Technological Unemployment (future salon series)

Do computers, robotics, and artificial intelligence impact the job market? Ever since the Luddites in the 19th century, people have argued that technological innovation does not cause unemployment, even though it does cause certain jobs to go away or become less labor-intensive -- the total number of jobs in the economy does not change, and innovation makes everyone more prosperous. In fact the term "Luddite fallacy" was coined as a result (and can be slung at you in arguments on Facebook if you argue otherwise.) Say's Law states that supply creates its own demand, so any displaced workers would automatically find work elsewhere once the market had had time to adjust. Karl Marx present a deeply pessimistic view of technological unemployment, but, we all know how history played out with his ideas and his ideas were dismissed by mainstream economics.

In 1920, the word "robot" was coined by Czech playwright Karel Čapek for his play R.U.R., which stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, and what the "robots" did was work in factories without being paid. The term "technological unemployment" was coined a few years later, in about 1925, though no one knows by whom.

The term "golden age of capitalism" has been applied to the postwar (WWII) period up through the 1970s. Since then, GDP has continued to increase, but the the average worker's wages have stagnated, with the GDP increase going to the top and wealth inequality accelerating. Technology has created a plethora of free stuff -- with only an internet connection you can get unlimited free or cheap music, videos, video games, open source software, and various other "information products", but with the twin caveats that if something is free, you can't make a living from it (musicians now make most of their money by touring and charging for shows, and writers of open-source software usually have day jobs, etc), and you still have to pay for rent, medical, and education, and the prices of those things are going up, rather than down.

Can the robots be blamed for this? Or is it a failure of economic policy? In this meeting, we'll be examining the evidence for the theory that technological unemployment is a real thing, coming from some recent popular books including The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee and Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. When it comes to "the future," this is obviously one of the most defining questions -- if you think technological unemployment is or isn't going to happen, you're going to have completely different expectations as to how the future will play out. Bring your own arguments/counter-arguments for/against.