The Cabot Trail... M ------------------------------- http://www.speakers.co.uk/books/hansbook.htm >From "The 20-80 Society" by Hans-Peter Martin INTRODUCTION World-shapers moving toward a new civilisation . "The whole world is being transformed in a transformation back to the way it was previously in a previous life." Playwright Werner Schwab World-class dreams are at home in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. It is an institution and an icon, luxury lodging and legendary symbol of the lust for life. Those who know it simply call it, respectfully, "The Fairmont." He who can afford to stay there, has made it. Like a cathedral of prosperity, it is enthroned atop Nob Hill above the famed "City" a California monument to ostentation, an unselfconscious mix of the turn of the century and the postwar boom. The intoxicating view overwhelms visitors as they ascend in the glass elevator up the outside of the hotel tower to the Crown Room restaurant at the top. There a panorama unfolds of the beautiful new world that occupies the dreams of billions of people: Glittering from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Berkeley Hills is a seemingly endless expanse of middle class affluence. Between the eucalyptus trees, the swimming pools of the invitingly spacious homes sparkle in the soft sunlight; in almost every driveway, several cars are parked. A colossal boundary stone, the Fairmont marks the intersection of the modern age and the future, of America and the Pacific Rim. Just down the hill from the hotel is the densely packed neighbourhood that was once the largest Chinese settlement outside Asia. The disaster-profiteers of the 1906 earthquake, the founding fathers of the United Nations, corporate chieftains, and, so far, every US. president of the 20th century -- they've all celebrated their triumphs in the hotel's plush, spacious ballrooms, which served as dream set for the filming of Arthur Hailey's novel Hotel and have, ever since, been overrun with tourists. Into this historic setting, one of the few men who has ever himself made history, Mikhail Gorbachev, welcomed the world's elite in late September 1995. Out of gratitude, American sponsors finance his US. foundation, which is located in the Presidio, a former military compound south of Golden Gate Bridge. Now, the foundation has flown in 500 top politicians, industry leaders and academics. The new "global brain trust," as the last President of the former Soviet Union and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize defined his exclusive gathering, would point the way into the 21st century, "Toward a new civilisation." At Gorbachev's summit, experienced shapers of the world like George Bush, George Shultz, or Margaret Thatcher encounter the new lords of the planet like CNN-chief Ted Turner, who wants to merge his business with Time Warner to create the world's largest media concern, or Southeast Asian business magnate Washington Sy Cip. For three days they debate with the global players of the computer industry, the world of finance, and the high priests of the world economy, economics professors from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford. Emissaries of free trade from London, Singapore, and of course Beijing are also on hand, making sure they get a word in when the future of mankind is discussed. They haven't come for a shouting match. Nothing will be allowed to get in the way of free and open discussion. The pushy mob of journalists is safely cordoned off. Strict rules force all the participants to avoid rhetorical excess. Speakers are given exactly five minutes to introduce a theme; no subsequent remark may last more than two minutes. Well-groomed older women hold up signs instructing the debating billionaires and theorists, like Formula One drivers: "1 minute," "30 seconds," "Stop." John Gage, a top manager at Sun Microsystems, a US computer company whose stock has been breaking records on Wall Street, kicks off the debate topic "Labour in the global economy." He says, "Anyone can work for us as long as they want; we also don't need any visas for our foreign workers. 19 Governments and their labour rules have become meaningless, he explains. He employs whoever he needs, at the moment preferably "good brains in India," who work for as long as they can. Sun Microsystems receives job applications from every continent, via computer." We hire our people by computer. They do their work on the computer, and they also get fired via the computer." The time lady signals him: "30 seconds." "We hire, quite simply, the cleverest people. With our efficiency we've been able since our founding 13 years ago to increase our revenues from zero to more than $6 billion. With a self-satisfied grin, Gage turns to a tablemate and says: "You didn't get there nearly that quickly, David." In the seconds that remain until the "Stop" signal, Gage enjoys his little dig. Its target is David Packard, co-founder of the high-tech giant Hewlett Packard. The grey-haired self-made billionaire doesn't bat an eyelash. He simply asks the central question: "How many employees do you really need, John?" "Six," Gage says. "Without them we'd be wiped out. But it doesn't matter at all where on earth they live." Now the debate moderator asks, "And how many people work for Sun Microsystems?" Gage: "16, 000. They are, except for a small minority, downsizable." No murmur goes through the room. For those present, this view of unimaginable armies of the unemployed is self-evident. None of these highly paid managers from the industries and countries of the future still believes there will be sufficient new, decently paid jobs in the technologically advanced growth markets of the hitherto wealthy nations -- no matter what the industry. The pragmatists at the Fairmont condense the future to a pair of numbers and a saying: "20 to 80" and "tittytainment." Twenty percent of the working age population will be enough to keep the world economy pumping in the next century. More manpower just isn't needed," contends magnate Washington Sy Cip. One fifth of all work-seekers will be enough to produce all the goods and perform all the high-value services that the world economy can use. This 20 percent will be able to actively participate in life, work, and recreation -- no matter what country they live in. Another one or two percent, the panellists allow, may make it by inheriting large sums of money. But the rest? Eighty percent of those willing to work without a job? "Certainly," says writer Jeremy Rifkin, author of the book The End of Work. "The bottom 80 percent will have terrible problems." Sun's Gage speaks up again and cites his company's CEO, Scott McNealy: The question will soon be "to have lunch or be lunch." From there, the high-powered discussion group on the "Future of Work" moves on to those who won't have work any more. Among them, the discussants are firmly convinced, will be dozens of millions of people around the world who up to now have felt themselves closer to the affluent everyday of the San Francisco Bay area than the struggle to survive without a steady job. A new social order will come into being, they say: Rich countries without any middle class to speak of. No one disagrees. Instead, their conversation centres around "tittytainment," an expression used by old warhorse Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Polish native was for four years national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter; since then he's occupied himself studying geopolitical questions. "Tittytainment," according to Brzezinski, is a combination of "entertainment" and "tits." Brzezinski is referring not so much to sex as to the milk that streams from the breast of a calming mother. With a mix of intoxicating entertainment and sufficient nourishment, the frustrated people of the world can be kept in good humour. The managers soberly discuss the necessary dosages, with which the wealthy fifth can keep the superfluous remainder occupied. Social engagement by business is, given global competitive pressures, unreasonable. Somebody else must busy themselves with the unemployed. The panellists expect that this help will come from the wide range of volunteer organisations, community groups, sports clubs, and associations of all sorts. "These activities can be rewarded with a modest salary and thus give self-respect to millions of citizens," contends Professor Rustum Roy of Pennsylvania State University. In any case, the business leaders expect, people in industrial nations will soon once again clean streets for almost no pay and find meagre shelter as household help. In the end the industrial era with its affluence for the masses will turn out to be nothing more than "a blink of an eyelash in economic history," analyses the guru of futurologists, John Naisbitt. The organisers of the three thought-provoking days at the Fairmont fancied themselves to be moving toward a new civilisation. But the path described by the assembled experts from office suites and academia leads straight back into the pre-modern era. The two-thirds society feared by Europeans since the 1980s therefore no longer describes the coming division of wealth and societal arrangement. The world model of the future follows the formula 20 to 80. . The one-fifth society is on the way, in which the excluded must be kept quiet with tittytainment. Is all this wildly exaggerated?
