WHY THE JOBS ARE DISAPPEARING
Human labor is becoming less necessary
At a time when so many of us are unemployed or underemployed it sounds pessimistic to assert that the trend will continue. But while I believe that we will in fact continue to see the demand for jobs far outstripping the supply, I’m hopeful that this may serve as the catalyst for a great and positive change.
The idea that an absence of work should be a source of suffering only makes sense in the context of an organizational system designed for getting by in a world characterized by scarcity. By contrast, in a world of abundance it is the suffering created by work that makes no sense.
Why the work is going away
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. - Buckminster Fuller
There is much debate about how the radical changes our society is experiencing will affect employment. But there is one persistent force which convinces me that we will continue to see an elimination of jobs. It has to do with the algorithmic nature of most of our tasks. As Daniel Pink puts it in “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us“:
Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: ‘algorithmic’ and ‘heuristic.’ An algorithmic task is one in which you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion. That is, there’s an algorithm for solving it. A heuristic task is the opposite. Precisely because no algorithm exists for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution. Working as a grocery checkout clerk is mostly algorithmic. You do pretty much the same thing over and over in a certain way. Creating an ad campaign is mostly heuristic. You have to come up with something new.
Pink’s book focuses on the need for a more evolved system of motivation to elicit high quality work from people performing heuristic tasks. But let’s set aside the topic of heuristic work for a moment and delve deeper into algorithmic work.
Any algorithmic task is subject to automation. The example sited by Pink in the quote above is that of a grocery checkout clerk — a job that has already begun to shift from humans to machines.
If you begin to apply the label of algorithmic versus heuristic to everything you do, you may be surprised at how much of it is the former. Granted, the task may require an extremely complicated algorithm, but an algorithm nonetheless. Even a task as complicated and variable as driving an automobile through an uncontrolled and dynamic environment is fundamentally an algorithmic task which can and is being automated.
Think about how many of your work tasks you already know how to handle, but you’re just waiting for the necessary input to determine your next response. It’s even possible that those tasks were once heuristic, but once you figured out a solution for it every subsequent occurrence of it became algorithmic. Is your job really so special as to be impervious to the encroachment of automation?
The jobs that are most obviously eliminated are those that are purely algorithmic and less complex. The Golden Gate Bridge no longer has tollbooth attendants, yet every southbound vehicle still pays a toll, even if their drivers never enrolled in any toll-expediting program.
Where there is a mixture of algorithmic and heuristic tasks, the elimination of jobs is a more subtle process and generally takes the form of the shifting of responsibilities. As the procedure for a task becomes defined and portions of it are automated (via software or robot-enabled computer) the task occupies less or none of the worker’s time. The newly-available time is now devoted to another task, which may in turn become automated as well. Multiple positions merge into one, new hires become unnecessary. A job consisting of 35 hours of algorithmic tasks and 5 hours of heuristic tasks per week becomes a 5 hour add-on for another employee and a pink slip for the original employee.
While the technology to automate all algorithmic processes does not yet exist, we leverage each new technological advancement to create ever-more complex and powerful systems, leading to exponential advancement. This process, writ large, means that all but the most persistently heuristic of endeavors will be taken away from humans.
This is a good thing
Will there be enough remaining heuristic pursuits to keep every man and woman of working age busy for 40 hours a week while also generating financial profit? I certainly believe that there is enough to be done to keep us all active — the world is an endlessly fascinating thing — but very little of it is so necessary that we should compel ourselves to do it by means of some contrived system driven by manufactured needs.
Rather, we should create for ourselves the opportunity to engage in these heuristic tasks as a form of play, of liberated indulgence in the things that make us most human such as our curiosity, creativity, and capacity to love. The disappearance of compulsory work can and should be a truly wonderful thing for our species. We just need to find a better way to organize ourselves to let it happen.
A future post will look at a method for modifying our economic system from one in which the absence of work is a problem into a more rational one based on our ever-increasing abundance.
