Technological Unemployment is not just a hypothesis, its a prominent future.

Greater Productivity: Smaller GDP

The issue is not very new. The debate about whether the technological advancements will create unemployment has been going on since the time of Aristotle. Yet somehow I can’t see how could any economists deny that when the work done by humans would start to being done by machines, the humans will have no or reduced work to do.

I’ve even found some arguments that were economically theorized beyond the practical feasibility. Well this matter is of a deep nature and so requires such concern. So, let’s examine the available arguments carefully & try to answer them. Somebody recently pointed out to me that we should rather focus on the long term effects than the immediate ones of the technological advancements. The immediate ones, he said were the reduction in demand of labour, which no one could dispute. But then he said, after a period the employment would again rise. Now this is the point I don’t agree with.

First I will tell you why some economists think that the long term employment will increase with the increase in technological advancements. They will first give you the example of some technologically advanced countries today and show that how the people there are satisfactorily employed. Then in theory they will tell you that the reason behind this is because with the technological advancements the need of labour to produce, mantle and repair machines will increase & so will the employment opportunities.

Men working in the presence of technology

Well, that is a good argument. But if you also considered it a sound argument, then either you are not an economics’ student or you’ve already forgotten to analyze and think.

The theoretical facet of this argument is rather a childish one. If the labour costs reduced by employing the machines were lower than the maintenance costs of those machines, do you think the elite entrepreneurs would even consider the technology for their production. No, they would do everything manually. Time, quality, etc. are some factors that could make us choose technology over labour but never at the cost of our profitability. So now basically, if the machines aren’t eradicating all the labour force, they are at least reducing them.

Now, about the examples of the technologically advanced countries that they are showing us. Let’s see China. Yes, I agree that the employment there also increased with the technological advancement but not due to the technological advancement. The main reason for their increasing work force is the unproductive population of the rest of the countries. Yes, that’s it. It’s like saying that china developed because other countries degraded. Well, face this fact because this is the only ultimate truth of the Global Economics.

So, until & unless we could be assured that whatever comes out of such advancements will be fairly distributed or otherwise that our current living standards would not be compromised for these technological advancements, we will keep protesting and criticizing the unequal advancements, but we will criticize gently. We are Gentle Critics!!!