How will technological change alter our economy and by extension our culture and social order? The invention of electricity, telecommunications and the internal combustion engine defined the 20th century and transformed the world in hitherto unimaginable ways:

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As we begin to enter the age of nanorobotics, this is already starting to feel that way…https://t.co/vkBqHQkxzM — Scott Santens (@scottsantens) April 26, 2019

Sophia the Robot on Nat Geo:

President Andrew Yang and Vice President Tulsi Gabbard huddle to discuss the real issues facing our society in the 21st century like growing income inequality, the rise of artificial intelligence, the subsequent loss of millions of middle class and working class jobs and unnecessary regime change wars:

With @TulsiGabbard speaking to Dems in Dallas County, Iowa. pic.twitter.com/D4Z8bmIXrU — Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) April 26, 2019

Hot take.

The rise of free-market capitalism shredded the social and economic fabric of Western Christendom in the modern era, but the economy of the post-modern era will change that by gradually eliminating work and scarcity and by redistributing wealth from machine slave laborers. In such a world, human beings will reorient toward reconstructing traditional cultures to provide the structure, meaning and purpose to life that was lost in the wake of the popularization of Enlightenment philosophy:

Capitalism is a series of sophistries to get people to pay for their own slavery and to destroy their morals, thereby driving them far from Christ. #ThirdPosition pic.twitter.com/CAqPvOFG2U — St Benedict ??Jon (@JonDave49) April 25, 2019

Entreprenuer.com:

“Are you worried about losing your job? Perhaps you should be, not because of an influx of illegal immigrants but because of robots.

Our jobs are not being stolen, they are being destroyed. A recently released report conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute estimated automation will eliminate 73 million jobs by 2030. While companies spend billions trying to improve efficiency through automation, we are often complicit in the job loss, perhaps without knowing it. Do you pump your own gas? Go to the self serve line at the grocery store? These were jobs once done by people but automation and the eager adoption by consumers eliminated the need for a paid position. …” This got me wondering, how big an impact would the loss of 73 million jobs make? According to Statista, there were 128.7 full time workers in 2018, leaving 55.7 jobs remaining. In other words, 43 percent of the jobs that exist today, will be automated out of existence if the McKinsey Global project plays out.

Yes, I have noticed the UPS trucks that are constantly delivering Amazon packages in my area, the new touch-screen kiosks at McDonald’s, the self checkouts at Wal-Mart, the proliferation of the Dollar General and Dollar Tree stores in the rural South, how all the unemployed blacks whose ancestors were sharecroppers are simply given free food with their EBT cards in exchange for social peace. We’re going to have to dramatically expand the welfare state to cope with automation.

Axios:

“When hedge fund CEOs, presidential candidates and college professors shout that something is wrong with capitalism as practiced, they are — unwittingly in most cases — attacking a long-deceased, 800-pound gorilla in the economy.

The backdrop: Thirteen years after his death, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman — a 5-foot-tall University of Chicago economist — continues to exert a dominant hold on public opinion with his stark call for a stripped-down, profit-making-only role for business. But the Friedman Doctrine, as some call it, is under threat as Americans attempt to make sense of the anger in the roiled U.S. heartland, beset by hollowed-out cities, bankrupt pension plans, and decades of flat wages.

What’s happening: In recent months, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, numerous Democratic presidential candidates and others have called for a more socially minded corporate America.”

I’ve never read Milton Friedman.

I suspect he will be fun to read one day though because of how wrong he was about economics. Everyone can look around and see the paradigm of neo-liberal economics crumbling before their eyes. The underlying cause is that the various assumptions the model is based on are flawed and are being dramatically exposed by accelerating technological change.