* * * * *
                                        
                       Some random thoughts on employment
                                        
> So, the first real wave of robots did not replace all the factory workers
> as everyone imagined. The robots replaced middle management and
> significantly improved the performance of minimum wage employees. All of
> the fast food chains watched the Burger-G experiment with Manna closely,
> and by 2012 they started installing Manna systems as well. By 2014 or so,
> nearly every business in America that had a significant pool of minimum-
> wage employees was installing Manna software or something similar. They had
> to do it in order to compete.
> 
> In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like
> wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems
> began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable.
> 

Via a comment at jwz's livejournal [1], “Manna, Chapter 1 [2]”

This is the third science fiction story I've come across that goes into depth
in a post-scarcity world; a computerized utopia where there are no wants for
material items—the others being Prime Intellect [3] and Down and Out in the
Magic Kingdom [4]. Perhaps our apparent jobless economic recovery [5] is a
harbinger of things to come.

* * * * *

I remember reading a future employment scenario in one of Robert Anton
Wilson's [6] works and it was an interesting scenario. If you automate your
own job—if you invent yourself out of a job in other words, you get a yearly
government salary of $250,000/year. Anyone whose job is elimited because of
automation will get $25,000/year. An intriguing idea but one I don't really
see coming about.

* * * * *

Another aspect of this “jobless recovery” I've been hearing about is that
more and more people are just giving up on being employed and thus a large
number of people are turning entrepreneurial, leading to a vast number of now
self-employed (which as a figure probably won't show up until the next year
or so).

There's a coherent thought in here somewhere … I just have to find it.

[1] http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/287421.html?thread=2507453#t250745
[2] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
[3] http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/
[4] http://www.craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-
[5] http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20031212-fri.html
[6] http://www.rawilson.com/main.shtml

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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