One has to wonder if Tyler Cowen is a realist or a pessimist. I've read his
"The Great Stagnation" in which, if I recall, he argues that we have eaten most
of the "low-hanging fruit" that drove national development during the past few
centuries, and a wind-down of our industry driven economies is inevitable. It
was that economy that middle-class sustainability depended on, so if Cowen is
right, it is good-bye middle class. Or maybe not. It may be good-bye middle
class depending on big-time resource and resource using industries, but hello
to a middle class, smaller perhaps, that uses computers and a highly varied
Internet to sustain itself.
Ed
________________________________
From: D & N <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 3:52:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The average are done for
Do you wonder if he actually spelled his name properly?
Yes, I see his point, just like I wouldn't disagree with Keith's
position on the topic. I just don't like the direction Harnden's
taking this.
To me, it's extremely desperate and divisive. Though he has more or
less confined his argument to jobs future, he seems to be limited in
his vision of a practical future for the planet.
Should Harnden care to engage readers into pressuring governments to
invest in renewable energies and sustainable industry, his
resignation might take a positive and productive turn.
Maintaining this path of fear ensures that there will be a vast gap.
He's buying into the multinationals' vision of future scarcity and
the panic to pit oneself against the rest. This is not even close to
a realistic future because we have to change now in order for life
to go on--even for his special 15%. But given that the changes have
to take place anyway, and once acceptance spreads, a better future
for most will be a working reality. Yes, knowing computers will
facilitate many ends, but is hardly essential for healthy, happy and
prosperous survival.
Has should check out Germany's success with the renewable jobs
market, in which most of the 300,000 jobs created are rather average,
and fairly well paying.
Natalia
On 29/09/2013 8:56 AM, Keith Hudson wrote:
The following is part of an article in today' s Sunday Times
>
>The average are done for. You don't need to be.
>
>Toby Harnden
>
>Do you want your child to have a job in 2033. If so, according
to a book that is gripping policy makers in Washington, they had
better start deferring to computers. Society i about to be divided
into
Big Earners and Big Losers and those who rage against the machine
are
destined for the scrap heap.
>
>Tyler Cowen, an economics profesor at George Mason University in
Virginia, delivers the bad news cheerfully. Inequality is on the
rise, he argues, and the middle class will soon be seen as a
quaint
feature of a bygone era.
>
>Over the next two deccades, he predicts, society will become a
"hyper-meritocracy" in which 15% will be richly rewarded for
thir adeptness in harnessing technology and the remaining 85% will
be
consigned to a fragile existence in which wages freeze or fall and
few
get a second chance at success.
>
>His book, Average is Over, concludes that we are about to enter "the age of
>genius machines, and it will be the people who work with them that will rise".
>For the rest, life will be decidedly tough and although the fracturing of
>society is "not inevitable in a metaphysical sense", he told the Sunday Times,
>he had little optimism that governments would do the things necessary to make
>the situation better.
>
>An engaging and eclectic thinker, Cowen, 51, was chess champion of
New
Jersey at 15, has written a guide to ethnic dining and is a
prolific
blogger. The Los Angeles Times has described him as a [polymath].
>
>Last year he was invited to Downing Street to deliver a seminar on
industrial policy and warned against Britain embracing the
politics of
envy.
>
>Cowen emphasises the important of humility in accepting that
computers
usually know best and has reflected this in his own life. He met
his wife
10 year ago via Match.com, a medium that forced them "out of our
usual intuitions and to our mutual benefit". He is enthused by
the advances in chess brought about by computers and accepts that
he
might not have succeeded as a young player using software "because
I'm not sure how humble I was back then."
>
>The key, he says, is to realise that, as in "freestyle
chess", in which players can consult competer programs, "the
human and the computer together are strpnger than just the
computer and
certainly gronger than just the human".
>
>Being the best at chess -- or anything in life -- is no longer
good
enough. "The humans who are best at freestyle chess are not the
grandmasters but people who are smart and know something about
chess but
also know whento defer to the computer and when your isdom
actually counts for something." Computer algorithms, he
argues, are becoming better at knowing what we want than we do --
and
successful people will just go along with this. Reading Amazon or
Yelp revview leads to better choices -- as does walking away from
a
business deal because a software pro9gram tells you it's too
risky, even
if your gut is telling you to hang in there.
>
>The downside is that employers will also usee computers with
"oppressive precision" to measuere output, weed out slackers
and spot those who have not always been steady and conscientious.
Making a fresh start will become next to impossible.
>
>How do we nhelp ourchildren in this brave, somewhat scary new
world -- to
be part of the 15% Cowen says that the future is too unpredictable
to
produce lists of jobs to gravitate towards or to avoid. But he
does
advise avoiding excessive specialisation: ""Do what you enjoy,
learn general skills and learn how to retrain yourself."
>
>
>_______________________________________________
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https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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