5 ms·

> We will be living in a post-work and post scarcity economy In 12 years? No way.

• rbanffy 9y ago
  I bet some people would be more than willing to fight wars to prevent that from happening in such a short timeframe.
• contingencies 9y ago
  I estimate there are 100 million people or more in China alone who work in sales and sourcing departments on manual supply chain processes that could easily be replaced with a single decent piece of open source software and a manager who can be assed typing in some figures or buying a smart factory upgrade to do it for him. That's very much tending towards post-work, for a significant chunk - 1/14th - of China, which is now I believe the world's largest economy. And that's the white collar scenario! And yet, by removing overheads and allocating resources to produce goods and services less wastefully for everyone, it will produce a net positive for the environment, despite the social upheaval. Then there's other areas at high risk from automation including transportation, QA/QC, law enforcement, financial and legal services, retail, manufacturing, construction, etc. I personally have no problem believing that at least 1/3 of society in developing or developed economies will see their lives change significantly through automation in the next 12 years.
  • varjag 9y ago
    Structural unemployment isn't quite 'post-work'.
    • marcosdumay 9y ago
      Structural unemployment is a first symptom of 'post-work'. Of it and a lot of other things, but it's something one should expect to see.
• throwaway2016a 9y ago
  It sounds far fetched and maybe it is, but one thing to consider is that AI, robotics, and automation have compounding impact. Each generation makes developing the new generation faster. We've already seen more advancement in 5 years than the past 20, at least in terms of mainstream adoption.
  • varjag 9y ago
    I disagree. The pace of automation has been rather steady, and the way of living 20 years ago was almost indistinguishable from now.