Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Automation is replacing human jobs. Sorry. That is bad news for people who want to work, and there is no way around it. Such is the nature of today’s new technologies.

In recent centuries, new technology arrives and displaces workers. Those unemployed eventually find jobs in new industries that build and maintain the technology that took away their job. That is just the way it works, right?

I am sorry to write that the new technology of today actually eliminates jobs. Period. There are no new jobs created to build the new technology. That is the nature of today’s new technology.

One smart person creates an algorithm. That smart person writes a computer program to implement that algorithm. That is a simplification of a complex ordeal, but it summarizes it. Jobs go away. There are no new jobs created to build the new technology. The one smart person built it once, and the new technology only needs to be built once. Yes, there may be one new job for the one hundred lost to help distribute the software automation created by the one smart person.

The employment news is worse. That one smart person rests on the fortune made by the algorithm and implementation for five or ten years. The one smart person then invents another algorithm and implements it. Poof. There go another set of jobs replaced by the smart person’s automation.

I wish I could find a way around this shrinking need for people to work. One thing I can find is that many of the displaced can become counselors to help many of the other displaced workers to cope with their lack of purpose. Another thing is the smart person uses the fortune made from the algorithms and implementations to create a charitable foundation that hires people to run around trying to solve society’s unsolvable problems like trying to pull the poor out of poverty. Those are both made up jobs that really don’t accomplish much other than paying someone a salary instead of government welfare.