In a conversation the other day, Stillwater made the comment:
Another is that culturally determined self-identity markers will continue to define preferences even as we slide down the rabbit hole. That means culturally determined self-identification markets will create labor stickiness even as the market demands increasingly flexible labor markets.
In the Redstone documentary, there was a point, before The Company went under, when with the increasing wages and benefits of the workers nudged the company towards finding ways to mine that required less labor. It involved dynamite and trucks. Even though there weren’t hazardous conditions in the mine anymore, you can imagine how well that went over with the employees that were laid off.
What I found to be particularly interesting, however, were the guys that they talked to who still had jobs. One of them was kept on as a forklift driver. Rather than being excited, he was rather frustrated. He wasn’t a forklift driver, he was a miner. This of the career that the movie spent the first 40 minutes discussing how dreadful it all was.
It makes sense, though, in more ways than one. He had bought into the mining culture. The fact that it was dangerous, unpleasant, and not remarkably lucrative actually only adds to the degree to which the tendency to identify it is natural. Nationalism is often at its peak when something is wrong. When you don’t have much else to hold on to, you hold on to your identity.
As an aside, this is one of my theories for why the south behaves as it often does. It’s disproportionately poor, stricken with racial strife, and was on the wrong side of two of the nation’s greatest moral struggles. Confronted with all of this, what you primarily have is your pride. Those (whites) with the least are the ones who fly the Confederate Flag most proudly.
Anyhow, back to the career sector, there are various jobs where one’s employment becomes a cultural identity. I notice this with teachers, for instance. Their desks and sometimes their homes are full of teacher pep-talk about how important the job is and so on. It’s there to a greater extent among teachers than it is doctors, and the former are notably less financially appreciated than the latter.
By and large, my own career has been wide and varied. Due to the flexibility that was required from one move to the next, if it was IT-related, and you’d pay me for it, I’d do it. I eventually settled into QA work for a couple consecutive jobs and identified with it. When my child is born and I find out it’s a boy or a girl, I plan to order a blue or pink baby outfit that says “QA Approved.” Geeks are, of course, notoriously proud of their occupational culture.
Little of this speaks to the meat of Stillwater’s comment, which is more broadly on the weightier subject of how our environments influence our career decisions. I don’t have a whole lot to add to that except an anecdote from back when I was in high school.
I was raised in a place with lots and lots of engineers. In sociology class, the teacher asked everyone to raise their hand if they planned to be… a doctor (one or two hands), a lawyer (no hands), an engineer (2/3 of the class raise their hands). I doubt that 2/3 of the class actually went into engineering, but it’s important and worthwhile to note how much the careers of our parents and the local culture influence where we aim to go in life.
I wonder how much of this is particular to the american cultural milieu or something that is more a product of a particular generation. At least anecdotally, I have met people who were taxi drivers, who are now in sales and vice versa. I know people who were white collar executives and are driving taxis now. I know a guy who was a bouncer who went into stock trading. I know another bouncer who went into fashion design. I really haven’t met someone who was alienated from his work because he was attached to his previous work identity. About the only people whose work plays a big part in their identities are my parents, who are doctors. (I dont know what they will do when they retire. I dont know if they do either)
I remember in middle school encountering the large number of people who wanted to be engineers, and I thought to myself, “what’s this fascination with trains?”
I’ve explained to many people that I’m an architect but I don’t build houses, and I’m an engineer but I don’t drive trains.
He’s a miner because he worked hard at learning how to be a miner: how to find a good coal seam, how to spot a shaft whose reinforcements aren’t solid enough, etc. He’s trained his body to be able to work a full shift without injuring himself. He’s probably rescued fallen co-workers and perhaps been rescued himself. It’s not just a job, it’s an accomplishment, and people are (rightly) proud of those. Being told that what you’ve accomplished over the past 20-odd years is done better by a bit of dynamite is unpleasant. This is one of the downsides of creative destruction that goes unnoticed by people who focus only on the economics of it.
I just notice this Will, and before I comment on your post, can I make a request? I misspelled one of those words, and it’s been eating at me since I hit ‘submit’ the first time. The correctly spelled sentence out to read: “…culturally determined self-identification markers.”
Changed it.
Now that’s service. Feel free to go through all of my comments and fixed typos any time you’re bored, Will.
I regularly go in and fix formatting problems.
Thanks Will.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I think what you’re talking about upthread is a substantive issue, not a ‘get over it’ issue. Here’s why.
A theory of political economy which is driven by price, profit and consumerism necessarily overlooks (intentionally, I think) the subjective experience of being a member of a society, or culture, part of which is having an identity around your work. Insofar as identity determines the types of employment we can reasonably expect a person to hold (and I mean that empirically and psychologically, not ideologocially) then the inability to find a job consistent with your personal (and culturally determined identity) will limit your ability to be a consumer. Which is a necessary condition upon which the whole price/profit/consumerism calculus depends.
It’s just a different way of saying that without a consumer class, capitalism as we know it (and what our models are predicated upon) fails.
Stillwater, full response to come, but could you elaborate on the sentence that starts with “insofar as identity…” I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying.