In a rapidly changing world, the question of the very systems we have in place for productivity come into question. This is often a touchy subject with people, especially in the US, which prides itself on its long-established values and governmental processes. Though many of us are moderates politically, taking a long term view often makes things look radical in perspective.
In 1776, a guy named Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. If you went to high school or college in the US, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve read it. The Wealth of Nations was written by Smith as a criticism of mercantilism and for many marks the beginnings of free-market economics. In short, Smith wrote about the division and pricing of labor. In specializing in your work, everyone benefited. Instead of everyone in the factory simply making pins, for example, if each person specialized in a different part of the pin-making process, the factory would have a lot more pins made at the end of the day.1
Over time, the world became more and more specialized, and the free market raised the standard of living for many, going on to turn the US into an economic powerhouse in a fraction of the time it took other countries to come close. As we advanced technologically though, it became much easier to automate these types of specialized work. This narrow ability of machines to be really good at singular tasks is what’s helping kill factory jobs. But if you look at even the most complex tasks (building a car, for instance), you can pretty easily break them down into simple component parts. Machines are becoming so good at breaking tasks down, that further specialization is becoming more and more difficult. Data-driven machine learning is becoming more and more robust as we collect more and more information about the world around us at a compounding rate.
This is now putting even the most complex desk jobs at high risk because machines can now study us even without the advent of artificial general intelligence. The cost-saving opportunities automation presents are too good to pass up for companies of all sizes. Everyone from fast food workers to radiologists are susceptible. While innovation used to help our standard of living, it’s now putting it at risk. In 1998, there were a total of 194 billion hours worked in the US. While productivity increased by 42%, millions of new businesses were created and the population increased by 40 million, that number was still 194 billion in 2013, 15 years later.2 At the same time, wages for new university graduates has been declining over the past decade, while over 40% of new graduates are forced to take on jobs that don’t require a degree.3 4 I don’t buy that we’re suddenly lazy. Innovation in the information age is just different than anything we’ve experienced before.
Until tomorrow,
Alex
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Cosimo, 2007.
Sprague, Shawn. “What Can Labor Productivity Tell Us about the U.S. Economy?” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 29 May 2014, www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-productivity-tell-us-about-the-us-economy.htm.
Mishel, Lawrence. “The 10-Year Decline in Wages for Most College Graduates.” Economic Policy Institute, 3 Oct. 2012, www.epi.org/publication/10-year-decline-wages-college-graduates/.
Redden, Elizabeth. “41% Of Recent Grads Work in Jobs Not Requiring a Degree.” Inside Higher Ed, 18 Feb. 2020, www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/02/18/41-recent-grads-work-jobs-not-requiring-degree.