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 One of the great modern {{t|dogma}}s.
-====Time off, organised sport and the commercialisation of leisure====
-The British invented all important sports. Even downhill skiing. (Americans: your “important sports” are all derived omfrom games the British invented: rounders, netball and rugby).
-Now there is a reason that the British invented all sports, and that is because the British invented the Industrial Revolution, which was humankind’s last go at technological unemployment: suddenly subsistence workers didn’t have to work the circadian rhythm, never stopping for a moment. work came on a reliable schedule. Machines did the grunt work, humans operated the machines, clocked off at 5 went off to enjoy official “leisure time”, meaning time beyond essential periods of rest, recovery, nutrition, washing and so on — to ''not'' think about the factory, and do whatever you please. No doubt anthropologists will say it was more complicated, or less benign, then that, but the essential point is that about two hundred and fifty years ago humans started predictably to have leisure time. This was (partial) technogical unemployment, v1.0. (For sure, technolocal unemployment happens ''by degree''.)
-Being full of industrial workers suddenly having the happy problem of figuring out what to do with their free time, we should not be surprised with what the British came up with: organised sport. ''Humans like to play games''.
-So it was, as the industrial revolution was presenting this “problem” that the sports we know today convened governing associations and set about formalising common rules: cricket (1787), rugby (1845), football (1863), lawn tennis (1874), boxing (1867) and field hockey (1900). Okay, and baseball (1845), American football (1876) ice hockey (1877) and basketball (1892).
-Each started life as an amateur undertaking — something for workers to while away their leisure time — and even those which professionalised early in the 20th century did not immediately realise their collosal commercial potential — some staying amateur until the end of the twentieth century.
-And here’s the point: these free, “downtime” activities, that emerged to keep idle workers occupied, turned out to have great value in and of themselves — obviously, or noone would do them in the first place — and that value eventually generated its own industry. What was leisure became ''work''. And work evolves around it: agents, event organisers, sponsors , broadcasters, marketers, equipment manufacturers — suddenly that leisurely bash around at the links of a Sunday requires two and a half grand of Callaway clubs, the same in polo shirts and silly trousers,  golf lessons, club memberships — workers had to go back to work just to afford the clobber to enjoy your time off.
-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====
 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>
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 [[File:BS bingo.png|50px|frame|right|This graphic courtesy of the JC’s own spurious correlations research programme]]So, wouldn’t it be a gas to see when the [[middle management]] [[buzzword]]s started to come into the corpus?  Well, fancy ''that'' →
+====Time off, organised sport and the commercialisation of leisure====
+Besides, if technological unemployment had more than a transitory dislocating effect, we would have long since noticed it. Technologies have been displacing labour for ''millennia''.
+The British invented all important sports. Even downhill skiing.<ref>True story: the mountain people of Europe had long since invented [[skiing]] as an essential means of conveyance during the alpine winters. It took the British to identify the possibilities of riding a train up and then just sliding back down for the hell of it.</ref> (Americans: your “important sports” are all derived from games the British invented: rounders, netball and rugby).
+Now there is a reason that the British invented all sports, and that is because the British invented the Industrial Revolution, which was humankind’s last go at technological unemployment: suddenly subsistence workers didn’t have to work the circadian rhythm, never stopping for a moment. work came on a reliable schedule. Machines did the grunt work, humans operated the machines, clocked off at 5 and went off to enjoy “leisure ”,  beyond essential periods of rest, recovery, nutrition, washing and so on — to ''not'' think about the factory, and do whatever you please. No doubt anthropologists will say it was more complicated, or less benign, then that, but the essential point is that about two hundred and fifty years ago humans started predictably to have leisure time. This was technogical unemployment, v1.0: for sure, it will happen ''by degrees''.)
+Being full of industrial workers suddenly having the happy problem of figuring out what to do with themselves, we should not be surprised that the British came up with organised sport. ''Humans like to play games''.
+So it was that the sports we know today convened governing associations and set about formalising common rules: cricket (1787), rugby (1845), football (1863), lawn tennis (1874), boxing (1867) and field hockey (1900). Okay, and baseball (1845), American football (1876) ice hockey (1877) and basketball (1892).
+Each started life as an amateur undertaking — something for workers to while away their leisure time — and even those which professionalised early in the 20th century did not immediately realise their collosal commercial potential — some staying amateur until the end of the twentieth century.
+And here’s the point: these free, “downtime” activities, that emerged to keep idle workers occupied, turned out to be valuable — obviously, or noone would do them in the first place — and where there is value there is business opportunity. That  spare time value eventually generated its own industry. What was leisure became ''work''. And work evolves around it: agents, event organisers, sponsors , broadcasters, marketers, equipment manufacturers — suddenly that leisurely bash around at the links of a Sunday requires two and a half grand of Callaway clubs, the same in polo shirts and silly trousers, golf lessons, club memberships — enough expense that you had to go back to work just to afford the clobber to enjoy your time off.
+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.
 {{sa}}
 *[[Operationalisation]]
 *[[Redundancy]]
 {{ref}}