problems that is starkly apparent in 2007 is that, as Kahn predicted, America has become unevenly but spectacularly wealthy. As a result many Americans have forsaken their traditional values. It is worth quoting his exact words:

  It is clear that the world of the immediate future will be confusing, complex and very difficult to cope with. Among the features cited in this short-term projection that concerns us most-and one to be considered a central issue for the transition, and possibly for the long term as well-is the erosion of the traditional societal levers and their replacement by other values, both transient and relatively permanent. It is primarily the upper middle class which has begun to experience this erosion at this point; perhaps three fourths of the American people still share traditional values. We believe, however, that erosion may eventually affect the rest of society… But if we are correct and traditional values cannot be restored, then Americans will have to import, invent and inculcate new values.

  Other nations would look at them askance, see the avarice and indulgence, piety and vulgarity-and become antagonistic. What Kahn does not mention is the incendiary role of religion in this new standoff. He pictures his countrymen and women, instead, as victims of riches:

  Americans are going to be enormously wealthy, so they must learn how to spend their wealth without becoming satiated, disappointed or fashionably antimaterialistic. They have to learn to take certain everyday affairs seriously (without becoming obsessed with them) in order to avoid boredom, and to compensate for the fact that they no longer have life and death struggles to engage their emotions. They have to learn to be gentlemen and ladies who pass their time doing difficult-if not useful-things well.

  Remember, Kahn was writing before the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, before anyone had heard of AIDS and before the enormous increase in disturbing knowledge about ‘ecology’. This was nine
years after Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb and only five years after the transforming UN Environment Conference in Stockholm in 1972. He had the four ‘types’ taped, though, and could understand our complex need for both cautious optimism and wary concern.

  The future will be determined by each of us being able to incorporate elements of all four types. I can imagine an enlightened businessperson, who understands how markets work best, setting up the choice of the new technologies to solve problems of production and remediation, all in cooperation with the most able of our conservationists looking sternly at the pitfalls.

  It also worth mentioning that Kahn and the Hudson Institute, as well as other think tanks past and present, were reacting to the enormous impact of Limits to Growth, one of the first attempts to use models and computers to try to track past trends and future possibilities. The Club of Rome, which was associated with these exercises, was perfectly respectable and headed by Fiat’s chief, Aurelio Peccei (1908-84). Nonetheless, plenty of conservative doubters attacked the Club and Limits, carefully picking out one or two of their scenarios to ridicule while ignoring the rest. Paul Ehrlich told me he had the same experience with The Population Bomb, which also offered scenarios rather than cast-iron predictions. Kahn was not so unprofessional as to commit the same egregious error.

  As for all four types melding into one-it is no longer wishful thinking. I took the trouble to call the heroine in my novel, 2007: A true story waiting to happen, Kate Schumpeter. For me she symbolised the way Kahn’s categories would have to merge this century if we are to survive. Kate is an innovator and an entrepreneur. She eventually becomes green as well. But there is not a scintilla of Malthusian gloom about her. You get the gist from the following cameo of Kate’s namesake-the great economist Joseph Schumpeter-given by Queensland University ’s Professor Mark Dodgson in January 2006 on ABC Radio National’s Ockham’s Razor.