Greedy Rant *

What do accountants do? They shift paper and shuffle numerals. And they earn a salary. Okay then, what do they do for society? Can we eat their ledgers? Would we pay to watch them if they worked at the MCG? Are they perennial money-trees that grow in the local park?

No. Accountants are the financial referees that stop us from killing each other. As human beings we are inherently a greedy, hungry pack of malignant monkeys, hell-bent on acquiring anything and everything we can. Because of this we have created a set of rules and this subset of humanity are our watchdogs, they administrate those rules.

I have just been reading a book by Rodney Stinson, Job Prospects Australia, ostensibly a guide for school leavers to help them with career decisions. But for this cynic, it is an in-depth look at how many useless jobs we are drudging through in the name of the great greedy money-go-round.

Australia has 100,800 accountants. And a similar number of carpenters and joiners, who, although they charge heaps, are infinitely more useful. Add to the accountants 460,000 accounts clerks and 2,400 debt collectors, and we have 8% of our working population keeping tabs on who owes who, mindlessly shifting numbers from one account to another, and then back again.

I have a PC at home, which kindly allows me to kill three-headed beasties with a nail gun or e-mail a video postcard to my grandmother. But sadly most of the computers on our planet exist because they run spreadsheets. Serious computer personnel (programmers, operators and technicians) - we have one quarter of a million of them, working in offices with recycled air, staring at screens.

Fortunately we have 160,000 doctors and nurses, but their attempts to keep us well are further undermined by an equal number of fast food crew members. A pattern of sad symmetry is starting to appear.

How rewarding it should be if you are a chiropractor, a teacher, a ballet dancer or a vet. You are unlikely to be purely interested in money, and your clients are genuinely appreciative of the service you provide. Yet as I pore over these statistics the radio is telling me that a man in Atlanta, Georgia has just shot dead 14 people. A stockbroker. I doubt that a podiatrist would go quite so berserk if his number of athlete's foot cases went down by 50% in the next fiscal quarter.

Two hundred thousand useful farmers create food, 140,000 useful factory workers make it extra-edible, and 70,000 useful chefs cover it with sauce. Only then can hungry wage-slaves gulp it down before rushing home for six hours of sales target worry beside a snoring spouse, while 106,000 useful kitchen hands do the dishes.

I once worked in a factory. I removed the feathers that the plucking machine missed. Or I packed the chickens into trays, still warm with life but minus a head. It wasn't much of a job, but at least I knew that, thanks to me, Australian housewives could purchase feather-free chooks. I had a useful purpose. What use are real estate property managers?

In this lucky country we have 212,000 cleaners, 2500 luggage porters and 47,000 bar attendants, all providing us with a decent standard of living. Yet for every bar worker there's a bank teller. For every luggage porter there's a market research interviewer. For every newsagent there are two telemarketers.
 
 
 

We have 120,000 sales reps zipping about in new cars, selling the same product except for a different coloured label, conjured up by 53,000 sales and marketing managers. I'm unsure how useful the automotive industry is so I split it in half. I also guessed that half of our 215,000 truck drivers and couriers would be carting food, while the remainder delivered Palm Pilots.

After sorting every Australian mode of employment into piles of actually useful and completely pointless (except for the ubiquitous greed factor), guess what? The piles are of equal height, even though the visual merchandisers and ticket writers tried to disguise themselves as artists. There's 50% good and 50% bad. Three million adults that could feel good about their work, and three million that hopefully won't.

To me this shows that, if we could be happy with our lot, and not covet thy neighbour's crockery, we would only have to work a 20-hour week.

But we don't. We are currently working longer hours than at the start of the century. When I was a kid computers and robots were quickly becoming reality. Experts were predicting that in the future we would be a leisurely species, the equals of our pet cats. Thirty-hour weeks were being planned, and we had discovered the great idea of job-sharing. While I wait for our leaders to explain what went wrong, I daydream….

In rural Australiopia is a town with a population of 5,000. They are mostly self-sufficient and manage to function fruitfully without any merchant bankers, sales reps or insurance brokers. When a strange car drives down their roads, it is noticed. When Gary the dishwasher is trying to sell jewellery at the pub, it is noticed. Crime is therefore low and the town has no security guards, one token policeman and no insurance policies. Because they operate a LETS system, there are no accountants. If it ever happens that one of the non-greedy citizens wants to buy something, they'll save up for it, for there are no banks and no credit cards. Businesses are small and do their own books. The local paper is free of advertisements. They are a content community with a twenty-hour working week and many golf courses.

I once saw an episode of Little House on the Prairie where Michael Landon's house got wrecked by a tornado. The next day all the local townsfolk got together and built him a new one. Two stories high. These days, with all of our knowledge and technology, we work for 30 years just to pay off a one-story house.