Whow Jed, Could you be correct? When I was in the 5th grade my teacher, Mrs. Biggs, was going over the history of Johnstown PA. We reviewed the steel industry. She explained that in times past the workers at Cambria Iron works would 60 to 80 hours a week. They had to get dressed up in there Sunday best to pick up there pay check. Today (in the early 1960's ) the work week at Bethlehem Steel is 40 hrs. When you graduate and go to work for Bethlehem you will only have to work 30 hrs a week because the robots will be doing the work for you. Today Bethlehem Steel is long bankrupt and Johnstown is becoming a town of old people. I do see help wanted signs at, Lows, Panerra Bread, and Lonestar.
Frank Z -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, Aug 10, 2010 6:46 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:what our post industrial society may look like I wrote: We will have to find a way to give everyone what they need and want with a new kind of economy. Not communism, socialism or capitalism. All three are ways of allocating human labor, and they would be equally unworkable in a world where human labor is useless. I did not mean to suggest that communism, socialism and capitalism are equally good, or equally effective, or that these are the only economic systems ever invented. They are the main three still surviving in the modern world. They are mostly in mixed configurations depending on market sector; i.e., Japan is mostly big-corporate capitalist but their healthcare sector is socialist. Someone in the New York Times wrote a letter in response to this column, about unemployment: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10herbert.html The letter says what I had in mind. It is well written. QUOTE: . . . There was a time in the early years of this country in which 90% of employed people worked on farms. An economy that did not have agriculture as the main source of livelihood was beyond imagining. . . . Our world is increasingly becoming one in which more and more jobs do not really require people at all. Productivity per worker is not a function of expertise, which is at an all-time low. Rather, it is the product of the automation of the workplace and of the tools at hand. This process could be much farther along than it is, but people are still somewhat cheaper than new technology. That will not remain the state of the workplace much longer. It is becoming increasingly necessary envision how an economy would work in which every job could be performed without humans at all. Who would own the means of production? How would people acquire purchasing power? Would these concepts even be relevant? Author John Varley described such an economy on the moon in "Steel Beach." Further exploration is definitely in order. We are taking the first baby steps into an economic landscape in which workers are increasingly superfluous. As Artificial Intelligence becomes a viable alternative, that phenomenon will spread into management. How to make such a world habitable for the average citizen is an intellectual challenge of the highest order, and urgency. . . . - Jed
