Toward a World that Works for Everyone
I have a young friend who’s like a granddaughter to me and through her I’ve been able to meet many 25-36-year-olds. Their situation is very sad. They’re entirely willing. And they have ideas. But they’re the kind of ideas that reflect their situation. Their situation is a lack of opportunities. Automation took most work […]
2023: So here we are, in the automated future of our dreams. Where robots do the “dirty jobs” and we all benefit. Or do we? Did we all benefit from the orgy of automation that took place in the late 20th century and continues today? Did wealth flow down, or even trickle down, to the […]
I’d like to repost this article from 2011 to accompany “Why Are Our Kids Living with Us?” If your child is unable to find a decent-paying job, this article may explain why. My first “awakening,” if you like, came in 1991 as I and my wife were driving through a favorite semi-rural section of British […]
I began my career as a historian examining how late-Victorian authors in English Canada represented the process of growth. (1) They believed in something contemporary historians came to call “creative repression”: We grow by denying ourselves. The body was seen as a fixed energy system. If we wasted our energy physically, we’d pay for it […]
(Concluded from Part 1, yesterday.) (From “Automation and Business Darwinism,” at https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/travel2.html) In order to provide a snapshot of the automation of work, I chose to study a corporate travel magazine during the years 1996 to 1998 — the Business Travel News or BTN. Trade magazines like it are all that are available to a […]
The work I’m doing now, around the Four Point Plan, (1) is a direct result of my work around the inroads of automation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was a time of blue screens and DOS commands. We had the novelty of computer games. Every day at 4:00 the office fell silent […]
[This article is an example of developmental or evolutionary history.] I look upon the recession of 1980-2 as perpetrated on the world to shed workers made obsolete by automation. (1) Workers were laid off, probably with offers to rehire, and then just not rehired because they’d been replaced by a machine. Recession layoffs eliminated the […]
(Concluded from Part 1, above.) I had a revelation one day in around 1990 driving my car through a small rural town on Vancouver Island that had always charmed me. We’d stop in a Mom and Pop restaurant, look around the M&P stores and shop. It was great fun. This time I was stunned to […]
Part 1 looks at Dr. Ibrahim’s well-stated case for a universal basic income. Part 2 looks at an article from 1998 discussing twenty years ago what Dr. Ibrahim is talking about now. COVID-19 and the case for the universal basic income Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, Arab News, Marc h 29, 2020 https://arab.news/gsb3x The idea of a […]
By 1998, when this article was published, automation had been stripping the labor market for one, perhaps two decades already. We were nowhere near considering addressing the social costs of automation. We were busy playing Tetris and loving our computers. If This is Your Job, Watch Out! Steve Beckow, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 1, […]
Here’s another article from 2017 that did not make the mainstream news media. I believe there is a lot of movement happening that most people have no idea about. – Sitara Elon Musk doubles down on universal basic income: ‘It’s going to be necessary’ Chris Weller, Business Insider, Feb 14, 2017 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/elon-musk-universal-basic-income-2017-2?r=US&IR=T In an interview […]
In my view, this is one scenario the Reval is designed to address. The only linkage the article leaves out is that automation, as well as shipping jobs overseas, created a buyer’s market for labor, causing labor unions to fall and leaving workers unprotected. (1) The wolf that ate Wall Street: US economy roars amid […]
Letter to the Editor: Universal basic income is inevitable as we head toward a fully automated society Mahmoud Ramadan, Oct. 10, 2019 https://www.thepostathens.com/article/2019/10/letter-to-the-editor-basic-income The industrial revolution, which started with the invention of the first commercially successful steam engine in Britain in the 18th century, allowed Britain to literally conquer the world. All the other advancements […]
I’ve traced this lack of compassion that I feel back to the crib. My arms were tied to the sides of the crib to stop me from scratching as a result of having excema. I was wheeled into the kitchen and left there all night no matter how much I cried. (1) I concluded that […]
I’d like to address the issue of automation while articles on it are still fresh in memory. The issue of the impoverishment of society through automation isn’t new. Back in 1990, when I woke up to it, (1) almost no one wanted to hear about the subject. Most people loved playing Tetris and were enamored […]
