There is regular talk of automation putting people out of jobs, which is nothing new. People have been bemoaning the march of machinery and automation since long before the famous Luddites gave their name to the term. But recently, there is a trend in American unemployment that seems from my cursory glance, to support some of these concerns.
Unemployment has objectively risen and largely recovered over the last 5 years to the point that we now boast a mid-single digit percentage. People intuitively view this with suspicion though, because the economy feels hollow still, the recovery shallow. Part of this is from people paid minimum wage which has not kept pace with inflation, well ever. Part is from the underemployed, those who have a job but not enough of a job to make ends meet. The part I'm interested in today, is the part of the labor force that has dropped out entirely, that no longer gets counted in the statistics. They are the people no longer looking for work because, often times, they can't find any. As such, they are left to rely on family, friends, or the state. They pull in some way on the resources of the economy, and help contribute to the hollow feeling to the recovery. Things don't feel recovered to them, or to the people supporting them.
Some of my instinct on this phenomenon says that this section of people is inflating because of automation taking the place of many jobs throughout the economy. From automatic article writers to factory robots, automation has the capacity to displace people at nearly every end of the income spectrum. It doesn't do it all at once, and the changeover is costly both economically and logistically. But this perhaps makes it more insidious. Certain sector technology grows to the point where it can replace many people's jobs and then maybe a trickle of change starts seeping in. But if a recession hits, or some hot new "disruptive" startup lowers the cost of changeover, those people can find themselves quickly out of work with skills no longer relevant in our economy. There is a level of offset to tech jobs, but the point of so much of tech is to do more with less. To require fewer people and less time to do a job. And at a point that works, and then there are less jobs, objectively, that need doing. Other industries may swell concurrently and also offset the job drain but I don't think it's unreasonable to respect the ruthless efficiency with which the tech world does its job of disrupting and automating. They have conferences for it and everything.
My concern is not that it's happening, because there is no fighting a changing tide. Nor do I want it to stop, or reverse, or even necessarily slow. I'm interested in who bears the responsibility for displacement and what can and should be done to replace the livelihood of the displaced.
I think to a large extent, automation-pushing-companies, bear a burden to consider the full scope of their actions. And at the very least brainstorm ways to help bridge the transition gap. Those who wield such tremendous power over the shape and direction of our economy bear a responsibility to responsibly manage that end state beyond the maximization of their own profit and payouts. This is a difficult cultural mandate for many in the field who feel markets should run roughshod, because free reign is always preferable to responsibility. I reject their hedonism.
At the same time, government bears a role as well. As an extension, ideally, of popular will and authority, government must recognize and address the sea change that is taking place in our economy. It may be that this transition is one of the contributors to the rampant wealth and income inequality that has rightly energized national political energy. More than that, government has a responsibility as the only agent capable of organizing and affecting change at a systemic level. Unlike companies, government has explicit jurisdiction to make sweeping change, according to its own instructions rather than make attempts at change by economic proxy and example.
I've read that a proper digital economy requires us to rethink the way we consume and produce digital transactions. Now we stream and consume everything for free and then value content by proxy, through advertising, through subscription fee. Most of the content we consume is created by normal people, rather than the companies money is being funneled through. Instead it may make sense to put a micro-price on everything and attributing value to the content rather than through companies who provide pseudo valuations after taking a handsome chunk for themselves. Clicking someone's photo would cost money. But someone clicking your photo would make you money. Operating seamlessly, this could provide some sort of solution to those put out of work by automation. Automation removes the value and capacity for much physical work. But all of us still produce and share and consume, especially digital content, as physical becomes the world of non-human.
At the same time it may make sense to try the radical proposition of a citizen's dividend. Replace almost all social programs with a simple, uniform income. Guaranteed to all people, rich or poor. All people receive this wage as a basic right and something to spend into the economy as they see fit. They can choose of course to make more money than this if they like, or they can simply spend this money back into the economy, with perhaps any savings left over being taxed the following year as extra income. This in conjunction with the above idea, or even as a standalone may address the concern that we are letting people fall through the cracks. Fundamentally, this is an issue of people being accounted for in a way that preserves their humanity. With work potentially becoming less relevant, it's worthwhile to imagine what can be done at a systemic level to preserve the most important and interesting part of being human: our ability to create and work.
