The Future of Work

The ever-widening income gap, the loss of middle class jobs, the increasing automation of factories, services and agriculture all conspire to paint a fairly bleak picture of the future of work.  On the one hand, automation has long been anticipated as a solution to the de-humanizing aspects of industrialized work – the tedious assembly line job, the numbing repetitive work that so many laborers perform.  However, the prospect of no work at all for significant groups in society makes one rather nostalgic for the good old days of relatively low-tech factories, banks with human tellers, and other real people jobs.

Automation was supposed to free mankind from the drudgery of certain types of work and allow us to direct our energies toward more productive, creative and self-fulfilling endeavors.  But if that was the dream, the reality is rather disappointing, at least at this stage in the process.  Of course, the U.S. accelerated the transition by moving many of its middle class, industrial jobs to lower wage economies in a spasm of off-shoring and outsourcing that had nothing to do with automation.  This tsunami of job losses was probably much faster and more disruptive than a steady evolution of automation would have been.  But now, even with significant increases in manufacturing output in recent years, the number of manufacturing jobs is still a shadow of its former self, due in great part to gains in productivity and automation.  Factories that once hosted thousands of workers are now typically running with hundreds, and even the hundreds may soon be unnecessary.  The genie is out of the bottle.

The effect of automation is not limited to the manufacturing sector.  Many types of service jobs are also on the chopping block and easily replaced by robots and other high tech gadgetry.  Once the self-driving and navigating vehicle and associated robot are available (and that day is not far off), then many of the remaining service sector jobs will be readily accomplished by inexpensive, reliable and low maintenance (compared to messy human beings!) automatons.  We have already experienced a similar transition in the incredibly frustrating world of automated telephone support systems that take us on a Kafkaesque journey in every attempt to interact with a company or medical provider.

Were it not for protectionist efforts in many countries, farming would already be automated and collectivized to a very high degree.  Autonomous tractors, combine, spreaders and sprayers are already roaming across fields like some sort of dystopian nightmare, and agribusiness long ago accomplished the almost complete extinction of the family farmer in the U.S.

Automation in healthcare, legal work, accounting, construction and a host of other industries is certain to come before too long.

In theory, automation should ultimately reduce the number of hours of work that are required of every human being - a supposed blessing and desirable outcome!  But of course that is not how it is playing out.  Work is not reduced but rather jobs are eliminated.  The lucky, skilled and connected maintain their jobs and increase their income, and the unfortunate and unskilled find themselves in unemployment lines and rallies for Donald Trump.

It seems clear that some serious analysis and planning is needed to avoid a cataclysmic breakdown of our economic and social systems.  It is highly doubtful that the free market will resolve this fast-moving rupture in our economic fabric before major social unrest occurs.  A Darwinian approach is unlikely to produce a very satisfactory outcome.  

The last major technology shift, the industrial revolution, brought us perilously close to a world revolution.  The millions of lives lost in the Soviet Union, communist China and a host of other revolutionary attempts to counter the calloused indifference of free-market capitalists should serve as a warning.  If we do not act to make this next transition less traumatic then there will surely be hell to pay.

The dream of a less tedious work-life through automation is fast transforming into a nightmare of inequality and disorientation.  In the end, neither border walls nor artful trade negotiations and tariffs will do anything but provide short-lived band-aids for this societal hemorrhage.  The world is changing rapidly and our ability to adapt is dependent on bold new ideas for sharing work and creating new types of enterprise.

Of course if automation only serves to free us up for longer spells of watching TV and engaging in various forms of mind-numbing social media and virtual reality, then perhaps the real solution would be to fully embrace neo-ludditism and take hammer and chisel to the devices that have insidiously transformed us from master to slave.  Humans of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your cyber chains!