Why Job Automation Wins

Why would you willingly labour in discomfort?

Perhaps in a post-human civilisation, as they write our documentary, they might be tempted to add an accent to our names. Perhaps our chapter will begin with ‘Humanś…’ — a crude editorial touch to mock our birth-given right for intolerance given the enduring suffering that anyone has to grace on a daily basis.

But when our chapter is written can we expect any author to resonate with what it means to live in discomfort? When the vectors of industrialisation and innovation serve to concatenate accessability and pleasure into products, then why can we expect the machine of human ingenuity to eventually stop churning luxuries?

Why won’t the world only get easier to live in?

Sure there’s always subjective discomforts, but there’s a steady stream of empirical data that’s rolling into a wave of onslaughts against anyone that dares suggest today is somehow ‘worse’ than yesterday.

It stands to reason that the world will at least empirically, continue to improve in a quantitative sense. Whether that translates to a qualitative improvement is somewhat nonsensical — how can the perceptions of those that lived in the 1700s be adequately correlated to tell any constructive insights besides just highlight their vast differences? By the end of the 1700s, Napoleon was beginning to grip Europe by the throat and a wave of republican and anti-monarchial spirit was washing across the continent.

Rather than a French invasion led by a self-proclaimed emperor, today Europeans are mostly preoccupied with Brexit negotiations and illegal immigration policies.

So with a world poised for self-improving its state of living, the question leads itself to an eventual awkward confrontation. Perhaps to offer a better state of living requires the decomposition of what ‘living’ means.

We find purpose and a sense of self-worth through work. Yet such philosophy has remained exactly that — philosophy. It’s been defenceless to the gunning of industry and the profiteering of commerce. Like venom suddenly stricken into its victim, workforces are paralysed against future serpent attacks.

To think automation is a snake-pit is to overlook how the world is today. It’s always been a snake-pit for those that need to live off snakeskins.

When the technology can afford it, the enterprisers will be mining to the bedrock of automation. Removing all discomfort is a principal driver for humanity and to do the opposite almost immediately brands the individual as a masochist.

The key insight here is how this isn’t a matter of the general public. Firms will be able to automate workforces both discreetly and without bearing public scrutiny so long as it’s marketed correctly. It’s offshore drilling that while some say is ruining the coral reefs of what it means to be human, the blackening yield of fuel for comfort will always hold its title as a usurper.

In short — job automation will become a marketing problem after the technology has been developed.

So the next question is, do you think you’re impervious to marketing? Or maybe a better question is, if job automation has already begun then why haven’t you stopped it?

Why Job Automation Wins was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.