In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He traced the devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees. While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech global economy, the American middle class continues to shrink and the workplace becomes ever more stressful. As the market economy and public sector decline, Rifkin predicted the growth of a “third sector”- voluntary and community-based service organizations - that will create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling down the military budget, enacting a value added tax on nonessential goods and services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a “social wage” in lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers.
In another interview I read, he advocated levying taxes on machines that replace human labor to then redirect these tax funds to those who have become unemployed.
What’s your take on this? In my view, the fact that automation makes low-cost production of goods and services possible is a great development. That way, people get the same for working less or more for working the same amount of time. Of course, work places are likely to change; we might see the end of the classic 9-to-5 day soon. But the Internet may give us a glimpse as to what future employment may look like if it won’t be screwed up by Rifkinesque “government-supported community services”: millions of micro-entrepreneurs satisfying niche demands by employing incredibly cheap capital goods such as the Internet.
Taxing capital goods (machines) or any valuable good at all (VAT) would be incredibly harmful in this regard because it would disincentive the very process that enables the super-cheap production of goods and services that, in turn, makes 9-to-5 work useless and creates opportunity for more individualized employment.
Technological advancement has to increase well being. If we get to the point where machines build other machines, supply will increase greatly, prices will fall, and spending will redirect to services, where the people who used to work manufacturing can find jobs.
I find it funny that no one has mentioned Star Trek (TNG) as a primary example of scarcity most likely always existing, despite massive technological development.
(I’m going to ignore that The Singularity ever occurs, as it didn’t seem to in Star Trek, but The Singularity obviously gives its own unique circumstances…)
Everytime Jean Luc Picard goes to the replicator & goes “Tea, Early Grey. Hot.”, there is a chance it may or may not work. If it doesn’t, his ability to get his tea is reduced, & his tea went from being almost infinitely abundant to indefinitely scarce.
So while his tea is scarce, the ability to get tea from the replicator is also scarce or non-existent, at least until it is fixed. I suppose in some way, the post-scarcity of the tea (in that its indefinitely abundant), depends on the replicator to work.
If the Captain desires tea from the replicator & it doesn’t work, he’s SOL, unless he utilizes possible archaic technology to brew up a cup himself (where pre-scracity technology solves scarcity in supposedly “post-scarcity” technology).
Or he could wait until someone (a crewman), or something (the computer) fixes the replicator, which in of itself, requires work, which would be required if the Captain decides to go “medevil”, & brew up a cup for himself, which may require materials that could be acquired with or without the replicators help.
A rousing stand-alone episode involving the traditions of Earth’s past would also most likely occur, probably entirely on the holodeck
Even in ST’s 24th Century world, despite a good deal of archaic problems (pre-24th century problems) are largely solved and/or rendered less harmful or benign, the “work” just shifts to a different area (in this case, there is much work to be done in the vague but ambitious goal of exploring the Galaxy or Universe via starship).
Admittedly, I’m fresh off of listening to Walter Block on “Minimum Wage” (Radical Austrianism, Radical Libertarianism), so perhaps I am still just intellectually “glowing”.
However, to me, it seems those that posit the “end of work” or “post-scarcity” ignore the subjectivity in what constitutes scarcity, from a human perspective, and the objective fact of both finite resources (despite recycling, & renewable, & possible fusion, all of which require both work to operate & maintain, as well as finite resources to construct), & the finite human lifespan.
Yes, mathematically we can determine how much nutrients & food a human being may require, but not all individual human beings require or even desire the same amounts of food, water, etc. (hence, a basic level of subsistience can seem more urgent).
Back on point, what may be view as “post-scarcity” is simply a state of “more abundant”, or a state of adjusted expectations in basic subsistience, which is obviously influenced by technological advancements, individual states of well-being, and so forth.
The end of work would never truly occur, as production & work would simply just shift around to adjust to other areas, interests, markets, etc. that are now possible to attend to, with previous things (such replication of food making world hunger more benign than it currently is).
When one finishes one item on the wish-list, he does not throw it away & declare the day as seized: he moves on to the next item in the list, until it is completed. In this sense, the wish-list of scracity never truly ends, & is always keeping us busy [:P]
To sum up, as geeky as my example may be, even fiction, imo, cannot seem to solve the paradox of claiming that “post-scracity” is attainable, or even possible.
If I were knowledgeable in physics, I’m sure there was probably something additional that would’ve made my comments more worthwhile, beyond a slightly amusing basis for a rebuttal against “post-scarcity” and “the end of work”.
In any case, it seems we will never get out of scarcity, aside from relative viewpoints & measurements of scarcity in the past years of our society (i.e. pre- replicator society will have scarcity in possibly varied & more amount than a post- replicator society).
Or, that supposedly “post-scracity” technology could be more accuratley called “meta-scracity”; in that, there would be scracity of items & food from a replicator if it is not operating correctly or at all.
The replicator would depend on the abundance of services & labor (or perhaps, work) to allow it to give the user all of it’s amazing scracity reducing abilities.
What is sometimes meant by the “end of work” is the end of the strict seperation of work from the rest of the typical Westerner’s life (perhaps an overgeneralization, but it can be recognized as a tendency). This is different from the “post-scarcity” meaning, and can be found, among other places, in the thought of Maria Montessori.
Okay, can somebody tell me how an activity that is funded with stolen money is somehow “voluntary”? That is like saying that we have a 100% voluntary army because we use stolen money instead of stolen kids.
Quite frankly, I viewed it as code for fascist volunteer groups & community based organizations, as with government support (read: funding), they will push the agenda of The State in the guise of something like Obama’s involuntary “voluntary” army and/or national service, only at more local levels that will be harder to resist.
This was more obvious to me having read this recently: "This Isn’t Socialism We Are Heading To, But It May Very Well Be the Other 20th Century “ism”
1933 Germany gathered their activists, & they accomplished so much together. It’s good to know we won’t be bored for the next decade or so.
