We are soon approaching a point in history in which an inherent contradiction (not criticism) of capitalism may reveal itself. While the market is eternally driven to “economize” (maximize profit) through the reduction of human labor (jobs), the typical western, capitalist government (since the early 20th century) is committed to ensuring an adequate labor supply, a compliant labor force, and a steady consumer base for economic stability and growth. Yet perhaps, equipped with artificial intelligence, we are nearing a point in which the scales will tip in favor of the former.
As technology becomes more efficient than human labor in many tasks, companies are continuing to adopt it in order to reduce costs and maximize productivity and profit. This technological disruption is already outpacing government efforts to intervene, spend, stimulate, and create human jobs where human jobs simply aren’t needed or wanted. Or, perhaps citizens will demand fiscal responsibility rather than accepting continued spending and stimulation given the state of the national debt. The result, as Henry Ford noted long ago when developing and adopting similarly disruptive technologies, will be a choice between “unemployment or leisure.”
The last time this occurred on a grand scale, the technological unemployment stemmed from the efficiencies gained from Industrial Revolution and the resulting “overproduction” and “market saturation” and (partially) led us into the Great Depression. But rather than heeding Ford’s and others’ advice on the inevitable choice between “unemployment or leisure,” we forged a new path: “Full-Time, Full Employment” for all, at the expense of the government, even when creating a fiscal deficit. Keynesian economics and the New Deal were born.
Yet some economists, philosophers and political thinkers argued that even if we had chosen “leisure” nearly a century ago, we would not have been ready as a result of the modern work ethic and “spirit of capitalism.” Hannah Arendt wrote about the “modern glorification of labor.” Joseph Pieper discussed the new “world of total work.” Jacques Ellul termed the “new ideology of work.” And Robert Hutchins, comparing our obsession with work to a new religion, spoke of our new “Salvation by Work.” Even today, writers such as Derek Thompson for The Atlantic have coined new terms such as “workism” to describe the cult of overwork coinciding with the reduction of religious participation. In fact, work now provides many with unconscious answers to the “existential questions” once consciously addressed by religion: identity, purpose, meaning, salvation, and social responsibility.
As the historian Benjamin Hunnicutt notes, “no other people in history has valued work as we moderns do, as an end in itself; no other civilization envisioned nothing better for future generations than enough work to fill the majority of people’ lives.”[1]
Although the rise of technology, capitalism, and work has resulted in an expansion of economic growth and standard of living unseen in world history, it also resulted in a loss in “the old arts of living” and the creation of the one-dimensional human: people with no knowledge, skills, or abilities outside of their paid labor, no ability to intrinsically fill their free time with anything meaningful for its own sake, or no free time to begin with as a result of steadily increasing commuting time, work hours, and technological avenues for this work to seep into our homes. More and more people have simply stopped having “a life” outside of their paid employment.
This, by and large, is “the leisure problem.” What is the point of progress and productivity if we are losing the knowledge, skills, and abilities to reap human value out of the dividends? The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted and acknowledged the pain a transition away from work, to leisure, might cause.
The economic problem is not—if we look into the future—the permanent problem of the human race…If the economic problem is solved mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose…I think with dread of the readjustment of the habits and instincts of the ordinary man…for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably well…It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself.
To many philosophers, writers, and political thinkers, this embodied the natural progression of freedom in America. Walt Whitman, for example, maintained that the American story of freedom would unfold in three “stages.” First would come political freedom, or the gradual spread of human rights in a constitutional democracy, rule of law, and the freeing of humans from oppression and tyranny. Second would be economic freedom, or the material prosperity that might free humans from the “slavery of material want.” And the third phase, the most important and most challenging, would be that of “Higher Progress,” or the freedom to “uncover experiences and conditions that are their own reward.” Hutchins described this phase, 60 years later, as the “personal or human good,” the freedom to “achieve the limit of our moral, intellectual, and spiritual powers” for their own sake, on our own time, outside the market-based system of economic justification or reward.
This third phase of freedom, the phase in which we are free to choose active, challenging, time-consuming and often time-warping pursuits for their own sake rather than for economic reward or reputation, is incredibly challenging because a glorification and almost religious devotion to work is required to accomplish the second phase. In the process of achieving levels of prosperity that should free us from material want, we often lose sight and knowledge of the ways of living for which this form and phase of freedom was sought in the first place.
Most people, in addition to losing their traditional day-to-day purpose, direction, and structure, will be at a loss as to how to occupy themselves and their time. Many of our talents and skills are by and large work-related and economically motivated. For most of us, non-pecuniary skills such as art, music, or sport mostly fade into irrelevance as we get older and the time to remain committed becomes more and more elusive. Others may give in to less virtuous temptations such as alcoholism and drugs, what the Character Strengths and Virtues handbook describes as “what is darkest within us,” whereas others might waste away in terminal boredom, scrolling away our increasingly limited pockets of free time.
And so, with no other options, no reasonable alternatives to occupy our time, this “society of laborers without labor” will go on laboring.
—
But perhaps a turning point has been reached. As Keynes also noted, “a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these [absolute needs] are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.”
One important indicator is the advent of the “experience economy.” Simply put, we are reaching a point in which many consumers prefer to purchase “experiences” rather than “products.” People prefer to give and receive “time” via experiences rather than money via products. Or, in employment arrangements and/or contracts, employees are seeking “raises” in their flexibility, hours, and work-life balance rather than their income.
Millennials – those born between 1980 and 1996 – are especially experience-driven. According to polls conducted by Harris, three out of four prefer to buy experiences rather than things. Simultaneously, the supremacy of work is fading across many age groups, as many modern jobs, quite frankly, are “bull___”.[2] A 2015 Gallop poll found 70% of US employees to be not “involved in, enthusiastic about or committed to their work.” In short, more and more Americans seem to be finding purpose, meaning and identity outside the confines of their paid employment.
The AI Dividend
So the questions remain:
What is the purpose of ever-increasing productivity if we never compensate ourselves with the time to reap the rewards?
And if that time does come back to us, what’s the point if we no longer possess the “old arts of living” intended to give meaning to the time saved?
These questions, and others, will inform the next set of posts, hopefully with some proposed solutions.
[1] Hunnicutt, The Age of Experiences
[2] David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs.
Great article chappy