I can't help but think that a future such as this would provide us with more jobless citizens.A few weeks ago, I had a fascinating conversation with a college professor. His specialty is social media such as Facebook and Twitter. One would think that being a tenured professor is as close to full-proof job security as it gets. Yet, he was terrified of losing his job. As someone in the field he is fully aware of the potential of technological progress. He related to me that there already exists technology that would allow a few charismatic professors to spread their knowledge to the masses over the Internet, thereby eliminating the need for all the others. Case in point is Udacity which offers many classes for free. It's only a matter of time before institutions such as Udacity receive accreditation thereby making quality education much more accessible and affordable.
Yes,
people in diverse fields such as college professors, waiters,
pharmacists, taxi drivers and even DJs are in danger of getting the pink slip
from their employers. Some fields will become much more competitive
for humans, while others will be completely dominated by machines.
In fact, it is quite possible that most of us, or even all of us
would end up losing their jobs thanks to the coming changes. The
question then becomes, what would a jobless society look like?
Before
I attempt to answer this question, I would like to state that this
blog is not intended for a political discussion. I will only
attempt to explain things the way I see them and you are free to agree
or disagree with me.
As
my personal friends know, I am a strong supporter of free market
capitalism. Free market capitalism has created an unprecedented
level of prosperity in societies that successfully adopted it. In
fact, it is the driving force behind technological progress. The
reason capitalism works is because it gives a strong incentive to
work and contribute to society by utilizing a basic human instinct:
greed. Socialist societies, on the other hand, never took greed into
account and therefore have consistently failed. This has been the
situation up until now. Up until now and for a long time to come
human labor has been and will be valuable.
However, as technology progresses human labor will gradually lose its value. There will be fewer opportunities for many skilled
workers, and ever fewer for unskilled ones. The resulting
unemployment may lead to social unrest, unless governments implement
social programs to help the unemployed, which would certainly be a
step toward socialism.
One
of the goals of socialism is equality, whereas capitalism creates and
thrives on inequality. It is both greed and inequality that serve as
an incentive for workers to try to succeed and move up the social
ladder. But what happens when human labor is partially or completely
replaced by machines? What is the point of allocating resources
unequally in a such a society? Greed and inequality can no
longer serve as incentives to contribute to society simply because
there is no way to compete with the machines. And distributing resources equally is synonymous with socialism. Will socialism be the
product of capitalism-driven technological progress? Oh the irony.
