Time and time again, I have heard people mock those who have jobs like data entry and customer service, even though there are tons of resources that have yet to be digitally converted and entitled people who like the idea of being served. Even though I agree wholeheartedly that there are number of redundancies and toxic workplace cultures in the white collar world, everyone can also agree that all these people have been supporting the economy. An empire based on consumption needs people to consume, and only now have all the alarms started to blare about nobody being able to afford to “contribute” to the economy. People can say what they want, but those “jobs that could be eliminated with AI” were the ones that created the opportunity for robots in the first place.
Without question, all those “pointless” jobs came with income, and when that income went away, there was nothing much that replaced it. Some will argue that people should have majored better in college for good white collar jobs or gone into trades, but I would posit that “everyone” going into trade would have flooded the trades. “Everyone” doing anything floods a portion of the market, so the idea that we can all be engineers, doctors, truckers, or line cooks is a mythology that needs to die. Folks went to college because the people who eschew responsibility said to get a college degree in whatever, even as they lie about it now, and we all did what our parents told us to do without question, which is something that younger generations are avoiding. Union busting is finally destroying the trades, so what now?
Moreover, the paper-pushing jobs were done all over the world, which is why customer service has evolved significantly over the past few decades. To be a good administrative assistant, one should speak at least two languages and be ridiculously skilled because the clientele are diverse. Helping the “elites” avoid the frontlines of angry people is a difficult task, especially when “elites” feel no remorse about the consequences of their policies. I have worked all over entry-level jobs in government and in the private sector, and no one above me ever considered how their plans affected clients, and I am not unique.
Jobs that can be done internationally mean that there is an international workforce that was able to lift up number of communities. Offices exist everywhere in the world in different forms, and there are people who are avoiding direct confrontation with consequences everywhere. Eliminating jobs without a real plan made entire countries vulnerable, which is one of the reasons that we are seeing the backlash all over the world. Young people recognize that industries have not evolved, and because leadership has stayed the same, even the middle-aged folks like myself are learning that there has been no acknowledgment that good jobs are few and far between, and everyone needs them. It was simply a bad idea not to pay people for work that folks at the top wanted done without the responsibility of acknowledging the existence of others.
I mean, I have worked in AI and used AI for one of my jobs, but my real question now is about the plan, since I have yet to see one. Selfish people have the same problem I have been talking about for ages: they have no long-term strategy, and the whole world is expected to function around their wants. My question is this: if these people could care less whether everyone starves, what are we gaining by keeping their system alive? Plenty of those without resources have been supporting those who hate them, but we need to stop listening to sycophants. Unless the technoligarchs have a plan for millions of people losing our “value,” why is this not just another form of genocide that they are trying to enact, but slower?
