Putting Intellectual Production to Work

The supposed and concrete economic progress that has been seen over the course of the last fifty years in the United States, combined with other globalized factors, has led to a populace that can no longer look to the factory or even the corporation for work on any type of a steady basis. The move from the physical production line to the intellectual one (evidenced by the growing world of virtual employment) has resulted in a much less stable working world. Young college graduates are today being largely encouraged to "create their own jobs," which of course doesn't mean a job that creates a physical product, but instead is pointed toward an intellectual product.

There are a number of beneficial aspects to this that shouldn't be discounted; at the same time, however, the path that it leads down should be examined as well. The problem with creating an intellectual product in an increasingly educated world is that there is a desperate race to be number one, with a little space left for two, three and four, with very little left from five on down. Whereas a cabinet maker in Des Moines in 1922 would not be a threat to another cabinet maker, slightly better or slightly worse, in Amarillo, today's intellectual products are monetized in a much different manner. We have democratized the world in that each opportunity is open to more people; but those opportunities are only apparently numerous, as they will never be able to come even close to fulfilling the economic needs of an increasingly educated workforce.

This comes at a time as well when we are becoming more rigidly confined within our ideas of how government should act within the marketplace; the right and the left rarely speak anymore, each side seeing the other only as its Fox News and supposedly European socialist caricatures. But the solutions are likely only going to come from a seemingly radical joining of the two ideas, of which I would propose the following:

The development of private intellectual enterprise should be encouraged, with individuals constantly seeking out and utilizing space within the virtual markets to sell their ideas. These ideas are generally freelanced and thus precarious- anyone who has been paid for work on the Internet can tell us that guarantees are impossible and your work is devalued almost as soon as it is monetized.

To this end, there should be a system of public works in place that allow for both continued intellectual enterprise and a steady form of income through traditional employment: anyone who has monetized intellectual property in the private sector over the past six months can be paid for an eight-hour workday even by only doing four hours of work. Let's give a specific example:

John develops a system of tracking unemployment numbers and sells that system to a polling company for '$xx'. He is now in a precariously stable position, having monetized his intellectual property but without any guarantees for the future. Under this plan, he is now eligible for a program that rewards time and intellect- from 9 am-1 pm everyday, he goes to work in an urban renewal program (or pre-kindergarten, or road renewal, or public library work) that is sponsored by local, state and federal funds, earning a base-but-steady wage of $12.00/hr (or $10.32, or $14.55, etc.), and because of his sale of his tracking system, he will be paid, over the next six months, for 8 hrs of work per day- effectively paying him for both his labor for the city and his past - and more importantly, future - intellectual labor. The "extra" pay is a reward for work done and an investment in work that will be done; after six months, if he has not monetized more intellectual property, he will only be paid for the work that he performs in his city job.

Through this sort of a system (and I am not proposing it as a studied economic possibility, but as an exercise in thinking about how an increasingly intellectual and precarious labor force can be most effectively utilized) we would be able to have concrete gains on local as well as global levels, while also re-valuing the physical capabilities of an educated populace. We have to face the reality that no matter how smart we believe ourselves to be, and no matter the faith that we have in our abilities, there is a growing number of people who are just as smart and just as faithful, all of whom are racing against each other- no longer merely against the other citizens of Des Moines or Amarillo, but against everyone, and that is a race that the vast majority of people cannot win, and through no fault of their own. Private enterprise should be encouraged and rewarded in a the marketplace; but by making public sector investments in intellectual production, we may be able to stabilize a system that, left to its own devices, will only continue its rocky and tremulous path.