Heady Times

What if I told you we will have the means to completely end poverty, worldwide, in the next 30 years. And along with it, end hunger, malnutrition, and their associated diseases. All without lowering anyone's standard of living. 

What if I told you we will have the means to end wealth inequality - and in doing so can end the disparities in health care, education, and opportunity, associated with it.

What if I told you we will have the ability for all people to live in the manner and at the standard of living of their choice, everywhere - wanting for nothing material? Or told you that we will have the means to equip scientific, exploration, engineering, and artistic endeavor with all that is needed, without regard to cost. 

What if I told you we will have the means to replace the focus in government from wealth and power, to actually governing and power. Or told you that we will have the means for people to focus on the attainment of knowledge and skill in science, music, the arts, and societal interaction - full time - rather than on survival, materialism, wealth, and consumerism. 

Crazy? A utopian futurist escaping the harshness of today’s world into fantasy? Well crazy remains to be seen. But an unrealistic utopian futurist’s fantasy - no.

But how? 

The answer is shockingly simple and eminently attainable in the next thirty years. It involves something we currently regard more as a threat, than as a species evolving godsend. 

Automation. 

Yep, rust belt causing, job costing, greed motivated, automation.

People have worried about the impact of automation on jobs and the economy for hundreds of years. Will everyone eventually be out of work because of it? Just look at the rust belt here in the midwest United States to witness first hand the harm automation can cause. 

But despite great worry and dire predictions ever since the invention of the printing press automation has created nearly as many jobs as it has displaced, to include the rust belt.

But the growth of automation is exponential and in our time is just starting to steepen its growth curve to dizzying rates, spreading at an ever increasing pace into the entire work environment - something we have never seen before. So, will this now finally end work? 

No, it will not. 

People are too curious and creative for work to ever end. But will it end jobs? Working mostly for money? Yes. Automation will fundamentally change how society views work, materialism, and survival. The 8-5pm grind, working at jobs people hate, working just to survive or just to maintain a certain standard of living, will end. Those are jobs - working mostly for money - and automation will end them. But work will always go on.

The more important question then becomes - how will advances in automation change society, not how will it change work. Automation is advancing at an ever-increasing rate, with the possibility looming of near complete automation of the service industry, transportation, manufacturing, food production, and power generation in the very near future. What will happen to ur economy as ,millions lose their jobs. And the logical conclusion of automations growth is the attainment of 'full automation' - where nearly all the material needs of society are met by autonomous machines. What then? If nearly no one has a job, what becomes of our economy? 

It is easy to see how the transition period from present day to full automation could destroy the world's economies as more and more people are displaced into unemployment at an ever faster rate.  How do we prevent the move to full automation from harming society as we struggle to keep up. 

In the next 5-10 years 5 million drivers, just in the USA, will lose their jobs to autonomous vehicles. That is 3% of the total USA workforce. And where it is true that the autonomous vehicle industry may create jobs for some of these drivers, eventually even those jobs will be lost to automation. Shortly thereafter advances in artificial intelligence will spell the demise of many of the jobs in the service industry, in manufacturing, product distribution, and on and on. This will extend even into the professions - doctors, lawyers, and engineers - Oh my who are we to marry now? 

So, what’s the plan? I mean we all know it’s coming, and it’s not very far in the future. Automation is more efficient and allows for greater profit so it's not stopping. Are we ready? 

Nope, not even a little.

Automation represents as big an existential threat to society as global warming and nuclear war, and just as with the latter two, we have no real plan. 5-10 years to witness autonomous vehicles, ships, perhaps airplanes and all the subsequent job loss is not a very long time. And with exponential growth in artificial intelligence and robotics, full automation could be upon us in as little as 30-50 years. If we are to adapt - planning must begin now.

To work towards solutions to this threat, we must first understand what we are dealing with - what full automation will look like. 

Full automation will employ subterranean machines that gather and refine raw materials, process them into parts and finished product, and then distribute them – all without human intervention. Operated and maintained by artificial intelligence (AI) and AI directed self-repair apparatus, these machines will make our homes, clothing, transportation, energy, toys, food, medicines – everything - without human intervention. Self-repairing machines with their own raw materials and energy sources that produce all the necessities of high-quality life for every human on earth. And since there is no need for human intervention of any kind these products can be provided at no cost. Free. Free? But what about the owners of the resources and the machines, you need to pay them, don’t you? Maybe a one-time payment by world societies as a whole at the beginning. But ongoing payment? Not if their every material need is already being met by these same machines. What are they going to spend their money on? Perhaps you pay them in a different form of currency – say political power, a Rembrandt or three, who knows? Well, I hope not, but my house, car, clothing, heat, light, food, on and on are will all be provided free of charge, regardless. If most of the jobs are taken, how would I pay them anyway? 

More importantly with full automation people worldwide would be lifted from poverty, famine, and given the resources for proper education and healthcare. There would be a cultural shift away from materialism and mere survival to self-fulfillment, exploration, discovery, and artistic expression. 

Clearly full automation has utopian qualities to it. But it's the getting from here to there that represents one of the greatest existential threats to humankind, ever. It involves the progressive displacement of the human workforce, and an evolutionary shift in people's minds away from money, materialism, wealth, and basic survival as the basis of self-worth. So, how do we keep full automation from destroying us? And once attained, what will people all day do if they can’t keep their noses to the grind wheel just to survive?

The answer to the second question is more easily answered. Just turn to scientists, artists, musicians, philanthropists, volunteers, and all the people today who work to discover, create, express themselves, or try to make this a better world. It will take no more than two generations for people to adopt from a world focused on survival and materialism, to a world of education and knowledge, exploration, discovery, artistic expression, and commitment to family. Imagine a child born into such a world, where parents and educators have unlimited resource to help with the child's education and the shaping of her talents and interests. A world where 8-5 jobs that are hated and worked solely to survive would be ancient history - as the child asks - how did they stand it?

So how do we get there safely? It helps to remember that getting there is going to occur whether we plan for it or not. Such is the nature of profit and greed. Either we have rapid job replacement with economic destruction, or we plan well in advance and adapt.

Our first step to full automation involves embracing it as a common goal worldwide. Make it the entire world’s ‘land a man on the moon in a decade’ unified effort - to end hunger, poverty, most communicable diseases while enhancing education, knowledge, and self-expression. Millions of people and their governments, along with trillions of dollars worldwide, are then committed to developing full automation over the next 30 years in a manner that does not destroy us along the way. A herculean effort many will say can't be done, exactly as they said of landing a person on the moon in the 1960's.

We would create an international automation administration - IAA - to bring worldwide resources and expertise together with the common mission of attaining complete automation and freedom from material constraint for all mankind, within the next 30 years. Expediting automation while transitioning as painlessly away from materialism as possible, it's mission.

Ten years from now 33 million drivers in the USA will be out of work. The IAA will then subsidize their training and salaries for jobs in the automation industry, paying them at least what they were earning as drivers. When the next great wave of automation strikes - say the global distribution of material goods – planes, ships, trains – those people will also be trained and hired into the automation industry. This in effect would maintain world economies while accelerating the effort to full automation. 

There then comes a point where further advancements in automation are put in place but are deliberately kept offline as more and more people are retrained and hired into the automation industry until such a day where the entire world’s material needs can be produced autonomously by machines. This is done to protect the health of world economies in the interim. But once ready to come fully online we throw the switch – at once ending poverty, unequal wealth distribution, famine, and all their associated problems - evolving as a species past materialism and working to survive, to working to self-enlighten, discover, explore, self-express, help, and thrive. 

Money, if it even continues exist, will take on a new form based mostly in barter, trading for art and unique antiquities as example. Politics becomes politics minus money, in other words unrecognizable but I suspect just as obnoxious. Human constructs such as prestige, religion, power, status, will remain at their essence, unchanged. 

Full automation then utopian in many respects, but the world still recognizable and flawed. Nevertheless, the onset of full automation will represent the greatest social evolutionary leap since humans moved past small nomadic clans to city states - if only we do it right.