An American Future — Another Take

Geoffrey Britain, who has a website that should interest many of my readers,  responded with two comments regarding Kevin’s recent article on An American Future. Both comments are worthwhile, but I thought the one below was interesting and worthy of a post.

His comment paints a future first expounded by Alvin Toffler. It is one where work, as we know it, essentially disappears. Mr. Britain does a nice job of explaining the implications of technology on the future. So long as mankind does not destroy itself, it is reasonable to expect that we shall eventually evolve to such a nirvana. No doubt we will find other problems, or at least complain about same) because man’s wants are insatiable.  Despite a world of plenty, there is still likely to be an allocation problem for which economics is supposed to provide guidance. Scarcity of sorts will still be a problem, even if time is the only scarcity.

It is not prudent for those in their 20s and 30s to bank on this happening in their lifetimes, although it will likely come faster than we reasonably can forecast today. Thus, I think Mr. Britain’s picture is a realistic one for future generations. Kevin’s concerns are how his generation deals with what is immediately in front of them.  Some of the forces/factors explored below will influence this generation. They already have changed the nature of work.

Both Kevin’s and Mr. Britain’s approaches appear relevant, but for vastly different time frames.

Here is Mr. Britain’s insightful tour of what he expects will happen in the future:

Before identifying and expanding upon those “other significant factors” which shall greatly affect our future economy, I would be remiss in not indicating my agreement with much of Kevin’s post. I just assess it to be both more temporary than Kevin’s evident assessment and believe it to be a ‘transitional phase’ in a much larger and ongoing societal transformation.

Future prognostication is always problematic but certain trends and realities are sure to have a societal impact, it’s in the specifics of that impact wherein the uncertainty lies. In my view, a matter of exactly how and in what way, not a matter of if.

OK, first the context, then the specifics:
The societal transformation to which I refer were first brought to the public’s attention with the speculations of the sociologist and futurist Alvin Toffler, expressed in his theory of “Future Shock” in 1970. And then importantly expanded upon in 1980 in his follow-up book “The Third Wave” by introducing his theory that a transition is occurring in developed countries from an ‘Industrial Age’ society, which he calls the “Second Wave”, to an ‘Information Age’ “Third Wave” society.

Toffler argued that society has been undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial or informational society”. He posited that this change would overwhelm many people, with the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation” – as he termed it, ‘future shocked’.

Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of this ‘future shock’. (I believe he overstates the case at least somewhat but is essentially correct) In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also popularized the term “information overload”.

Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of ‘waves’ – each wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside.
The First Wave is the settled agricultural society which prevailed in much of the world after the Neolithic Revolution, which replaced hunter-gatherer cultures.

The Second Wave is Industrial Age society. “The Second Wave began in Western Europe with the Industrial Revolution, and subsequently spread across the world. Key aspects of Second Wave society are the nuclear family, a factory-type education system and the corporation based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.”

The Third Wave is the post-industrial or ‘information’ society. Toffler says that since the late 1950s most western countries have been transitioning from a Second Wave society into a Third Wave society.

Though the society foreseen is still emerging, with the dramatic transitions of the past two decades (e.g. Cell Phones, Internet, the rise of non-national and super-national powers, etc.), several distinguishing features were posed as characteristic of this new society. Among others, these included:

The rolling back of the Industrial-Era creed of “standardization”, as exemplified in the one-size-fits-all approach typical of institutions of this era, such as the education system, factories, governments, mass media, high volume mass production and distribution, etc.

The attack on the nation-state from both above and below and the progressive obsolescence of the nation-state itself.

The assault on the nation-state from below would include both the gradual loss of consensus, such as has characterized the politics of the United States in the 21st century, as well as political turmoil elsewhere.

The assault on the nation-state from above would include the rise of powerful non-national entities: IGO’s, multinational corporations, religions with global reach, and even terrorist organizations or cartels. It would include the progressive hemming-in of national economies and of nation-states under a growing network of super-national organizations and affiliations; e.g. the European Union, the North American Union, the newly formed African Union, as well as organizations such as the WTO, NAFTA or International Criminal Court.

The eclipsing of monetary wealth by knowledge and information as the primary determinant of power and its distribution.

A transformation of the very character of democracy, itself, from rule-by-periodic polling at the election booth, toward a more direct interaction between the government and its populace. To a large extent, this has already emerged with the rise of the Internet, the trend toward on-line voting in the United States, though it has not yet congealed in the form of a fundamental revision of the constitution of any state.

Toffler left open both the question of what the outcome of the transformation of the structure of democracy was to entail, as well as the question of what kind of world order would supersede the order of nation-states.

The eclipsing of manufacturing and manufacturing goods by knowledge-production and information-processing as the primary economic activity.

The emergence of various high technologies, such as cloning, global communications networks, nanotechnology, etc.

OK, now for some specifics;

The new technologies, now emerging in the laboratories are sure to be paradigm changing in nature.

To elucidate on three fundamental technologies and a reality that will transform our future economy:

The technologies:
Nanotechnology; will affect manufacturing on a paradigm changing level as profound as the advent of computers.

Nuclear Fusion; we know it exists and is doable, it’s the process that fuels the stars and when achieved will result in utterly clean, inexhaustible and vanishingly inexpensive energy production.

Artificial intelligence and robotics: we are already there; Robot Scientist Able to Conduct Research By Itself

“Researchers have successfully developed a new robot [A.I.] that is able to reason, formulate theories, and work on new scientific breakthroughs without the need of real scientists.”

The mostly unrecognized reality;
<a href=”http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/resource.html”.Asteriod mining; according to NASA, ” It has been estimated that the mineral wealth resident in the belt of asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter would be equivalent to about 100 billion dollars for every person on Earth today.”

What do we get when we posit an economy benefiting from inexhaustible, ‘cheaper-than-dirt’ energy production, near-inexhausible and ‘dirt’-cheap mineral resources and a logarithmically more productive work force of intelligent robots?

Productivity on a scale previously unimaginable and produced at a cost greatly lower than available today. Manufacturing costs orders of multitude lower, than those between ‘first-wave’ society’s ‘hand-made’ production and second-wave society’s mass manufactured products.

The societal repercussions of that predictably certain future scenario are ‘off the scale’ profound.

That level of productivity and low costs essentially subjects current economic thinking to a tsunami of paradigm changing assumptions.

Start with China’s and indeed all third world work forces no longer competitive.

Robots work 24/7, aside from purchase and maintenance costs and depreciation there are no labor costs in production. No insurance, no benefits, no sick days…China and all third-world labor will no more be able to compete with a robot work force… than American manufacturing workers can compete with China’s current .86 cents an hour labor costs.

Manufacturing will resume wherever the market exists, or when nuclear fusion makes space flight as cheap as current rail transportation, will be shipped down from the moon’s environmentally clean factories with its 24/7 robotic work force.

The level of societal wealth will literally be astronomical and will allow for something never before possible; a social safety net predicated on a society-wide PUBLIC trust fund.

Yes, Kevin (and Monty) there will be unimaginable changes in how we make our living and the structure of our economy. Yes, whatever the level of productivity and wealth, economic laws remain but “the changes they are a comin” and of exactly what they shall consist no man can say, beyond the most temporary and general of outlines.

Of only one thing may we be sure, we will not be in Kansas very much longer.

Share/Save