The Automated Future
If you’ve read much history, you learned about the social and cultural upheavals that accompanied the industrial revolution of the 17 and 1800’s. Milder upheavals heralded the agricultural and transportation revolutions of the late 1800’s and the early 20th century.
Our society has been drastically changed in the last 40 years by the advent of radio, television, computers and the social media so prevalent today.
In the relative near future, our culture will change beyond recognition compared
to today’s culture.
Political leaders, economists, pundits and the major media outlets are missing (or haven’t thought about or just don’t know) the catastrophic effect automation will have on the future economy of the United States and eventually, the whole world.
Thus, the public is left uninformed and subject to being misled on what will provide income in their future. It certainly will not be manufacturing jobs or manual labor except in rare circumstances.
When clothing factories discovered they could invest in automating the production of clothing and eliminate the cost of labor, the sewing-line jobs disappeared and will never return as they were. This is happening across the board with all manufacturing jobs.
Production of almost any product can be achieved by automation requiring only human oversight and computer programming and eliminating most of the cost of labor – and the jobs by which many people once “earned their living.”
How will your grandchildren earn their living?
The only thing human beings can produce that is of value and is better and cheaper than automation is something unique that few can create: art, music and entertainment will provide income for some.
Therefore, many individuals will be relegated to functioning as “consumers” of the products automation creates.
The transition to an automated society and culture is taking place at exponential speed; see “drones” and “driverless cars” and McDonald’s where you place your order on a touch screen and receive food stored, retrieved, cooked and served by automation.
The latter is being hurried into existence by the increased cost of human workers due to “minimum wage” politics.
The result will be increased power in more centralized governments as more and more people are forced to rely on government stipends for their “daily bread”.
The fact is that a sizable portion of the population will not have a “job” because there will be nothing they can do unless they’re one of those unique individuals who create things.
In strictly material terms – food, clothing, shelter etc. – the average person
will lack little if anything in those areas.
But mankind has always before in our history been able to find employment and “earn a living” by the “sweat of their brow” or by the knowledge of how to perform tasks, or sell things, or help make things.
There will still be “sales” people and there will certainly be “customer service” jobs but a large majority will be “unemployed” and unemployable.
With more power vested in more centralized governments will come more graft and corruption in government and a further stratification of society into the elites and the consumers.
Politicians today are railing against “income inequality”; they ain’t seen nothing yet!
So, what’s going to happen? I don’t know and sadly, I don’t think anyone else knows either.
The only place I’ve seen where anyone has tried to project the results of this scenario is in the science-fiction books of the last century. It seems not much is being written about this now and technology has advanced so much that older projections drastically underestimate the speed with which this future is approaching.
It may be a very bright future; apparently, only God knows. I’m asking Him quite often to show me or send someone to show me what will happen but so far, no answers have appeared.
