Job destruction: the business of scaremongering

It is actually undisputed among experts: Technological progress creates more jobs on balance than it destroys. And yet you can find article headlines in all established media suggesting that millions of jobs will be lost. This is despite the fact that experts usually make contradictory statements in the same article. Apparently, panic sells better than a spirit of optimism. But this is exactly what we urgently need in the discussion about the work of tomorrow.

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Examples

There are numerous examples of such scaremongering. I’ll pick out three.

Interview with Erik Brynjolfsson in the NZZ of 09.01.2016. Title: “Millions of jobs are disappearing”. Statement in the interview by Brynjolfsson: “But it must also be emphasized just as strongly that we will probably also create tens of millions of new jobs. This is a historical pattern.”

Article about Klaus Schwab, Director of the WEF, in Blick (the Swiss newspaper Bild) from 18.01.2016 “Fourth industrial revolution costs five million jobs” However, the article states that 2 million new jobs would also be created. Furthermore, the “mentioned” study by the WEF turns out to be a relatively simple survey in which the participants state that compensation will take place.

Interview with Thimotheus Höttges in Die Zeit from 30.12.2015. The first sentence in the (incredibly unfortunate) outline reads: “The Telekom boss expects fewer jobs as a result of digitalization.” In the interview, however, the answers are completely different: “Perhaps a look at the history books will help: the stocking knitting machine was fought against by the English queen in the 16th century because people were afraid of mass unemployment. From looms to steam engines, everything was said to be the devil’s work. However, industrial quantum leaps have always had a positive effect on employment.”

More jobs – why?

You don’t need to be an expert to recognize that technological progress will create more work in the medium term. As Brynjolfsson says, this is a historical pattern. The reason for this is quite simple: new technology creates new opportunities. New opportunities create new needs and problems, and new needs and problems create new work. Play it out, you’ll keep coming back to it. As long as we create more new opportunities through technology than we solve existing problems, there will be more work.

It goes without saying that the work will not remain the same. Our society has a problem with this because it has not yet been able to develop a truly intergenerational perception (generally longer lives and accelerated technological development will make this much easier for future generations). There is knowledge of changes in the past. But there is no daily awareness. And logically, there is therefore no anticipation of the future.

Because we only know theoretically (from history books) that a significant number of jobs have disappeared in the last 100 years, we find it difficult to imagine that the majority of today’s professions will also be gone in 100 years’ time. Or at least we perceive it as an enormous threat. The fact that the coachman or farrier will no longer exist doesn’t really matter to us.

And please don’t tell me that the bottom line is that more jobs may have been lost in the last 500 years. A head calculation of the simplest kind with the variables of population figures, annual working hours and income shows that an enormous number of jobs have been created, with dramatically improved working conditions.

The wrong signal

If I want to sell something, fear is the most effective tool. It is probably due to this simple truth that the media are increasingly headlining their articles on digital change with these scare stories. There is a click war out there.

But if you consider that these first impressions remain with most people, I think this is doing enormous damage. Because it fuels society’s defensive attitude towards change. A change, nota bene, that cannot be stopped by humans because it is nothing other than human.

Social upheaval

Never before in the history of the Western world, because that is what we are talking about, has an imminent fundamental change been so foreseeable. For the first time, we have the opportunity to actively shape these changes in society.

However, this is only possible if politicians, entrepreneurs and citizens move forward. Towards each other.

“Everyone – politicians, entrepreneurs and employees – must make short-term sacrifices in order to achieve medium-term gains.

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That may be hard, because it may mean losing things that everyone has grown fond of. In favor of something new, something previously unknown. However, the fact that it is worth it is also evident when we look back: who wants to live in a world like the one 50 years ago? Nobody does.

We don’t need to worry, we need to get to work!

I am not particularly optimistic that we will seize this opportunity to actively shape change. The fronts seem too hardened to me. Entrepreneurs and employees want to blame politicians, who are supposed to maintain the status quo for as long as possible with subsidies and regulation. Politicians, on the other hand, see entrepreneurs as having a duty. One can only hope that after a phase of “storming”, the players will get their act together and develop concepts for change that are as holistic as possible.

Because nothing is worse than artificially maintaining a status quo for a long time, only to reach a point where restructuring is unavoidable. And then, because it has built up, really dramatic changes happen in a short space of time. We can cope relatively well with the slow, orderly decline of “outdated” professions and industries. Abrupt, drastic changes lead to the greatest possible problems at every level.

It would therefore behove us all to discuss and report on the changes and challenges in a differentiated manner. This will prevent the formation of fronts and thus minimize the effort that change demands of us in the long term. The media are not doing us any service right now with their sensationalist articles.

This article originally appeared in January 16 as part of my “Transformed!” column on t3n.