AI Will Destroy Millions of Jobs - Here's What We Should Do ASAP

The secret of the golden age of Athens

Graphic design jobs? Gone.

Accounting jobs? Toast.

Administrators? Roasted worse than Charbucks, ground to ash, and blasted through with espresso water.

Various experts estimate we could lose countless millions of jobs due to artificial intelligence.

They tell us all this technological innovation will eventually lead to more jobs.

But that’s not helpful for the millions of unemployed people now, is it?

The promise of future jobs was cold comfort to the woolen industries of medieval England and the papermakers of ancient China.

Typically, it takes a generation or two for new industries to emerge from the rubble of capitalism’s “creative destruction.”

Why are we okay with AI decimating our people for fifty years before economies re-adjust to the new normal?

Here’s what everyone’s missing:

Even the ancient Greeks knew there was a simple way to avert civilizational chaos during times of technological advancement.

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Athens.

~461 BC.

Exciting new technologies are taking over the struggling city-state.

Rotary mills grind grain faster than ever.

Gears power mechanical inventions (including the world’s first computer.)

Water clocks measure time with astounding precision.

Early steam-powered contraptions dazzle the populace.

But there’s a dark side: Unemployment is rising.

Fewer hands are needed in the fields and workshops.

The visionary statesman Pericles sees where things are headed:

Mass unemployment, debt peonage, slavery, desperation, starvation… uprising, revolution, civil war, opportunistic attacks from Sparta or Persia… the end of Athens.

So what does he do?

He taxes the elites and commerce class and starts an ambitious public works program.

He commissions countless architectural and cultural projects: temples, theaters, statues, and civic buildings.

He hires thousands of unemployed Athenians — stonemasons, sculptors, laborers, painters, even poets and playwrights — to bring these visions to life.

The workers spend their pay in the Agora.

This commerce creates more jobs.

This employment creates more taxation.

This revenue enables more development.

This lowers unemployment and increases community wealth creation.

They build the Long Walls for defense, the Odeon for fun, gymnasiums for strength, make upgrades to the Theatre of Dionysus, and launch a full restoration of the Acropolis.

Athens is saved from the chaos of technological upheaval.

They get to have their tech and eat it too.

Athens enters its Golden Age.

That age produces Sophocles, Aeschylus, Anaxagoras, Socrates.

And in the process, leaves behind some unbelievable masterpieces including the Parthenon.

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Our Golden Age

We don’t need to build temples to Athena.

But couldn’t we start with tens of millions of gorgeous, hyper-affordable, at-cost, energy-efficient, stone homes?

What about virtually free and unlimited eco-power from tidal, wave, geothermal, hydro, and modular reactors?

What about at-cost public eco-transportation like trains, subways, busses, hyperloops, maglev busses, maglev trains, maglev taxis, and vactrains?

Shelter, energy, and transportation… these three costs alone account for more than 50% of annual household spending.

Imagine only having to work half as much.

With AI doing the other half, we could have our tech and eat it too.

At present, Silicon Valley has us on a crash course with mass unemployment for a generation and immense family and community upheaval, with the rewards accruing to a handful of sociopathic billionaires.

Let’s build a Golden Age instead.

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I talk about the evils of modern money in my new A Devil Named Lucifer, which is out now!

Here’s the trailer:

Here are some fun conversations about it:

I’d so appreciate it if you’d buy the book and spread the word!