Egyptian entrepreneur Samih Sawiris
Mass automation will mean the majority of human beings will have little prospect of being in employment. It is essential both to provide for them with financial support, and to create a sense of purpose
The transition to the era where the vast majority of people will not be able to be employed will require governments to start seriously thinking about de-demonising not working. Right now, the world is full of Calvinists who believe that God made us here to work, and even if others are not as extreme, there is this subtle belief that if you don?t work you?re no good. And this will have to change as we move into an era where machines will do a lot of the work that people are doing now and where it becomes impossible to create enough jobs. So, de facto, come 2050 a lot of people will be born and live and die without ever really working because the world doesn?t need them as a workforce. If governments don?t soon start to prepare people for this event, we will have a lot of angry and unhappy people who just don?t understand why some are working and they?re not.
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The second thing that has to happen is to create an association between all these machines and the ex-employees that were replaced by them, and the best scenario would be to start contriving a sense of ownership. Let?s let?s say you used to assemble cars in a factory and now it?s all computerised with robots. Under this system, you wou...