News have been spreading on how unemployment will soar as internet businesses, 3D printing and the like take over, continuing to lessen the need for human labour that the industrial and automation revolutions had started.
Should we fear for our jobs?
It's on us! If unbridled capitalism is to continue, then certainly. On the other hand, if flexibility exists, to deal with this totally new challenge, many possibilities open. Let me ramble through some:
1 – Go back, go back! Forget everything about tech development and do it all by hand. Promote only handwork and bureaucratic jobs. In fact, get rid of computers altogether, hire a secretary or become one. That'll do: full employment ! ( or not so much so...);
2 – F**k these questions. That's just the market taking care of itself. Let automation do it all - more profit for the big companies – no salaries, health insurances, etc.Let's just keep a few lucky ones who can manage this tech or do creative work and who will be feeling so lucky that they will sell us their hours cheap;
3 – Rotate the few jobs that actually need humans and let new technologies do it all. Pay everyone a basic income and don't let money get caught in the nodes of the system that big companies embody;
4 – Liberate hand and brain work from traditional jobs, don't let money get stuck in the said nodes a create loads of new jobs saving the environment and implementing actions that actually rid civilization of the all too well-known plagues (disease, overpopulation, poverty, lack of education, war);
5 – let tech take over and pay everyone to be poets, in the sense of Agostinho da Silva. Pay them to follow their callings, to use their talents to improve social wellbeing, environmental conditions, etc.
What do the bright solutions have in common? What can protect us from the possible dystopic consequences of the new tech wave? Money not being caught up in the nodes of the system and so get taken away from it actually diminishing the amount of cash flowing , the trade of services, ideas,etc.