By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Originally published at Frontline
The latest fear factor to hit the world relates to the disappearance of jobs. Everywhere now the buzz is about how technology is going to transform work – and reduce it dramatically. The Davos World Economic Forum CEO Klaus Schwab (whose book The Fourth Industrial Revolution was released this week) is just the latest in a long line of recent predictors of this gloomy possibility. From 3-D printing to robots that will perform not just some basic services but even more skilled activities like those of accountancy and so on, the fear is that human labour will be increasingly displaced by machines, and so there will simply not be enough work to provide employment to all the people who need jobs.
But there is some confusion in all this doomsaying about the future (or lack of it) of work. Let’s distinguish first between two types of technological change: productive and disruptive. The first describes those changes that increase productivity and change the nature of economic activities. They certainly include increasing automation, as well as a host of new developments in biotechnology and other areas, which clearly reflect the “creative destruction” inherent in a lot of technological change.
There is little point fighting against such advance of technology or even trying to slow it down in some way, because that simply would not work and in any case is not really desirable. But that does not mean that we should be in despair simply because it would displace a lot of human work – in fact, where it replaces arduous work full of drudgery, or makes doing things more easily, we should celebrate it.
However, this means that the greater surpluses generated in these more productive activities should be transferred to demand for more employment-intensive activities that enhance the quality of life in society. A lot of these would be in services both old and new, which would include care activities in which the human element is essential, as well as creative industries and knowledge and entertainment activities and a range of other services.
Care work in particular is likely to become an increasingly important and necessary part of future work, given projected patterns of demography and morbidity. In its broader definition that means not just relational care (care of the young, the old, the sick, the differently abled) but also all activities that contribute to the existence and well-being of others, which includes a wide range of what are commonly known as “household tasks”. Such work is currently provided along a broad continuum from relatively highly paid skilled professionals (doctors, for example) to lower paid workers with skills that are less socially acknowledged (such as nursery school teachers whose work is actually very demanding and requires substantial skills and training to be effective) to unpaid labour (much of the work performed largely but not solely by women and girl children within households and local communities). Recognising and redistributing such work and according it dignity and proper remuneration is not only important, but will serve as a major driver of employment generation in future, even as it improves the quality of life for all.
In addition, new jobs that could potentially be generated by the surpluses thrown up by productivity increases in some sectors could also include certain types of production (organic agriculture, for example, or more craft-driven handicraft production that is increasingly discovering new niche markets) that become more valued by society and require more human labour by their very nature. A wide range of services that result from the “creative economy” also fall into this category.
Many of these activities actually require more people working at them to deliver better quality, so standard indicators of productivity in such work are not of much use, and really should not be used to assess them at all. Rather, insofar as these two reflect improvements in quality of life, we should welcome the potential for such employment that is enabled by increases in productivity in other activities.
However, it is evident that this is not an easy process, and it is definitely not naturally thrown up by market forces. Rather, the processes of capitalist market workings are more likely to throw up mass unemployment and greater inequality if left to function unchecked, which is why technological change is generating such pessimism about job creation.
So managing this process for the greater public good definitely means greater public intervention, which in turn needs to occur through more democratic and accountable states. This can happen through more public spending that will generate more employment directly, to provide goods and services that improve the quality of life of people in the society, and indirectly through the positive multiplier effects of the initial spending that in turn increases demand in that economy. The process of encouraging expansion of labour intensive activities that improve quality of life rather than only GDP can also be pushed by states through changing incentives for private players.
This in turn means that dealing with the impact of such technological change requires a change from the currently conventional mind set of policy makers across the world. But it is still something that is potentially positive and should be welcomed if societies (and their governments) are able to shift strategies and generate processes so that everyone can benefit.
But there is another kind of technological change that is more disruptive rather than productive, because it does not really increase productivity but simply creates enabling conditions for changes in the way that goods and services are produced and distributed. Such organisational changes are exemplified by what is now called “Uberisation” – whereby improvements in ICT allow “aggregators” to emerge who simply link up providers and buyers of goods and services and apparently eliminate middlemen.
Funnily enough, this is the technological change that many celebrate, even as they worry about the implications of productive technologies that will displace labour. That is because this has immediate effects on prices to begin with – as the many who have benefited from cheaper taxi services because of Uber or reduced hotel costs because of AirBnB will vouch for. But this happens really because the workers have become the direct producers, contracting out their goods or services to customers enabled by new technology. The services end up being provided at what are effectively “piece rate wages” for the workers concerned.
We know that through history – as well as now when it is so common in production chains in manufacturing across the developing world – piece rate work has been a classic vehicle for the greater exploitation of workers. Such workers try to ensure sales by driving down their own prices or accepting lower prices offered by buyers, and then work longer hours to compensate or to ensure higher incomes. They face all the risks of production and market variability. They often take on multiple activities in order to diversify and increase their incomes. And since they are effectively “self-employed” (even when they are in effect dependent sub-contractors of much larger companies) they are responsible for their own safety at work, their own social security and all else that would normally be covered by employers.
It is ironic that such re-organisation of work is being treated as a major technological advance, when in effect what it is doing is reviving the putting-out arrangements that were typical of early capitalism. So we should not get too excited about it – some of the “new economy jobs” are just the old piece rate work, in new guises and extending to old and new services.
In the contemporary context, these are also mechanisms of slipping through regulatory cracks and allowing the “aggregators” to avoid bearing any responsibility for the protection or well-being of workers. So, unlike the creative destruction of the first kind of technological change, which has positive effects even when it displaces workers, this kind of disruptive organisational change enabled by new technology is neither inevitable nor ultimately that desirable.
This process is certainly something that can be tamed and made more socially palatable through appropriate regulation. The idea that “aggregators” or those who subcontract out several parts of the production processes are not employers and therefore not responsible for the conditions of the actual workers involved, is something that must be fought. And regulatory mechanisms must be put into place to ensure that workers’ rights and protection are not lost because of this. Interestingly, enforcement of regulations in many instances may well be facilitated and made easier by the same technologies that have created these changes in the first place.
So we need to take a new and fresher look at technological change. That’s the only way we can stop being afraid of new technology or being ruled and manipulated by it.
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No jobs – no revenue — no profit.
Makes a good case for state ownership of the means of production for the common good.
Ugghhh! So the choice is between mass unemployment and low-skill, and (undoubtedly) low-wage (and likely low benefit) “labour intensive” work that many would find unpalatable? If that’s the price of technological “progress” then I’d rather chuck the technology which is more and more just a means of rent extraction for the enrichment of labor-exploiting sociopaths bent on hoarding more personal wealth than some small countries than a true social good.
I’m glad retirement is only a few years away for me.
Retirees form the largest class of “labor-exploiting sociopath”.
That’s just not true. Retirees have worked their entire lives creating the wherewithal that allows the economy that you and I benefit from to exist. You stand on their shoulders and you brazenly insult them. I can’t help but wonder if your post is in service to creating the age divide necessary to dismantle social security. If so you are taking it away from your own generation.
Honestly if the choice will be to die or be a household servant to some techy I’d be half tempted to take up arms and smash all of the machines.
How will this shift to ‘labor intensive’ work play out for those of us who are not exactly congenial folk, anyhow?
cough…’Butlerian Jehad’…cough..
How do I get in touch with the nearest Butlerian cell?
If I hear the word “disruptive” one more time, I think I’ll scream.
What’s the point of “progress” if it makes everyone’s life worse? Why is rising productivity supposed to make everything scarcer? It makes no sense.
“Progress,” yes, but for whom…
Let’s see, managing this process means > public intervention via more democratic and accountable states which happens (apparently) by (can’t make this stuff up) more public spending. OK, Wallets out, everyone, do your part (or perhaps rot in hell without a lapel flag pin!) Let’s SPEND our way to infinite freedom fries!
Georgieee, you in there??? Come on out, we FOUND yoooou! I’m no Red. Can’t wait to spend my way to more more democratic and accountable states.
First sentence paragraph four:
“However, this means that the greater surpluses generated in these more productive activities should be transferred to demand for more employment-intensive activities that enhance the quality of life in society.”
State spending does not come from taxes, see Stephanie Kelton at Sanders campaign or any Bard or UMKC economist, so your wallet is safe if the popular side wins, and yes Sanders platform polls popular across parties at the level of the general population.
Yes politics has to change and confront distribution head on. Look at todays news paper, that is what’s happening. Politics is how benefits get distributed and getting everyone involved in it is the best way we’ve worked out yet to get the most peoples’ interests served.
And how, pray tell will this be accomplished? Taxes may not technically fund government spending but if the plan is to appropriate the “greater surpluses” from more productive (which I read to mean profitable) activities then how the hell does this guy propose to get them other than taxation?
Look, I’m all for defanging the financial and political power of giant corporations but this sounds a bit utopian to me (and no I’m not a Hill-bot and I’m all for thinking big but there has to be some kind of plan for actual implementation).
And even if we could accomplish the above, I think this guy is delusional if he thinks that enough meaningful, non-profit generating jobs can be created to address the hollowing out of employment that he predicts. And I doubt that enough people would find these jobs desirable replacements for the work they have now to make this scheme even remotely practical.
This post sounds like an apologetic from some ivory tower clown (who knows that he’s in little danger of losing his cozy little sinecure) on behalf of crap-italist sociopaths who are probably funding him.
I think this guy is delusional if he thinks that enough meaningful, non-profit generating jobs can be created to address the hollowing out of employment that he predicts. And I doubt that enough people would find these jobs desirable replacements for the work they have now to make this scheme even remotely practical.
The work is already there. It’s just that there is not enough money in the right hands to pay people to do it as “jobs.” And I think you are only partially right about these jobs not being desirable. How many single mothers are working fast food so that they can pay someone else to look after their kid? You think people wouldn’t prefer to get paid for looking after their own kid?
I’m personally skeptical of the “all the jobs are going to go away” thesis. But the author is certainly right that, if they did, an intelligent society would figure out how to put people to self-supporting work doing care work rather than forcing them to stumble through life in poverty and self-loathing.
Meaningless bald assertion. Please supply actual evidence that there is enough of this work to replace all the jobs that this guy predicts will disappear as a result of technological displacement.
So how do you propose to get all that money that tech gazillionaires and financiers are currently hoarding for themselves into “the right hands”?
A lot fewer than would rather have someone else do that as a an employment or government benefit so that they can work at a job.
False dichotomy. l bet many would rather have a better job than get paid to stay home with their kids.
But that’s the thesis we’re talking about here. You can’t say the solution works on the basis that the premise is false.
Your opinion. Unless he’s volunteering to give up his cushy academic position to become a “care worker” he’s full of shit. Not everyone is suited for or interested in doing “care work”. I really doubt that people with good jobs that would be replaced by technology are not more going to be happy with becoming “care workers” and those with bad jobs would be more likely to prefer a better job than being paid to stay at home. And let’s not forget that there’s almost no chance that, “intelligent” society or not, that these “care worker” jobs are going to be compensated on anything more than a subsistence level.
The author’s argument is just an excuse for allowing elites to reap the vast majority of the fruits of the economy while throwing crumbs to the displaced workers.
> So how do you propose to get all that money that tech gazillionaires and financiers are currently hoarding for themselves into “the right hands”?
How mystery. /s You’re aware that taxes do not fund spending, but you’re wondering how it’s possible to get money from tech execs and financial fraudsters?
> And I doubt that enough people would find these jobs desirable replacements for the work they have now to make this scheme even remotely practical.
Plenty of people work in soul-destroying, fraud-based industries. You’re saying they naturally incline to these activities and have no desire to work elsewhere… I disagree.
> Please supply actual evidence that there is enough of this work to replace all the jobs that this guy predicts will disappear
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates the U.S. needs $2.2 trillion dollars of infrastructure spending during the next 5 years. Sounds like a good start to me… Next time you demand figures to refute your own arguments, first supply some of your own.
Thank you for your non-responses to the questions I raised.
How about answering the question instead of writing a nonsensical non-sequitur? The author of the post is proposing getting the money for his scheme from profit-making enterprises. The comment I responded to claimed that taxes were unnecessary. You don’t see a contradiction there or don’t you understand English? You certainly don’t write coherent, grammatically correct sentences?
True but what’s your point? Do you really think they want an even worse job with lower pay
I said no such thing. That’s just a silly straw man argument you’re making. My argument is that people that have good jobs that they will be displaced from are not necessarily going to be happy becoming low-paid “care workers”
The discussion is about “care workers” not physical infrastructure work which is one of the occupations that the author is saying people will be displaced from. Your “evidence” is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Next time have Mommy help you with your comments, that is, unless your lack of ability in reading comprehension and elementary logic is congenitial.
Come on! Grow up and learn to converse in a civil manner. The poster you just responded to so insultingly has a long history of meaningful contribution here.
I think a lot of the questions you are asking are similar to this interview.
Just more bullshit. He starts out by using people like Einstein and Stravinsky as examples then admits his blatant bait and switch and says that people could feel fulfilled by hoisting sandbags. Uh, yeah sure – on a real short-term basis In an emergency that works but who the fuck wants to do that or any repetitive, monotonous heavy manual labor for a living? And then he goes on about teaching people to shop less, in other words, do without. I think consumerism is out of control but he’s not really trying to curb consumerism he’s trying to make people content with less (which in all these bullshit “New Work” schemes probably means less in terms of housing, food, medical care, vacations, etc. – not just silly consumer goods) because they’re barely going to be able to earn a subsistence living from their freelance, make-work jobs (and they will likely need more than one).
When these ass-clown academics start talking about workplace democracy and making workers stakeholders in business with status equal to management and investors I’ll start listening. Until then they can STFU.
care work does beat the @#$# cubical probably if it was compensated the same, but of course it’s not and that’s why people spend their lives in dreary cubes. “Good” jobs what a laugh … what lucky 20% has those?
The idea is to make jobs and working life better not to get rid of them for the enrichment of the already ultra-rich and consign workers to even worse situations.
Do you have any idea what “care work” actually involves? You, and most people, would probably kill for a cubicle existence if they actually had to do care work.
Ugh. I agree with roadrider. Not everyone wants to babysit the children of billionaire spreadsheet diddlers or change bedpans.
What is this lovely “care work”? Why should the 1% even think of paying more when they such a pliable supply of cheap and desperate workers.
Yep. We still have to tax the hoarders and redistribute the wealth-counting units (money), probably more than before. I see no alternative to that.
Actually it might be the main thing that has to be done.
I always wonder if the economists who describe these scenarios of transition in such sanguine terms have any realization or feeling at all for the amazing amounts of suffering and displacement that occurs when getting from point A to point B whether it be in the realities that take place (looting of public weal) or in their fantasy constructs where their advancement is about the only possible real outcome.
Of course not ! Why in hell would anyone think these economists have ANY kind of empathy for people who ACTUALLY live in the real world !!…… I mean, they have a chair, a committee, a megaphone, and all the vig that implies !
Bridge, this is why I’m declaring jihad on “disruptive.” And other words like it.
“Innovative.” “Startup.” “Founder.” “Unicorn.”
Indeed! I’m convinced that this is the bleeding edge of the capital vs. labor struggle today. “Independent contractor” scams prevent workers from organizing to better their lot, and allow unscrupulous kleptocrats the “liberty” to exploit workers any way they wish.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2016/02/8590040/union-files-represent-uber-drivers-serving-laguardia
Independent contractors need unions. Just like employees.
How about instead of doing moar, we work less? That’s what Keynes proposed. We live in a time of abundance. The Protestant Work Ethic has outlived its usefulness. The economic task of our time is not increasing aggregate production. Rather, it is allocating resources equitably.
Indeed, the only rational solution, but who will answer that question? We should just make more of any kind of sh!t? IMHO, GDP goes down, victory for the environment!!!!! But wait — unemployment increases to 20, 30, 40 or more percent (and yes, I know it is already there if you include people who have given up, are in jail or in the armed forces) but hey, produce and consume *MOAR*!
.
Somebody has to employ people to save the environment, that should be easy but sadly the market has no way. You don’t count in a market unless you can pay. Monarch butterflies will be extinct because they have *no money*.
Sayonara, monarch-san.
Hey, with more time away from work, people could build more butterfly gardens. Win-win.
http://monarchbutterflygarden.net/how-to-start-monarch-butterfly-garden/
When it comes to destructive human beings, In Praise of Idleness is something good for Nature.
Worship by the working masses of their elite masters must end before anything like this can happen. The use of propaganda by the elite to convince masses of people that they are indeed worthy of this reverence is the main obstacle preventing common sense solutions to our environmental and economic problems. We have a worldview problem.
We are entering another time in history when the collective consciousness of the people is reaching a crisis of legitimacy. The stated goals of social life no longer match the everyday experience so a breakdown is inevitable.
No amount of advertising or brand messaging can hide the destruction wrought by unregulated capitalism. Individuals leaving the current system and forging more equitable relationships among themselves is the only plausible long term solution. To remain sane- you need to get out.
Our current social system is a failure when viewed thru the lens of equality and justice. You are either for a society built on the foundation of equality and justice or you are not. The choice must be made and the terms are that stark.
If you view the society in which you participate in as an organized criminal network, the choices become easier and clearer to make.
Interesting post. One thing economists who write about technology/employment/productivity often miss is that companies/agencies will buy new technology, say computers for instance, and let employment numbers drop because a computer allows one person to be more productive. Lower costs and higher productivity adds to company profits. However, company will then often not upgrade technology, letting computer systems age to the point that productivity actually drops, because tech upgrades are a cost. So companies cut employment costs, AND cut tech upgrade costs. That’s the worst of both worlds in many ways. Economists always seem to assume that technology = up-to-date and reliable technology devices.
When I read a line like this: “Care work in particular is likely to become an increasingly important and necessary part of future work, given projected patterns of demography and morbidity.” I shudder at the thought of a nursing home or assisted living facility using out-of-date or buggy technology to reduce nurse or caregiver staff.
Guess my quibble is with neoliberal economics and not technology per se.
E. coli Economic Mythology
The preamp counterweight is a deductive, digital black hole, what is not the future, subject to downward mutation, the race to the bottom. It’s like taking your family to the amusement park. You can let a few kids run on ahead, but you have to watch the rest, lest they poison themselves or jump in front of a roller coaster on a dare.
What do you do with the back end of the distribution?
Complex life is subject to very high mutation rates, orders of magnitude beyond most of nature, which can only result in mutational devolution absent behavioral adaptation. The bonded reproductive compliment repairs mutations and gives the couple access to a running gene bank for additional adaptation, on the leading horizon. Of course the majority on the back end is going to capitalize gene therapy with modern medicine, and socialize reproduction with Family Law; finance, war and the supporting infrastructure are just derivatives.
Like people, how a gene expresses itself depends upon the environment – P,V, & T frequency. There is no one-size-fits-all genetic algorithm. The E. coli at Chipotle was engineered (check the signature).
The nation/states are simply a portfolio of empire, and media is obviously a scale cloning operation, amplifying artificially differentiated attributes. People don’t need products to replace nature. Consumerism is like giving candy to your kids before bedtime, which is what the CBs have been doing, calling the closed-system output GDP, GIGO.
We can already place a nuclear reaction in the space the size of a golf ball and transmit a lightning bolt between any two points. Oil is a Fred Flintstone energy source, Fred is trying to set the price $10 above equilibrium, and the only thing keeping it from snapping $10 under is war. With no change in technology, the market-clearing price is $18, and it can only go down from there due to demographic deceleration and MAD infrastructure collapse; shale was the cold war contract.
From the perspective of the Neanderthals in the FILO bankruptcy queue, arbitrarily breeding on property and money, intelligence is an aberration, which is consistent with the data gathered for the purpose. From the perspective of socialized science, intelligence as measured by social scientists is the natural hierarchy of ascension, breeding downward mutation and proposing technology as the cure. Whether the collapse of their MAD infrastructure is an opportunity or threat depends upon perspective.
From the perspective of the universe, the rock is transferring information, without DNA, and given the limited choice, you are better off betting on the rock.
AI is a coupler, a compiling/decompiling ac multiplexer, with a hashed stack. Perception is a function of spatial recognition. And technology is largely noise, but if employed as a sandbox, has its uses.
From my perspective as an opensource AI guy, the objective is not to give an amputee a less substandard leg replacement or a substitute robot, but rather the tools necessary to employ what is learned with the experience to improve quality of life, diversity of spatial recognition, which also has applications in space exploration. My ‘book’ is my children. NPV depends upon what you value.
Do you really think those earthquakes in Texas, benzene in NY, or the decline of the petrodollar are accidents? Have you had your E. coli modified food product today? Funny, how all those borders embedded in those historical treaties are suddenly in play.
A child expects the unexpected; the empire of peer interest groups penalizes you for seeing it, relative to those that comply, with what is expected. Set your subconscious up accordingly.
The communist party leaders are at least smart enough to recognize that a merger between social science and feudal industry is a recipe for fascism, as a justification for themselves. History is like a reel on an old-fashioned projector.
I wouldn’t put it past them (whoever), but can you provide a link?
“But that does not mean that we should be in despair simply because it would displace a lot of human work – in fact, where it replaces arduous work full of drudgery, or makes doing things more easily, we should celebrate it. However, this means that the greater surpluses generated in these more productive activities should be transferred to demand for more employment-intensive activities that enhance the quality of life in society.”
This is assuming that the surplus generated by the increases in productivity will be greater in value to the labor shed as a result. The reality in such a globalized economy is that such advancements will be immediately adopted by the competition, eating into said surpluses. Few innovations in history were as revolutionary as the personal computer and internet yet all they generated were substantial productivity gains for a brief period (appropriated by capital than labor, meaning real wages stagnated) and a big asset bubble in the stock market that popped a few years later. The only thing driving the economy forward afterwards was a big real estate bubble and since that popped we’ve had probably the worst stagnation we’ve seen since the Great Depression.
Moreover, the rate of profit has steadily declined since the latter half of the Bretton Woods era. Since the Germans and Japanese finished rebuilding their economies in the 1970’s, the global economy has been mired in a crisis of overproduction/under-utilization of capacity in manufacturing, with growth no longer coming from the agricultural and industrial sectors but rather the “service” sector (and has been rather fictitious and unsustainable). Perhaps it is only natural that as the organic composition of capital rises in such a competitive, highly globalized economy, the rate of profit falls. But what happens when we get to zero?
Mainstream economics teaches us that new innovations will always drive economic growth (forever and ever), but can’t the most important inventions only occur once? What new technology will rival the development of plumbing? Electricity? The automobile? The washing machine? Heating and air conditioning? Computers, the internet, smartphones? We’ve seen a tremendous amount of technological advancement since the 1970’s yet growth as been quite slow compared to other eras, and things don’t look to be getting better. What if the biggest sources of economic growth can only occur once? What if what produces robust growth is not the capitalist economy itself but rather urbanization and industrialization? The wealthiest nations in the world in the 17th century were capitalist economies yet growth was very low during that period. Since the world’s powers finished undergoing the processes of industrialization and urbanization in the 1970’s, economic growth has been quite slow and unsustainable (has only come from asset bubbles or external demand). Japan has had two and a half lost decades, Europe is imploding, countries like Argentina will never be what they once were, and even now mainstream economists are forecasting ‘secular stagnation’ for the US.
If the global economy were to grow at 3% annually, it would double before 2060, and then double again soon after the turn of the century. How will that math work out? Even with China and India’s heavy growth over the past two and a half decades, there weren’t enough destinations for the copious amounts of capital in which the global economy was awash, leaving the US stock and real estate markets as the safest bets for investments. Combined they form a third of the earth’s population, so could a boom in Africa even compare? And after that, what could come next? What new gadgets are going to keep the global economy growing at such a breakneck pace?
A capitalist economy needs growth in order to function normally. However, space and resources on our planet are finite. How can growth be infinite? At some point, natural limits will catch up to capitalism–if it doesn’t destroy itself first.
Here’s the sparknotes version for those of you who don’t want to read the whole thing:
The productivity gains the author believes will drive capitalism forward (if correctly distributed) will be more than outweighed by the labor shed in the process.
Since the 1970’s, the global economy has suffered from a crisis of overproduction/under-utilization of capacity in manufacturing. Without robust growth from the agricultural and industrial sectors, the only growth since then has come from bubbles (eg Japanese real estate in the 80’s, US stock market in the 90’s, US real estate in the 00’s) or external demand.
Many of the most important technological innovations that spurred booms in the past can only happen once, and the growth from these advancements is becoming less and less significant. We may not have a tech boom like the 90’s for a long time but it was very short-lived and wasn’t great for job creation.
The rate of profit has a tendency to fall, and has been since the second half of the Bretton Woods era. Rising organic composition of capital means fewer profits, and the profit rate eventually gets to zero. That will be bad.
Capitalism needs 3% growth for normality. At 3% growth the global economy will double by 2060, and then double again a few decades later. That’s just not going to happen, meaning we’re going to get very low growth rates. It will be interesting to see how long the masses put up with that.
Thus the need for another planet to duplicate our ‘success’ here.
The best and the brightest are all working on that.
“But that does not mean that we should be in despair simply because it would displace a lot of human work – in fact, where it replaces arduous work full of drudgery, or makes doing things more easily, we should celebrate it. However, this means that the greater surpluses generated in these more productive activities should be transferred to demand for more employment-intensive activities that enhance the quality of life in society.”
You correctly identified the faulty assumption upon which the article is based. Clearly, this “great surplus” is not translating into employment-intensive activities. Look at Europe, for example.
Professor Ghosh neglects to point out that all of our wonderful, labor saving, job destroying technology is ultimately dependent on abundant, cheap energy. Despite the current (misleading) appearance of abundant, cheap energy, it is gone for good. Pick a price, you can either destroy economies or oil producers, or both. There is no longer a sweet spot where everyone is happy. So this job threat is a “problem” which fixes itself. With scarce, expensive energy, we are going to need a lot more people hoeing potatoes, shelling beans, threshing grain, knitting socks, transporting to market, etc. There is going to be no shortage of things to do. Let’s agree to only fret about things which have some finite chance of happening.
A robot uses less energy than a human.
A robot doesn’t need a house.
A typical human energy need per day:
2,500 calories (directly energy consumption, excluding food production energy cost) = 10,000 jouels
And his house uses, say, 20 KWh or 20,000 watt hours.
1 watt hour = 3600 joules.
20,000 watt hours = 72,000,000 joules, because a robot doesn’t need a house.
For the overlords, robots mean less dependence on cheap energy. :(
I don’t think a robot consumes that much.
It’s not just the operational costs. There are large quantities of (hidden) embedded energy in the steel, aluminum, mining, sensors, electronics, batteries, supply chains, and in the lifestyle maintenance of the developers, manufacturers, distributors and vendors. We are moving toward a great simplification, and things which are only affordable by the elites, will lack a critical mass to keep the whole enterprise running. Many components of today’s technology require the existence of all of the other components. The network enables its elements. When the network begins to falter and show vulnerabilities, our magnificent growth machine can operate in reverse.
I don’t think a robot consumes that much.
And it spends nothing.
I always find it amusing when people rail against technology via technology.
In all seriousness, I would suggest that you are radically undervaluing the power of the computing revolution. The reason that power hasn’t fully materialized in the average person’s life is that public policy has directed most of the gain to connected insiders.
But even then, despite the enormous amount of fraud and theft in our system, the computing revolution has still dramatically increased the quality of life for millions of people.
at the expense of millions of people as well
How?
Use technology to rant against technology.
It’s like giving them a taste of their own medicine.
and don’t write off the vast amount of energy currently being used to run our global internet infrastructure. If and when society runs up against energy shortages, then all things computer grind to a halt, as with many other parts of our modern technology.
This all reminds me of an English Nursery Rhyme:
Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.
Funnily enough the last verse could also refer to the stock market!
I’m glad that this is starting to make the news. Here’s a 2013 report from Oxford that I have been spreading far and wide.
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
Worker displacement via technology is possibly the largest potential disenfranchisement of human beings, ever. Resulting social problems could dwarf what we think of as “social problems” today.
For instance, current global population stands at roughly 7.3 billion, projected to roughly 11 billion in 2050 (just 35 years from now!) The Oxford study projects 45%of all work will be automated. Plotting population growth and worker displacement on a graph shows a steadily widening gap between population growth and available work (meaning, massive worker displacement). It’s frightening.
I think the Swiss have the right idea, with a national guaranteed income. I heard the Finns are considering the same thing.