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Not long ago, schoolchildren chose what they wanted to be when they grew up, and later selected the best college they could gain admission to, spent years gaining proficiency in their fields, and joined a company that had a need for their skills. Careers lasted lifetimes.
Now, by my estimates, the half-life of a career is about 10 years. I [Vivek Wadhwa] expect that it will decrease, within a decade, to five years. Advancing technologies will cause so much disruption to almost every industry that entire professions will disappear. And then, in about 15–20 years from now, we will be facing a jobless future, in which most jobs are done by machines and the cost of basic necessities such as food, energy and health care is negligible — just as the costs of cellphone communications and information are today. We will be entering an era of abundance in which we no longer have to work to have our basic needs met. And we will gain the freedom to pursue creative endeavors and do the things that we really like.
I am not kidding. Change is happening so fast that our children may not even need to learn how to drive. By the late 2020s, self-driving cars will have proven to be so much safer than human-driven ones that we will be debating whether humans should be banned from public roads; and clean energies such as solar and wind will be able to provide for 100 percent of the planet's energy needs and cost a fraction of what fossil fuel– and nuclear-based generation does today.
In other words, every industry is disruptible by technology. Presumably, banking and punditry are forever?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:28PM
This is completely sci-fi. The part about automation rendering jobs obsolete is true, the part about basic necessities having negligible cost is fantasy. Energy isn't cheap, and it's getting more expensive. Gasoline is only going to get more expensive, and even if we manage to convert to cheap renewables in time, housing isn't getting any cheaper either. These days, housing is turning out to be the lion's share of people's living expenses. And of course, healthcare isn't getting cheaper either. We've managed to spread out the costs more with ObamaCare, but that isn't making the actual cost of care cheaper.
How are people going to afford to pay these expenses without gainful employment?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:54PM
The "inputs" (energy, raw material, and in some sense land) aren't really an issue. Land is the only one that really is intractable until Standard Western Culture kicks in everywhere and women start having babies at below replacement rates. Once populations stabilize and then start to decline, as they inevitably do, the intrinsic aspects of the land shortage problems start going away. What we are left with are problems directly related to how our society has chosen to allow purchasing power (money) be distributed. Since those are choices we make, we can simply choose to make different choices--if we find the will. People really have no idea just how bad things have gotten in the last 60 years. It's something you have to visualize because most humans can't intuitively grasp raw numbers at that scale. Thankfully there's an excellent visualization on Youtube. [youtube.com]
When I say "how we have chosen" to allocate purchasing power, I mean exactly that. We've decided through complacency, willful ignorance, and credulity, that hoarding wealth is permissible in our society. This isn't just carrying a decent bank balance or having a nest egg for retirement; it's truly staggering, obscene, pointless, harmful, levels of wealth aggregation.
There's good news and bad news. The good news is that this won't go on forever, it can't because once someone has nothing you can't take anything away from them anymore. You can drive them into debt but that's only useful as a tool to keep taking from them what little they have left. Once they're in debt, can't pay, have nothing else to take, and no income, the game is over. Once you do that to enough people, they come and kill you. We either find a way to slow down this train peacefully, or stomp the accelerator until we run out of track.
That's the bad news: the latter looks more likely.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:20AM
Do you really believe that people who literally have nothing will be able to lead your revolution for you? Because that's what you're talking about here, wishful thinker. You want a revolution, but you want to sit on your stupid lazy ass while someone else starts it for you. You really, really need to read about the history of revolutions and learn to understand that every successful revolution has been funded by very rich people.
Go die in a fucking hole, you armchair revolutionary moron.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:52AM
There was one guy, his name is practically synonymous with violent revolution that ended up spurring several rounds of just what you say never happened. His name: Karl Marx.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:14PM
While I understand what your going for, just wanted to point out that Karl Marx was actually quite rich. Not top 1% rich or super wealthy like the GP; but rich none the less. That doesn't invalidate your point about the revolutions his mindwork started as he was long dead before those happened :).
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:55AM
I think you completely mis-parsed that sentence, friend. I'm at least going to charitably interpret your rage as thus misplaced and try to make my point more clearly.
When millions of people become impoverished and begin to starve, they will riot and break things. Some of that violence will be directed at rich people. If I'm part of that unlucky class known as the "not rich" I'll be out in the streets throwing bottles of gasoline at banks with everyone else. It's my hope that things don't have to come to that. I don't want a violent revolution because everyone loses. Just having a great big potlatch might reset the board but it leaves everyone worse off.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:44PM
Congratulations, you just put yourself on The List which will - ironically - prevent you from doing what you would be attempting to do.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:47AM
People really have no idea just how bad things have gotten in the last 60 years. It's something you have to visualize because most humans can't intuitively grasp raw numbers at that scale.
Let us keep in mind that 95% of the world's population doesn't live in the US and two thirds of the world's population has seen a considerable increase [voxeu.org] in their wealth (with a decline in global wealth inequality as a direct result). We should be asking why the US isn't fully sharing in this boon rather than hand-wringing over a modest stagnation that didn't happen outside of the US and a few other developed world countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:51PM
You mean to say there are things outside of the US? I was told there were dragons there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:02PM
Please provide citations not backed by a think tank.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 30 2015, @10:40PM
Please provide citations not backed by a think tank.
I don't feel like it. The flimsy basis of your rejection doesn't indicate to me that there's much to be gained from searching for more evidence.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:54PM
How are people going to afford to pay these expenses without gainful employment?
Are they supposed to? Does anyone wonder today how the inhabitants of Brazilian favelas manage to pay for top notch medical services, best organic food and healthy living?
I fully agree that there will never be a society where anything material is free. Imagine such a society, and I immediately request to build me a planet-wide palace a mile wide. Even leaving alone the issue of materials, this palace is bound to intrude on other humans - what to do then? It appears that though materials and energy might be cheap enough, there are many resources that will remain rationed - and you will have to buy them. We have already seen such a transition when certain resources got too cheap to meter - like computing resources. The resource named "CPU time" is no longer rationed (unless you need a supercomputer,) but plenty more remain. Generally, anything that requires human labor will be rationed. Hell, the world government wants me to pay for the carbon dioxide exhaust of the power plant that powers my computer. That's an example of something that was free before, but artful scammers managed to make it into a product and force everyone to buy it!
Similarly, the author writes "the cost of basic necessities such as food, energy and health care is negligible — just as the costs of cellphone communications and information are today." Obviously the author didn't buy his own cell phone plan, as they can cost you a pretty penny. But besides, the cost of anything is not defined by the cost of production - it is defined by what the market will bear. As production of food and energy is necessarily monopolized by those "guilds," they can just dictate their prices. What will a city slicker do in protest - stop eating? Will he be planting his own potatoes in a flower pot? If a doctor's office is taxed through the gills, the doctor will charge $300 for a visit - and what will you then do if you need a prescription?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:07AM
No, we haven't, that's not possible. If CPU time were free, then Bitcoin would have no value. Bitcoin is the future, man, the future.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:06AM
There's two things which are not free and are not likely to ever be free: real estate and energy. We're certainly getting to the point where a lot of manufactured goods are extremely cheap because of efficiency and automation, but cheap is still not free, and making and transporting things requires energy. Even if we had free energy somehow (not likely), real estate is not free. Personally, I want a house in Hawaii near the beach and surrounded by jungle with no neighbors for miles around. I'm sure I'm not the only person who would like a place like that, but obviously there's only so much land available which meets those requirements, certainly not remotely enough for all the people who want it. With the human population continuing to grow, and the planet staying the same size, this situation isn't going to get much better; bigger/taller buildings help, but only so much. Most people don't want to live like sardines.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:52AM
Healthcare can get cheaper, if it's based on generic nanobots repairing damage and fighting disease in the body continuously. The intermediate personalized health care based on genomic medicine will be somewhat effective, especially for certain disorders, but prohibitively expensive for most.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:46PM
But there's no money in that... who would develop such a thing?
Hey everybody, look at this pulsating artery in my neck here... watch me stab it!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:24PM
the part about basic necessities having negligible cost is fantasy
Binary thinking malfunction. It doesn't have to be zero or full cost. It can be so dang cheap its not worth charging.
My bachelor pad had "free" water, "free" heating... rolled into the rent because its too expensive to charge individually. Not freezing to death in winter and not dehydrating are rather basic needs. It turns out the insane cost of installing 28 separate meters and 28 separate monthly account billings just isn't worth in when the std deviation between us renters was incredibly low (Yes if you live in SFO there's a huge difference in heating an uninsulated apartment from 60 degrees to 65 or 75 degrees, but in the frozen north the relative difference between heating from -20 to 68 or -20 to 72 is a rounding error).
Now that I think back, ye olde student dorms had "everything" free but food! All the water you can drink, all the heat you want, infinite free electricity (well, technically we had 2 fifteen amp circuits)... This is pretty much the future. There were private dorms for the rich kids with "free" all you can eat food, which I never participated in, although I had a girlfriend living in an apartment dorm like that for a little while.
My point is at some point you round the cost down to nothing and file it under some other expense. Probably rent.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:55AM
The part that you're missing is that your bachelor pad wasn't free at all: you still had to pay rent. They just rolled everything into it because it's a better value that way, plus they probably use that as a selling point when competing against similar places; who wants to deal with paying a bunch of separate utility bills when you could just have one bill for the month?
Same thing goes for dorms. They aren't that cheap to live in these days. They just roll everything into one bill.
What you're talking about before is people living for free. There's no way to do that. Not without having some kind of welfare system, basic income, or similar. Real estate is a limited resource, as is energy. No one's going to give them away for free.