The mathematical and biological implication of that is the extinction of our society within 100 years.
Making matters even more uncertain for families is the fact that we are at the peak of a paradigm shift, possibly the greatest in human history. For the first time in millions of years, a more dominant life form is evolving on the planet, and we are not only creating it but also encouraging it to replace us. I wrote about that in my paper The Knowledge That We Can Do Something vs. The Wisdom Not To Do It.
In my consulting and personal life, I encounter an increasing number of people every month who are displaced from work and have no options other than relying on government subsidies. Many of these people are in their forties or fifties, a time of life that is considered most productive, and they have lost jobs they held for twenty or thirty years. Software engineers, coders, bankers, manufacturing employees, editors, content creators, agricultural workers, and other trades are among the numbers. All replaced by automation, internet-based services, and technology-driven changes in their industries. Soon, we anticipate that teachers, librarians, medical professionals, and accountants will begin joining the ranks of the chronically unemployed.
Much of my life was spent in construction estimating and project management. My first exposure to how technology would change my industry was decades ago, when I began experimenting with computers in the workplace. There was one function of our work that often required a week of tedious interaction between a pencil, a paper spreadsheet, and an adding machine that had a roll of paper for auditing. One day, I was inspired to put the entire mess on an electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc, for those who recall that far back. I put the initial values and formulas in the top cell and replicated them to the bottom of the spreadsheet. Instantly, weeks of calculations were performed – five days of work, done in less than five minutes.
Today, when we receive project documents, they are created electronically and come with complete lists and quantities of materials and assemblies. We then import these into an estimating program that allows us to upload the drawings and perform additional surveys as needed. We have preset assembly estimates that price out the work, and it is not unusual for me to be able to produce an estimate in a couple of hours today that might have taken two weeks forty years ago. To put that in perspective, one employee now can do the work of ten.
The same can be said of bookkeeping and accounting, as well as many other management functions. Microsoft recently laid off 9,000 such mid-level managers. Replaced by the efficiency of the machine world they created. In total, more than one million employees will be terminated in 2025 as companies eliminate positions that are no longer needed and focus on reducing the lower 20% of producers as a result.
The model’s problems are numerous, despite its admirable efficiency from an evolutionary perspective. The biggest problem is that people were lied to, employment isn’t a long-term solution, and “Get a good education and get a good job” might be the biggest scam in human history. My Grandfather was a tenured college professor in the University of California system. Later in his life, he bemoaned their inability to stay in their double-wide mobile home in Anaheim, California. He wrote us a letter, ashamed that they could not send Christmas presents. He shared that the people in that community of hundreds of residents were all being driven out by the cost of living in California. We kids were in our thirties at the time and couldn’t care less about getting presents; we just wanted time with them. For him, however, it was a matter of pride. He had been betrayed by his philosophy, as in all our lives, we were taught about the value of education and jobs. In the end, he understood, and it devastated him. Employment is always temporary; you don’t own your job. Making matters worse, you will always be paid at the lowest rate that it takes to replace you.
Millions of people with college degrees are discovering that being fifty years old and unemployable is a harsh reality when you have teenage children and few entrepreneurial skills.