Think about it. Biomedical researchers don’t plan to research cure to cancer for the rest of humanity. City planners don’t plan to build infinite number of cities, and washing machine manufacturers don’t plan to make infinite iterations of their product. At some point, we’ll have cured every known illness, come up with the best city design that adapts perfectly to every possible situation, and a washing machine that can also dry your clothes. The ultimate goal of these jobs are to - eventually - eliminate themselves.
Then there are maintenance jobs. Farming tools improve over time, but the act of farming simply maintains the foundation of society, rather than move it forward. Most hospital doctors cure patients of known illnesses using known methods and tools, but do not discover new ones. Cooks, taxi drivers, lawyers, cashiers - all primarily exist to support existing infrastructure rather than build it. These jobs can’t eliminate themselves.
Regardless, all jobs exist only because we haven’t found a way to automate them yet. We already replaced cashiers with Kiosks and self-checkout machines. We avoid interacting with bank employees by using apps and websites. We don’t need paperboys to deliver the latest news, and we would have already replaced all subway drivers if it wasn’t for the unions that are against it (don’t get me wrong - I support labor unions).
Eventually, Waymo and Tesla will perfect self driving cars and eliminate Uber drivers, drone networks will be established and drop our packages via air and robotics will take over health care. It will be extremely challenging, but it will happen. Not to just spite maintenance jobs, but because that’s what progress does. Requirements and patterns of a procedure gets identified and automated.
We all know that we can’t stop progress. Even if someone gives up, someone else will pick it up and perfect it at some point. The human race is a perfectionist - we have always made progress, are making progress, and will keep making even more progress until there is no more problems we can possibly comprehend. That is how we are wired.
Okay, so what?
The problem is, we need jobs to survive. Specifically, we need money to survive. Actually, we need food and shelter to survive, but our society has built a strong link between all three. It’s a paradox; Humanity actively work to eliminate labor, yet their survival relies on it.
The solution isn’t to resist automation and artificial intelligence from taking our jobs. Not only does that hinder progress, but does nothing but delay the inevitable.
Instead, We need societies to make use of all the progress to bring down cost of necessities instead of infinitely chasing GDP growth and larger profit margins. Just as we expect our roads, plumbing, and electricity to work, we should start demanding governments to provide food and shelter as fundamental human rights. That is literally their core function - gather individual efforts to make it easier for everyone to be self-sufficient. Automation and artificial intelligence should make us overjoyed as steps towards such future, not make us worried that putting food on the table will become more challenging.
But the giants are too big to see us. Scream louder.
As a side note, there are great questions relevant to this post that I may or may not answer further in a different post:
Q. How do we live without work? Wouldn’t life be so boring?
- We would do whatever we find entertaining for the sake of entertainment instead of needing a financial incentive.
Q. Making everything cost near nothing will destroy economy!
- Good. The economy merely exists as one of many points of incentive for progress. Let’s remove the need for financial incentive and return our focus to the actual incentive: the improvement of our lives.
Q. We can’t have the government invest in automated systems like this! They’ll grow too powerful and allow even more control over the people!
- Valid concern, but I don’t know any alternative non-profit organization designed solely to gather funds for movements such as this.
Q. You don’t know shit!
- Who said I did?