I’m a huge fan of capitalism. But I can’t shake the thought that in a decade or two we may need to move to what I call post-capitalism. Whether that means a basic income (endorsed by Milton Friedman!) or something else — and whether it has to happen the hard way, via some kind of social uprising by the have-nots — I don’t know. But I fear that if our basic economic foundation doesn’t evolve, then we’ll squander most of the enormous cornucopia of benefits that new technologies offer us. That’s not (yet) inevitable; but right now, alas, it seems to me all too likely.

Excerpted from Jon Evans, in TechCrunch.

This comes from an article discussing the effect of automation in reducig the quality and quantity of jobs that are available, and the resulting decline in the incomes of the U.S. middle class.

“As Winship puts it:

If technology reduces demand for labor by a quarter, that might translate into everyone working 25 percent less rather than unemployment rising by one-fourth.

I fully agree. Indeed, in my view, the ultimate purpose of technology is to destroy all jobs and bring on a post-scarcity economy. Let’s face it, a whole lot of today’s jobs are already total bullshit; but they persist because we live within an economic system built by, for, and around people with full-time jobs.

The trouble is, we can’t get there from here, not without wholesale changes. Machines will reduce labor, yes, great: but equally, across all of society? You must be joking. If technology cuts the demand for labor by 25%, then laborers will earn 25% less, or 25% of them will become unemployed, while all the benefits go to those who own and/or built/wrote that technology. That’s capitalism.

“Just turn the newly unemployed into entrepeneurs!” the cargo-cult believers chant. Yeah, right. Let me quote The Economist again: “The self-employed work longer, but their median hourly earnings are less than half those of employees.” Entrepeneurialism is not magic pixie dust. Most entrepeneurs fail.

Everyone I know was (rightly) contemptuous of, and disgusted by, the idea that the homeless can be raised out of poverty with a few JavaScript textbooks. But the notion that America’s six million licensed truck and taxi drivers will all find new-new-economy jobs once self-driving vehicles start putting them out of business? I fail to see how that’s much different.

And again, it’s not just truckers; almost every job, probably including yours, runs the risk of being obsoleted when software eats the world…or when the next version eats it again, even faster. Meanwhile, retraining is slow, 50% of the population is below average, and even if technology does eventually create as many jobs as it destroys, there’s no guarantee that those jobs will be available to the entire population, or appear in a timely manner. The result, in a world built around the precepts that most people must have jobs and unemployment is a disaster: economic devastation for those affected.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe everything will be fine and the next generation will quickly find themselves overwhelmed with offers for jobs that don’t exist today. But there’s no conclusive evidence either way, and by the time there is, it’ll probably be too late to make meaningful changes. So we need to at least seriously consider the possibility that our current economic system is fundamentally incapable of dealing with this rising technological whirlwind, and that most people live in houses with much thinner walls than they want to believe.

If I’m right, then the under- and unemployed masses will grow ever more frustrated, angry, and resentful of the distant and decadent elite who reap all the wealth and benefits of this Great Devouring. (I think we can all agree that San Francisco’s already getting pretty decadent.) The rich will in turn will presumably accuse the masses of trying to freeload on the immense wealth generated by their disruptive innovations. And instead of taking the first few faltering steps towards a post-scarcity society, i.e. a better world with fewer jobs, we’ll charge headlong into class warfare.

I’m a huge fan of capitalism. But I can’t shake the thought that in a decade or two we may need to move to what I call post-capitalism. Whether that means a basic income (endorsed by Milton Friedman!) or something else — and whether it has to happen the hard way, via some kind of social uprising by the have-nots — I don’t know. But I fear that if our basic economic foundation doesn’t evolve, then we’ll squander most of the enormous cornucopia of benefits that new technologies offer us. That’s not (yet) inevitable; but right now, alas, it seems to me all too likely.”