I have very little in common with the arguments of the Leave Campaign, and in particular reject the anti-immigration thrust of the Campaign. However, I welcome Brexit as offering an enhanced ability and chance to experiment with new policies that dare more economic freedom.
We need more entrepreneurial freedom to creatively exploit the opportunities of our burgeoning technological age, accelerate progress. The tendency of the EU to regulate and ‘harmonize’ more and more aspects of social and economic life in the name of protecting citizens and in the name of creating a level economic playing field is paralysing entrepreneurial innovation and leads to stagnation. The UK society and economy can now escape from this paralysing embrace of the EU’s one-fits-all the next prosperity potentials of our civilisation can only be explored and discovered if the straight jacket of the nanny state is gradually loosened and dismantled.interventionist regulatory overreach. Whether it will make decisive steps in this direction is of course another question. There is no guarantee, but now there is at least this possibility which did not exist within the EU frame. I believe that all the seemingly entrenched societal problems of our time—endemic unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, the so-called housing crisis, retirement finance crisis, social mobility crisis etc. etc. are so many invitations for an unleashed entrepreneurial problem solving creativity, once the state gets out of the way.
I am convinced that the next prosperity potentials of our civilisation can only be explored and discovered if the straight jacket of the nanny state is gradually loosened and dismantled. (The bigger the scale of a country or block, the easier it becomes for the state to expand its scope. That’s why I favour small countries: they must keep their state action small in scope and cannot afford to erect trade barriers or impose heavy tax and regulatory burdens.) It’s time to roll back the state and for us to take the risk of giving more freedom and self-responsibility to us all, unleashing entrepreneurial creativity, organisational experimentation as well as individual aspiration and empowerment. I think we are ready and well equipped for this, at least in the most advanced societies and in the most advanced arenas of the world economy. One-fits-all rules are not the way to create a fair, meritocratic, competitive, level playing field. The inevitably differentiated world societal landscape needs adaptive elbow room everywhere. If the same rules are imposed on different contexts then there can be no fair competition at all. Real competition requires real freedoms. If the most advanced arenas impose their standards on less advanced arenas then they only protect themselves via political (police) means, avoiding economic competition. Gladly the UK still has less restrictive employment rules than EU countries like Germany, France, Italy and Austria. A firm like ZHA does not exist and could not exist in Germany. I cannot imagine how we could stay cutting edge, if each redundancy round The only real effective protection of employees is an unhampered and therefore fluid employment marketwould leave us not with the people we most value but with the people protected by the prescribed social indicators.
I believe the whole approach of trying to protect employees via the imposition of rules is misconceived and backfires to the detriment of all. The only real effective protection of employees is an unhampered and therefore fluid employment market, where employees find plentiful alternative work opportunities or find it is free and easy to set up shop themselves, due to a very liberal business environment. Labour markets will be rich and fluid when firms no longer have to anticipate paralysing difficulties to sever relations if things do not work out, and where all are freely creative in their contracting offers and can freely compete and improve accordingly. In contrast an overregulated labour market is a frozen labour market where holding a job becomes an entrenched privilege and reinforces the unproductive mentality to hold tight even if satisfaction is missing on both sides of the employment bond. Protections, e.g. anti-discrimination laws, came in far too late, after real discrimination had already disappeared in the advanced countries and the respective protections (prescribing what nobody violates) seem to have largely degenerated into a tool for routine abuse by those who cannot or will not perform. (Discrimination goes against the vital incentives of employers for whom only merit delivering market-measured success can count and therefore always and everywhere emerged from the workforce itself rather than from the employers’ side.) The UK has only been semi-independent from the EU’s restrictive tendencies, and the results of EU employment dispute cases have until now been feeding into UK case law. Generally, my view is that the law should arbitrate freely contracted relations rather than imposing universal standards that constrain voluntary arrangements and arrest the potential adaptive agility and evolutionary dynamic of the legal system.
The imposition of standards also impinges harmfully on the development sector. The amount of “protective” standards for real estate developments in the UK is as ludicrously prescriptive as elsewhere in the EU. There are national standards, London standards and impositions from the various London Boroughs. For residential developments every room The amount of “protective” standards for real estate developments in the UK is as ludicrously prescriptive as elsewhere in the EU.size is prescribed, the overall size of apartments cannot be below a certain minimum, the number and size of balconies, the overall unit mix, the maximum number of apartments accessible via a shared core etc. etc. On top of this come the prescriptive land use and density allocations, as well as ancient, overly restrictive right-of-light restrictions no longer compatible with the high density requirements of our post-Fordist network society craving for (high productivity) urban concentration. Then 30-40% of so-called “affordable housing” (compulsively rationed housing) is imposed on all developments above a certain size, which according to London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s intention is soon to be increased to 50% across London.
One really wonders what (if anything) is left to the creativity of developers and their architects? What can developers compete on in this context? How can they use the market as a discovery process to tease out and test the desires and requirements of a dynamic population during our changing times? And who are these standards meant to protect? Protection from what? All that I can see in such restrictions is the curbing of choice, and thus the devaluation of everybody’s incomes as none of us gets to spend our money on the kind of things, places, locations and life we would like to spend it on. Especially the rule that demands minimum apartment sizes pushes many out of the more central locations they would like to live at, happy to trade centrality for size. However such trades are prevented and we are all that much poorer for that.
a post-Brexit UK will be more accessible to the world’s talents who feel attracted to London and its employment opportunitiesFinally, concerning immigration, I believe that despite the fact that the Leave Campaign was all about curbing immigration, I feel that Brexit entails the chance to evolve a more open, immigration-friendly society and economy. The conservative government understands full well that the UK’s prosperity relies on immigration to enhance the UK workforce. The problem is that for immigration to work, immigration rules must be carefully crafted in relation to welfare entitlements. Immigration cannot imply a free for all, not even in a contained zone of relatively advanced prosperity like the EU, as conditions are still far from even across the EU. The UK government’s proposals to limit access to welfare benefits for EU immigrants for the first years—aimed at immigrants from Eastern Europe where welfare provisions are very different—were denied by the EU as an unacceptable form of discrimination. This inability to sensibly manage the relationship between immigration and welfare meant that some other ways had to be found to contain overall numbers and this containment effort hurts globally competing businesses like ZHA, who look at the whole world labour market as search space for professional creative talent, talent which is being trained here but has to be sent home due to the UK’s current lack of freedom to manage its immigration.
According to this analysis, we might hope that a post-Brexit UK will be more accessible to the world’s talents who feel attracted to London and its employment opportunities, and who should in my view get the chance to prove themselves, thrive and make us—and the world—more productive and prosperous in the process.
59 Comments
False, Patrik, false. Every work relation you are describing is almost never equal. Therefore there is always power involved -or at least some avatar of it-. In this case, the intern wants something the employer has -experience- and that puts him or her in a position to exercise multiple ways of exploitation (i.e. not paying, forcing hours, and so on…). This is even a bigger issue when the system is a twisted, perverted and false meritocracy where the goal is not really learning or developing a career but, instead, the possibility of checking the box "famous architect proximity" in a resume. Add to that an increasing offer and a decreased demand and you have the recipe for a labour market based on exploitation, bad salaries, discrimination against women (always the first victims) and the constant inability of our profession to diversify or export its services (Less than 2% of practices in Spain, for instance).
So, and this is actually economy 1.1 and law 1.2, mutually agreed arrangements don't eliminate exploitation. Hate to be the one that uses the harsh, realistic examples but here it comes: Some "entrepreneurs" may offer a young woman a loan to travel to, let's say Spain, from a country out of the Schengen treaty. In return she has to be a sex-slave for two years. She may agree. That doesn't turn this "mutually agreed arrangement" into something other than exploitation. The relation is not one of equality, “the entrepreneurs” have what she wants, she may be in need, and they have a far better knowledge of what is happening… you name it. Again, an example of power and unbalanced relations: She wants to go, HAS to go. NEEDS to go, and –in the absence of the law, and regulation- that opens the door for exploitation.
Of course I know I'm using an extreme example. But that is precisely the problem: The law must protect EVERYONE and can't rely on "trusting" entrepeneurs because it must be universal.
In fact, what you are describing is just the state of any labour market before unionism, before social protection. Each worker, alone, is in a position of clear disadvantage. All the workers together, acting in unison, have power. The power of controlling their labour, the power of being and controlling the workforce. And the big leap forward in some advanced democracies is that workers had the possibility of forcing some of their achievements into mandatory minimums and laws, which is actually the civilised way to go, instead of this concept of "trust me" you are proposing.
The fact that you paint a sci-fi scenario of an interns scarce as a justification could be funny if it wasn’t sad. The number of architects in Europe has increased almost exponentially (In Spain, it has gone from 14.910 in 1986 to 46.500 in 2006). The market is still recovering from the economic-credit crisis of 2006, so the offer of architects is way beyond the demand of workers, making for a market where a company could keep hiring interns nonstop, not paying them (or paying them the bare minimum) and keep going for years. Even more, the fact that some companies hire NON PAID interns, forces the rest of the professionals (Even experienced professionals) to lower their salaries as part of a disloyal competition scenario that distorts the market dynamic, thus increasing your number of possible “interns” exponentially.
The other fallacy you are using is the classic: “Interns take time”. Again, false. They are, let me repeat this, an investment. The possibility of taylor fitting a worker to your own standards. Will it take time? (Time=money) of course. So did your first 3D printer and you bought it anyway because in the long run it was necessary – useful to the needs of your company. As with any other investment.
But beyond this –which is, again, basic economy and basic concepts for a services company (and architecture is a service) - the easy answers for you are two:
1.- In case you are hiring interns, really training them and offering them the possibility of a career (A company is not a university, let’s set that straight) if they are “walking out of the door again” you may question yourself if you are paying them enough (Or to be precise more than the minimum because you have to) or offering a desirable and secure work environment (And for secure I mean the worker being able to take in consideration simple things as: could I buy a house? Have a child? Get pregnant without being afraid I must get fired? Be in a company that values me and lets me grow as a professional and as a person? Could I have a family? As simple as that.
Of course you could argue that they want to start a business on their own. The reality is that an architectural profession structured around an infinite number of mini-entrepeneurs is not sustainable and that the image of the “heroic architect” as the only respectable and admitted goal (Howard Roark and such) is false and based on dysfunctional economic measurements of success (Built square meters / architect, for example, appearances in magazines… and so on). It is an image produced mostly in architecture schools without explaining that working in a company, being a worker, is as valid, as fruitful and as rewarding and honest and successful as being a classic architect or even a star.
2. - If you feel interns offer no “valuable production”, then hire experienced professionals. High end experienced professionals. Their training time would reduce considerably. But in return –oh snap- they may be more expensive (Or at least they should be, if our labour market wasn’t twisted because of common malpractice i.e.: Not paying interns or –true story- charging them money to work)
Last, but not least, there is an inherent value in anyone’s work and it is related to what he or she produces and the benefit obtained by the employer. Again, the basics: It is called surplus value: The difference between production costs and profit (Of course, detracting the benefits of the employer). In this structure, the minimum wage is not there as some kind of mediocrity hall pass, instead it is calculated as the minimal amount a worker needs to barely survive, barely sustain him or herself. Thus, it is THE MINIMUM PRICE below which workers shouldn’t sell their labour because they’ll be selling it under production costs (Production being here the possibility of being alive, healthy (mentally and physically) eating and having a place to sleep for example).
[The minimum wage is commonly based on the cost of basic services (Medical, public transport, water, electricity, heating), the basic eating needs –bread, chicken, rice… nothing luxurious- and it is usually calculated to support a standard family].
Of course, you can decide how much an employee is worth for you, but the minimum wage is there –again- because “trust” is not legally binding. The law is. You can pay an employee as much as you want, but you can’t pay less than the minimum cost of life (In which minimum wage is commonly based). First it sounds sick, and second, we’ll be entering the realm of disloyal competition again.
" ... the truth is different: interns often take more time than give back valuable production ... and the training one invests soon walks out of the door again ... "
Maybe they would stick around if the atmosphere in your office was not so toxic. You're just proving to be a colossal pile of dung Patrik.
sociopath.
Patrik Schumacher, preacher of the prosperity gospel, euro stylee
what I find amusing are people that strongly push over the top socialist ideologies against the 'rule of the jungle' as a positive position while unaware of the complacency model they have created to ensure the wealthy remain in a position of power. the left's position on stabilitiy only ensures the seperation of class further - Germany being an exemplar example..........try firing a German worker on any grounds, especially lack of production. on Fareed Zakari's GPS CNN show he interviewed a man who had wrote a book and created some interesting graphs. The country with the largest percentage of wealthy based on inheritance was Germany, which also had the least amount of wealth created through corruption and the least opportunity for class jumping. i lived and worked in Germany and had no clue a 1% class even existed. The Welfare State of any seemingly well organized state in Europe only ensures the poor remain poor and that change is nearly impossible. The rule of the jungle is Opportunity for the new......last but least, most people who intern at firms like ZHA are people who have no interest in being part of a firm or community, they just need a name on their resume. i was told this by a starchitexcts HR person - so sociopaths working for sociopaths just at bad wages, seems fairs to me.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian."
-Henry Ford
I agree with Olaf. We need a reasonable balance though to avoid complete anarchy...which would likely devolve into some form of dictatorship. There has never been a real nation run by pure political philosophy without it becoming a disaster. I like the idea of govt minimalism. It allows for things like roads, bridges, police, and public schools
yes jla-x. give us infrastructure and leave the rest to the market. if the jungle is the market then the desert is the welfare state - nothing but mirages with no water in site.
I'm going to leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusal_of_work
And note that the glorification of work and the glorification of the race to the top is a pile of bullshit. Part of the control machine.
Hey jla-x, Henry Ford was an anti-semit / nazi sympathizer, so maybe not someone you what to quote, especially when it's concerning the native peoples his race committed mass genocide against.....
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