Abstract
I highly recommend Confronting Dystopia for anyone interested in a trenchant analysis of the impact of technology on the world of work. The various authors (primarily economists and social scientists) do an excellent job of documenting trends over the past 30 years and projecting them forward for both the global north and south. Paus challenges the authors to address the impact of evolving digital technologies (broadly defined to include AI, robotics, social media, platform capitalism, big data, and more) on the following issues: (a) the number and quality of jobs available; (b) human well-being and inequality; and (c) new policy and institutional arrangements that need to be implemented to ensure broadly shared prosperity. The short answer to these questions is that without major shifts in the social contract, the laissez-faire march of technology is most likely to erode good middle class jobs, increase precarious work, exacerbate inequality and poverty, and lead to more authoritarian/dictatorial governments.
While the long sweep of history suggests that the jobs lost through the evolution of technology are eventually replaced, authors in this volume predict this time will be different for several reasons. First, compared with previous technological advances (steam, combustion engine, electricity, etc.), the capacity of information technology currently doubles every two years. Second, robots are being created that can learn from mistakes and self-correct. They can do this with tasks that involve analysis and predictions and do it much faster than humans. This type of machine learning threatens millions of middle management jobs. Big data and AI have already developed to the point of reading text and writing articles. Forbes magazine uses a Chicago company called Narrative Science to write some of their articles using software, not people. A spokesman for Forbes predicted that in 15 years, 90% of their articles would be written by software. Robots have developed three-dimensional vision and have remarkable physical dexterity that could easily replace types of warehouse workers or materials handlers. Currently, robots are being developed that can make pizzas, hamburgers, and even sew. Add to this list the prospect of self-driving vehicles, and we are talking about the loss of billions of jobs worldwide over the next few decades.
The book does not offer a road map out of our current mess, but the authors do an excellent job of showing where current trends are leading us, where they might end up, and the alternative paths that could be taken. However, we must decide we want something different and effectively organize to demand and create a more equitable future.
Two of the more optimistic chapters are by Robert Pollin and Mignon Duffy, who make clear that creating a Green New Deal and solving the worldwide care deficit (respectively) could create millions of decent paying, sustainable jobs to offset the loss of jobs in other sectors related to technological change. Pollin finds that if all economies begin investing 1.5% to 2% of GDP into a variety of clean energy industries, we could decrease carbon emissions by 40% by 2035 and meet the goals of Paris Climate Accord with a net gain in jobs, even accounting for job losses in the fossil fuel sector. Duffy reviews the empirical literature on the worldwide deficit in care jobs, the chains of care labor (and deficits) from the global south to the global north, and the historical and continuing devaluation of care work based on gender. While both authors offer rational, egalitarian, job-positive paths forward, neither offer much of a political power analysis nor an organizing plan that might deliver these laudable goals. Change would require a massive political power shift away from the dominant neoliberal paradigm to a more social-democratic one with higher taxes on the wealthy and massive increases in public expenditures. Other authors in this volume offer solutions such as a Guaranteed Basic Income (probably the most consistent policy suggestion throughout the book), taxing robots, and more universal public social services, all of which would also require massive shifts in political power.
In the introduction to the book, Paus admits that the book is more of a description of where the world of work is headed and potential paths forward rather than an organizing plan for delivering the most equitable and generous solutions. While reading this book prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, I was wondering what type of global crisis might disrupt the neoliberal power structure and create opportunities for massive structural change. The Covid-19 crisis might just be the disrupter that inspires the movements and organizing to create structural change, a new social contract and more broadly shared prosperity. Paus’s book is a must read for anyone who wants to help bend the moral arc of the world of work toward justice.