Charles Hugh Smith: Fixing The Way We Work
Charles Hugh Smith returns to the podcast this week to discuss the theme of his new book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All.
Automation and artificial intelligence are changing the landscape of work. Tens of millions of jobs are on track to be eliminated over the next decade or so by these advancing technological innovations in the US alone.
The way in which our current economy is constructed, the fruits of those cost savings are likely to go into a very small number of private pockets, while the millions of displaced workers will find themselves with no income and no work to do. It’s a huge looming problem that is not being address in national dialog right now.
But there’s opportunity to course-correct here. To use our new technologies to increase total productivity in a way that empowers rather than diminishes the individual worker.
What if we could hit the reset button on the way we create money, work, commerce and community?
This is not an idle question, for technology now enables us to hit that reset button and organize the creation of money, work, commerce and community in new ways. If we could start from scratch, what would a new system look like?
To answer that, we must understand why the current system is failing. The current system is based on five principles that are assumed to be true:
- Money created by banks trickles down to create work for all
- Technology creates more jobs than automation destroys
- Centralization is the solution to large-scale economic problems
- Expanding debt and consumption (i.e. growth) is the path to prosperity
- Maximizing private gain organizes the economy to the benefit of all
All five have proven to be untrue. No wonder inequality is rising and opportunity is declining. Clearly, we need a new system that offers what the current system cannot: meaningful work for all.
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