Employment in a futuristic world

I tend to think of it from the other way round. It is not only about the jobs that need to be done, it is also about inventing new jobs so that society can continue to function.

Because our civilization is largely based on money, people need to do something in order to get money. People with money need to have something to spend it on. We are constantly creating new jobs and new things to buy so that the system more or less balances.

The early industrial revolution made agriculture less labour intensive. One man with a seed drill and a horse could do the work of several people sowing seeds by hand. The farm workers made redundant moved into cities, largely to make stuff. The stuff that these new city dwellers made wasn't stuff that people needed. It was stuff that people convinced themselves that they wanted. Repeat, repeat, repeat until we get to now and the folk who bought iphone 6s two years ago are now upgrading to iphone 7s.

As well as making stuff, we also provide services to each other. We make each other coffee, sell each other insurance and write books.

What will the future look like? Until and unless we change our attitude to money, it will probably be more of the same. Money has a funny way of perpetuating this cycle of want and provide. We will be selling each other iphone 327s because the iphone 326 is so last week, darling.

At some point, we will probably move to a four day working week and a three day weekend. I know that sounds weird, but it's only been a little over a century since most of the West moved from a six day working week and a one day weekend.

We're also going to have to do something about the increasing ageing population needing more care. This probably means a shift into more people working in healthcare and an extension of the retirement age. That's not going to be an easy one to do, as folks do like their shiny iphones.

We may yet have a Star Trek-like revelation and get rid of money. Or at the very least change the way we use it. The system of money is creating a strong imbalance between a relatively small number of people who have a lot of it and the rest of the world who would really like some more. Money started out as a way of trading labour for stuff, but over the centuries it has tended to pool around some people more than others. At some point, the huge numbers of people with little money are going to realise that the system isn't working for them.

Once! said:

At some point, the huge numbers of people with little money are going to realise that the system isn't working for them.

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They already are! But because they are generally less well educated they fail to understand the real problem and find scapegoats instead - and end up being dismissed as racists, bigots and dinosaurs.

One possible trend is the change of prostitution from a criminal act to a commercial one.

I see a variety of precursors. Some SF takes it for granted. An example is Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. On Beta, the most modern of the worlds near to Barrayar in jump space, it is routine. There's even an entire Betan space station called The Orb of Unearthly Delights devoted to entertainment, much of it including sex. In J. D. Robb's crime series sex workers are licensed and not even called that; they are called Licensed Companions, or LCs. So maybe there will be a slow movement by other writers in that direction.

Another are the number of countries where sex workers are licensed and regulated, or not regulated at all. For a map see this Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution#Legality.

Another is a relaxed attitude in some countries toward quasi-prostitution. Trophy wives (or husbands) are simply accepted as something rich men and increasingly women buy/marry, dispensing with them as they age. Related to that is the practice in some countries where keeping a mistress is almost expected, especially for the well-to-do, and a man may gain sub rosa credit for how appealing the mistress is. Video cam prostitution is an increasingly popular practice, with wo/men sometimes having stables of admirers who pay them for acting out requests. And some very young wo/men have set up vidcam businesses without any expectation of getting payment, except popularity of their sites.

I've also heard (what may be an urban legend) for the last dozen or two years that students who are having money problems will engage in sex work. Sometimes it's through a brothel. Some brothels act in an organized fashion, with web sites and lawyers and accountants to ensure they keep the IRS off their backs. Or in a more informal way, with women (or occasionally men) who match make out of the goodness of their hearts. Or they set themselves up as commercial match makers, such as Christian site eHarmony. If their customers engage in a commercial activity, it's the responsibility of the customers, not the "match makers."

Further, if one person pays all expenses (for a trip to Paris, perhaps) that is simply acting in a time-honored fashion, especially if they are men. And that little $3000 dress, and the loan of $100,000 of jewelry? A present for someone very special. Especially if they are going to be companions to, say, the Oscars or Emmys. And who could object if a friend buys another friend a $300 set of books for their classes? They are just investing in their friend's future happiness, and supporting a poor but ambitious person who may someday be a CEO or famous scientist or the President of the United States.

Connecting some of these activities with legal prostitution may seem a stretch. But such stretches over decades can have a powerful cumulative tidal effect. I wouldn't be surprised if someday soon I didn't see a movie or TV show where the main character is a sex worker. (Oh, wait.)

Laer Carroll said:

One possible trend is the change of prostitution from a criminal act to a commercial one.

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Nah, it will be sex androids. Anything goes and they never get a headache. No chance of STDs, either - assuming they have an auto-cleaning function...

Survival sex work is a very real thing, particularly among GSM (gender and sexual minority) youth. It's the only way some trans people can fund their medical transition. Camming is pretty common.

After the Really Great Pandemic, I think that Laer Carroll's idea will become a reality worldwide. In some form prostitution is legal in more places than that map indicates, and adding in the covertly accepted areas covers a lot. Also the present trend toward legalizing drugs probably will continue. It is interesting to note that two hundred years ago there were few restrictions on prostitutes, drug, alcohol, etc. Almost all of the restrictions we have now were put in during the 19th and 20th centuries. In a few hundred years we'll be calling that era of banning pleasures by some peculiar term.

Shivari said:

...it will be sex androids.

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You're right! There's certain to be! After all, we already have crude versions.

You would certainly be able to tailor them, to look like your favorite celeb, maybe. Or like something else entirely. Elves, orcs, aliens, anyone. Something really weird. And they'd be perfectly compliant. "Whip me with the one with the Geneva blue strands, Andie baby."

Things will get really complicated when they are given they are given the ability to stand and walk on their own, inside the house at first, then later models outside. And the ability to talk, then sing and dance.

But then we've written those stories, haven't we?

Much depends on whether or not future robots are programmed with Asimov's Three Laws. If they are, then the only obvious human jobs would be assassin, bodyguard, soldier (if fighting fellow humans), thief...

Sex droid would be a great disguise for an assassin...

Shivari said:

They already are! But because they are generally less well educated they fail to understand the real problem and find scapegoats instead - and end up being dismissed as racists, bigots and dinosaurs.

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Fair point. There are huge numbers of people voting for change. They can feel that the system isn't working for them and they want someone to do something about it. The problem is that no-one really knows what change can be made to give them what they want. Along comes a wily politician like Trump or Farage who says that they know the solution. All you need to do is ... build a wall, kick the foreigners out, make Britain/ America great again.

It's a great sales pitch, but will those solutions actually achieve the change that the large number of people want? The problems go deeper than that.

As we're in the science fiction forum I can say this ... money is broken. The whole system needs reform. I haven't the first clue how we fix it or what we change it to. But sooner or later we're going to realise that money isn't working.

The only problem is that the people who have money are generally the ones in power. And for them money is working very nicely, thank you. The people who want change don't have the power to make the change happen.

Once! said:

The only problem is that the people who have money are generally the ones in power. And for them money is working very nicely,
thank you. The people who want change don't have the power to make the change happen.

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Indeed - hence my earlier polemic. I think this is a far bigger threat than climate change. We either embrace social and economic equality - some form of universal citizen's wage, for example - or the entire system will collapse. Will the rich see the writing on the wall before it's too late? I hope so - but wouldn't bet on it.

A lot may depend on what we class as "the rich". At one end of the scale, we have the individuals who are clearly mega-rich - the Bill Gates's and Warren Buffetts. But if we take the world's population, where is the median line? Would you or I be above that line or below it?

In theory, money ought to be a way of swapping my effort and expertise for someone else's effort and expertise. I do my job so I can afford to pay someone else to build my car, defend my country, heal me when I'm sick - all the stuff that I need to survive and thrive.

But I am fortunate to have grown up in the UK. By an accident of history, the UK is the fifth/ sixth richest country in the world. We got that way by virtue of our location on the shoulder of Europe and our policies of capitalism and free trade with other nations. We shamelessly appropriated every idea that everyone else had and got to the industrial revolution faster than most. Crucially, we allowed our entrepreneurs to keep most of their profits, so they gambled more on building infrastructure, importing more new ideas, building an empire.

That in turn has led to a good education and health system which is more or less free at the point of use. The price of property in the UK has risen exponentially which means that those of us with property owning parents and grandparents can inherit a ridiculous amount of money. The Duke of Westminster once said that the best way to accumulate a fortune is to have an ancestor who was best pals with William the Conqueror.

I am not in that league, but I am comfortable. I own a house which means that my son will inherit money that he didn't work for. That house is worth more than a similar house in another country because of the UK's wealth, which I didn't work for. The house has doubled in value in the past fifteen years - again, that's money that I didn't work for. I've inherited money that the previous generation earned. I have enjoyed the benefit of a free education which was gained by an accident of my nation's history.

So when we talk about the world's rich, we probably ought to include ourselves. When we do come to rebalance the world, the UK, US, Germany et al would probably see their standards of living go down so that standards could be increased elsewhere. That won't be easy to do. Many people who argue for punishing the rich would not be so comfortable when they realise that they are relatively rich compared to others elsewhere in the world.

The Star Trek ideal is that every citizen of Earth would be born into the same rights and life chances as everyone else on the planet. Your wealth would be what you earn, not what your ancestors bequeathed to you, whether that is individual inheritance or the wealth of nations.

We are a long, long way from that.

I believe that many of us realize that we are living on borrowed time. We either talk about it openly, or we think about it in the privacy of our own minds. While I agree that our current monetary system is ineffective and antiquated, I feel that replacing it with another system may not be the answer. Even if we reverted to some sort of a barter system that included sex, it wouldn't work with our present population. There are too many people. All of us can't go to university and there isn't enough jobs, manual labor or professional, to keep everyone employed.

Here is how I see it as well as the choices that I feel we will have to address in the future. In the short term, what we are seeing now, you will see a rise in nationalism and patriotism. This isn't just an American cowboy thing, this has spread to our English cousins. Once!, how do you feel about the Brexit thing? My wife is English, from Brighton, and she thinks its not going to go well for England. In the short term, this solution seems so simple. Closing your borders and keeping foreign goods out of your economy may stabilize things but it is a false sense of security. Your own internal population will grow and you're back to the same problem of not enough work and not enough natural resources to spread equally.

What about a world government? Unless its a dictatorship, and we really don't want that, it will be slow to react, rife with nepotism and corruption, and unable to agree on anything. Sort of like the United Nations is right now. I keep coming back to this but I feel that exploration and the creation of new frontiers is the safety valve for the overpopulation problem. Still that creates the questions of where do we explore and what or whom do we exploit on the new frontier? Once!, do you believe the Gaia Theory will come into play or has it already?

Right now, I'm thinking about Kuwisdelu, our resident source of all things Native American. I have a question which is what kept the native people from overpopulating their own lands? Was it a lack of technology? Was it childhood illnesses? My limited knowledge indicates that Native Americans achieved a balance with nature. Maybe it was their religious/spiritual side that helped accomplish this?

I don't believe there's any kind of cultural secret to be found anywhere. Overpopulation is caused by - overpopulation! Look at any society from ancient history and the population density is tiny. Not because of anything special - but because there weren't many humans around!

The Earth has a landmass of 500 million square kilometeres (not all of that habitable) and 170,000 years ago there were probably only a handful of members of homo sapiens. The spread was slow.

And it's really only in the last century or so that we have developed the technological ability to protect ourselves from some of the worst ravages of nature (especially social, medical and agricultural technology). So now there are a lot of us - and more of us survive than in the past.

On top of which, industrial technology has allowed us to become rampant consumerists. There is probably enough to go around fairly - if we were prepared to live more simply. But too many people want the latest gadgets, up-to-date fashions and a TV in every room. They want to drive rather than walk. They want fruit and vegetables out of season. We're no longer connected to the Earth and the rhythm of Nature. We're living in an alien machine-world that's driving us insane - and our coping strategies are wrecking the planet.

I’m not an economist or an MBA, so I have only a layman’s understanding of economics. Still, this is an interesting topic because I’ve had a story prompt banging around in my head for a while.

As I understand it, things like GDP are a measure of how much productivity there is in an economy. A worker takes some wood and some nails and produces furniture. The furniture is worth more than the sum of the materials, by an amount equal to the labor put into it. The worker sells the furniture for a profit, and has money to buy more materials and maybe some food and shelter. If the worker tries to demand too much for his furniture, sales will suffer, and someone else will come along and sell competing furniture for less.

That’s the primary-school model of an economy, and probably not an unreasonable representation for pre-industrial societies. Of course, then you get guilds and royal patents screwing up the true value by artificially limiting the supply one way or the other.

Now, introduce some power tools to make furniture construction easier. The worker can produce furniture faster, and maybe better quality. The cost of materials is unchanged, and he now has to put aside money every month to save for tool replacement, so the price doesn’t drop dramatically, but it does drop. The worker might make a smidge more on each sale, but at the same time, other people have to spend slightly less on furniture, so have more disposable income. Do this with a few other commodities, and you have an increase in the standard of living. And maybe some inflation as people are willing to throw their money around a little more freely, but you still have the spectre of competition keeping things in line.

Still a simple picture.

Now, introduce an individual who creates a furniture business, and hires people to build the furniture. They’re guaranteed a steady, modest, dependable income, in return for working for him. He gets the profits, they get security.

Eventually, it’s all businesses, with the profits being kept by an increasingly small group of people. This consolidation, as I understand it, is inevitable absent anti-trust laws.

Occasionally, jobs will disappear or be greatly reduced in number as technology changes (buggy-whip-makers, candle-makers). There’s some dislocation, and individuals may have a hard time, but overall, the economy will get a boost as the new technology introduces new opportunities and new markets.

By this point, some of you have gone catatonic, so now I’m going to introduce the science-fictioney aspect. Someone invents an A.I. that is good enough to take over pretty much every blue-collar and no-collar job, and many white-collar ones as well. 90% of the wage-slave jobs disappear virtually overnight, as businesses scramble to replace workers with robots.

So, what happens at this point? Well, the problem with economics is that it’s very much a feedback-driven system. If everyone bets the same way, it often causes the system to go in another direction. Generally, you have to buy when everyone is selling, and sell when everyone is buying. And that’s the trick.

In this case, let’s start with the simplest prediction: Almost everyone is out of work and the One Percent says So what, not our problem. So, I have to ask this, and let’s take the USA as the location for all of this, just because. You’ve got 324 million people out of work, about to lose their homes, unable to buy food, and you’ve got 32,400,000 people still working, and you’ve got 3,600,000 people who own everything (and lots of it), and are thumbing their noses at the rest of the population. Does this sound like a stable situation to you? There’ve been revolutions for less reason.

Okay, total anarchy, thunderdome, cage match, on a global scale. That’s scenario one.

Two: With the robot A.I.s, labor becomes essentially free, so it’s all about the raw materials, and skill/knowledge. All the employees who used to build the furniture for the one percent say screw you and go off and start their own businesses, using robot labor. Now, instead of a few big businesses, you’ve got umpteen small ones. Of course, you still have distribution issues. Maybe there’s still room for a Walmart style of business. Except that, if anyone can put together a furniture business anywhere, why would you buy furniture imported from Bangkok if you can buy it from up the street? Big businesses go down the tubes, large distributers of finished goods as well. All that’s left are the companies that transport raw materials for all these small businesses. And mostly, these can be regional.

There are other scenarios, as well. Like where there isn’t a revolution, but the one percent discovers that they no longer have anyone buying their goods, because everyone has gone back to a more-or-less pre-industrial lifestyle. Or the government steps in and gives everyone a guaranteed minimum income so that we can all continue to consume. Of course, they’d have to raise taxes on the businesses to do so, so expect the one percent to scream like stuck pigs.

Anyway, there are lots of ways this can go. The only thing we can predict is that anything we attempt to predict will probably change the outcome.

Angry Guy said:

There are other scenarios, as well. Like where there isn’t a revolution, but the one percent discovers that they no longer have anyone buying their goods, because everyone has gone back to a more-or-less pre-industrial lifestyle. Or the government steps in and gives everyone a guaranteed minimum income so that we can all continue to consume. Of course, they’d have to raise taxes on the businesses to do so, so expect the one percent to scream like stuck pigs.

Anyway, there are lots of ways this can go. The only thing we can predict is that anything we attempt to predict will probably change the outcome.

Click to expand...

The first suggestion here is a good one, but the second one is what we're headed toward; although it will take a hundred or two hundred years. This is why I hate to see manufacturing jobs leave the country; it sends more customers into poverty, so they can't buy what they used to make, and the government has to provided something to keep the revolution from starting next weekend. The present trend is to off-shore all jobs, and when there are no places left to send the jobs, the robots will get the jobs instead. The only people left with jobs will be securities traders and robot designers, and the designers will be looking for ways to replace them with robots.

The other alternative is much better, and I am an optimist.

Angry Guy said:

Okay, total anarchy, thunderdome, cage match, on a global scale. That’s scenario one.

Two: With the robot A.I.s, labor becomes essentially free, so it’s all about the raw materials, and skill/knowledge. All the employees who used to build the furniture for the one percent say screw you and go off and start their own businesses, using robot labor. Now, instead of a few big businesses, you’ve got umpteen small ones. Of course, you still have distribution issues. Maybe there’s still room for a Walmart style of business. Except that, if anyone can put together a furniture business anywhere, why would you buy furniture imported from Bangkok if you can buy it from up the street? Big businesses go down the tubes, large distributers of finished goods as well. All that’s left are the companies that transport raw materials for all these small businesses. And mostly, these can be regional.

There are other scenarios, as well. Like where there isn’t a revolution, but the one percent discovers that they no longer have anyone buying their goods, because everyone has gone back to a more-or-less pre-industrial lifestyle. Or the government steps in and gives everyone a guaranteed minimum income so that we can all continue to consume. Of course, they’d have to raise taxes on the businesses to do so, so expect the one percent to scream like stuck pigs.

Anyway, there are lots of ways this can go. The only thing we can predict is that anything we attempt to predict will probably change the outcome.

Click to expand...

Yes, well, good luck building an iPhone59 or a Ford Mirabilis out of garden weeds, soil or whatever basic materials you can lay your hands on... Or growing enough food to feed your family inside your small apartment on the 40th subterranean level of Civic Housing Zone 32.

Our entire cultural base has moved away from natural and locally-available products towards products made from materials that are the result of heavy industry - principally metals and oil. This simply cannot be reproduced on a cottage-industry scale. Ownership of these resources - and land - will determine who is rich.

I believe the only viable option is high-tech with equality. A low-tech self-suffice int agrarian approach might be - except there probably isn't enough land for all. I don't really see much in between.

Just to add - I hate being so pessimistic. I wish someone could persuade me out of it!

Shivari said:

Our entire cultural base has moved away from natural and locally-available products towards products made from materials that are the result of heavy industry - principally metals and oil. This simply cannot be reproduced on a cottage-industry scale. Ownership of these resources - and land - will determine who is rich.

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Most things that can be produced at all, can be produced at a small scale. It's economies of scale that generally prevent that from happening, rather than some engineering issue. Some things will not be generally available, such as Rare Earths, but that's what an economy is for. I agree, though, that control of the raw resources will become the new wealth. The question is whether that will cause a shake-up of the current one percent or not.

Shivari said:

I believe the only viable option is high-tech with equality. A low-tech self-suffice int agrarian approach might be - except there probably isn't enough land for all. I don't really see much in between.

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This is all fine and dandy, but how do you see us getting there? And how will it work? This is the problem shared by libertarian and communist utopias (utopiae?)--the end result is asserted as a fait accompli, then "they all lived happily ever after." I just don't think you can get there from here.

Angry Guy said:

This is all fine and dandy, but how do you see us getting there? And how will it work? This is the problem shared by libertarian and communist utopias (utopiae?)--the end result is asserted as a fait accompli, then "they all lived happily ever after." I just don't think you can get there from here.

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If you [coughs politely] read the thread, I have said that I don't see us getting there. To my mind it's the only way that avoids cataclysm, but I can't see it happening. Well, maybe - after a few billions have died in the shakedown.

Shivari said:

If you [coughs politely] read the thread, I have said that I don't see us getting there. To my mind it's the only way that avoids cataclysm, but I can't see it happening. Well, maybe - after a few billions have died in the shakedown.

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Sadly, we agree on this as well. I am, as I said, looking at this from the point of view of a writing prompt, so I'm primarily focusing on outcomes that I can see a way to get to.

And even more sadly, the Krell have proven that even if we do get there, it's still a disaster.

realityfix said:

Right now, I'm thinking about Kuwisdelu, our resident source of all things Native American. I have a question which is what kept the native people from overpopulating their own lands? Was it a lack of technology? Was it childhood illnesses? My limited knowledge indicates that Native Americans achieved a balance with nature. Maybe it was their religious/spiritual side that helped accomplish this?

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There's no simple answer to that. "Balance with nature" sounds so new age and hippie, but it's a simple fact that those who are more directly impacted by environmental devastation will care more about it and try to do more to protect against it. That remains true today. Large corporations and people living in cities are insulated and isolated from the effects of modern development. It is poor, indigenous communities of color around the world which are most affected by climate change and other man-made environmental catastrophes. Traditional ways of living with the land (whether it's farming, foraging, or hunting) stop working when you destroy the land. We've seen that in the past with the Church Rock uranium mine, which devastated tribal lands in the southwest, and remains the largest radioactive disaster in US history. Yet because primarily Native communities were affected, no one cares. I've stood on the banks of a man-made river that were once the green fields that the Three Affiliated Tribes called home, where they farmed for thousands of years, and watched the water drown the ruins of their ancient villages, for the sake of a dam providing power to the people in Denver. I've seen oil companies promise money and prosperity and deliver only poverty, destruction, and crime, leaving a wasteland in their wake with their illegally dumped frack water. And now we're seeing the same thing again today with the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will poison the Dakotas' drinking water and destroy the bones of their ancestors.

Our spirituality and religions are driven by the reality that our children will have to deal with the consequences when we desecrate our mother's body.

Apart from Kuwi's contributions*, this thread is so subset-of-northern-hemisphere-high-latitude-cultures-ocentric. It might be worth expanding your horizons.

*tips hat

Helix said:

Apart from Kuwi's contributions*, this thread is so subset-of-northern-hemisphere-high-latitude-cultures-ocentric. It might be worth expanding your horizons.
*tips hat

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I'm not quite sure what you're actually criticising. The original post asked what will happen to employment in societies having a high technological base when the kind of human labour we're used to is no longer required. So that's what we've been discussing.

Are you saying that we shouldn't discuss such things?

I also disagree with your describing it as "northern-hemisphere-high-latitude-cultures-ocentric". The type of society we're discussing is not exclusive to the NHHL area - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country#/media/File:2014_UN_Human_Development_Report_Quartiles.svg.

And those countries who are not in this group all seem to doing as much as they can to join the club. I'm not aware of any single country in the world that has declared its intention to follow a different social path. Perhaps you could enlighten me if I'm wrong?

Shivari said:

I'm not quite sure what you're actually criticising. The original post asked what will happen to employment in societies having a high technological base when the kind of human labour we're used to is no longer required. So that's what we've been discussing.

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I think part of Helix's criticism might be that many of our advances and technological luxuries have come with a high environmental and human cost from which most of us living in first world nations have been insulated and which we rarely discuss. It's not unlikely that the post-scarcity future we so happily imagine relies on an invisible underclass and a creeping environmental devastation that will eventually catch up to us. In addition to the climatological consequences of industry, much of the employment we describe as disappearing has gone not to robots but to human slaves and sweatshop workers.

We talk about robots and automation as a plentiful source of cheap labor in the future.

The hard question is: what if humans are cheaper?

kuwisdelu said:

I think part of Helix's criticism might be that many of our advances and technological luxuries have come with a high environmental and human cost from which most of us living in first world nations have been insulated and which we rarely discuss. It's not unlikely that the post-scarcity future we so happily imagine relies on an invisible underclass and a creeping environmental devastation that will eventually catch up to us. In addition to the climatological consequences of industry, much of the employment we describe as disappearing has gone not to robots but to human slaves and sweatshop workers.

We talk about robots and automation as a plentiful source of cheap labor in the future.

The hard question is: what if humans are cheaper?

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I wrote just a handful of posts ago "We're no longer connected to the Earth and the rhythm of Nature. We're living in an alien machine-world that's driving us insane - and our coping strategies are wrecking the planet."

The subject is one that is increasingly becoming mainstream. A few decades ago only a handful of crazies talked about climate change. Now it's talked about by world leaders. I don't know about other countries, but here in the UK most ordinary folks know about it - even if they don't fully understand it.

I think what has fascinated me by this thread is that it offers a way to make it more real to ordinary people. Most folks spend all their energy just getting by - worrying about possible flooding in coastal areas or glaciation in 200 years time is not high on their agenda. I'm not saying that is right - but it's the reality.

However, tell them that unless we change their children may not have any possibility of a job - that makes it much more immediate.

"The hard question is: what if humans are cheaper?" This is exactly what we've been discussing!

Shivari said:

I'm not quite sure what you're actually criticising. The original post asked what will happen to employment in societies having a high technological base when the kind of human labour we're used to is no longer required. So that's what we've been discussing.

Are you saying that we shouldn't discuss such things?

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Well, obviously criticism is exactly the same as censorship. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't question your North American/Western Europe bias?

Shivari said:

I also disagree with your describing it as "northern-hemisphere-high-latitude-cultures-ocentric". The type of society we're discussing is not exclusive to the NHHL area - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devel...014_UN_Human_Development_Report_Quartiles.svg.

And those countries who are not in this group all seem to doing as much as they can to join the club. I'm not aware of any single country in the world that has declared its intention to follow a different social path. Perhaps you could enlighten me if I'm wrong?

Click to expand...

Well, for a start, NHHLCs don't include all so-called developed nations, so bracketting the two concepts together isn't very helpful. How China will respond to challenges is different from how India will respond is different from Chile will respond is different from how Australia will respond and so on. Viewing them all through a lens of how things work for cities west of the Urals and north of the Rio Grande limits the range of possible answers to the question. Consequently. it makes for same old same old stories.

This (Sorry, I didn't include the link, but it's in post #41):

Our entire cultural base has moved away from natural and locally-available products towards products made from materials that are the result of heavy industry - principally metals and oil. This simply cannot be reproduced on a cottage-industry scale. Ownership of these resources - and land - will determine who is rich.

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is very specific to a particular culture. Quite a number of them, probably. But not all.

Kuwi has covered one aspect, but also the idea that the collapse of the money system is a bigger problem than climate change is completely beyond my ken. Such a collapse might stuff up some parts of the world, but climate change will do it to all parts of the world. Who do you think will survive both?