I remember when I was in teenager (a long time ago), hearing a pundit say, “If productivity gains continue, by the 1980s we’ll all be looking around for something to do.” That didn’t happen, of course, except it sort of did.
The factories of North America were mostly automated long ago. The computer revolution that Microsoft ushered in (“A computer on every desk and it every home.”) took awhile to increase the productivity in offices. I remember early PCs without hard drives and the early, feeble attempts to network them. But, in time, networked PCs happened and then the internet really changed our lives.
For most business functions, I think of doing accounting or analysis, or information processing, personal computers have made an amazing impact. An accounting department of 15 or twenty, doing things manually, can now be replaced by two or three people using computers.
Those productivity gains foreseen for the 1980s may have arrived late, but they arrived and more. Still, none of us are looking around for things to do. Probably because no one will pay us to do nothing but look around.
Of course, we never anticipated our materialism being seemingly without end. Who knew we needed a television in every room? Or a pocket computer/camera that, oh yeah, makes phone calls too? Or that one car per person isn’t enough? Or that I need hot yoga, with fashionable gear, followed up by avocado toast? Or all the other ‘necessities’ of modern life?
There are implications of this increased productivity other than consuming more stuff and services. In some industries, there seems to be much more competition. I’m thinking of news and entertainment. Rather than four television channels we have hundreds. With the news, we seem to have specialized news outlets for every purpose or view point, all while good journalism seems to have left the building. Thus, lots of ‘news’ but most of it is sensational junk food for our minds.
So, what happens when we experience the next giant productivity leap? I have in mind the subject of my blog in June about autonomous cars and the potential for a paradigm shift in our transportation systems. If it happens, the automobile fleet will decrease by 80 percent. Traditional auto manufacturers, parts suppliers and repair facilities will mostly go away. Professional drivers (taxis, Uber, trucks, buses) will be unemployed. It will take time but there will be a wholesale change in the number employed in transportation and related industries. And no one is going to pay them to look around for something to do.
Will we all just consume more goods and services? Will we just invent more stuff we can’t live without? Will healthcare absorb all those people needing jobs, caring for our unhealthy population? Capitalism is amazingly able to respond to changes in the economy. I’m a fan of free markets with government providing what is appropriate in terms of a level playing field and consumer safety.
But if productivity increases another 25 percent…what does that imply? More terrible journalism? A thousand channels of TV, all showing crap 24 hours a day? Lots more companies and people trying to sell us stuff constantly?
I wonder but I don’t know.
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