Allocated labour
A system decides what you will do, and people comply — sometimes willingly.
The external half of the allocation problem. A mechanism — a computer, a lottery, a caste — hands out the work, and the society functions. Nobody is deceived about the fact of assignment; the argument is over whether being assigned is compatible with being free.
Le Guin wrote the hardest version. Anarres is an anarchist society with no property, no law and no compulsion, and it still runs a Division of Labour that posts people to jobs. Nothing forces you to accept. Almost everyone accepts, and the novel is unsparing about what happens to the one who does not — how a society without punishment nonetheless finds ways to make refusal unbearable.
This pattern is the one most likely to describe a real post-automation society, because allocation is what institutions do when work stops being economically necessary but socially remains so. Look at the mechanism in each case, and ask what would happen if you said no.
11 works give this answer
We
Every hour is scheduled: when to wake, work, walk in ranks, chew each mouthful. Two Personal Hours a day are the only unallocated time anyone has, and the state considers even those a regrettable concession.
Allocated labourAD-016-ALL·BK·1974Start hereThe Dispossessed
On Anarres nobody is compelled to work and there is no property, no wage and no law. A computer posts people to jobs anyway — sometimes for years, sometimes far from the people they love — and almost everyone goes. Refusal is permitted and quietly unsurvivable.
Allocated labourAD-018-ALL·FM·1985Start hereBrazil
Sam Lowry processes forms at the Ministry of Information and declines a promotion, because the job is comfortable and requires nothing. The department's entire output is paperwork correcting the consequences of its own earlier paperwork, including the one typographical error that kills a man.
Allocated labourAD-021-ALL·BK·1988Start hereCyteen
Azi work the job their psychset was designed around, and find it satisfying, because the satisfaction was part of the design. They are not stupid, not mistreated and not deceived about what they are. Their tapes tell them what to want, and Cherryh's interest is in the technicians who write the tapes.
Allocated labourAD-034-ALL·BK·2006Daemon
Take jobs from the network. It pays well, it ranks you, it advances you, and it never explains what any individual task is for. People do the work anyway, and most of them prefer it to the employer they had before.
Allocated labourAD-036-ALL·TV·2006Ergo Proxy
The council issues you an occupation, a residence, a partner and a duty to be productive. Vincent's assigned job is disposing of AutoReivs that malfunction. Nobody chose any of it, and the city considers the arrangement a kindness.
Allocated labourAD-045-ALL·BK·2010Start hereFreedom™
Take a quest. Members hold levels rather than job titles, are paid in credits earned by verified work, and rebuild local farming and manufacturing under a network that allocates the tasks and audits the output. Nobody has a boss, and nobody chooses their own work either.
Allocated labourAD-047-ALL·BK·2011Wool
Everyone holds an assigned trade — porter, mechanic, farmer, IT — for life, in a shaft they will never leave. Children are permitted by lottery. The one job nobody volunteers for is cleaning, and it is a death sentence dressed as maintenance.
Allocated labourAD-048-ALL·TV·2011Person of Interest
Wait for a number. The Machine supplies one social security number at a time and explains nothing — not the reasoning, not whether the person is victim or perpetrator. Two men build their entire working lives around instructions they cannot audit and come, gradually, to trust.
Allocated labourAD-052-ALL·BK·2014On Such a Full Sea
Raise fish and vegetables for people you will never meet. Roles are effectively assigned at birth, the work is skilled and genuinely respected, and the community narrates its own life in the first person plural.
Allocated labourAD-068-ALL·TV·2023Silo
Everyone holds an assigned trade for life — mechanic, porter, farmer, IT, Judicial — in a shaft they will never leave. Children are permitted by lottery. The one job nobody volunteers for is cleaning, and it is a death sentence dressed as maintenance.
Allocated labour