I’d be interested in seeing some intelligent discussion of what the man actually said.
Look it is intensely obvious that productivity is increasing. Productivity can be defined as the amount of human effort needed to produce goods and services, also known as stuff. As productivity increases, there is more stuff per person. Wealth of the society and of most though not always all individuals goes up.
But continue that curve. By definition, at some point infinite stuff will be produced with zero human input. Or, if that’s taking the curve too far, at some point a great deal of stuff will be produced with very little human input. IOW, there will be little economic demand for whatever input most people are capable of providing.
300 years ago most human input to the economy was via their muscles. Even ships often moved by muscle power. People of low intelligence were just as much in demand for such jobs as the world’s greatest genius. The Industrial Revolution came along and human muscle power became increasingly irrelevant. Productivity and wealth soared, after thousands of years of stagnation.
Today most people work at desks, with their minds. The problem is that those jobs are increasingly being done by computers and robots. This process of course still creates new jobs, but with very few exceptions the new jobs require intelligence quite a ways over on the right side of the Bell Curve. No Lefties Need Apply. This is not an issue of education or training. The taxi-driver laid off because the new taxi is driven by a computer will simply not build a new career writing apps for Android.
The process for a couple hundred years now is that new and better types of jobs are created faster than the old ones are destroyed. Net, net society comes out ahead.
But that’s a historical pattern, not a law of nature.
I’d like to discuss options for handling things if Reich is right, in his prediction if not his prescription.
Is there any way to run a world in which there is very little economic demand for services most people are capable of providing other than redistribution by the government?
Instead of ranting about the iniquities of redistritubion, with which I agree, BTW, what are the alternatives?
My nephew is a robotics engineer. He was visiting a few months back. He works remotely, usually, and was working from my house. He's an intense guy and was working 12-14 hour days in this zone of complete, intense concentration.
It made me think that we ARE reaching a time when there will not be enough "work" for everyone. But, guys like my nephew will still be needed.
We are seeing the creation of a large entitlement class already. People who will and have never really worked. People who have left the workforce who will never return. We are seeing the beginnings of those people being sustained by a guaranteed income by the "state" or the ever smaller group of taxpayers.
How's that work? How and why do guys like my nephew continue to do what they do?
The life of a hunter gatherer or a subsistence farmer is not very appealing. Technology definitely has its drawbacks but no one wants to go back to the past.
Create value through artisan craft. Cottage industries, hand-made one-of-a-kind products. When the Star Trek replicator will be able create any product from a pre-defined library of patterns and templates, the new status symbol will be a hand-distilled liquor in a hand-blown glass, neither of which you can own unless you meet their makers in person.
The situation does pose a dilemma. What happens when most jobs have been automated away?
I wouldn’t be surprised if one possibility — as an option for those who are so inclined — is a resurgence of utopian communities. Like the (real) Amish. Go be a pioneer. Be a farmer. Work hard, be self-suffient, use less technology, but not no technology.
Some folks would find it appealing. The alternative may be to live in a big city high-rise and surg facebook all day long.
Having sexes with beautiful womenz.
Redistribution by the government is just a forced taking. It is using MIGHT to make a right. I am totally against such manifestations of raw power, because governments are made up of people who very often—if not usually—have a lust power and fortune hiding behind the desire to do good. So I would suspect that it is power over me and lust for my fortune they are after—not a real desire to help the less fortunate. And frankly, where ever redistribution by the government is tried, the less fortunate are not helped. It is the “helpers” who benefit, not the poor.
Now in a world where things can be had for practically no effort, then those less fortunate get their share of these things too. It is often pointed out that our American poor have things a king of centuries ago would have paid a hefty ransom for. Flat screen TVs, cell phones, computers, free food, housing assistance, etc. Right now getting those things to the poor involves taking them from others...
But, what if they can be produced for nothing by machines? Food synthesized from garbage, for example. Homes printed by 3D printers. Electricity provided by fusion. Why would someone need to work a JOB? Why not, and even stupid people, become like the Eloi of H. G. Wells The Time Machine?
Human rights as defined in the Declaration of Independence set three things: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Really, that’s all a government should ensure.
This concept was visited to a certain extent in the 1950s Sci-Fi movie Forbidden Planet. Where society had finally created a machine that could produce anything in any quantity that was controlled by each beings brain. “Creation by mere thought”. In the story however all beings from this planet were super intelligent. There is no mention of lesser intellect. Check it out if you have never seen the movie. It does drive home the point that in reality nothing in our universe is scarce.