The constraints of a changing economic system. Thanks to technological development.

If you read the headlines in the daily press, you might think that robots are on the verge of taking all our jobs. It’s not even close to that. Depending on how you see it, “unfortunately” or “fortunately”. Nevertheless, the topic is a concern for employees, entrepreneurs and university professors alike.

The economic dilemma

The reasoning that many people use is simple: we have more and more machines that make our work easier and reduce the time required. This means that there are fewer jobs to be created. And since we are not getting fewer people, there are unemployed people ceteris paribus.

A conclusion that feels intuitively right, but does not take important points into account. Firstly, there is the fact that, on balance, new technology always leads to more work. This is ultimately due to the fact that we humans always exploit the new possibilities and that new technologies are combined with other new technologies and/or existing ones, increasing the number of possibilities exponentially.

The fact that this hunger for exploration and knowledge leads to more work becomes clear to anyone who has studied it in detail.

You have to imagine it as if there were tasks/work that had not yet been recognized. The new technologies build the bridge to feasibility in this process, so to speak. The moment we realize that something can be done, even if the challenges are enormous, we tackle it and from then on this task is on the list.

Take the self-driving car, for example. The idea that such a thing must exist is practically as old as the car itself. But as soon as the technological feasibility became foreseeable, many people started working on it. Feasibility, in turn, “accelerates” and increases the speed of development.

Work is not the same as a job

While it is quite clear that technological progress will create more work, the question of whether it will also generate more jobs remains open. This distinction between job and work is an enormously important one. Unfortunately, even some very highly decorated experts fail to see this.

Work in this context is, so to speak, a task that can be performed by a person or a machine. A job is the current definition of the conditions under which a person performs tasks for society.

The former is a factually/physically tangible thing. The job, on the other hand, is an invention – a belief system.

Two divergent developments

While the nature of work and tasks are subject to increasingly rapid change, the job has become more and more established in its universal form of application.

This had and still has many advantages for all of us: On balance, life became safer and much more comfortable. As a society, we could afford this because we benefited enormously from the growth in population and prosperity. In the phase of saturation, which we have definitely reached, we are increasingly confronted with a system that cannot continue to work in the foreseeable future.

For the time being, this is much less dramatic than we imagine. But we can really make it worse over the next few years.

 

“Most people wrongly assume that the economic system is a given, unchanging constant in dealing with future technologies. The opposite is true: adapting the economic system is the most stringent solution to almost all future economic and social challenges.”

 

An economy x.0

We make it worse if we stubbornly stick to our current economic system. On an intuitive level, this is a logical and clear thing. We have been socialized with today’s social capitalism. We know nothing else. It is the fundamental service bus on which our value exchange is based.

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this economic system will no longer be able to meet the demands of our future lives.

Anyone who says such things, and I do so deliberately, is quickly branded. Either as a “fantasist”, as someone who has no idea or, from the old-fashioned corner – as a “communist”.

If I may say so, this is a rather stupid approach to future economic problems. The majority of these problems arise precisely because the social and technological reality no longer matches the systemic.

Think of it as if you had a thermometer whose scale only went up to 20 degrees Celsius. Over time, the room temperature would rise to 30 degrees and everyone in the room would get rid of their sweaters and be happy with the new temperature. However, this temperature can no longer be displayed on the thermometer.

In this situation, it would never occur to anyone to cool the room and try to persuade people to put their woolen sweaters back on. No. They would get another thermometer or, if that were possible, simply adjust the temperature scale. After all, it’s just a scale. An invention we believe in. And something that, you might think, we can simply change.

Change what?

But it’s just not that simple. I think it is important that we first become aware of the need to adapt. And then bring about changes in the smallest possible iterations. Small changes are always relatively easy and painless for society.

I consider the change in our relationship to the job to be fundamental. I believe that linking time to pay is something we will soon have to give up.

Because in the work of the future, time spent no longer plays such an important role. We have to move away from the quantitative towards the qualitative. The machine will actually take over the quantitative aspects. Even in complex processes and tasks.

What remains are the qualitative, creative tasks. And these will increase with every technology. Just because we don’t know them yet, the tasks and work of tomorrow, doesn’t mean that they won’t be there. We just can’t imagine it yet. Just as we couldn’t imagine car mechanics in the 18th century or software testers in the 1970s.

Departure

What we need is an active role for politics and economics. If you read here often, you probably know how critical I am of economics as someone who has studied it. They, the economic sciences, bring us less and less value in this day and age. This is because old recipes and concepts are being preached.

If this discipline is anything to go by, then now is precisely the time to research models that will support our society economically in the future. The aim is to create a new conceptual operating system for the economy and, as if that weren’t difficult enough, to identify a corresponding migration path that will also find a majority among politicians.

And yes, of course, in a free, democratic and decentralized process.

It sounds completely impossible. And yes, it probably is impossible. Nevertheless, it is what needs to happen now if structural change is not to catch us as a Western society completely on the wrong foot.

Openly shaping change begins in the mind of each individual

As always, there is a lot you can do as an individual. In this case, you can be open to new concepts, flexible in terms of income and conditions. I don’t mean giving up social achievements or accepting losses.

It is enough, for example, to simply talk seriously with colleagues about the unconditional basic income. If you get involved in such discussions at all.

Because every active, liberal change begins in the mind. With the imagination. That is positive change. The counterpart to this starts with the mouth or the wallet and is damn painful because it is forced. Let’s not let it get that far.