You’re Screwed.

If you have a boss, anyway.

Jobs are getting demolished like crazy. Yours is probably next.

Robots and software are making each worker amazingly productive. This has been happening forever. Ned Ludd is famous for smashing a couple stocking frames because they took his job. A bunch of people thought this was a good idea and so they also started bashing technology. Then they became Luddites. They were scared. They were professionals who became obsolete because of technology.

Fortunately, no amount of bashing can stop technological progress. (Well, actually, some guy discovered aluminum like 1800 years before we started using it but a greedy King had him beheaded. So sometimes it can work for a while. But he didn’t have the Internet or any backed up data.) The Luddites lose every time.

The original Luddites (like everyone else) ended up getting factory jobs and pay raises. There was more going around. But what happens while the new jobs get made?

In recent history, the new jobs have come in quick. Not now, though. There’s been no obvious place for displaced workers to go.

The rest of this post will give you the information you need to understand what’s happening and, more importantly, how you can secure a place for you and your family among the beneficiaries of all this disruptive craziness.

 I quote heavily from Al Gore’s most recent book, The Future, which is a phenomenal look at the current landscape we’re dealing with. I have also quoted James Altucher’s Choose Yourself which is one of the better books out there. For a more in-depth and step-by-step approach to thriving in this crazy world check out our book, Self-Made U.

A. Robots are Taking Over

Consider the following graph provided by the MIT Technology Review

Productivity is consistently rising while more people are losing jobs. Where are all the extra goods going?!

Pretty wild, huh? There’s an increased abundance of stuff but a decrease in the amount of people who can afford it.

Damn robots!

I hope you’re beginning to create a robot-leveraging scheme.

Look, for example, at the coal industry in the United States. In the last quarter century, production has increased by 133 percent, even as jobs have decreased by 33 percent.

He points out that it’s not just blue collars that are getting pink slips. Nobody is safe.

Consider the impact of intelligent programs for legal and document research in law firms. Some studies indicate that with the addition of these programs, a single first-year associate can now perform with greater accuracy the volume of work that used to be done by 500 first-year associates.

He also discusses the massive impact that automated cars and trucks will have on jobs.

Much has been written about Google’s success in developing self-driving automobiles, which have now travelled 300,000 miles in all driving conditions without an accident. If this technology is soon perfected – as many predict – consider the impact of the 373,000 people employed in the United States alone as taxi drivers and chauffeurs  Already, some Australian mining companies have replaced high-wage truck drivers with driverless trucks.

Getting rid of drivers is just the start. Think about the entire auto-industry. Auto-body and mechanics are all going to be consolidated to a few major companies. Traffic lights won’t be necessary.

To “drive” (harhar!) this point home, here is an anecdote from James Altucher:

Recently I joined the board of directors of a temporary staffing company with $700 million revenue. The year before they had $400 million. That growth occurred in a flat economy. I now can see firsthand and immediately what parts of the economy are hiring full-time and what parts of the economy are moving toward using more temporary workers.

I’ll tell you the answer: ZERO sectors in the economy are moving toward more full-time workers. Everything is either being cut back, moved toward outsourcing out of the country, or hiring temp workers. And this goes not just for low-paid industrial workers, but middle-managers, computer programmers, accountants, lawyers, and even senior executives.

This kind of destruction is happening everywhere. It’s important to keep in mind that this is creative destruction and will create industries as well. Chances are they are going to be industries that require you have some technical skills though. Or, even better, understand how to leverage the technical skills of others.

B. A Couple People Own The Big Robots

The factory (virtual or physical) owners appear to be soaking up the increased efficiencies.

Now, just because the factory owners are getting all the extra money from these technological advances it doesn’t mean they’re taking all the extra stuff. Most of that money is saved. Saved money is just a store of redeemable promises. It has no affect on what’s happening around it. So it’s not like the top 1% are the only people benefiting from this productivity. (As goods get cheaper we can afford to dole out more good as “natural rights”.)

The wealth inequality in the U.S. is worse than Canada, China, and pretty much the rest of the world. However, this measurement on its own isn’t fair. Our “poor” are much better off than the “middle class” in most countries because of excess productivity in that 1%. Our Human Development Index (life expectancy, education, income) ranking is 3 versus China’s 101 ranking. We need to keep in mind that statistics are the third kind of lie (the first being lies and the second being damn lies) and shouldn’t scare us too much. (It’s also worth noting that rarely has any good come of attacking income inequality, it’s better to work with what is than cry about what isn’t.)

The point is this: the money is getting sucked out of the class middle class. You’ve got to choose to move up or get pushed down. Since you’re here, I know which way you want to go.

EVERYTHING is getting robosourced…

C. But Not Most of the Robots

As technology focuses productivity to fewer corporations it also puts more power in your hands. A laptop and Internet connection are the equivalent of having a small team of programmers a couple of years ago. Consider the fact that you can start an online store for about $15 a month at Shopify.

From The Future:

Where services are concerned, we are also seeing a third trend, which might be called “self-sourcing”: individual consumers of services, empowered with laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other productivity-enhancing devices, are interacting with intelligent programs to effectively partner with machine intelligence to effectively replace many of the people who used to be employed in service jobs. Many airline travelers routinely make their own reservations, pick their own seats, and print their boarding passes. Many supermarkets and other stores enable shoppers to handle the checkout and payment processes on their own. Banks began to provide cash with ATM machines and now offer extensive online banking services. Customers of many businesses now routinely deal with computers on the telephone. National postal services disintermediated (that is, their “middleman” role is being made obsolete - by email and social media.

This self-sourcing trend is still in its early stages and will accelerate dramatically as artificial intelligence improves year by year. One obvious problem is that there is no compensation for all the new work done by individuals, even as the compensation formerly paid to those in firms who lost their jobs is also lost to the economy as a whole.

How are you already benefiting from these massive increases in productivity? How can you use these advancements to further benefit you?

this was 3d printed

D. The Transition Is Far From Complete

While jobs are disappearing rapidly, some, at least, are being created. There are always opportunities for those who will look for them. Gore mentions that robosourcing will actually shift jobs away from the developing world and back home:

The wave of automation that is contributing to the outsourcing and robosourcing of jobs from developed countries to emerging and developing markets will soon begin to displace many of the jobs so recently created in those same low-wage countries. 3D printing could accelerate this process, and eventually could also move manufacturing back into developed countries. Many U.S. companies have already reported that various forms of automation have enabled them to bring back at least some of the jobs they had originally outsourced to low-wage countries.

Most of the forces underway are moving jobs away from us. Some trends are developing that will bring jobs back. Gore and Altucher don’t seem to think that these jobs will come back. We never know what the next revolution will bring, though. “Change is the only constant,” is a tired saying that deserves another look. Change will come and we don’t know what it will look like. The one thing that seems certain: it’s coming faster…

keep in mind: this is LOGARITHMIC graph!

E. It’s Happening Faster… And Faster ANDFASTER!

These massive upheavals are happening more frequently as we move forward. Technology itself propels new technology forward. So the better the technology the quicker it can push us into the next wave of technology. Our ability to adapt is what allowed us to survive extreme conditions early on in our species’ history and that ability will be pushed as we face an ever-increasing pace of change. From The Future:

Consider again the larger pattern traced in the history of these three epochs: the first lasted 200,000 years, the next lasted 8,000 years, and the Industrial Revolution took only 150 years. Each of these historic changes in the nature of the human experience we more significant than its predecessor and occurred over a radically shorter time span. All were connected to technological innovations.

Major breakthroughs are occurring in genetics/biotech, sustainable energy, and AI. All of these movements have the potential to create even more massive increases in productivity per employee. They also have the potential to create a new demand for those AI-steroided employees.

F. “It’s Different This Time”

Every previous epoch has been the brain developing technology. That technology worked like a basic tool. Now the tool is like our brain. Artificial Intelligence is nearing a point where it can do much of the work our brain used to – the very thing we used to further technology. The role of “humanity” in production is being pushed farther and farther to the side (even “creativity” is being put in question). This makes this shift different than any other before. (Note that Ray Kurzweil, an optimistic futurist, doesn’t believe the brain will be able to be replicated for decades to come… so at least some of our brain will still be needed.)

As artificial intelligence matures and is connected with all the other technological extensions of human capacity – grasping and manipulating physical objects, recombining them into new forms, carrying them over distance, communicating with one another utilizing flows of information of far greater volume and far greater speed than any humans are capable of achieving, making their own abstract models of reality, and learning in ways that are sometimes superior to the human capacity to learn – the impact of the AI revolution will be far greater than that of any previous technological revolution.

One of the impacts will be to further accelerate the decoupling of gains in productivity from gains in the standard of living for the middle class. In the past, improvements in economic efficiency have generally led to improvements in wages for the majority, but when the substitution of technology capital for labor creates the elimination of very large numbers of jobs, a much larger proportion of the gains go to those who provide the capital. The fundamental relationship between technology and employment is being transformed.

Again, this sounds pessimistic. Keep in mind that if there is nobody to buy products then there is no profit in producing them. This shift will ultimately steady itself, but in the meantime – you better start out-human-ing the machines. You need to create a platform. You need to serve others in the way computers can’t. You need to use the leverage being created by these computers.

G. You Probably Didn’t Choose Your Dream

There are a few of people who spend trillions of dollars to make you want certain things. It’s difficult to keep your mind sane when it’s bombarded by paid ads all day. Especially when these come from people you trust. Many of our obsessions started with the “American Dream”, which James Altucher describes in his book Choose Yourself:

In fact, “the American Dream” comes from a marketing campaign developed by Fannie Mae to convince Americans newly flush with cash to start taking mortgages. Why buy a home with your won hard-earned money when you can use somebody else’s? It may be the best marketing slogan ever conceived. It was like a vacuum cleaner that that sucked everyone into believing that a $15 trillion mortgage industry would lead to universal happiness. “The American Dream” quickly replaced the peace and quiet of the suburb with the desperate need to always stay ahead.

Now is a time to look back on your dreams. Why are you going after that dream? Did somebody tell you it was the right thing to do a long time ago? The machines are mostly taking jobs that people didn’t want in the first place. Use this opportunity.

you’ve got to take one

H. Your Choices

According to Altucher, you have two choices:

In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur. Choose to commoditize your labor or choose yourself to be a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur.

If you’re reading this, I know you’re not trying to be a temp staffer. The entrepreneur’s path has more people on it than ever before – and it’s also more accessible than ever before. You have the tools, you just need to start using them.

it’s a whole new worllddd

I. This World Is Better

This increased productivity must be a good thing at the end. It’s the transition that’s painful. In Self-Made U I wrote:

One of the many beautiful parts of this shift is that fulfillment, a feeling of purpose in life, is no longer something you do after-hours. The whole world is becoming more integrated and so is your life.

The reward system is different now. You aren’t getting paid to do what they tell you really well because they don’t know what to tell you! You’ve got to figure that out now. It’s a return to our roots. Before the industrial revolution we were all pretty much entrepreneurs anyway. You had to figure out your craft and how you were going to sell it.

So here we are. Being pushed out into the open again. It’s scarier. There’s no map and nobody seems to know what’s going on. We’ve got to find our way. But we can’t really find what’s not there… so we’ve got to make it!

This is a world where your work can make you feel alive. That’s a better place to be.

… to comment below!

K. What do you think?

This whole thing is crazy! So much excitement, opportunity, and uncertainty. How are you approaching it? Do you have strategies you are using?

Do you have more questions that you’d like to have answered?

Do you have a story you’d like to share?

Comment below and let’s learn some more about the future…

Also, for all sorts of how-to on taking advantage of these things… buy our book!

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