Jobs as an obsolescent concept

About four years ago, I wrote a piece called “retirement as an obsolescent concept” in Career Planning and Adult Development Journal (Vol. 26, No. 2 , Summer 2010 – little blog post here). It was a nice piece that may have generated a few chuckles and nods of agreement, but no great controversy there.

My next piece for the journal (and my next entry in the dictionary of obsolescent concepts) is jobs. This one might generate a bit more controversy. Keep in mind that obsolescent is defined as: “going out of use: becoming obsolete.” The obsolescence will indeed be a long one, but it’s underway.

Here’s some initial thoughts on why jobs are an obsolescent concept:

• The Houston Foresight program discussed post-capitalist organizing principles a few years back. Reminds me of Pierre Wack suggesting that the first set of scenarios identified the uncertainties, and in the second they became convinced of the uncertainty happening, and it was mainly a question of timing.
• For a more recent talk on the future of the economy (which I blogged about in a nine-part series, the links are here), I found roughly three-dozen names or concepts for what’s next – the common thread is the rise of “sharing” as a central principle.
• Our Student Needs 2025 team came up with a student living scenario called the “Ours Economy: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption.” So, Kickstarter, P2P, Uber, Lift, Air BNB, all are hints at what’s coming.
• Our Student Needs 2025 team tried to come up with ways that the rise of Big Data, predictive analytics, sensors, ICT and AI would not have a huge impact on our lives – we couldn’t barring a virtual socio-economic collapse. In a nutshell, many jobs will be automated out of existence.
• The rise of an Abundance Economy – lived Wired Editor Chris Anderson’s Economics of Abundance and there is the newer Abundance by Peter Diamandis
• An indicator that resonated with me: Will Portland Always Be a Retirement Community for the Young? Portland has done “all the right things” to produce a quality of life that has indeed attracted talented workers. It has so many highly educated people, however, that it doesn’t know what to do with them all
• Switzerland is having a referendum on guaranteed national income.

It’s a paradigm shift – jobs are fundamental to our identity. When we introduce ourselves we typically go right to “what we do,” which is our job. It challenges the notion that a goal of economic policy is full employment – rather, the goal is full unemployment. The issue is how to distribute wealth without jobs ; it’s a tricky one, but one we’re going to have to grapple with. In the meantime, I am going to flesh out these ideas and write the new piece – stay tuned! Andy Hines