The Meaning of Life

We have a basic belief in this country - people who work hard can improve their situation in life.  We celebrate success stories about poor students who studied hard and got college degrees and went on to make something we generally define as success that means that they earned enough money to live comfortably and send their own kids to college.  We celebrate stories about people who were bullied throughout school but learned to deal with it by making people laugh, and who went on to become successful comedians.  We celebrate the dropouts who start up companies in their garages, companies that are now worth billions and billions of dollars.

And by celebrating those stories, we hold out hope for ourselves, that through our own hard work and intelligence, our willingness to take risks and struggle through adversity, we too might be able to earn a better-than-average life for ourselves.

Often we see the failings of others to achieve that kind of success, and we put the blame squarely on their shoulders for doing any number of unforgivable sins - not going to college; not getting the right degree in college; having children too early or out of wedlock or with a spouse who was a bad choice (perhaps because he or she had the audacity to drop dead at a young age); getting hooked on drugs, even legal ones like alcohol; or simply making the wrong choices about what employment to accept.  We blame people, and we believe that if they just worked harder, if they just had better education or educational opportunities, if they just were willing to try, they could have money, too. 

We assume that somehow magically tens of millions of jobs will open up that are higher pay if the people who are working minimum wage would just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

And sometimes we believe that despite evidence to the contrary in our own lives, as is the case with many people I know who are low income and yet believe these things.

It's always *other* people who are making bad choices, who are taking advantage of the system, who are lazy slackers who don't want to work...

But someday soon, we're not going to be able to think that way, because we're all out of jobs:

This video is a pretty spot-on take-down of the future we're staring at.  I can speak to it myself.  In that video, he describes "automation engineers" who are working actively to program computers to do the jobs that humans used to do.  That's exactly what I do for a living.  Companies like it because once the programming is done, a small team of engineers can handle the work that used to take hundreds of people, and at a fraction of the cost.  This means the companies can lower their rates to compete in the market, and when competition isn't strong, it means they can also increase their profit margins.

That's because humans are huge portions of the costs companies pay.  The space that you use to work - bathrooms, break rooms, your desk, and so on - costs money, in addition to simply payroll expenses, insurance, taxes, and so on.  A computer that can do the job of hundreds can fit in a cabinet that is less than a square yard or meter.

And as this video notes, we programmers are getting better at replicating your abilities on a computer level.

Eventually, every job will be replaced by a computer, and then only the heads of companies and their immediate support staff will be human jobs.  In that day and age, it's not feasible for every human being to be a CEO - even minimizing space for computers, there isn't enough room for all of those companies, given that a single company can supply all of a given type of thing.  Ford could successfully manufacture every car in the world, Apple could make every computer, Samsung every phone.  While competition breeds innovation, we've seen that that's still true when there's very limited competition, when only a handful of companies fill every role in a given field.  There could never be a thousand successful cell phone manufacturers, let alone millions.

As such, we need a new concept for what it means to be human.  Currently, we expect that a human will contribute in some way to society, and we value that contribution via whether someone is willing to pay for the human to do that thing, and how much.  As such, we think that basketball and football stars contribute thousands of times more to society than teachers and nurses and firefighters and police officers, all of whom contribute several times more than barristas and cashiers and customer service reps.  But when all of those jobs disappear, what will be the function of humanity?  There's only a limited extent to which creativity is the answer - we can't all be artists and musicians and so on, some of us simply lack any such talents. 

In that day, we will have to move to an economy that says "sure, you can have your companies making products worldwide, and those companies can even elevate your position in life so that you have the very nicest things, but you're going to have to give back to all the people who got you there, who helped pay for your goods and paid for the roads you delivered those goods on and so on."  An economy that recognizes that not every person can work, but that not every person needs to work, because we produce EVERYTHING in such abundance that work is no longer a meaningful measure of how much you contributed to that abundance.

In that day, we will have to set up a society that:

1. Heavily taxes business
2. Uses those taxes to completely pay for food, housing, water, clothing, education, medical care, and transportation for everyone, regardless of income or whatever.

Imagine this...

Imagine a primitive microeconomy.  A small group of people who hunt animals together for food.  There are perhaps ten of them.  They work together to build each other's houses, and to hunt food together, and so on.  One day, Nirk figures out that Zark is the best hunter, so Nirk says to Zark: "You are better at hunting than I am, and I am better at building and tearing down houses.  Why don't you spend more time hunting, and I'll take care of tearing down your house and moving it to the next location?  That way, we'll both be more efficient."  Zark likes the idea, and so she agrees.  The two of them get a few minutes more leisure time each day because they have divided up their work this way.  Soon, Tork sees what they're doing, and says "hey, I want in on this.  I can make and clean your clothes for you, if you'll do those things for me."  They agree, and all three get a few more minutes in their days.  Berk joins in to cook the food that Zark brings in, and Jurk takes care of all of the children, teaching them and making sure they're not under foot.  And all of them get a few more minutes of leisure time in their days, because they're more efficient.

Eventually, they start inventing things.  Mirk builds a device that can hunt animals better than Zark can.  And so everyone asks Mirk to hunt for them, but now Zark has nothing to do.  They give Zark some menial jobs, but it's not what Zark wants to do. 

But, because they're a community, they say "Look, Zark, we're sorry we took away your job.  You can keep doing it if you like, but there's no need for it anymore, because Mirk brings in more food than you do.  But that's OK.  We'll still move and build your house, we'll still do your laundry, we'll still care for your kids, because you are our sister and we love you.  But more importantly, we'll do these things because we're still so efficient at them.  What would take you all day will take each of us only a few minutes.  In our abundance, we can care for you."

Or they can make Zark starve... and then when Mirk takes over Berk's job, Jurk and Tork still feel safe, and so they let Mirk have even more abundance because they feel like Mirk earned it, while Zark and Berk sat around doing nothing because there was nothing for them to do.  And then Tork loses his job, too.   And finally Jurk does.  And now, because Mirk has all the power, Mirk can make the others starve, and keep them from doing any useful work.

And that's just it.  In this future age where robots make everything, we will have abundance, and we can share that abundance around.  We can, or we can hoard it all in the hands of a few people, and make the majority starve.

But that's not the future.  That's now.  Every day we become more efficient at our work - so much that not every job is necessary.  The current Gross National Income, per capita, in the U.S. is over $55,000.  That's per person.  Including children.  And yet, average pay is less than half that.  This means that we could literally have half the population out of work and pay for them at the same average level.  Given that roughly 23.3% of people in the U.S. are children under 18, that means our current economy *could* pay every adult $71,000 per year.  Even if we said that $50,000 was plenty per adult, we could have *42%* unemployment and still pay for everyone.

But we can't see that, because to get to our low average pay, we've severely underpaid people for many, many years.  It appears to many of us that our economy would collapse if unemployment significantly rose, if we started simply paying for everything for everyone. 

It's clearly not true, but it's what we think is true.

Some day, we'll be forced to face it.  I hope we can get over this ridiculous notion long before then.