But wait... there's less!

I love hearing the stories of people on this show. Tiny House Big Living screens Sundays at 9.30pm on Channel 94 (in Australia). Each week there's two half-hour episodes. While it's fun seeing (and critiquing) the various designs, I really get inspired when someone is making a big positive life change. Recently we got two good stories in one night. Paul and Bekah Dreisbach Paul and Bekah each grew up overseas. Their families were in the Philippines and Africa. Paul shares how this changed them. "Our backgrounds of growing up in a third-world culture and country have affected why we're going to go tiny. People living in shacks or the smallest little places are just as happy and we've realised that it's not necessarily the place you live in or how many things you have but it's the people you're around." Bekah reflects on the moving back to the USA: "Here it's just a struggle to have more and buy more things and you surround yours...

Many of today's jobs will disappear. Will they be replaced by newer cushier jobs? "No" says this video. at least not in significant numbers. I was reminded of this 15-minute documentary (it seems even quicker) by the agriculture analogy in Will Robots Take Your Job? (see my summary of the book ). This short film also compares the disappearance of horses from agriculture to the current technological advancements. Many will worry about this, but it could actually be good news. If we sort out the details then many more of us could have a better work-life balance and enjoy our lives far more. A 4-day or 3-day work week is one option. Of course the government will also have to properly tax these robot-driven companies (to replace the income tax that human workers used to pay).

The future could be very different. It's one reason I started this blog. What will technology mean for jobs? For incomes? For society? So I was excited to find Will Robots Take Your Job? at my local library. What does the book say? There's always been technological change and we've always found jobs. As the more laborious jobs were taken by machines, we took on higher skilled jobs, moving further up the "skill ladder". The main question is whether this time is different. Will the "skill ladder" continue to have higher rungs for humans to move on to? Will these rungs appear as quickly as the current rungs disappear? Either way we're headed for significant disruption. Either large-scale re-training of our workforce or massive unemployment. The author despairs that our leaders seem not to talk about this - and worse still, not have a plan for it. Farmers or horses? In 1870 about 75% of Americans worked in agriculture and used 25 million hors...