Getting Paid to Talk. A Manifesto
We have come to assume that it is normal for knowledge workers not to get paid. Normal that there aren’t many of them.
The original (Spanish) version of this article can be found here.
A few days ago I shared some thoughts about the end of work. I talked about how the promised “knowledge society” never came, and how instead what emerged was an “attention society.”
In this new economy, where a handful of brands compete to sell the same product to the same customers, former industrial jobs have not been replaced by intellectual jobs for architects, engineers, and scientists. What has grown instead is an army of salespeople, waiters, store clerks, and call center operators fighting to capture the customer’s attention. That’s why today, in developed countries, 25% of young people are overqualified: they trained to design mobile phones, but ended up selling them.
We could look for culprits. And there are some. But before pointing fingers at others, maybe it’s worth looking inward and asking ourselves: could we have something to do with it?
Because one of the reasons why there aren’t more intellectual jobs is simple (and painful): we have gotten used to not paying for them. How many times have we attended a lecture, a workshop, or a concert where the only person not getting paid was the one creating the content?
I myself have organized hundreds of events and participated as a speaker in dozens. And I accepted—like so many others—that it was normal not to pay and not to get paid. At those events, the sound technician gets paid, the social media manager, the cultural coordinator, the venue director, and the cleaning staff all get paid. The insurance company gets paid, and so does the electricity supplier, the caterer, and the staging company. The company that built the building got paid, as did the bank that provided the loan for it. The landlord gets paid. But the person giving the talk or the concert? That person far too often leaves without a paycheck. Those who generate the value that allows everyone else to justify their jobs are the only ones not compensated. No wonder there are no more intellectual jobs if we refuse to pay for them!
How can this be?
And here comes my double mea culpa: for not having paid when I was organizing events, and for not having charged when I was participating. Because those of us who give away our work—perhaps because we have other sources of income—unwittingly contribute to making it impossible for those who do not have such resources to devote themselves to this. We slam the door on the possibility of paid intellectual work by giving away our own.
This all creates several absurd situations:
First: It is increasingly common to see brilliant, but precarious, young people working for free for audiences who earn far more than they do. The speaker ends up being the poorest person in the room.
Second: The same creators are then forced to restrict access to their content online just to get some source of income. Digital content, which could be reproduced infinitely at no cost, does not reach beyond a paywall. However, in live events, which are physical work, which require time you will never get back and are dedicated only to those in the room, no one pays.
Third: Only those whose lives are already secured through other means can afford to do this. And in this way, we consolidate a very obvious reality: it is always the same people who speak. Always those who can afford to give away a couple of hours in a day, plus a few more hours thinking about what to say in the days beforehand. Those of us who live on a salary from an institution that pays us to think, or who already have our lives sorted out.
As a consequence of the precariousness of intellectual work, many people end up having to work frantically, or to publish in ethically dubious outlets, or to switch careers altogether.
How do we expect to have a society of thinkers when we value them so little that we treat them this way? How do we expect new ideas to emerge if it’s always the same people talking?
That’s why today I’m proposing something very simple. A mini-manifesto with three commitments, one for each type of actor involved in this mess:
3 COMMITMENTS TO DIGNIFY INTELLECTUAL WORK
Cultural institutions will commit to always paying musicians, actors, journalists, teachers, speakers, and any other type of intellectual worker who provides a service in their facilities or programs. Just as they would never ask someone to serve drinks at the event for free, they should not ask anyone to speak for free.
Speakers, musicians, presenters will commit to always charging for their work. If they later wish to donate that money, perfect. But first, it should exist, it should be offered to all speakers, and whoever wants to give it back or donate it to another organization can do so.
Attendees will commit to getting used to chipping in, making a small digital payment, or at least paying an entrance fee. There are many ways to organize this, even so that only those who can afford it among the audience pay.
Abundance is built by recognizing the value of other people’s work.