A post from TechnoAnthropology about employment in a time of increasing technological efficiency:

“The old Luddite fears seem to have been somewhat founded. Factories are making cars and needing less workers to do it. Brad McClenny (who sits in the office next to mine), armed with the internet, MS Word, machine translation, and digital phones, runs the international student program for our college in a way that it took a team of three people to do ten years ago (Kathy, Amanda, and that other girl).

As a starry-eyed libertarian, I try to believe that for every job that efficiency kills, we’ll get other ones, as all of the unemployed people begin to invent killer iPhone apps and musical masterpieces that we all can’t live without, and sell them to the people holding the remaining old-school jobs. It might be true. It would be cool.

Another thing that might be cool (in a starry-eyed not-libertarian way) would be transitioning into something like the Star Trek economy, where there is sufficient efficiency to guarantee everyone exactly the clothes and meals they want replicated, and we spend our time following our callings, quite aside from any need for money. This would take futuristic levels of automation and efficiency. It would also take redistribution. Some historical re-distributive plans in other countries got ugly. Americans are taught about these in school, and don’t like them. I don’t think that America will go for this kind of re-distribution anytime soon. Well, not if we know we’re going for it.”