Ten Responses to the Technological Unemployment Problem
There are many economists who still maintain that technological unemployment cannot happen, at least not on the large scale described above. The reasoning for this argument is called the luddite fallacy, which explains that although automation does displace workers, it simultaneously leads to lower prices. These lower prices in turn stimulate consumer demand and provide the basis for new industries, which in turn hire more workers. The luddite fallacy has more or less held true for two hundred years. The question is will it continue to hold true in the face of the computer revolution and accelerating technological progress? How can we be sure new jobs will arrive fast enough to offset the jobs lost?
This is a fairly straightforward solution. Since growing numbers of people won’t be able to earn money from their labor, it might make sense to just give everyone a guaranteed income whether or not they work. This would allow the market economy as we know it to continue, since putting money in people’s hands would prop up the cycle of consumer spending. Often this idea is characterized as socialist, and in some senses it is, but this characterization overlooks that the goal of a UBI is actually to save market capitalism. Moreover, with a guaranteed basic income many other socialist programs like social security, unemployment, and food stamps could be dismantled and replaced with this far more streamlined system. An obvious question is, where does the money come from? A variety of ideas have been suggested; Marshall Brain details several possibilities in his essay Robotic Freedom.
This is a more individual approach that does not rely on government intervention. By taking advantage of new decentralized technologies and living as cheaply as possible, people might be able to increasingly just opt out of capitalism and consumerism entirely. This approach is advocated by Federico Pistono in his book Robots Will Steal Your Job But That’s Okay and could be facilitated by forward thinking engineering projects such as Open Source Ecology, as well as upcoming advances in technologies like solar panels and 3D printers.
This is an alternate economic system advocated by The Venus Project “in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. All resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few.†This arrangement is made possible by aggressive use of advanced technologies to create an abundance of resources and thereby negate the need for any sort of rationing. Although Jacques Fresco, the founder of the Venus Project, claims his system is distinct from socialism, it appears to me to be fairly consistent with an extreme version of what has been called “automation socialism.†I believe the socialist comparison is apt since RBE implies the end of both private property and wealth concentration. In any event, this system sounds idyllic in principle but naturally raises the question “How could we get from here to there?â€
This approach is advocated by Martin Ford in his book The Lights in the Tunnel. His approach overlaps heavily with the unconditional basic income idea in that his goal is the same: put money directly in people’s hands so they can spend it and keep the market economy going. The main difference is that instead of making the income unconditional, Ford advocates doling out money according to an incentive scheme that encourages behavior society desires. Among the hypothetical examples Ford mentions is paying people to read books.
In their book Race Against the Machine, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson suggest that we should try racing with machines. In addition, seminal futurist Ray Kurzweil has repeatedly expressed his view that we are destined to “merge with machines.†How might this resolve the technological unemployment problem? Well, technological unemployment ultimately stems from the fact that automation advances much faster than people can learn new skills. So if we can find a way to directly upgrade human minds—such as through the use of brain-computer interfaces—then workers would be able to keep pace with technological change and readily adapt to new jobs and industries as quickly as they crop up. Moreover, super intelligent humans might develop new desires which would in turn stimulate new industries. Alternately humans might become enlightened and decide they no longer need a market economy. Either way the problem would be solved.
A lot of more traditional pundits admit there is a potential problem with technological unemployment (or at least technological inequality) but seem uninterested in any of the more drastic solutions mentioned above. Instead they push for a series of common sense policy fixes, such as fixing education to better prepare people for STEM fields or reforming the patent system to mitigate drags on innovation. These policy tweaks are designed to make the economy function incrementally better in this new technological era.
One line of reasoning argues that technological unemployment can only ever be a temporary problem, since the day is approaching when we will literally print out all of our food and other necessities. Thus the problem only arises in the awkward transitional period: after we’ve automated large numbers of jobs, but before technology has lowered the cost of living to near zero. Therefore we should try to accelerate technological progress by whatever means necessary so that we can make the painful transition as short as possible—much like tearing off a bandaid.
This position argues that as long as government stays out of the way the transition will be relatively smooth and painless. Yes, there will be less jobs available, and certainly people’s incomes will suffer, but technology will simultaneously bring down the cost of living at a fast enough rate that people will survive just fine without the need for government invention or economic restructuring.
It’s possible a technological unemployment crisis would simply be a pitstop on the way to a much more dangerous crisis involving artificial general intelligence. Once AGI arrives we will have much bigger issues to contend with, such as will the human race survive being displaced as the most intelligent beings on planet Earth? So while technological unemployment might be worth worrying about at the margins, really the bulk of our energy ought to be devoted to this more substantial threat on the horizon. This position is advocated by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and others.
Oakbridge University – Jeshua Online
“Greetings. We are the Arcturian Council. We are pleased to connect with all of you.
We are very pleased with the progress that we see you all making there on Earth at this time of slowing down, doing less, and feeling more. You are there to feel all of the emotions that are available to you, including your fear of being destitute, sick, and then ultimately dying. You have all three of those fears coming up at the same time during the pandemic crisis that has been coupled with economic crashes and unemployment. You are getting your money’s worth, and this was actually a very economical choice for the human collective consciousness, because you want to be processing faster. You want to be facing as many of your lower-vibrational emotions as you can.
Now, when you are in the midst of a clearing of lower-vibrational emotions, you also have then put yourself in a position where lower-vibrational thoughts will be coming to you, lower-vibrational beliefs will be formed, and a lower-vibrational perspective on the world you live in will become a part of your way of looking at the world. This trap is what you need to avoid right now. You need to avoid the trap of ignoring your feelings in favor of thoughts of persecution, abuse of power, and loss of control.
Once you process your fears, you will be able to take back your power. You will be able to feel the truth that you have come to know as awakened beings that says you are deliberate creators. You are there to pick from all of the various vibrations that you come into contact with. You are there to create a better experience for yourselves and for the rest of humanity. You are not there to wait for something like disclosure to come around so that you can be free and validated in your beliefs.
You want to create a collective consciousness that allows for physical extra-terrestrials to simply be able to land their ships without fear of what those humans who haven’t dealt with their emotions might do. So if you really want to see the massive changes on your world that more and more people are talking about at this time, you need to feel those feeling, as difficult as they are, so that you can move past them, so that you can get into your creative vibration and bring humanity to the highest level of consciousness that has ever existed there on planet Earth.
We know that it’s the harder path. It’s the more challenging path, but it’s also the path that you knew you were going to take before you incarnated. And now is the time to get on it and to invite others to join you.
We are the Arcturian Council, and we have enjoyed connecting with you.”
“Greetings. We are the Arcturian Council. We are pleased to connect with all of you.
We are continuing to explore the many possibilities that we see leading up to this next very important solstice that you have coming up there on Earth. You are at this time relying heavily upon energies coming from all across the galaxy, and on the solstice it will be your sun’s turn to shine, quite literally. There are many possibilities that humanity is choosing from at this time, and that you can choose from as individuals. Now, we know that many of you have heard about a solar flash, or a solar sneeze, and for a very long time people have been talking about the effects of solar flares on all of you there on Earth.
But with this upcoming solstice, what we see as the most likely probability is that your sun will be sending out such an enormous transmission of unconditional love that humanity will forever be changed by that transmission. Now, of course you are dealing with quite a bit of chaos and fear on your world at this time, and it is at times like these that every being that you have helping you steps it up a bit in terms of the offerings, the transmissions, the downloads, the activations, and so on.
You are undoubtedly going to receive more from your sun during this solstice than you have during any previous solstice that you’ve experienced there on Earth. You have been summoning, and the sun has taken notice. The sun has received your requests for help and wants very much to help. Your sun is a living being, a being with consciousness and is a part of the overall plan to help humanity ascend.
Now, you have reached a point where we feel you have done enough cleansing, purging, and ultimately evolving as a result of the Covid-19 virus. We see very little good in dragging this out till the end of 2020, or even beyond. And so, we can see how this particular timeline will be the one that you will all choose for yourselves, to rise up like a Phoenix from the ashes, to become the version of humanity that is going to live out the years you have remaining before the shift in consciousness is completed.
We give you this transmission, this wonderful message a month in advance of your solstice, because we are essentially out an invitation to all of you to be on that timeline, to bring about the changes that you want to experience, rather than the ones you are afraid might happen. That is how you do it. That is how you ensure that you are living in the future that you want to be living in.
We are the Arcturian Council, and we have enjoyed connecting with you.”
I AM Love and I AM Light
Bill Brockbrader Released 2012 JUNE 27