Work and business conditions

More particular than participation in a general industry, the conditions of any particular job or business will attract or deter workers. In an exchange economy one of the primary factors that attracts or deters workers is pay: if a job doesn't provide enough pay, people will generally only take it if they are desperate, while if it offers a generous amount of pay people are likely to compete for it (of course, the state of the job market could make people compete for underpaid jobs as well).

But there are already other considerations that people take into account, such as a belief in the job and good working conditions. Rather than pursuing the highest paying jobs that they can, many people pursue lower paying jobs that they believe are more rewarding, more morally sound, more beneficial to society, and so on. Similarly, there are people who take jobs they find morally unpalatable or where the conditions are dangerous or exploitative, either because the money is exceptional or because they are desperate.

In a non-reciprocal gifting economy, the push-pull factors of jobs aren't decided by wages, but by belief and conditions. This means that jobs still have ways to attract people in, competing for the allocation of the resource of labour, but also that the behaviours of businesses would be fundamentally changed in relation to workers.

Belief in the job

If financial remuneration isn't a necessity and isn't relevant to a job, then people will likely not do a job that they see as "just a job".

In an exchange economy, the point of a job and the function of a job are often disconnected. For someone during the agricultural revolution, it must have been inescapable that digging, planting and harvesting were essential tasks for survival, but in a modern exchange economy people might perform all sorts of work where they don't see the particular relevance to society. While the ancient farmer would not have stopped their work because they know the impact is starvation, the modern worker is often in a position where they don't stop their work because they will run out of money - and though this can cause starvation, the connection between their work and starvation, where their work is something like buying gold, selling timeshares, or serving coffees, is bound to be less obvious.

In a non-reciprocal gifting economy, the point of the job is not the pay, but the job itself. And without the motivation of pay, people will only do a job that they have some belief in - that they believe will give them personal joy or improvement, or that will in some way bring joy or improvement to others.

If an employer comes up with a socially exploitative or maladaptive business or engages with morally problematic business practices, they will not attract employees. The purpose of the job must be convincing, because no one will join if it is not. This is not to say that people have the same ideas about what is beneficial for society or that people are all convinced by the same things, but it does propose something radically different to the liberal market economy: labour will be directed not to where the money is, but to where their understanding of a good society is.

Without prices (in this case, wages), it won't be the case that resources would be directed randomly: they would go where people believe that they would be useful. And we already see this principle in action, both where people boycott certain industries and invest in others not because of price, but because of principle; and also where people override the market through democratic institutions that legislate regulatory environments, taxes and welfare.

Good conditions

In addition to some belief in the job, workers would also be likely to reject poor working conditions. Where unemployment is a threat to survival, people can be kept in poor working conditions whenever leaving would have worse consequences. In these cases, few resources are directed to the comfort of the employee. Alternatively, poor working conditions can occur where the job is in a difficult context or environment (such as, say, an oil rig), in which case pay can often be a compensation. In this case, too, there are fewer resources directed to employee comfort.

But where unemployment is not a threat and pay is not a factor, good conditions have to be a much greater consideration for employers, and should have more resources directed to them. By "good conditions" I am thinking of conditions that ensure employee safety and improve employee comfort, that make employees feel listened to and responded to, that accommodate employee needs and hours, and so forth. A business that operates with poor facilities, inflexible arrangements, is deaf to employee concerns and places employees at risk is not going to attract workers, and no amount of money - because there is no amount of money - can change that.

Employees therefore have power to determine what sort of working conditions are appropriate for their industry and will join the industry once those working conditions have been met. Note that because employees are there because they believe in the job, they will likely be reasonably responsive to the constraints of the job, not demand too much of the business in order to accommodate them, and know that their central goal is to work and not to be distracted.

Business practices

With no core motivation to accrue exchange capacity - that is, without the drive to earn profits - businesses are likely to change how they use resources for the purpose of business. The use of resources would be less focused on continuous revenue and more on product quality and utility.

For example, a business in an exchange economy is focused on lowering costs and increasing revenue. There are many ways to do this, and many of them are not exploitative or problematic. However, many of them are. And in an exchange economy, there is no economic drive to differentiate between the two: both will produce higher profits. So a company that makes smart phones might lower costs through clever efficiency innovations and smart designs, but they might also use lower quality materials, rushed production line timeframes, fewer safety standards for workers and products, and designs that are less user-friendly. In addition, they also want to raise more revenue, and that can be done by building a better product (with a better touchscreen, for example) or making greater access to it, or finding a need in the population that isn't being satisfied (such as phones that work like speakers or gaming devices). But alternatively, they can make products that need to be replaced regularly (by slowing down the software or using poor battery materials), or work to instill that need in people (by making it fashionable and desirable to get the latest version), including instilling the initial desire in the first place (by building a narrative that life is incomplete without this phone).

Phone companies need to sell more phones. What would happen if it became normalised to only update a smartphone every 5 or 10 years, if they were so robust that they lasted that long, and if there weren't any regularly hyped-up models released in the meantime? What if they were far more easily repariable and able to be modified? In that case, phone companies would sell less phones. So these traits are somewhat undesirable for a phone company in an exchange economy.

But in a non-reciprocal gifting economy, there is no profit-drive, but just purpose-drive. The company exists, and convinces others that it needs labour and resources, because it fills an important and beneficial need. It doesn't need to endlessly make phones in order to justify its existence, it needs to make the right amount of phones. And, in a theoretical world where the company managed to provide every person with a long-lasting, durable phone, the company could happily close its doors. Now, I don't think that situation is likely, but it could certainly be the ideal of a company to work towards - something to direct its purpose. Compare this to an exchange economy, where the purpose of the company is to make money, and so the ideal is to continually sell more of the product, which sometimes means manufacturing demand.

Ability to leave

If a business does start to engage in immoral, exploitative, unsafe or disturbing practices, employees can just leave. Unlike in an exchange economy, leaving a job would not result in an inability to access the resources they need for their quality of life. This takes a lot of power away from the employer and hands it to the employees. A lot of the causes of poor conditions are because employees are limited in their power, and rely on collective bargaining through organisations such as unions to push improvements, often only making progress in small steps. However, aggregate employee power would be the natural outcome of a non-reciprocal gifting economy: employees would be able to quit if they did not find their working conditions sufficient and the management responsive, and so poor conditions would cause a mass walk-out even without any particular requirement for planning or solidarity among members. I'll talk about this more in the next article.

No paradox of efficiency

The paradox of efficiency is the name I gave to the tension in the exchange economy where efficiency improvements are bad for workers, and pit workers (who are trying to accrue exchange capacity) against employers (who are also trying to accrue exchange capacity), so that labour efficiency innovations could be ignored, dropped or stymied. But with no exchange capacity there is no paradox of efficiency, and one of the positive outcomes of this is that employees should be motivated to share efficiency improvements, even if it reduces the businesses need for that employee or puts them out of a job completely. In fact, employees should have no trouble being made redundant or replaced by machines, as long as they have the belief that the labour efficiency is effective, ethical and has sufficient human oversight. Efficiency would be made in a more moral and socially beneficial context (where the aim is not for the business to accrue more exchange capacity by, for example, being unsafe or exploitative) where the business and its workers consider what the goals of the efficiency are.

People are motivated to find efficiencies, both because they often want to work less but still ensure that moral care is being exercised in society, and also because people find joy in identifying and implementing improvements. And without the paradox of efficiency, employees and employers are aligned on this being a good thing, which means that efficiencies will be more regularly sought and implemented across the entire cross-section of the workforce, rather than imposed by some at the expense of others.

No moral overrides

The final thing I want to mention here is just to reiterate that without monetary remuneration, people can decide not to take jobs (or to quit them) if they find the business practices or purpose unsavoury or socially problematic. Money cannot be a motivator to make people abandon their morals, hoping to stave off starvation or gain more luxuries or power. The force of money can distort moral thinking - either through fear or greed - but those distortions, and their ability to override the core morality that someone might have about taking a particular job, would no longer be present. And not only would this likely ensure that resources are directed to more moral, socially beneficial and generally popular businesses, improving economic calculation, but it would also help create less stressed and conflicted employees who would be healthier as a result.