Harper Lee published her Pulitzer Prize winning book, To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. A couple of years later, Gregory Peck won an Academy for Best Actor in his role as Atticus in the movie adaptation. Quite a remarkable book.
What many do not realize is Lee was given a grant by friends to take off work for a year and concentrate on writing the book. Her story has fired the imagination of many who would like all of us to find similar friends and get a similar grant. Imagine what wonderful things we could produce. They call it a Universal Basic Income and our angel would be the government. We would all get an amount irrespective of our work status. Not a one time gift, an annual one.
No matter that Lee was a unicorn as authors go, and few of us will have such success or that we should all strive to find a similar angel in our personal networks, not expect it from the government, but the idea is getting wide play. President Barack Obama in a recent interview with Wired talked about it. Ok, so as a lame duck President he will not get too far with it, but the Swiss already held a referendum about it earlier this year (it lost but is expected to come up for consideration again in a couple of years), and several governments around the world are debating it.
I have several questions about the concept before we rush off and commit much time and money
Why are we panicking over sensational analysis of job losses?
Two Oxford researchers think nearly half the US workforce is susceptible to being eliminated by automation. Gartner says a third. Those are clearly catastrophic numbers. But…how about we dissect that analysis first? I do so in my book, Silicon Collar and in this blog post. There are many flaws with those and other alarmist reports, and before we spend trillions in new social programs we owe it to ourselves to commission more independent analysis, this time with practitioners included, not just by academics and analysts.
Last century of automation shows gradual job losses which societies adjusted to
For my book I analyzed a century of technologies in the form of UPC scanners, ATM, email and others and how they only gradually impacted jobs. Here are some of the examples
- An early version of the ATM machine was introduced in 1960. Six decades later and even with mobile banking taking off, we still have over 90,000 bank branches across the U.S., employing over half a million tellers and other employees
- The UPC code and scanner were patented in 1952. It took the grocery industry two decades to start to widely adopt it. The end result was not loss of checkout jobs. It improved inventory control and led to an explosion of SKUs. Even today, with self-check out kiosks in many stores, those jobs have not disappeared.
- We have been predicting the death of “snail mail” for decades as email, texting, Skype, Facetime, and social media have become our preferred methods of communicating with each other. Unbelievably, the US Postal Service business has gone up — it sorts half the world’s paper-based mail and packages and keeps over half a million workers employed.
- With digital voice mailboxes and most of us doing our own word processing and travel arrangements, who needs secretaries or administrative assistants? Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that category still employs nearly four million workers in the US.
In the book, I show what I call societal circuit breakers to automation and leads to an evolution, not revolution in jobs.
Modern automation is similarly impacting jobs — just gradually
People say modern technologies will kill many more jobs. I say show me. Artificial Intelligence? IBM’s Watson has been hyped for 5 years and so far has not replaced a single job even after massive investment. Yann LeCun, director of AI research at Facebook, recently commented, “ we are a long way from machines that are as intelligent as humans — or even rats. So far, we’ve seen only 5% of what AI can do.” Robotics? Japan is the world leader and for 5 years they have tried to use robots for their nuclear clean up. Everyone of those robots has failed. Forget nuclear clean up — how about tidying your hair? David Bruemmer, president and CTO of 5D Robotics, recently described how intimidating a hairdresser’s job looks to a robot. Autonomous cars? Our laws and infrastructure will not be ready for years if not decades.
I have many more examples in my book, but don’t take my word for it. Let’s commission an independent review of automation and job impact in the past few decades and how our societies have adjusted without a UBI needed.
Plenty of new jobs being created
As I told Dennis Howlett there is no single version of the truth when it comes to job estimates. I have described an “Alt-Job” economy of workers in franchises, on platforms ( iStore, Amazon fulfillment, eBay work at home, Uber etc.) and a whole new categories of services — alternative health like acupuncturists, herbalists, pet care etc. — none of which our parents enjoyed. These jobs are not well tracked. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has also reported for 3+ years 4+ million unfilled jobs in each of its monthly reports in the better tracked part of the labor economy. The IRS reports if you exclude the top 1% the rest of us plebs still report $ 10 trillion in income a year. Our workforce is creative enough to keep creating new opportunities — not wait for a dole.
Why are we hell bent on hurting the dignity which comes from work?
Most of us grew up reading Richard Scarry’s illustrated books where anthropomorphic animals went about their daily lives in Busytown. One of his most popular books, What Do People Do All Day? showed these characters like Grocer Cat at work.
For eons, many of us have derived our self-esteem from our work lives. In fact, many of us continue with names which reflect the trades of our ancestors. It could be the Chinese Chong (derived from bow maker), the English Weaver, the Egyptian El-Mofti (from Arabic for legal expert), German Baumgartner (related to orchard), or the Indian Bhattacharya (from Sanskrit for teacher) — and there are thousands of other names derived from occupations in various societies.
Instead of UBI, I would prefer an enhanced Earned Income Credit. Let’s supplement, as needed, the incomes of those who get a good’s night sleep after accomplishing something they feel good about during the day.
What could we do with UBI funding?
UBI fans point to all kinds of funding sources — repurposed unemployment benefits, raise corporate taxes etc. I am not sure it would cover even a fraction of what UBI would cost if we truly mean “universal” — every one in a region gets the benefits.
Here’s how I would like to instead spend the money. We have three major issues in the workforce — drugs (misuse is endemic in certain industries), anger management (made worse by the recent Presidential election), and stress (especially in our veterans,broader ones caused by fear of job loss from machines etc.). Let’s spend on therapies to make these workers much more productive again. Let’s invest in solving our Grand Challenges — in next-gen infrastructure, healthcare, energy, space travel. That will generate a bunch of new jobs.
We are letting our pessimism drive us to a social program which will cripple many economies. Even worse, it will dent work ethic. For most of us work equals dignity and immense satisfaction from accomplishing something each day. Why are we trying to destroy that?
Final thought: why not sponsor our own Harper Lees, not involve the government?
Cross posted at Medium
Digital Rookies
I was fortunate to be invited by Karl-Heinz Streibich to interview 40 of the most sophisticated companies in the world for his book The Digital Enterprise. That was in 2013 and by now these companies are miles ahead in their digital journeys. And at the same time, I see every outsourcing firm and software company has watched them and are talking about digital transformations. I must admit many of their approaches appear very rudimentary.
Here are some common fllaws
a) They talk about digital Dinosaurs when they should be talking Phoenix.
You know the quickest way to lose digital credibility? Use Borders, Blockbuster or Kodak as examples. Executive eyes rolls as they hear yet another vendor try the FUD “If you don’t work with us, you will suffer a similar fate”. They have heard it for a decade now from more vendors than they can recall.
Far better to talk about companies which have gone through traumatic times and diversified and continue to survive.
On the New Florence blog, I have examples of technology and Lego, Marvel, BP salvage operations after the Gulf spill, how railroads have been reborn. In my other books,I have examples of how Aircell has been reborn as GoGo the wi-fly service, how Delta Airlines has reinvented itself with technology, how GM’s OnStar has repeatedly been recast, how Corning seems to have major impact on mainstream technology every decade or so and others.
b) They only have examples from a narrow part of the enterprise
Way too many vendors have examples of social marketing and collaboration and tend to define a narrow role for the Chief Digital Officer. In my interviews for The Digital Enterprise, I was struck by how wide a swath the role should cover. In talking to companies like GE and Nissan, the digital opportunity is in smarter products and services – technology embedded in them. In talking to CPG companies like Coca Cola Enterprises, the emphasis was on digitization of the customer channel. In talking to banks and insurance companies like Standard Chartered and Allianz, the focus on digital security and privacy came through very clearly. In talking to companies in industries like travel and media which have been ravaged by technology upheaval, the intense focus is on business model innovation for the digital world. In talking to several companies in Germany where the term Industrie 4.0 is a watchword, the digitization of the shop floor and logistics via robotics, telematics and other technologies came out strong.
c) They tend to propose COTS solutions
Way too many vendors propose off the shelf packaged software and standardized hardware, sensors etc. Imagine if you had proposed that to Disney as it rethought its park experience and came up with its MagicBand. Digital transformation projects are strategic and need differentiation, not technology any competitor can buy and negate the barrier to entry. So, you may have a strong SaaS or IoT practice but unless you can dramatically customize your offerings you look like many of your competitors
d) Their process/talent thinking has not evolved
Many vendors have spray painted their “best practices” from their ERP businesses to make them appear relevant for new digital models. Few reflect the dramatic changes industries are facing. Go to London and see the huge range of startups which are targeting specific pieces of traditional financial services companies – some focused on international funds transfers, micro-loans, mortgage crowdfunding, direct debit processing etc. Look at the countless new ways people pay each other these days – with procurement cards, EFTPOS, PayPal, Bitcoin and many others when their software still primarily assumes payment by check.
Worse, they still have traditional roles assigned to specific processes, when all kinds of scanners, drones, wearables, robotics, sensors should be part of the new configuration. Ownership of such "machines" is fragmented in most companies—the plant manager likely knows about shop floor robots, and someone in IT may know how many web services or service bots are deployed, but few companies have an executive responsible for coordinating all their automation efforts.
Too many vendors are making rookie mistakes. They should have been making such mistakes 5+ years ago. Many offer little new thinking to customers in a fast changing world.
October 17, 2016 in Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)