Here’s a statistic that might shock you.

If US GDP were distributed equally, every household would make $160,000 per year.

Surprised? Now. I’m not suggesting we have a glorious revolution anytime soon. I’m suggesting we’re already having one. The world is on its way to a post-work future. More and more of what nations produce — $20 trillion worth for the US — is produced without human intervention. What’s true for the US is true for every advanced economy in the world. We are well past the point where people in rich countries could earn middle class lives if incomes were distributed equally.

But why should they be — at least a little more so?

What links the great problems in the world today — stagnation, inequality, extremism? It’s the the future’s here, as a great writer once said — it’s just not equally distributed. Those problems are all rising because, though we might not know, we are on the revolutionary road to a world without work. Every dollar, yen, or renminbi of value created in the economies of today is done so with less and less work. So jobs are disappearing — but the fruits of a workless economy are not being allocated well: justly, efficiently, effectively, optimally.In ways that allow societies to prosper — instead of collapse into something like lawless neofeudal oligarchies.

The scarcest commodity in modern economies is becoming work itself. That is why we are seeing yesterday’s careers going up in smoke. Gigs replacing jobs.Young people looking desperately for a way in, but finding none. The whole labour market breaking all of yesterday’s rules — low unemployment, but also little inflation, and no real gains in household incomes, which continue to shrink. Those cannot all be true unless there is something changing, and changing profoundly, at the heart of the economy.

That something is technology and automation. Algorithms are replacing whole categories of managers at Uber and Amazon. They are replacing whole industries — advertising and media — at Google and Facebook. They are replacing whole categories of workers, in accounting, law, and medicine. Now. Let us leave aside the question of whether they are doing so well — we will come back to that in the end.

So here we are, economists, managers, intellectuals, politicans, people — seeking work, jobs, and careers, desperately in an economy that has less and less of it to offer. We are trying to solve a problem that was itself the solution to yesterday’s problems. We wanted lives of ease and comfort, where work itself became obsolete. Now we stand on the cusp of that science-fiction world that we wanted. But the transition is the hard part.

Let me give you a metaphor. An industrial economy was like a factory. It needed human input. This one is like a balloon. It rises by itself. The question is who’s allowed in.

The road to a post-work world will be paved with revolution. Political, social, and cultural ones — not just technological ones. Let me explain how.

In America, all safety nets and public goods are tied to one’s “job” — healthcare, insurance, educational subsidies, and so on. This is the result ofhypercapitalism meeting a puritanical work ethic. But it has also left the US with a failed social contract — because in a world where work is itself becoming the scarcest commodity, tying one’s quality of life to a “job” is a recipe for social disaster: democracy then fails, as people turn to authoritarian movements to give them what the economy cannot — healthcare, education, income, savings, and so on. The balloon is rising — but no one is in it. And those on the ground are likely to pull it down.

The American social contract is failing because it was built for a world of work — and in a world without work, it will have to be totally rewritten. But how is that to be done? Well, because America is so uniquely poorly positioned to make the transition to a post-work world, it’s example shows us what will is missing. The basics of a decent life will need to be uncoupled from “jobs”. And so will “income”, “savings”, “investments”, and “ownership”. Because in a world where “jobs” are themselves things of the past, tying one’s ability to earn to them is going to cause American style social collapse.

Now. How, in turn, is a social contract to be rewritten? It will take a generation or two of reform. Of mass movements for change and transformation. The status quo will fight it, every step of the way. So Americans will need to change their norms and values — from “poor people are lazy” to “everyone deserves an income” — and then their institutions.Short of a social, cultural, and political revolution, a world without work threatens to collapse societies whose social contracts are still written for an industrial age.

Who is better positioned in this transition to a world without work? Europe.There, the basics of life aren’t tied to jobs. They are basic rights. Healthcare, education, media, and so on. Even income and savings, to a small degree, aren’t contingent on one’s “job”. Here, the social contract will have to be updated — but perhaps not totally rewritten like in America. The balloon, must only be made big enough for everyone to fit.

Now. Where will societies that can’t make the transition end up? Again, America gives us a clue. Social contracts written for industrial societies, that are growing empty of work, will turn those very societies feudal. Middle classes and poor will become something like serfs and peasants, while those who “own” the algorithms that manage the workless economy will be something like lords and barons, with absolute power. When work itself is a scarce commodity, the serfs and peasants ability to live will be dependent on the patronage of the right nobles, just as in previous eras of human history.The balloon will crash, instead of rising, if no one is allowed in.

That is why making this transition will be revolutionary in another way, too. If it isn’t handled with care, foresight, and humanity, societies will regress into a bygone era that combines the worst of all past eras: authoritarianism, feudalism, fascism, together, at once. Revolutions can cut both ways, after all.

Now. I have said a “workless society”. Do I mean that people will sit around watching MTV and vegetating? That there is no work left to be done? Not at all. The work of the future is very different from the work of the past, and in many ways, it is not work at all. It isn’t hierarchical, it isn’t commanded-and-controlled, it isn’t routinized and formulaic, and it isn’t something to be endured, but something to be embraced and enjoyed.

The work of the future is about reclaming our dignity, humanity, and freedom — in the deepest meanings of these words. It is creative and expressive, deeply emotional and intellectual — not just technical, analytical, and mundane, fitting gears together. There is labour to be done — but it is about finding ways to solve these big problems of climate change, to extend the human lifespan, to understand who we humans really are, to find out what this thing we call the universe is. These big questions that have haunted us from the beginning of our days — that is the work to be done in a world where the work of earning one’s daily bread has already been met, whether through art, literature, science.

There is another way to put that. If we make the transition succesfully, to a post-work world, we are in the balloon. All of us, together. The question is then where we go. What do we explore? See? Discover? What lies above the clouds? The work of the future is about creating the very inventions, governments, social contracts, ways of life, forms of organization, modes of expression, that allow people to prosper higher and higher, in a world without work. And that’s the greatest irony of all. It seems like it should be easy. But in fact, living without the burden of work might just be the hardest — and most rewarding work — of all.

Umair

Originally written February 2018