Comment by davidvaughan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidvaughan | Hacker News Reader

The figure of two billion could be an exaggeration, but it may also be true that a big chunk of the employment pie is currently disappearing.

If you're a poorly educated westerner, there isn't much for you to do even now. OECD countries all complain about households in which nobody has ever worked. Given the falling relative and absolute standards of education, it's hard to see opportunities for them.

To my mind, automation and low wages elsewhere in the world have had a big impact on the labour pool. This may be difficult for highly employable folk reading this board to grasp, but consider what folk are doing as they leave college. Sure, lots of them are getting well-paid jobs, but a heck of a lot are interning and struggling along with 10-dollar jobs on the freelance auction sites.

But why is there a general panic when the possibility of the end of work arises? For billions of people it would mean freedom from drudgery and the prospect of doing more fulfilling things instead - looking after families, creating things, learning new stuff and so on.

Freedom from drudgery sounds great, but who will pay for those people to eat and do more fulfilling things?

they themselves will have to produce value - they will just be producing those value not as part of employment, but for themselves (e.g., subsistance living? cottage industry?).

The only way I can think of to pay for this, is for the more productive people to pay, in the form of a citizen's wage. We have the first inkling of this in Britain, in the form of the proposed universal credit.

But it should be borne in mind that stuff is getting cheaper, thanks to automation. The proportion of income spent on food has fallen from 33% to 15% in fifty years.

In any case, I think we have little option. It's possible that current employment problems are a blip, but annual hours worked per person have fallen by around 25% since 1950. And halved since the 19th century. It looks like a trend to me.

People panic because a society where the majority cannot do worthwhile work cannot continue to function as it currently does. Change will necessarily come about through cooperation or force because people's lives will literally depend upon it. Change is scary, nevermind one that large.

"But why is there a general panic when the possibility of the end of work arises?"

At least partly because here in the USA (YMMV in other countries) we've spent much of the last century vilifying the idea of socialism.

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