Even in the first world [due to AI and automation], many workers with non-transferable skills will have problems finding new employ, while even highly skilled workers and professionals may find fewer positions open, including formerly high paid architects, dentists, lawyers, stock traders and accountants.
Without steady incomes, people will feel lost, concerned for their next meal, worried about how to clothe and educate their children, and even if not starving, adrift and undervalued without clear meaning in life.
There is one answer to this dilemma, although currently rejected by many conservative pundits as a form of socialist teat that may be the end of us. In fact, it will be our salvation: Namely, some level of guaranteed minimum income, provided to all citizens equally, the capital for which would amass from surplus profits created in the labor performed by the millions of robots and AI machines … the same robots and AI that are both freeing our time and tossing so many of us onto the unemployment line. A "guaranteed basic income" system for all is the solutions, redistributing a portion of the profits earned by AI so that nobody is truly living in poverty (while still letting the AI entrepreneurs retain enough for themselves as investment and development incentives), coupled with an international treaty system to protect labor in the developing world.
Such a minimum income payment could be coupled with governmental creation of jobs and pay sources that change the marketplace. Profits from AI could be taxed and used to train human schoolteachers, paying them very high salaries for working in classrooms with 3-to-1 student-teacher ratios or less. The number of scientists doing pure research would blossom, with adequate budgets to fund the most advanced laboratories. There would be more doctors (although probably fewer lawyers, as our litigious and criminal natures are reduced.) Government gardeners would turn our cities green. Zen priests, rabbis and other clergy would proliferate as people had time and education to pursue spiritual pursuits. Creative professions, such as painter, musician, or dancer, would become well-paid career paths. Even local athletes and small ballet school instructors could then be well paid to play soccer or teach toe work. In fact, some silly occupations would boom just for their very silly and fun, from professional hopscotch teams to salaried salad bar designers to paid puppy petters, bringing joy to all concerned. All this will be inevitable, because otherwise there will be riots in the streets (where hopefully government drones and “pacifying weapons” will not be used against the rioters).
Highly automated factories, reaping high profits with low numbers of human employees, will have to either leave those profits with the factory owners and shareholders, or redistribute a fair portion to laid-off workers and the rest of us. Quite simply, the wages that would have been paid to the human shepherd who is replaced by a robot shepherd will be paid to the human, now back in college working on his Ph.d. in animal husbandry. The redundant machine operator in the sports equipment factory will now have the money and time to buy sports equipment, then go to the field to play.
Of course, let the capitalist owner of the factory and its robots keep a healthy share, sufficient to encourage the investor and entrepreneur in building (environmentally safe) factories and buying more robots. Even so, there is plenty to go around. Further, the guaranteed basic income need not be set so high that it completely dissuades people from working and contributing to society, but can represent just enough salary to allow everyone to have a safe and comfortable home, nutritious food, clothes, and other life necessities, excellent health care, and educational opportunities that would be considered a baseline. Beyond that, people who are able and wanting a little more may choose to perform some constructive labor in one of the available careers or service activities. There may also be a mandatory requirement of labor for those, especially youths, who are physically able. I would love to see a “draft” in which all able young people were inducted for a year of public service as tenders of our forests and orderlies in our hospitals (even if robots could do some of the work more efficiently. It is a wonderful growth experience for our kids.) Ultimately, a draft may not even be needed, for the enhanced human drive for charity pleasure bursts with caring mind will mean that most people will want to get off their asses, work and serve without prodding or even much pay.
And even if some people do wish to be lazy, or only devote their energies to painting, gardening, writing fanciful books like this one. or even (wait for it) meditating all day, so what? So long as all needed jobs are filled by human or machine, so long as nobody is starving or rioting in the streets, so long as production is sufficiently humming, so long as tax revenues are providing universal housing, food, and health care, then what’s the harm in letting some take it easy? At worst, we will be left with many bad paintings and terrible novels, exuberant gardens, and maybe a surplus of enlightened masters.
Might we even be left with a world in which our greatest social problem is people forcing good will on others without true need or call: visiting patients in hospital who really wish to be left alone, performing the ‘Heimlich Maneuver’ of some fellow who was never actually choking, helping old ladies to cross streets that they do not wish to cross? Laws may have to be passed in which forcibly lending someone an unwanted ‘shoulder to lean on’ is defined as a kind of assault! Yes, the strength of the altruistic drives within us may take some fine tuning.
We have come to believe the modern capitalist line that the whole system will collapse if we stop the steam roller of endless production, consumption, and growing markets. But is that really the case? What would happen if we instead reached a level of stasis, or “enoughness,” in which people are healthy, content, and living well at a consistent level? If our robots are producing sufficient shoes for all feet, non-polluting cars to transport us, and enough delicious, elegantly prepared, nutritious calories for all to enjoy, do we really need more shoes, cars and calories? If we all have comfortable, environmentally sound housing filled with appliances and communication tools, nearby green parks, vibrant theatres and schools with 3-to-1 teacher ratios, can we not just ‘be at home with it all’ without need for much more?
The focus of industry will change if we desire to live more simply and more easily content with less, as well as more concerned about our fellow citizens. Hospitals and new drugs to cure disease will remain desirable to support and develop, because they benefit people in need (all of us really) and many diseases are just bound to remain for a long time. Our pleasure centers, biologically enhanced to thrill at the relief of others’ suffering, will lead us to pour much of our AI industrial profits into medical research on an unprecedented scale. Public and private construction projects that truly benefit people in need of schools and hospitals will have unprecedented public support, whereby slums are replaced with 3-D printed housing, all coupled with greatly increased environmental consciousness too. Alternative and renewable energy production will flourish. Alas, yes, some industries, such as commercial oil production, coal mining, factory poultry farming and slaughter houses, gun manufacture, illegal drug manufacture (especially if the new healthy drugs I have been describing are even more pleasant and satisfying over the long term), and sweatshop manufacturing will fade away, just as did buffalo hunting, Indian fighting, slave ships and the whaling industry with the coming of the 20th century. Few will miss them.
At last, more environmentally aware and moderate in our tastes, we may come to realize that this entire planet is our parent, for it has given us birth, fed us, sheltered us, and offered us a place to thrive. We should no longer be adversaries of nature, but partners. Rather than taking the Earth for granted as a source of resources to exploit and wilds to tame for real estate, we might honor ‘mother nature’ like our own mothers, nurture the land as a garden, care for our world as we do our own home. It is our home. In fact, it is who we are, for when we touch something deep within, we can realize that we are nature, we are this planet and all life, and they are just us.
Truly, the Zen masters of old revered the land, air, and water. 500 or 1000 years ago, ideas of “ecology” were simply not as understood nor pressing as they are today, yet the old masters wrote poems cherishing the natural. They celebrated the seasons and what nature can teach us. Master Dogen, for example, wrote in Shobogenzo Jisho-Zanmai:
“This sutra is the sutra of the whole universe in the ten directions —
the great earth with its mountains, rivers, grass, trees, self, and others.”
the great earth with its mountains, rivers, grass, trees, self, and others.”
A Zen master, as an ideal, values simplicity, appreciates what one already has, accepts life as it is and takes “just enough.” He or she is content with the food placed in their bowl, even if it is just the fruits and nuts that the earth can provide, a warm fire on a cold night, the view of the mountains outside one’s window, a lovely haiku, a simple bed, good friends to visit and to sit meditation together. There is, somewhere, a place or places in the brain where a taste for simplicity and satisfaction at “just enough” can be tapped into, turning us all into simple living Zen masters too. We just need to find those inner places, and we will.
If I were to summarize one central lesson of Zen practice, it is to be content right here, even as we keep striving … with many desires dropped away, but others which are balanced and necessary kept in moderation and balance … with nothing to add or change amid things just as they are, even as we strive to fix what we need and can.
Ours would be a life of peace and plenty.
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