Work and the World Cup

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

I saw a great report on TVJ a few days ago about the World Cup's impact on productivity. When a big match is on, the roads are almost empty, people give work a pause, and businesses make less money. It's not good for GDP. However, people are happier. What's that worth? How do you account for that on a balance sheet?

Losses in productivity worth billions have been predicted in the United States, and many more billions in the United Kingdom. Yahoo Finance estimated that the Germany vs USA game alone cost US$682 million in lost productivity owing to the 14 million workers that stopped to watch the game. I'm sure the numbers in Jamaica are far less staggering overall, but nonetheless larger as a percentage of our comparatively tiny budget.

But has the World Cup made us poorer? If you count riches in dollars only, it probably has.

One odd set of statistics that caught my eye has to do with its impact on the consumption of pornography. Turns out pornographers are hampered by the World Cup because traffic to their websites dips significantly when games are on. Popular porn purveyors BangBros report that they took a combined 33 per cent dip during the last US match. Only its gay website bucked the trend and experienced a 23 per cent increase.

In fact, when Germany played Portugal, another popular international porn site lost 60 per cent of its German traffic, and 40 per cent of its Portuguese traffic. After the Germanic drubbing, traffic didn't return to normal for several hours in Germany, whereas following their humbling defeat, the Portuguese logged on at significantly higher rates. Similar dips were seen by studies when Brazil played Croatia.

What are we to make of this? Football causes pornography consumption to decline, and winning delays mankind's return to its wicked ways. Homosexuals, though, as ever, seem to go in the other direction.

Pornographic curiosities aside, it's interesting how people skip off work at the slightest pretext. Given the smallest reason, much less a public spectacle like the World Cup, people gallop away from their desks, cubicles and cubbyholes like prison escapees anxious for open air and sunlight. It tells me something is wrong, and that the World Cup excitement is a 'learning moment' where we can stand back and see work a little more clearly.

CRAPPY WORK

Many hate work because, unfortunately, most of the work they do is crap. It's unnecessary and it's not fun, unlike football, which isn't necessary but is fun. Most work doesn't inure to your benefit or to the benefit of humankind. You don't have to be an anarchist (although it helps) to recognise this. Many of us spend our lives in soul-deadening dull pursuits that, in turn, deaden our souls and make us dull.

Consider that with mechanical production and modern farming methods, it really doesn't take the whole employable population to produce the food, clothing, and shelter that we need to survive. But still, there's all this additional activity and all this additional junk. Of all the superfluous stuff that's produced, some of it is enjoyable and artistically worthwhile, but very much of it is just 'make-work', like the sloppy by-product of a substitute teacher's arts-and-craft project. There are whole professions that could be cancelled with great benefit to the earth and humankind. And I don't think many people would miss them.

Further to that, why is it that people who work the hardest get paid the least? Our economic system's moral justification is based on the idea that meritocracy will win out in the end, and that those who work hardest and put in the most effort will reap the most reward. Is there any evidence of that? Not really.

It would seem the opposite is true, and that those who work the least get paid best. The way our society structures rewards is perverse. There was a British study from some years ago that I can't find, but haven't ever forgotten, showing that people who contribute the most to human happiness are paid relatively poorly. These are the nurses, hospital workers, garbage men, and teachers.

Instead, we reward bankers and lawyers, the glorified paper-pushers who on the whole often detract from the quality of life of others around them. I confess that I'm a lawyer. But I do have the excuse that I went to law school while very young and while labouring under the misconception that lawyering had some vague connection with justice. Having been disabused, I'm in recovery.

And for the record, I think newspaper opinion editors should be paid piles of tax-free cash. I also think newspaper columnists should be as well.

Communism and traditional virtue

Since communism managed to pervert every traditional virtue, fetishising work was one of its features. According to that ideology, the natural material world was to be moulded through human labour into a perfect home for mankind, a heaven on earth. You will immediately see the arrogance in the idea that we will command nature. But also notice that in reality, most of us don't want to be in heaven just yet, and certainly don't want to work to get there. Right here, with this beer in hand watching football, is quite fine, thanks very much.

So not surprisingly, Marx hasn't got much to teach about laziness. For that you have to turn to his unfairly neglected Cuban son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, who wrote the splendidly titled The Right to Be Lazy in 1883. It argues that capitalism robs us of our natural born right to do nothing. I've thought of updating it to add that we must temper capitalism to make watching football and cricket central.

All of which is to say, today you must forget work, turn on the footy, turn off the porn, and pray that the Germans don't march through Argentina with the ruthless precision they used to humiliate Brazil. Although their technically brilliant team is operating like the Eighth Army at Tannenberg, let's still hope that it's the Prussians who end up rushing to porn sites after the match.

Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.