Really great post by Jamais Caisco on FastCompany blog.

Very much in line with my last posts on massive manias, booms and busts. I have not added much here: just mixing some different sources. But some folks told me i am not that bad in mashing-up stuff 😉

Think you can’t be replaced by a machine? Think again.

Definitely read this article in more depth. Key passage in ‘Think Again”:

Structural Shifts

The issue of a future in which there are large parts of the economy that are underemployed, unemployed, or unemployable is a serious issue. And the data already suggests this:

(source) Notice how after the last recession in 2001 the number shifted upwards. The boom year of 2006 have an additional 5% long-term unemployed than the boom years of 1998. If you go back even further in that graph, to the 1960s, you see an even larger structural shifts upwards. Here’s University of Chicago Economist Kevin Murphy thinking through this issue.

Robots are becoming more dextrous, able to do a growing number of tasks requiring precision and strength, and computer systems are becoming smarter, able to tackle jobs needing pattern-matching and creative skills.

Humans are still cheaper, for now, but this puts downward pressure on wages–and the old rule that new technology opens up entirely new fields of human labor won’t hold true forever. Smarter, more capable machines will snap up those jobs, too.

Robonomics: If robots and digital systems can do everything, let them–but let human society skim value from the result. This becomes a technologically-driven version of the Basic Income Guarantee model, where citizens are given a basic above-poverty income guarantee and are free to explore education, entrepreneurship, or even a life of indolence. Or they can get one of the remaining human jobs, jobs that may pay much more than they do now in order to attract people who otherwise wouldn’t want the work.

Picture Credits:
Money, courtesy Jamais Cascio, Creative-Commons Licensed