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Technological unemployment: Difference between revisions
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This presented the sort of problem everyone wants to have: figuring out what to do with your free time. The British were the nation who, predominantly, had this problem, and just one thing they did was ''invent organised sport''. | This presented the sort of problem everyone wants to have: figuring out what to do with your free time. The British were the nation who, predominantly, had this problem, and just one thing they did was ''invent organised sport''. | ||
There were settled governing associations for golf (1744), cricket (1787), rugby (1845), football (1863), tennis (1874), boxing (1867) hockey (1900), okay and baseball (1845), American football (1876) and basketball (1892). Each started as an amateur undertaking — for workers to do in their leisure time — and even those which professionalised early (American sports generally prodessionakused quickly, other sports less so) did not realise the collosal commercial potential until the end of the twentieth century. | |||
And there’s the rub: activities that emerged to occupy our extra time have value — obviously, is we would not do them — and that value will eventually generate its own industry. What was leisure becomes ''work''. And work evolves around it: agents, event organisers, broadcasters, marketing, equipment manufacturers — suddenly that leisurely bash around at the links on a Sunday requires two and a half grand of Callaway clubs, the same in polo shirts and silly trousers, 10 grand membership, and you need to go to work just to afford the clobber to play an occasional round. | |||
We have been dealing with “technological unemployment” for ninety years, that is too say. ''It hasn't created any unemployment yet''. There is no reason to think it will start now. | |||
====The theory==== | ====The theory==== | ||
As articulated by Keynes: “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.”<ref>Keynes: ''Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren''</ref> | As articulated by Keynes: “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.”<ref>Keynes: ''Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren''</ref> | ||