A New World Order

Since I was a child, with stories of what the year 2000 would bring, with jetpacks - since watching The Jetsons over bologna sandwiches and Lipton Chicken Noodle soup and dreaming of flying cars of 2020 - being told of how robots (automation) would reduce or remove menial jobs and tasks, and the utopian world the future held....

As an adult I look at the world today and my mind meanders. We actually DO see automation. Grocery stores self-serve check outs, the new envelopeless ATM deposits, Skip-the-dishes and Uber-eats.

But let's not be deceived or tricked. This is definitely NOT an evolution of the Full Service Gas station. There IS a difference between Self-serve gas and Full Service Gas. You paid less to do it yourself.

Self-checkout at the grocery store? Well, you aren't getting 2-5% off your grocery bill to do their job. In fact, we ARE having menial jobs and tasks eliminated. But we are also putting people out of work. On a consumer driven political-economic system, although on the surface it appears as corporate profits, it really isn't. If we reduce or eliminate the consumer, regardless of automation or estimated corporate profits, the system collapses.

It's easy for a large company to automate and cut back 15% of its workforce. But repeat that on a large enough scale and you've reduced the overall consumer by 15%. No consumption, no profit; no corporation.

And with an ever decreasing world job market (and slow population growth and higher immigration growth) there becomes a problem.

On a tangent: We are getting closer and closer to successfully creating lab-grown meat (animal less meat) a further 85% of our global food production could be redistributed to human consumption. Supporting an estimated 3.5 billion more people.....but wouldn't we need more jobs?

Also see Netflix's Explained: The Future of Meat

A possible solution? Universal Basic Income. Great idea, but is it affordable? Is it doable? The money is there. After all, if a grocery store installs self-checkout kiosks and reduces 15% of their staff, the savings should be carried over to that 15%.

Easy. But not in our current corporate environment. Not in our current political environment. No, I don't believe the Conservatives (or political right) are capable to do this. No, this isn't a opportunity to promote your favourite political flavour. I believe the Liberals (or political left) are just as incapable to successfully navigating anything of this nature.

Like the division of Church and State was a necessary transition (c. 1802), so too must we look at the divorce of Capitalism & Democracy... because they are not synonymous.

("Democracy May Not Exist" & "What Democracy Looks Like" by Astra Taylor.)

What we have today is not democracy. Yes, we label and name it such. I suppose it's the closest thing we understand as democracy. Maybe it's better viewed as a journey towards democracy. Too often we think Capitalism is individual wealth and socialism is charity. It's quite the opposite: Capitalism through democracy is reverse charity (the poor and working man giving charity to the rich few) and socialism is about individual wealth. Our current system doesn't work.