The New Economy: Humans Need Not Apply

What effects does advanced technology and automation have on society and the economy? The new economy is “survival of the fittest” on steroids, and this evolution is accelerating at an unprecedented pace.

Recent advances in technology have already pushed us past the Rubicon. As we integrate this new tech, we’re going to eliminate multiple categories of jobs. Winter is coming, and it can’t be stopped.

This is going to create tremendous pressure on the “powers that be” to produce a new model of employment and social enterprise, the like and scale of which will be unprecedented.

See, there’s this simple and inconvenient rule of economics: advanced technology lifts the bar for productive employment.

For the first time in human history, we’re now approaching an age in our developed economies where we can adequately supply demand without full human employment.

This means that even if the development of new technology ceased today, a full integration of existing technologies would still cut millions of US jobs. Small businesses employ over half of US workers. Many of those jobs could be minimized or removed tomorrow.

Let’s say you own a restaurant. Implementing basic things like on-table tablets and an analytic dispatch systems would allow you to replace wait-staff and rotate the remainder far more efficiently (cutting their hours).

And that isn’t even considering what next-gen technology is going to do.

• 3D-printing is getting better and cheaper. (It would be hard to overstate its future impact on the retail/logistics/transportation industries.)
• Driverless cars are now a proven technology. When you factor in Uber, chauffeurs, taxi-drivers, and car-rental clerks are all endangered.
• MOOCs and other alternatives are continuing to poach students from high-cost universities. This means fewer tenured positions and heavy cuts to well-paid admin staff.
• Robotics is getting very, very good. Advanced models are already being used as support workers for the elderly in some countries.
• Nanotechnology and related improvements in medicine mean that people are going to live longer and retire later.

A growing number of what were once middle-class jobs are now at an incredibly high risk of extinction. Source: