Another Covid 19 Thought

   

                                        Malcolm MacDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" 
                                                   (credit: the Guardian) 

   

   

                                                          Julie Christie in "Fahrenheit 451" 

                                                            (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

One of the ideas that the Covid 19 pandemic has given us to consider, especially in the developed nations, is the lesson that we also get in many of our dystopian novels and movies. In several of those futuristic works, many people in society have little or no work to do.

As technology advances and more and more goods and services are produced by fewer and fewer workers, in every sector of the economy, more and more people are going to end up unemployed. The problem for society then becomes how to distribute the wealth downward. We’ll still be making the goods, but with what funds will consumers buy them? The wealth isn’t going to “trickle down” if there is no trickle.

In many dystopian writers’ visions, the government just gives people money. The giving is done under many different programs, but most folk get their money and spend it, and the wealth circulates in a viable way.

Where all this government money is ultimately coming from is unclear in many novels, but I think the implication is that the corporations are willing to pay higher taxes as long as they can stay in business. And the business leaders have come to see that paying those taxes is their only way to stay in business at all. Otherwise, the masses of poor folk for whom there is no work will get fed up and revolt, and chaos will take over. In such a vision, society takes the only way out that looks like it should work.

But there are still problems. Most of the people in these novels for whom work is not available do not take up one of the arts or a sport or some other avocation from which they can get a sense of meaning. They deteriorate into society’s typical bad habits and are in constant need of therapy of one kind or another. Men, in particular, who have been conditioned by society to be breadwinners, are often pictured as floundering. They wonder what they are supposed to do. Masses of people turn to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and violence, etc..

The really perplexing element in such a view of society is the children of the government housing projects. They really have no work to prepare for. They see school as a joke. A glaring hypocrisy. So they do drugs and chase thrills. For example, the narrator of “A Clockwork Orange” gets his best thrills raping and beating innocent people for the sheer fun of it. "A bi' uv the old uhltra violence." 

In our present pandemic, we have been shown that the basics needs of life could be produced by far fewer workers than we were trying to keep employed just a few short months ago. For me, anyway, that is the biggest lesson of the last six months. We could fully robotize most of the mines, farms, and factories. The technology needed has been available for decades. Then, governments could pay millions of citizens a guaranteed annual income. Let folks buy whatever they like. Stay in business.

However …however. One is driven to wonder what will become of the masses who really don’t need to work anymore. Ever. Will they handle it?

Long after we have found a vaccine for Covid 19, will people even want to go back to work? Will we be able to stand the consequences of our own success?