The theory of employment in a robot-dominated world is barely out of the bassinet. There are quite literally endless news articles, every day, on the arrival of the robots in the workplace, far beyond the cute Japanese robots and human-like receptionists. The main problem, however, is the employment culture, not the robots. El Cheapo employment, Fiverr’s pathetic pay for writers, Spotify’s princely part of a cent for streaming, you name it, devaluing human work and paying peanuts is now the norm.
Robots, according to the theory, will simply provide the cheapskates with new toys. The whole idea of robots as an antidote to those pesky “employees” and “customers” is a major incentive for development. Robots don’t need workplace amenities, health care, pensions, etc. It’s a bean-counter’s dream.
That’s true, to a point. Not all professions, however, are affected in the same way. New theories have gone so far as to identify robot-proof professions, including the arts, health, design, and other talent-based work. The other, much less impressive and not very workable, theory is the “service-based economy”, i.e. a planet full of waiters.
CEOs and executives, wrongly, are considered to be immune, largely because they’re unlikely to put themselves out of work. They can, however, be detached by software and the dashboard approach to management. You don’t need a manager to spend 3 weeks preparing a report you can get for yourself in 3 minutes. Software is a form of robotics, in practice, when applied to these roles. MYOB could decimate the exec population with a few extra functions, in theory.
In the midst of all this doom is an ironic, but appropriate fact or several:
1. Turning humans in to corporate robots has been a complete disaster. A world full of personality-free zombies is a world of dysfunction, barely literate incomprehension, and lousy reactions to serious problems. Real robots actually do their jobs, rather than enact some maniacal interpretation of corporate whims and management science babble.
2. A lot of jobs go nowhere, very slowly, and drag careers to a penny-pinching oblivion. Not being employed as a vegetable in some “job” may be the best thing that’s happened to some people.
3. Turning people in to mere bill-paying machines has essentially killed civilization and demotivated the human species. The world lives in a subsistence-level coma, with the only variations according to income.
4. The whole global employment market is totally obsolete in its traditional form. You can do business around the world with a phone, not a huge building, mindless commuting and expensive offices. You can have multiple income streams, rather than being nailed to a single source. Generation Y is quite right to disbelieve every ancient, creaking myth about “hard work equals success”, particularly in a totally dishonest culture. Jobs now last a few years, not decades. Income doesn’t miraculously appear out of nowhere, either.
Robots are simply part of enforcing this emerging human reality. They’re more conspicuous, but the entire old employment paradigm is already a fossil. They’re just burying it. It’s amazing to watch so many greedy corporate dinosaurs continuing to lug around this overpriced farce of a commercial environment, in the face of so many facts which say it’s utterly nonsensical to do business like that. The current job market is now a remake of the Flintstones, without the laughs.
The good side — Much less obvious, much more human
When the robots come, they’ll obliterate the entire working dynamics of the present job market. Like robot warehouses and online sales, they’ll achieve more, reduce costs for consumers, and improve efficiencies.
That’s where the good news starts:
*Most people would be far more productive, happier, and living in much healthier mental and physical environments than trapped in offices with stir-crazy, talent-hating nutcases.
*People work better when they can apply skills. The average corporate job is basically a straitjacket for skills, with very limited chances to really shine and perform, and in an often hostile, everyone-in-everyone-else’s-face, nasty environment.
*Dumb work, at whatever level, is a major consumer of time and effort in most jobs. It’s a waste of skills by definition. Robots will take away these limitations; imagine being able to focus on the really exciting stuff, rather than wading through spreadsheets and meetings.
*Freeing up minds, souls, and talents has a lot going for it. Busy people can be inflicted with any insane absurdity in the old environments, and have to wear it. Those able to think can tell it where to go. That one factor alone could reboot humanity.
*Imagine doing something you like doing where you can really perform well without the economic sabotage and financial hernias of this “world”. Think people could be persuaded to try that?
*More to the point – Human beings with real lives, not job-chimps with chicken coop existences, are a lot more demanding and assertive. The tides of economic, political and corporate BS which ooze through the world will get very short shrift from people who don’t have to put up with it.
Utopia, it won’t be, quite, for a while. Robots will take a while to introduce. The human-hating Puritan scum who refuse to consider any improvements in human life, lizard-like management dogma-worshippers and other evolutionary regressives will fight it.
They’ll lose, like they lost every other fight against real human progress in the past, but they’ll obstruct as long as they can. Ultimately, the cost factors and much higher efficiencies will kill any obstruction. It’s just a question of how long it takes for someone to look at the numbers.
The robots will also overtake and generate further improvements, simply by technological inertia. They’re evolving continuously through cognitive computing, better materials, nano tech, etc. in to whole new species which aren’t even ideas yet.
It’s amusing to think that robots, the great blow against the working poor, aka everyone, will solve poverty, boredom, and lack of opportunities. Say goodbye to the Verminocracy, and good riddance.
