A very good question was asked of a panel by a retired EY partner now teaching at a US university at the conference I was at in the USA last week. He made three points when looking at the financial projections of those talking about the trajectory of the US deficit.
The first was that we may be on the cusp of a medical break through. 3D printing of spare parts for the human anatomy at low cost coupled with other likely breakthroughs in cancer and in low cost disease prediction now make it very likely that human life expectancy may increase considerably. Twenty years is at least possible.
Second, there is much discussion in some quarters of the impact of technology on jobs. This is from the European Trade Union Institute and is drawn from well researched sources:
No one was taking this into account in their forecasts.
So, third, Richard G Larsen asked, what does this do for any forecasts except suggest that extrapolation from current experience os of almost no use at all?
Now, I admit to being guilty here. I often say there is little evidence of the impact of the likely effect of the next round of new technologies on people's lives, and I do so for good reason. That good reason is that I continue to assume that the changes will be beneficial, because that is the way that most have been perceived to date if we ignore the externalities that they have given rise to - which too many find it too easy to do. But what if the next round of change is not of this type at all? What if it is, as the above figure suggests, deeply disruptive of labour whilst also being relatively cheap in capital expenditure terms whilst accumulating considerable returns nonetheless? What then?
I admit that this occurred to me to be a deeply relevant question for the Brexit debate. The question to be asked is whether or not Brexit provides us with three things. The first is greater capacity to deal with changes such as these, if they are forthcoming. The second is whether it might provide greater resilience in the face of such change. And the last is whether Brexit might enhance our chance of reacting communally to the impact of what is to come.
In this context I presume capacity is a technical issue. If change is to happen there is a good argument that the UK might wish to be a part of it. We have already seen the tax stresses of, for example, having to pay US IT company subsidiaries located in tax havens for the use of technology. Is the real stress arising from that something that we would be wise to avoid by having technology developed and taxed here in the UK? I think so. But will Brexit let us, acting in isolation and without the benefit of proven trade treaty benefits for a considerable period, increase the chance of that development happening here in the UK? I doubt it.
So what of resilience? By this I mean our capacity to adapt to this change if it is to happen. I stress that adaption is both technical and social: here I am dealing with the technical aspect. By this I mean can we put in place the mechanisms to handle the consequences of change? These would include the need to tax the enormously increased returns to capital that would be earned in this country even if the legal ownership was elsewhere; the need to address the massively increased inequality in society that these changes could result in unless addressed appropriately by way of, for example, a universal income, and the need to reduce the free flow of capital to avoid taxation of capital that would otherwise undermine the capacity to reclaim tax from the economy. Here I have to admit that at present Brexit looks like it would help. The EU was built on the basis of a model of capitalism that has already been proven to be long outdated and inappropriate for twenty first century need but it is showing little capacity for change. It is not hard in that case to suggest that Brexit offers opportunity that remaining does not.
And what of social consequnces, the communal element to all this? Do we in the UK have sufficient sense in isolation, in our class and wealth divided society, built as it is on the notion of the entitlement of privilege, to overcome the enormous divisions in society that these changes could give rise to in a fashion that delivers rapid redistribution of the resulting income and gains so that all might continue to flourish in new ways despite the massive changes in the mechanisms of production that might take place? Might we as a socity in particular embrace the need for a much bigger government sector dedicated to meeting caring and educational as well as social need that will inevitably arise as a result of these changes?
I don't know the UK could do that alone: there are certainly strong forces lined up to oppose it. Would we better in that case working with others? My instinct is yes, we would be.
But what I make clear is that I do think these are Brexit questions. But as you can tell the answers are not clear.
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Tricky, but I’d offset the predicted life-expectancy gains from (the always just around the corner) breakthroughs in cancer treatments and transplant technologies against the likelihood that one of the externalities that you may have had in mind renders those advantages irrelevant.
The potentially catastrophic effect of Antimicrobial Resistant (AMR) infections is a huge externality of the global farming and pharma industries that I’m not sure our Governments or the EU are doing enough to protect us against.
Again it would be good to be in a position to help strengthen our defences on a supra-national level, and I hope we are, but the UK’s history as far as this kind of thing goes (see the continued use of neonicotinoids) is not promising.
I accept the possibility of countervailing trends
Re extending life expectancy – unless there is also a cure for dementia then a great increase in the numbers living with dementia needing care is not positive.
Re technology: – if the response ( hopefully) would be a universal income for all citizens; if this didn’t happen at the very least across the whole of the EU then the need to be able to manage UK borders / free movement of people might well be needed – which would support Brexit. (not that I have to date.)
Well, it looks to me to be another argument for a pan-European citizen’s income.
With falling wages and more technology / less jobs, how is the economy going to work?
If the ownership of land and capital was spread much more evenly across the population as a whole (of a country, a continent, a world) the issue of the value and availability of labour would be far less problematic.
As it stands today, technological advances have always been devastating for many people while hugely beneficial to an often smaller number of others. That makes no sense for the successful progress of society as a whole, we should of course all welcome technological changes for peaceful purposes at least.
And yet you cannot blame the Luddites of this world because it is their lives, their families, their futures which will be devastated, while the owners of the successful technology will be rewarded with huge riches.
Herein I believe lies much of the anger and frustration at today’s multinationals, in the same way as the wealthy elite, large corporations and landowners of all previous generations were held to blame for the devastating social changes caused by land clearances, famines, industrialisation, environmental pollution, poverty etc…
So ownership of land and capital is the issue – as it has always been.
I can see a world in the not too distant future where for example:
– most commercial vehicle drivers will be obsolete
– most simple repetitive manual and mental tasks will have been fully automated
– most human activities will have been financialised and owned by mega corporations (at the expense of nation states and wider public ownership)
– and most people will be wondering how to make more than a meagre existence living and provide for themselves, their families and their future.
In a world of 10+ billion people, that’s either a world with huge debt and violence problems or one where land and capital has been divided much more equally. I don’t see a middle ground, middle class, mixed economy type solution on the horizon anymore.
Perhaps I’m just an old pessimist, but it strikes me we are bumping up against some walls at the moment that capitalism doesn’t have the capability to build a doorway for us all to get through them safely and securely.
Wholeheartedly agree with that conclusion
I think an oncoming age of Post Scarcity Anarchism ought to pretty good on the whole. The problems of success are easier to deal with than the problems of failure.
“The future arrived already: the problem is that it’s unevenly distributed”
Science fiction fans will recognise the quote.
You are right to worry about automation and the future; but you would do well to reflect on the present state of manufacturing – those jobs weren’t automated, they were exported to China; and the distributional effects are identical, in our unequal society, already.
What’s changing is that automation is encroaching on jobs that cannot be exported.
Autonomous vehicles will probably be on the public highway in five years’ time, and definitely in ten: that’s a huge tranche of local human labour superseded.
In two years’ time, an autonomous 3-D printer will begin constructing a footbridge across a canal in Amsterdam. It won’t look like the ‘fab you’ll have at home: it’s larger, it prints steel, and the environmental constraints include ‘thrown beer bottles from drunken passers-by’.
When it’s deployed over here, those environmental constraints will probably include flying bricks and determined poking with a scaffolding pole: I’ll let you gess why, and by whom.
So yes, you are right to look at the economic and social problems now because, to quote another science author, the future’s arrived already and it’s all in the wrong order.
As for medicine and futurism, I’ll pay attention when I hear that I can live as a forty-five year old when I’m eighty five; right now, all I’m hearing is cancer management – not cures! – and the prospect of living as a frail and declining eighty-five year old into my second century.
The idea that we are going to run out of jobs for people to do is fanciful. I don’t fancy being tended by a robot when I’m in my dotage – the demand for care services is woefully unfulfilled. Nor do I relish watching a ballet choreographed and performed by robots. With policies for full employment and short statutory working hours we should be able to welcome the opportunity for enjoyable leisure activities. But if we want excellent public goods and services there is no need or possibility of a meaningful UBI.
There will be jobs
But paying for them will be an issue
Care for the elderly, young and infirm should be a public service because that is the most efficient way of providing it.
I rather fancy that, given the advance of radical and inhuman politics, the question will not be who looks after the elderly/sick/disabled, but how to ensure their lack of survival.
This present government is doing quite well.
This from The Torygraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/12158930/Biggest-annual-rise-in-deaths-for-almost-fifty-years-prompts-warnings-of-crisis-in-elderly-care.html
And:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34074557
Well on the way to solving both care of the elderly, and lowering benefit claims.