Average Is Over

Average Is Over
nytimes.com

in any case, it reminded me of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

The population is increasing and the requirement for people is decreasing.

This gap is made wider by increased birth-rates and better automation. More people are being born into a world where fewer are required. That is quite a scary thought. Computers and machines automate and replace people everywhere.

I have some anecdotal evidence of this:

At my last business we used to follow-up twice via email with all of the people who had not responded to a quote that we had sent them. We had 50-100 enquiries a day so the follow-ups soon mounted up. I tried every CRM and mail-list manager out there. I could not find one that would trigger an email from my Gmail account if a contact had not responded. I was spending 3-4 hours a day doing the follow-ups. So were my staff. It got to the point where I wanted to hire someone to do it. Eventually I learnt more about the software and read up on ruby on rails. I hired a small software house to help with the backend, built the front-end myself and a month later, a machine replaced the humans and prevented a new hire. That is just one job at a tiny 5-person company. At scale, computer-based automation creates huge efficiencies. The flip-side of that are huge deficiencies in employment.

Here come the machines.

If you think about it, in a world without technology, the money we spend has to go to someone in the economy. However, since we know have artificial workforce in play, we effectively pay less, which means that we in consequence pay out less than we receive. So eitheir we all get paid less (yay communism), or some people just naturally have to be unemployed (yay income inequality).