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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: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:01PM
Empirically, "fabulous prosperity" has pretty much worked out for at least the last 200 years. It's only the last 20 years or so where things have turned around a bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:17PM
Has no one ever learned ANY History?
The Panic of 1837
The Long Depression that started in 1873 and lasted 2 decades
The Great Depression
The Bush-Obama Depression with 23 percent unemployment (and still rising)
Capitalism fails again and again and again.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 31 2015, @04:36PM
Has no one ever learned ANY History?
I see that you describe almost 180 years of history. So what system can fail again and again and again for that long and still be going strong?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @01:58AM
The Shakers had a system of communal living and a common ownership of the means of production aka Socialism before Marx invented the term and long before there was a USA.
There are Shakers to this day and Shaker-made goods are still prized.
(If it wasn't for the religious thing--no sex ever--the Shakers would likely be big today.)
Old enough for you?
One wonders what would have become of the Paris Commune of 1871 if the Capitalists' hired thugs hadn't come in after 78 days and murdered the Communards by the tens of thousands.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 02 2015, @04:52AM
The Shakers had a system of communal living and a common ownership of the means of production aka Socialism before Marx invented the term and long before there was a USA. There are Shakers to this day and Shaker-made goods are still prized.
The Shaker movement never had more than a few thousand people. Currently, there are something like four members according to Wikipedia. At least your Mondragon example is large enough that it could be scale to humanity.
One wonders what would have become of the Paris Commune of 1871 if the Capitalists' hired thugs hadn't come in after 78 days and murdered the Communards by the tens of thousands.
I think you just described the end state, whether they lasted three weeks or three years. The Paris Commune was never going to be a long lasting phenomena.