Technological change and future of work

Sir, – It is almost 10 years since the great economic crash and we appear to have learned nothing. We are reaching the crest of another boom which, when it collapses, will have far greater consequences than that of 2008.

This new economic situation is very different from the old. Instead of inability to ever produce enough, which necessitated constant need to “grow” and produce more, modern technology can, unless restrained, grossly overproduce, causing enormous problems of market oversupply and obscene waste. Furthermore, this ability to produce like never before is achieved by new digitally controlled automation, which eliminates need for human labour on an unprecedented scale.

Old technology excelled in doing so for more than two centuries but computerisation has ushered in an entirely different situation.

Not alone is automation much better, it is much more affordable in replacing even individual employment. The scramble for jobs is just beginning; over the next decade it will intensify with no-holds-barred attempts by economies, even friendly ones, to sustain home employment, regardless of what impact such action has on employment elsewhere.

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Ireland has recently expended enormous effort on Brexit negotiations and claims substantial success approaching year’s end. The perceived success will be of little consequence, however, in the greater picture, for we, the EU and the British are fighting the wrong battle.

Instead of squabbling with each other over free markets and invisible borders and citizens’ rights, all should urgently be engaged in how to adapt to the new economics.

How can the EU and the world restrain production? How can economics function in a situation of sufficiency rather than growth? How can adequate employment be sustained in a situation where technology increasingly eliminates enormous amounts of work?

Present economic ideology is to longer adequate to manage the potentially most successful economic situation that ever existed. The old system simply intensifies inequality and division. Power, wealth and ownership are increasingly concentrated in feudalistic corporate monoliths while individuals are abandoned to insecurity of business and employment and are enslaved by debt and dependency into a type of 21st-century serfdom. If not confronted by politicians, such a trend back to feudalism can lead only to further economic collapse, social unrest, extremist politics and international hostilities.

It is a real tragedy; the world was never in better economic shape but outdated economic ideology prevents mass populations from benefits that are there aplenty for all. Let us hope that 2018 brings wiser council and we begin to realise how wonderful an economic world we have managed to create, and that the only way to sustain it is to make the benefits accessible to all.

We must adapt to technological success. Business confidence must be restored by restraint of production, growth economics must give way to sufficiency and adequate employment must be ensured by generating more jobs from less work. – Yours, etc,

PADRAIC NEARY,

Tubbercurry,

Co Sligo.