The World in 2030
I want to share with you some thoughts and concerns about the future. I think that for all of us that touch tech deeply as part of our daily work, we can see through the scattered horizon the difficulties in the near future for a lot of people. In my case I am the CEO & Founder of a Tech Startup that, in our niche, reduce dramatically the costs vs the offline way of doing what we do.
I clearly think it is the time to act, global leadership of regions should highlight those threats and act accordingly. There goes my concerns:
1) The capitalist world has demonstrated that is the best one to generate welfare to the majority of the population. The point is that a leopard never changes his spots, so the trend to maximize benefits is unstoppable, centuries ago it was the factories, in the last century to offshore the production to "low-cost countries" (how much textile is produced worldwide outside of China and India nowadays?) and XXI is the century of robotics and AI, even in China and India (in China a mobile factory has multiplied his efficiency by 250% implementing robots for 95% of their work), it seems that we can also find leopards in Asia ...
2) Robotization will lead us to a new scenario. Millions of works will be destroyed during the next decades, and my deep concern is that those positions will not find an easy solution. If you are a truck driver, where will you relocate when the number of jobs on your segment will go down agressively year on year? Of course, there will be new works in robotics, healthcare, etc, but ... one: they will not compensate the reduction, and two: those new jobs are not for truck drivers. Some say that I talk like the Luddites of the 19th century (those who destroyed weaving machinery as a form of protest), and that they were finally wrong in their vision. Well, the point is that now things happen much faster and in a global scale, so the mankind do not have the time to adapt.
3) Robotics & AI will not only affect those "blue collar" position. Robotics and AI will reduce the need for lawyers, doctors, accountants, pilots, etc. If you add the complexity of the demographics and the pension scheme in some countries, the threat is huge and fully global.
4) Can we stop it? Think about Amazon.com, what is the % of labor cost vs sales compared to standard malls/shops. How they are handling the logistics, what kind of experiments are they doing with supermarkets without cashiers? This is automatization and robotics, the need for labor cost will be dramatically reduced. Can we ban Amazon because they destroy the job ecosystem? I don't think it will be possible. Can we charge Taxes to robots, as Bill Gates proposed? Yes of course, I do strongly support that.
5) My point is not about what high skilled people will do, that will be solved more easily. Probably there will be more freelance positions, different jobs at the same time, more efficient way of living, more focused on the new needs of the population, etc. Many people can reinvent themselves, but, there will be also tons of people that will not be able to. So, for me the big problem is populism. It will increase dramatically, as there will be more differences between rich and poor people, and the unemployment rate will grow in low skilled population. Somehow I think that the movie Elysium is not so far away of reality. Populism grows when the economy goes bad, and that is gonna happen. It happened in Venezuela and Greece, and to get back to normal is a long and difficult road. And look at the US, it happened not because the economy was going bad, it happened because for a relevant part of the population it was going bad. If I eat two sandwiches and you eat zero, the statistic report will tell that, on average we've eaten one each of us ...
6) Solutions: Uff, that is difficult. The one to one solution is easier, focus your skills on what is gonna be needed and if you are clever enough, you will not have any issue. The point is the global solution. What kind of world are we going to have? What can we do to change things? I think that we need two things: Long Term Vision with Leadership & Global Scale Solution.
- Long-Term Vision. We need a strong leadership that will think on 10-20 years on, and also people that can have a global impact. We will need somebody as Bill Gates, with global credibility and impact to push this. Somebody who really can change things on global scale. Some crazy ideas:
- If we reduce gradually the working hours from 5 days / week to 4 days a week, there will be a need to hire more people, and will compensate the automation of work. This together with an increase on taxes for Robotics impact (based on EBITDA), may be part of the things to do. Who can do that? with what schedule? Some countries cannot afford to reduce his competitiveness, it should be implemented globally and gradually.
- Educate for the future. Educate in new skills for actual "truck drivers" so they can relocate when this happens to new positions. That is extremely difficult, but it is necessary.
- Global Vision. This is something that will not work if it is done in one country. A better world for all of us will need generosity from everybody, and a long term vision. I think that only the UE can have the vision an influence to do something with global impact. China will have a huge problem with automation, I am sure they should be part of the solution. The US is critical, but ... we will need a very strong leadership to fight multinationals interest.
By last but not least, I was born in the late sixties ... so ... this is not about me. My future is more or less is guaranteed. In 2030 I will be 63 so I will be close to the end of my working life (I hope). This is for the next generations, part of our mission is to prepare the heritage, and I would love to hear politicians talk about it, but ... please, name me one that talks about it.
"Coach", Consultor de Lenguas y Traductor / Coach, Consultant in Languages and Translator
6 年Unfortunately most politicians don?t see beyond their next election or re-election. They seem to be more engaged in staying in power than in solving their countries' problems (world problems are not something that concerns them, as the world doesn't participate in their national elections). Just look at the non-response by most counties' governments to the global warming problem. Photographs of the ice caps of Antartica and the Arctric have been showing the reduction of the ice and snow, as have the photos of glaciers in all continents. People in general, as well as politicians, are so worried about their little tree that they are unable to see the forest's problems. And when the forest dies, so will their little tree. While Capitalism may well be the most efficient form of providing welfare for most of the population, its track record shows that the element of Social Responsibility is often lacking. Who cares about pollution when the Board of Directors want a greater ROI? Which manager is going to go against his Board of Directors or even the Shareholders if it's gonig to cost him his job and his family's welfare? If capitalism is to survive, it must be "enlightened2 or "intelligent" . Converting our planet into a great factory with uncontrolled pollution of air, land and water would be disastrous. A world such as portrayed in the 1973 film Soylent Green. Since there seems to be no return to the pre-electronic era (Pol Pot's vision of the future and the cost of getting there is unacceptable) , we have no choice but to begin making less mistakes. Your vision of a highly polarized society, with the rich being extremely rich and the poor being extremely poor is already taken place and it's a recipe for disaster. When social inequality reaches a threshold, those who have nothing have nothing to lose. This can result in revolts, violence, theft, and a general breakdown of "civilized" ways of life. It can also lead to the rise of dictatorial governments initially through democratic ways as happened in Germany between the two world Wars. The desperate poverty of the Gerrnan people led them to elect Hitler as an alternative to misery. In Italy Benito Mussolini simply "marched on Rome" and took hold of power my means of a "putsch" or "coup d'êtat" . The result was two totalitarian states in Europe, which ultimately led to a World War. Unfortunately, I don't see Mr Bill Gates, nor anyone else of similar caliber, getting involved in correcting the cousre in which our planet is heading. Workless, poor masses, pollution of air, land and water, and global warming are unfortunately a very real danger. The beauty, and the weakness, of democracy is that politicians are elected by the people, yet the people have shown time and again that they sometimes pick the worst candidate. The irresponsible behaviour of many politicians is not only endangering our planet's economy and ecology, it's also endangering our political system. Democracy, as well as the planet, is in danger. And we live in this endangered, politically and ecologically unstabe planet. We have nowhere else to go. Unfortunately I cannot provide an answer, that's up to all human beings to realize the danger and do something about it.