Self-driving cars and the dangers of the Star Trek economy

Back in the glory days of ST:TNG (that’s Star Trek: The Next Generation for the muggles out there) my friends and I enjoyed opining about the contradictions inherent in the economy depicted on the show. Why should anybody get out of bed in the morning when anything you could want (except perhaps gold pressed latinum) could be magically rendered in a few seconds by a replicator?  Sure, the big shots like Picard might work for the glory or the adventure, but what about the poor saps in the background? Why would anybody want to spend years lugging boxes around a Federation starship or being a second banana in sick bay when you could be back home enjoying endless plenty at the push of a button?

For 25 years these sophomoric critiques stayed in the background of my mind along with other useless speculation about science fiction, like why the Star Trek universe didn’t have many robots, or why every living being in the Star Wars universe had to be needlessly outlandish. Then the horizon for self-driving cars suddenly got a lot closer. Elon Musk’s manic energy added autonomy to all the other technical moon shots in Teslas. Uber astounded the world by announcing a pilot involving self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Sure, Tesla’s self-driving technology grabbed headlines because it or a driver screwed up and the driver ended up dead, and Uber’s self-driving cars still have a driver in them, but the future of autonomous vehicles seems to be arriving faster than we expected. I joked with my nine-year old daughter that she won’t need to get a driver’s licence. Now I don’t think it’s so funny, and not just because I am concerned that she will miss out on the exasperating joy of driving. I think that as an adult my daughter will face an economy unlike anything else that we have seen in human history.

What’s the connection between showboating by Uber or Tesla and who is going to collect the empty glasses in Ten Forward? It’s estimated that there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States.  I believe that these jobs are going to disappear with a rapidity that makes the decline of manufacturing the US look like a picnic. The same technical leaps in artificial intelligence and related fields that make self-driving cars possible will automate vast swathes of the economy with shocking speed. White collar workers will not be immune. Categories of employment in finance, IT, healthcare will disappear. The speed at which these jobs disappear, and the variety of industries that will be vulnerable, will make it impossible for governments to maintain the confidence trick that has been maintained for the last 40 years as other types of work have vanished at a stately, even predictable pace. Politicians will have to give up on talk of retraining or seeking new opportunities. There will just be too much change, too fast.

Not all jobs will disappear, of course. I believe there will be an elite with rare and difficult-to-automate skills who will command great wealth and prestige. The nebulous and highly lucrative trade of data scientist is an example of such a job that already exists today. On the other end, there will be work that isn’t worth the effort to automate. I believe that lack of free-range robots is one thing that Star Trek got right, so demand for personal care workers, for example, will remain high, particularly as the oldest boomers begin to reach old age. In between the heights of the economy and the jobs that aren’t worth doing away with a huge gap will open up.

How will society adjust to this massive challenge? I believe that in the 2030s, people will look back to the recent living wage referendum in Switzerland as the start of a new trend in public policy. That referendum did not pass, but it represented a recognition on the part of a government that the game was up. The time had come to face the fact that there are sufficient resources to provide a living for everybody regardless of whether they are or could be actively working. The coming automation revolution will generate plenty – think of how much shipping costs alone will drop when trucking is automated – and it will torch jobs across the economy. I believe that it will take time for people to let go of the work ethic, but I believe that governments will have to steal a march in the name of social cohesion. If the basics of a reasonably comfortable life become so cheap that we might as well have replicators, and if employment collapses, then why not remove the stigma and make it possible for a large part of the population to enjoy their lives with a government-provided living wage?

What’s not to like? The promise of increased leisure time is finally delivered, and people can spend their days fulfilling their potential rather than slaving away at a dumb job. To see the problem I think we need to revisit those aging boomers. I believe that for many older people, the one change that undermines them more than any other, more than even severe health problems, is the transition from being active economic agents to passive consumers. A wise man once said that retirement is not a biblical principle. That means that humans are not meant to disconnect the locomotive at the end of our lives and the rest of the train drift into the station. What will it mean if a significant portion of the population never has a locomotive , never has the prospect of being economically valued agents ever? Not just for a down period after a recession, not just for the painful gap between finishing education and getting that first job, but forever. I believe that will be a catastrophe for society, regardless of what governments decide they have to do in terms of a guaranteed living wage.

Genesis 3:19 says that “you will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow.” I believe that this is a true statement about the human condition, as true today as it ever was. The tsunami of technical change that is coming to western economies in the next 2 decades may make work obsolete for many people, but it won’t change our nature. For my daughter’s sake, I hope that the leaders who will drive this technical revolution, and the politicians who will try to adapt to it, don’t forget this defining fact about humans – we need work for more than just sustenance.

 

 

Jeremy Corbyn and the return of British Leyland

It’s the most interesting story in UK politics since the Scottish referendum. Jeremy Corbyn, a modest Labour MP, has been plucked from obscurity and looks set to become leader of the party next month. Some people have called him a loony left throwback, a Michael Foot for the new millennium. Others have cringed at such comparisons and claimed that Corbyn is at the true centre of the party. This group says it’s the Blairite luvvies who have shoved Labour so far to the right that a voice of reason like Corbyn can be cast as a bolshie villain.

Jezza in his natural habitat

I have a lot to say about Corbyn, but because I have been slow to get back to the blog, most of it has already been said. A Very British Coup  come to life – done to death. Jezza and Berni Sanders separated a birth – done and done. There’s a thesis to be made that Corbyn’s the one political figure who could take the wind out of the SNP’s sails in Scotland, but that argument involves too many bank shots, and too few comparisons to Quebec, so I will leave it alone. There is, however, one juicy plum as-yet unplucked in the Jezzasphere, and that’s whether Corbyn could bring back a genuinely British auto industry.

Starting in 1968 with its consolidation as British Leyland, the UK-controlled mass-market car industry went through a long, spluttering decline until Rover, the last piece, finally expired in 2005. The rule is that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. British Leyland was an exception to this rule. From militant unions, to hapless managers, to governments that oscillated between largesse and neglect, there were plenty of fathers for the disaster that befell the British-controlled auto industry. From the smoking ruin of British Leyland a very different industry has emerged. More cars are made in the UK then ever before, and more are exported to other markets than ever before, all by foreign companies.

Some say that because it lacks a national champion in the auto sector Britain has been able to avoid the government meddling and market distortion that has plagued the French and Italian car industries. I say, some chicken, some neck. The British automotive industry, when it was genuinely British, was massively interesting. The bizarre, astonishing, and often exasperating cars produced by British Leyland were never boring, even the boring ones. A few weeks ago I chased a Marina, the first one I had seen running under its own power, for several kilometres so I could get a look at it up close. It was a boring, terrible car in the 70s but today it is a magnificent survivor, a rare and beautiful gem.

Terrible in the 70’s – rare and beautiful today

So, where does Jeremy Corbyn fit in here? He has stated clearly that one of his priorities is to restore passenger rail in the UK to public ownership. If he becomes Labour leader, and if he becomes prime minister in 2020, and if he fulfills his promise to reconstitute British Rail, then why not go the full monty and bring back British Leyland? Various bits and pieces of the old empire are still around – Land Rover, Jaguar, and even MINI. Time for the UK to control the high ground of its industry again. If Corbyn can save the Union and bring back British Leyland then he will truly be the best UK prime minister ever.