Tim Jackson writes:
"By easing up on the gas pedal of efficiency
and creating jobs in what are traditionally seen as “low productivity”
sectors, we have within our grasp the means to maintain or increase
employment, even when the economy stagnates.
"At first, this may sound crazy; we’ve become so conditioned by the
language of efficiency. But there are sectors of the economy where
chasing productivity growth doesn’t make sense at all. Certain kinds of
tasks rely inherently on the allocation of people’s time and attention.
The caring professions are a good example: medicine, social work,
education. Expanding our economies in these directions has all sorts of
advantages.
"In the first place, the time spent by these professions directly
improves the quality of our lives. Making them more and more efficient
is not, after a certain point, actually desirable. What sense does it
make to ask our teachers to teach ever bigger classes? Our doctors to
treat more and more patients per hour? The Royal College of Nursing in
Britain warned recently that front-line staff members in the National
Health Service are now being 'stretched to breaking point', in the wake
of staffing cuts, while a study earlier this year in the Journal of
Professional Nursing revealed a worrying decline in empathy among
student nurses coping with time targets and efficiency pressures.
Instead of imposing meaningless productivity targets, we should be
aiming to enhance and protect not only the value of the care but also
the experience of the caregiver.
"The care and concern of one human being for another is a peculiar 'commodity.' It can’t be stockpiled. It becomes degraded through trade.
It isn’t delivered by machines. Its quality rests entirely on the
attention paid by one person to another. Even to speak of reducing the
time involved is to misunderstand its value.
"Care is not the only profession deserving renewed attention as a source
of economic employment. Craft is another. It is the accuracy and detail
inherent in crafted goods that endows them with lasting value. It is the
time and attention paid by the carpenter, the seamstress and the tailor
that makes this detail possible. The same is true of the cultural
sector: it is the time spent practicing, rehearsing and performing that
gives music, for instance, its enduring appeal. What — aside from
meaningless noise — would be gained by asking the New York Philharmonic
to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony faster and faster each year?"
