Its hard not to think about what the future holds for us. In the last fifty years we have seen nearly every sector disrupted because of technology, and it doesnt look like that process is going to stop anytime soon.
One of the things I think about are people who make a living driving. We use Uber pretty often, and I sometimes talk to the drivers to see how and when they started out as Uber drivers. There are some folks who say they gave up their day jobs because this was paying more. One that I was talking to just a few days ago said she had not had any other job for more than one and a half years. And she has a Masters degree from NYU! She talked about how difficult it was to find a decently paying job, and that no one cares about her degree. It was sad to listen to her because I know that sooner or later she will find herself out of this job as well - my guess is that in five to ten years, unless this country puts regulations in place, we will have a self driving car service that will be way cheaper. And these guys will unfortunately not be able to compete against those, and will soon have to find something else to do. Its the same with truck and bus drivers.
Another area where disruption is going to happen is delivery services. All those delivery service folks who are raking in money now because of the popularity of the rise in demand for delivery will sooner or later find themselves out of a job - when the drones figure out how to do it faster and cheaper.
There are so many areas like these where change is happening. Folks who make this kind of progress happen think they are doing everyone a service - it takes away the need to have people engaged in work that can easily be automated, freeing people to engage in more creative pursuits. Their reasoning is : no one should have to sit behind the wheel of a truck for hours at a time to earn a living. Instead, we should have folks who create software that can drive cars around automatically.
Unfortunately, the question arises: what can these folks do instead that will not require specialized skills? The trouble with all the progress we are making is that it removes large numbers of jobs that dont need a lot of skill and adds a few jobs that are extremely specialized and skill based. The folks whose jobs got taken away will never be able to hold the jobs that got created by this type of disruption. We will eventually eliminate the need for unskilled / low skilled labor and only have a market open for smart, creative, skilled and extremely competitive folks who are willing to work round the clock to keep their jobs. And because these jobs are going to be few in number, they will have to work harder and harder to make sure they are not taken away by someone else. And obviously, their work is going to make more and more jobs irrelevant as time passes by. Essentially, we are progressing in a direction where we will eventually put most folks out of a means of livelihood, and the gap between the rich and poor will increase further. The only difference will be that the everyone will have the opportunity to try to get one of those few jobs; the ones who dont will only be able to blame their genes and upbringing.
So what am I proposing? That we call the world to a halt and stop all progress? Grind growth and subsequently the economy to a halt? Where would that leave us?
For a long time I had this post written up until here and I felt I couldnt post it because I had no answers. I thought the answers will come to me in time, but it hasnt. So I am going to post this, hoping the answer will arrive afterwards and it can be added in as an update later.
Update as of Aug 2017: There is a company called Humu that is attempting to solve this problem. There is also some research into Basic Income that Ycombinator is doing, that seems like it is attempting to solve the same issues. Happy to realize that I am not the only one thinking this way and that we are hopefully going to make some progress on this problem.
One of the things I think about are people who make a living driving. We use Uber pretty often, and I sometimes talk to the drivers to see how and when they started out as Uber drivers. There are some folks who say they gave up their day jobs because this was paying more. One that I was talking to just a few days ago said she had not had any other job for more than one and a half years. And she has a Masters degree from NYU! She talked about how difficult it was to find a decently paying job, and that no one cares about her degree. It was sad to listen to her because I know that sooner or later she will find herself out of this job as well - my guess is that in five to ten years, unless this country puts regulations in place, we will have a self driving car service that will be way cheaper. And these guys will unfortunately not be able to compete against those, and will soon have to find something else to do. Its the same with truck and bus drivers.
Another area where disruption is going to happen is delivery services. All those delivery service folks who are raking in money now because of the popularity of the rise in demand for delivery will sooner or later find themselves out of a job - when the drones figure out how to do it faster and cheaper.
There are so many areas like these where change is happening. Folks who make this kind of progress happen think they are doing everyone a service - it takes away the need to have people engaged in work that can easily be automated, freeing people to engage in more creative pursuits. Their reasoning is : no one should have to sit behind the wheel of a truck for hours at a time to earn a living. Instead, we should have folks who create software that can drive cars around automatically.
Unfortunately, the question arises: what can these folks do instead that will not require specialized skills? The trouble with all the progress we are making is that it removes large numbers of jobs that dont need a lot of skill and adds a few jobs that are extremely specialized and skill based. The folks whose jobs got taken away will never be able to hold the jobs that got created by this type of disruption. We will eventually eliminate the need for unskilled / low skilled labor and only have a market open for smart, creative, skilled and extremely competitive folks who are willing to work round the clock to keep their jobs. And because these jobs are going to be few in number, they will have to work harder and harder to make sure they are not taken away by someone else. And obviously, their work is going to make more and more jobs irrelevant as time passes by. Essentially, we are progressing in a direction where we will eventually put most folks out of a means of livelihood, and the gap between the rich and poor will increase further. The only difference will be that the everyone will have the opportunity to try to get one of those few jobs; the ones who dont will only be able to blame their genes and upbringing.
So what am I proposing? That we call the world to a halt and stop all progress? Grind growth and subsequently the economy to a halt? Where would that leave us?
For a long time I had this post written up until here and I felt I couldnt post it because I had no answers. I thought the answers will come to me in time, but it hasnt. So I am going to post this, hoping the answer will arrive afterwards and it can be added in as an update later.
Update as of Aug 2017: There is a company called Humu that is attempting to solve this problem. There is also some research into Basic Income that Ycombinator is doing, that seems like it is attempting to solve the same issues. Happy to realize that I am not the only one thinking this way and that we are hopefully going to make some progress on this problem.
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