-Rifkin? -Rifkin, yes. Jeremy Rifkin said:

"Madagascar.... Certain islands produce vanilla flavor.

It's one of the most popular flavors for ice-cream and candy.

They get about $25 a pound for vanilla

but it takes a lot of nurturing and work."

A scientific group began to make vanilla

synthetic vanilla, same atomic structure.

They can make it for about $3 a pound

versus $25. That's going to wipe out all the island's survivors

the farmers, you understand, in Madagascar.

It's going to wipe out all those people.

There are always people that think they won't be wiped out

because they're the managers.

Japan is making program managers

that program sequences of car production.

They get all the workers together to work as a team

and they move the machines at a certain speed.

Then they pick it up a little to get the guys working faster.

The guys complain.

If they complain too much, they're canned.

They keep running the machines faster until a person

slows up. When he slows up there's a light that blinks at his station

so the other guys say "Pick it up!"

There's a lot of stress in Japan,

emotional stress because they work them

continuously; they order them.

It's team work and they love the company

and after hours, they have company dinners

and affairs. The worker hardly ever sees

the members of his family.

Years later, after they retire

they usually degenerate because

they've been worked to the limit.

They have no hobby, thinking or anything else

and they're lost without the company.

Do you understand? There are psychological problems.

(Intv) The company is like their 'family' more than their real family.

- Yes, the company pushes and shoves to see how much it can get out of them.

What you have to remember is that the company will not succeed

unless it's faster than General Motors

better than Toyota. You know what I mean?

They can't. The whole world today depends on

how efficient your production is.

If you have machines doing most of the work

then the help has to be

like computer programmers. They all make recommendations

and they familiarize all the workers

with every aspect of production.

They are 'generalists'

in the automobile production field, not in thinking.

Their devotion to the company is like a mother.

Without that mother, they'd have no jobs.

There's new organizations forming in Japan

that try to counteract that, but that doesn't bring any money to Japan

so it won't be too successful.

You can't counteract something unless you bring something new.

(Intv) They don't give many social services over there either, do they?

-They do have some. The Japanese that have been laid off

and those affiliated with good will and all that

to a limited extent.

Japan doesn't have the social services the US has, yet.

When they get laid off there is no future. There's nothing they can study

unless they study computer programming

and they have a hell of a lot of computer programmers in Japan.

Do you understand? The programmer

operates the sequences

whereas the foreman used to do that.

He used to say "The wheels come on. Now they go to painting."

Now the computerized program does that.

The guy in charge used to be in the front office.

Now his desk is right in the shop

next to the working man.

They dress like the working man; they wear the same clothing

and that's to make them feel that they're all one.

American engineers went to Japan to study their system

and they're installing it in America.

That's what 'time-and-motion people' are.

They get more motion out of people in less time.

If you assemble certain things using a straight assembly bench

if you bend it, all the parts are nearer

and so you can assemble things faster, but you don't get paid more.

Do you know what I mean? So 'time-and-motion men'

are also engineers who try to get the most motion

in the least amount of time out of most people.

As their job is to get to do that,

their job is not to benefit people.

There should be psychologists

to study stress levels and stop [it] at a certain point.

That does not help the company, do you understand?

That's why they don't have psychological fatigue studies

but we would have that because that means more hospitalization.

If you don't have fatigue studies

the company doesn't pay for it, the worker pays for it

so that's his problem. If he gets sick or has a nervous breakdown

and has to go to a psychologist or to a hospital.

The company does not study that

because it doesn't do them any good to find out what the level is.

I think it would do them good, but they don't understand that.

All they have are charts of production levels.

If it goes up higher, whatever the production line is

that's getting that high mark

called exponential curve.

They try to put that on all levels.

Japanese companies

do not share ideas with other Japanese companies

but they do welcome visits to their plant

and people make notes and walk away with the same thing.

The supermarkets (I don't know if you notice this)

don't have all the cashiers working.

They have certain aisles open

and they put more load on the girls, [it's] tabulated.

They have new machines

that measure the phone calls that the help makes

while they're on the production line.

If a phone call runs over a certain amount of time, it's noticed.

It's printed out so the executive managers of the supermarkets

know how much time you spend on the phone, even though it's your family.

If you take more than four days off a year, they tend to can you.

When I say capitalism is inefficient, it hurts itself because

the more people you lay off eventually

they won't have the money to pay taxes or buy the products.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

If you don't you're supposed to interrupt me.

Capitalism was OK maybe a hundred years ago

because we didn't have any other systems, but it's socially offensive today.

People have higher stress levels, most normal people

because their company tries to get them

to take their work home and think about it.

(intv) But you've been around a while. Would you say

stress levels...If you think back once, 20 years ...

-Even among the executives...

(Intv) Let's say when you were a child, do you think back and remember if

people had just as much stress then as they do now or less?

-They had less

because they weren't laid off as much.

Today you work for a company, you get laid off

and you look for the same job again and it's gone.

Automation is being installed very quickly

and the rate that automation is being installed

is going up like that.

It isn't a slow, long curve.

If they build automation plants

you don't need heating in the winter

because machines don't need that.

When you've got humans working there, you need heating

daylight and electric lamps. You don't need that with machines.

You also have to give a little insurance on the working people.

You have to have a nurse and a first aid station.

You don't need that with machines.

With machines it's called 'lights-out manufacturing'.

A factory could be dark, as long as it's automated.

That's why... Human systems go on strike, they smoke

they go to the bathroom, they fuck off which is all normal

but with machines there's no fuck off.

They work hard all the time and make no demands.

If I say we're moving toward a machine world

it isn't a wish that I have. It's a natural direction of technology.

An engineer's job is to tighten up systems

and make things work better.

The engineers don't know that they're

hurting other people. They say "Well, why don't you become an engineer?"

until they get laid off.

Until you have a...You have a monitor in a supermarket

that works with a cashier

that measures the time. If a person calls up and says

"Are you having any specials on beans today?"

If they spend too much time on the phone, they're moved out

and so their phone calls are monitored.

The more you know about people and their bank accounts

the more you know that we're going to have a good business year

if a lot of people have savings in the bank.

Banks do monitor what you buy

and how much you withdraw and how much you put back in.

The more banks know about you (there are certain things

they're not supposed to do that are against the law)

but their lawyers say "Well listen, we want to know

whether a person is an agitator, or a communist"...

The more information you get on people:

their savings, habits, hobbies

the more you know about them, the more you can predict.

What science is about is predictability.

You know if you go hunting Wednesdays

you're going to catch more deer than Sunday

because everybody's out there hunting on a Sunday

Do you know what I mean?

If you keep a record of that

you have to do that for yourself in order to catch a deer

Does that make sense?

If you share your idea "Always go Wednesday

because it's least crowded"

or a guy says "Instead of taking Saturday off from work

I'm going to work Saturday and hunt Wednesday

because there's more deer."

He doesn't tell everybody in the plant that

because everybody would do that.

Self-interest hurts the majority of people

but it doesn't hurt the person who's involved in self-interest.

That's why most people stick to what they know.

Because when you tell them there's another way

it doesn't do anything for them right now.

Do you understand that? That's why they're not interested

but if the system continues to lay off people

they're going to be forced to be interested.

Let's say (I hope it's not too late)

that the environment is so badly damaged

and people are so badly laid off and so hungry

that robberies will go up.

If you cut out the support structure

if they can't get a job and you cut out payments

then crime will go up

whether they hit you on the head and take your wallet

or break into your house.

It's more efficient for criminals to work as a gang

rather than trying to rob a bank alone:

have one guy outside looking around

one guy setting a building on fire

three miles from the bank to keep the police occupied.

That's called 'strategy for bank-robbing'

instead of you just going in with a gun saying

"I want your money!" Banks are now installing very heavy

laminated plate glass

so that even if you point a gun at the teller

she has a foot pedal she presses

that rings an alarm at the police station

that means there's a robbery underway.

They're not allowed to install a trap device in front of the cashier.

When she presses that, the robber falls through the trap door.

It might accidentally go off

and they'll sue the shit out of the bank.

They're not that accurate yet, but I can assure you when they are

they'll install them.

It becomes more difficult to become a criminal

with all these cameras around the banks.

Should the banks put the cameras in?

If they want to survive and don't want to be robbed every day