New Tea With Alice with Dan Ilic, and Contemplations on The Nature of Work

Hallo lovely Patreonites

I made a joke once that the joy of working for yourself is that you suddenly find out you're a terrible employee AND a terrible boss.

I'm seeing more and more discussion online of the nature of work, particularly when it comes to a critical engagement with capitalism, and the failures of ... let's call it American-style capitalism; libertarian capitalism, 'the market will sort it out' capitalism. I'm calling it now, the market is an idiot, and where your stall is in the market makes a difference, and that invisible hand is creepy. 

I see business owners in America and to a lesser extent the U.K. bemoan a lack of workers willing to take that minimum wage, and say they can't afford to run their business if they're required to pay more. At which complaint I sort of think, if you can't afford to pay your workers, you don't have a business, you have a weird cult? Like, a business is a double ended device, isn't it?

I see people in minimum wage jobs (which phrase has a very different meaning depending on which country you happen to be earning that wage) asking, 'why should we work if it doesn't make us safe?', 'What is work really worth, if we can't figure out a system to accurately quantify the economic impact of  things like healthcare in a way that figures out to pay those workers decently?', 'Why should we work if it doesn't guarantee our stake in society?', 'What are we paying into if it doesn't pay out?'

Why does the narrative of the good worker demand we be passionate about our work, while at the same time suggesting that people who are happy and relaxed at work are somehow suspect?

All of this is something I'm thinking about as someone who is in the Arts, which constantly has to confront ideas about what is work and what isn't (and to a parallel or orthogonal extent, as someone being pregnant, thinking about what kind of work this is). 

We have this cultural emphasis on work as cost; that it must take something out of us to be valid - work that is nourishing or enjoyable or comes easily is seen as somehow a trick or a cheat. Work that involves looking after yourself or others is seen as not the same as real work - whether it's being the full time carer of a family member, or sweeping up the mental health shards of a friend twice a week. 

I have friends with chronic illness who spend the equivalent of a full time job sorting out their medical care or basic needs and nonetheless think of themselves as useless or not-working because they're not contributing to the economy, while there are plenty of corporate people in jobs that might for years or decades be loss leaders, or subsidised by the government or actively wasting resources to literally no positive economic outcome like decorative automata on a clockwork display who would never question whether what they do is real work or not. 

What about the colleagues who work for years to pitch a show, get it picked up, funded, written, cast, rehearsed, filmed, and then cancelled before it goes to air? Is that work? What if it's never funded? At what point do things cross over into being work, and at what point do they stop being work?

Anyway, as ever, no conclusions, just some thinking. 

New Tea With Alice: Dan Ilic

Dan Ilic of A Rational Fear is a very old friend of mine, and a relentless participator in things, creator of work and the genesis of jobs for other people. We chatted in our separate houses in Sydney Lockdown about climate change, helplessness and activism.

Here you go: http://apple.co/2oyL7Vy

Non- itunes listeners can catch it here 

Find Dan and A Rational Fear on Patreon Here 

--

If you like any of my work, please do share it around - that is a profoundly impactful way to support this little project.

xx

A