We all find some satisfaction with what we do. If we try to do our jobs better, we will be happy. The “snake” in that particular garden is automation. In the late 1700s, 80 or 90 out of every hundred people were in the food production business. Now, one person in a hundred produces enough food for the other ninety nine.
Every segment of the private sector has gone through similarly rampant restructuring, reductions, and redundancies. As fewer people produce more, more people don’t have to produce anything.
The only area immune from efficiencies is government. There, lots of people have unnecessary jobs. For many, make-work jobs provide the only employment they will, or can, get. Almost all of them pretend to believe, at some level, that they’re doing something useful.
At heart, they know they’re doing meaningless make-work. They understand that they have their jobs because politicians provide favored unions and bureaus with incomes in exchange for votes and donations. No one can be truly happy if their lives are based on favoritism that allows them to steal from their neighbors.
Millions of educators could be replaced by distance learning, computerized lessons, and teaching machines. They don’t want that to happen to themselves, even as everything they buy is affordable solely because of automated manufacturing of everything from light bulbs to medicine. So, their is hypocrisy in the fraud, further disturbing the soul’s essential affinity for fairness.
We see high degrees of unemployment in many places. In Spain, unemployment is over 20%. In America’s cities, some areas have 50% of their residents without jobs. Still, distribution systems work well enough that there is food, clothing, housing, and medical care for all.
If we utilized our time like monks, we’d find that automating jobs out of existence provides more time for prayer, study, and worship. With more spare time, people could grow closer to God and their families. It’s amazing that people aren’t demanding more automation so they could spend time with their children. With the proper distribution systems, they could.
The biggest difficulty in trying to turn the production of goods and services into a cornucopia that provides everyone with what they need is illustrated by giving, say, a side of beef to ten families to divide among themselves.
Of all the available cuts, who gets rump roast? Who gets the filets?
