mises.org / Christopher Westley / JUNE 9, 2015
For a few years now, a modern form of Luddite-ism has decried a seemingly ramped-up use of technology that is expected to upend labor markets in the near future to degrees heretofore unseen. In this world, what we know as fast food restaurants will become completely self-serve, with iPad-ish screens used to order French fries and machines in the kitchen to prepare them. All those workers in that industry, well, they’re out of luck and will just have to acquaint themselves with their next-best work option, which probably involves a government dole and a parent’s spare bed.
But it’s not just fast food. Think self-driving semi-trucks. Google cars. Virtual classrooms replacing traditional ones. Robots replacing factory workers. Vertically-oriented business models with roots in post-war America are giving way to horizontal-oriented ones that produce more with less. Stereotypical Exhibit A: In 1988, Kodak employed 144,000 people in its film business. In 2012, it filed for bankruptcy, a year that witnessed the emergence of Instagram, a photo company that, at the time, served over thirty million customers with its thirteen employees.
Without delving into the economics of these trends, which I consider to be positive in the long-run — albeit exacerbated by labor cost-increasing government policies — let me offer a confession. I always thought economists were going to avoid these trends. Yes, our interactions with students might change, and robots might even replace us in the classroom, but these developments seemed a long way off. Regardless, the everyday work of writing an academic paper or book review would never be taken on by technology.
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