Utopian Dreams in a Transactional Economy

Content creator is an upcoming profession that employs many according to a Washington Post article titled, “Millions work as content creators. In official records, they barely exist.” Authors Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz assert, “Millions have ditched traditional career paths to work as online creators and content-makers, using their computers and phones to amass followers and build businesses whose influence now rivals the biggest names in entertainment, news and politics.” Goldman Sachs forecasts this sector of the economy could generate half a trillion dollars annually by 2027. It is a thing!

Not so fast! I don’t see many financially stable folk living on revenues generated from content they create for a website, streaming service, substack, or podcast. Roughly 12 percent of participants in a recent survey of content creators indicated annual earnings of more that $50,000, according to Harwell and Lorenz. 46 percent said they made less than $1,000. It may be true some are earning a living as content creators, and some earn a lot, but rivaling the biggest names in entertainment, news and politics? Please.

Cutting the cord from a single employer job and venturing on our own is possible. I did it more than once in 55 years in the workforce. To me, breaking loose is mostly about developing a sustainable lifestyle without working a “big job.” It is individualistic and empowering. It relies on others much differently from working for a large company. It will drain your personal bank accounts more quickly than you can log into Twitch. It is something of a dream.

When I retired from a transportation and logistics career I started a small consulting firm with me as the only employee. The idea was to take contracts to do work in the peace and justice movement that would help pay bills and become a platform for bigger, better things. To supplement my income, I took any kind of transactional work, including newspaper freelancing, farm work, jobs through a temporary service, and others. While I had the organization, I found it nearly impossible to have enough jobs in the pipeline to stay busy and generate needed income. In the end, I retired on my Social Security pension with Medicare as my health coverage and do my content creation on that financial platform.

A piece of advice I gave someone pursuing a content creator career was to get 10 years in with a company or companies that paid/withheld Social Security taxes. With a potential worklife of 50+ years, spending ten of them in a company that participates in Social Security seems very doable without infringing on creativity. I also said they should wait until full retirement age before filing to collect benefits so as to maximize the monthly pension payment. The response was predictable: “Is Social Security even going to be around?” Who knows if Social Security will change from it’s current process? There is not enough money to pay full benefits after 2033 without Congress changing something. Medicare begins to run out of money in 2031. So many people rely on these programs, it’s hard not to image the Congress doing something to secure them for the future.

At our core we seek a way of living that meets our needs. While we don’t seek to join a cult, we do have an impulse to gravitate toward support groups that are not necessarily just family. Utopian movements of the 19th Century were communal in nature. (The Library of Congress lists some). I think of Brook Farm, the Shaker Community, Rappites (a.k.a. The Harmony Society), and the Amana Colonies when I think of utopian communities. They followed the impulse to break away from broader American culture and join together to better meet common needs. Longer term they were all unsustainable, yet people seek this form of community today in different ways.

My experiences with the millennial generation revealed a different kind of pursuit of being part of a community. Large group activities were commonplace when millennials were in their 20s. They persisted through the years. While members found what today seems like traditional jobs with a commute, workplace, payroll, and benefits, they bonded together in a way that had a separate trajectory from a single person-single job career. It was antithetical to the rugged individualism of myth and legend, especially after 1981. With good employment being harder to find, it is no wonder people cut loose and become individualistic entrepreneurs in the context of a larger group. Being a content creator can be attractive in a society that has comparatively few outlets for creative impulses. Like my small consulting firm, content creator is an umbrella organization to do many different things.

Being a content creator is viable for some. The challenge is to develop enough income streams so as to have a financial base to pay quotidian bills like rent, groceries, transportation and utilities. The temptation is to take a big job to accomplish this. At the same time, if done well, a big job demands a full share of one’s daily energy. I wrote about this in my unpublished autobiography.

We had a discussion with a friend of hers about how she had to give up her artwork after taking a job at John Deere. She was tired after work, raising a child, and found little time or desire to make art. I knew if I took a full time job, I might find myself in the same situation.

An Iowa Life, unpublished manuscript by Paul Deaton

I found myself in this situation several times, notably when in 1984 I began my career in transportation and logistics. Being creative and managing creative content that generates income are both difficult when working as an exempt employee in a management position. One makes a choice to live this way. I’m not sure being an effective content creator is possible in this type of work environment.

I think of the 46 percent of content creators who in the survey earned less than $1,000 per year. It is impossible for an American to live on this amount of money without significant support from others and other institutions. Some books have been written explaining how to do this. Yet what seems evident is turning the dream of freedom from economic needs to pursuit of content creation in a transactional society is possible only with more boilerplate opportunities to earn income than there are. Finding and developing such a community is the necessary first step many content creators stumble into. Recognizing it up front would save time and provide a better path to success.

What I’m describing is utopian, although not the way the 19th Century utopian movements were. Maybe a better descriptor is “communal.” Whatever one calls it, it is a dream until proven viable and sustainable in a transactional society. If it were easy, we’d all be content creators.