SUBJECT, CITIZEN, CONSUMER
It makes me laugh to think about our present notion of a model citizen and worker. You can hear elected officials, school administrators, and the media all going on, to no end, about a new class of creative, independent, and entrepreneurial young people. This entrepreneurial ideal – especially as a labour strategy – is plainly absurd. Is there any doubt that it’s a dream and not a description of how things actually are or a reasonable prescription or recipe for the future?
An education survey recently came around. Among other things, it asked students about their desire to “be responsible for [their] own employment after graduation.” My friend responded by noting that, “Entrepreneurialism is a cheap veneer used to gloss over the instability that ‘flexible’ post-Fordist systems have brought to Canada’s workforce and I would be an idiot to want to participate in this guise.” I think she’s right. Less than a legitimate labour strategy, this seems like a tool for passing responsibility from government and business – those ultimately accountable for destroying entire sectors of employment, and our unions (the only construction in the universe known to create or maintain a thriving middle-class) – and refocussing it onto the working class. “No jobs? No job security? No pension? No retirement? That’s because you aren’t creative, efficient, intelligent, educated, ambitious, or connected enough. Obviously!”
I love that nobody seems to have planned for or even anticipated anything beyond their own immediate future. And even then, only imagining this proximate future to be virtually identical to the distant past. (What do our administrators do with their time? I mean, other than hold meetings, attend conferences, and go to lunch of course...) I love that we live in a society that doesn’t appear to have even contemplated any kind of sustainability. I love that our overarching social, economic, and environmental policy – knowing what we do, having seen what we have – is essentially scorched-earth. I love this recommendation coming from the managerial class that says I should spend twenty-five years at school and come out the other end with a degree, or three (and $25,000 to $125,000 in debt), only to have to create my own employment out of thin air too. And what's astonishing is that they seem sure these grads – who will already struggle for a decade or more even to make minimum payments toward interest on their student loan – are willing and able to take on still more suffocating debt, and that every bank and venture capitalist in the land is similarly eager to grant such a person another $50,000, just out of the goodness of their heart, to help the totally inexperienced get their first business off the ground. I love that they suggest this knowing better than anyone that 80% of all businesses fail within the first 18 months. And I also love that it’s from this sound footing – of insurmountable debt, odds stacked to the sky against them, and with little experience and zero security – that young people are then expected to not only pay their bills and grow a business but also put money aside for a down-payment on an apartment (not a house, of course, because who could possibly afford that) and take on a mortgage, while starting a family and managing to sequester away a little something for retirement (but not by investing it anywhere because we all know that stocks, bonds, the whole banking and finance sector, and even whole currencies and nations currently have the stability of a tower of Jenga blocks – if your Jenga opponent is a cat and you’re playing your game on a boat at sea.) Ya. Nice work team. Great plan!
To paraphrase my friend: the next time you hear someone talking about the emerging entrepreneurial or creative class, be sure to ask them what qualities they think the ideal entrepreneur should have:
A) A total lack of understanding of finance and modern political economy B) An entirely unjustified faith in the notion of meritocracy C) A bottomless trust fund D) The desire to work grueling hours and never see one’s friends or family E) Gumption! F) All of the above
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