Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

The vast majority of jobs that sustain our standard of living are blue-collar: farmers who grow our food, textile workers who make our clothes, construction workers who build our homes, plumbers, electricians, waste disposal workers, etc. I'd say it's white-collar work that became overinflated this past century, largely as a reaction to the automation and outsourcing of many traditional blue-collar roles.

Now, with white-collar jobs themselves increasingly at risk, it's unclear where people will turn. The economic pie continues to shrink, and I don't see that trend reversing.

It appears to me that our socio-economic model simply doesn't scale with technology. We need to have a constructive conversation about how to adapt.

The way I see it you only have two real choices:

1. Raise wages to match global increased productivity

2. Democratize ownership

That's it.

Democratize ownership it is.

Imagine an early human group of 40 people. If one person hoarded the food of 37 others and employed the remaining two just to guard it, it wasn't long before the ruse was up and there was a revolt and the food reclaimed.

Now, only because of scale and abstraction, basically the same setup is possible (0.1% owns as much as 50% of the population).

Our time is perverted ownership-wise, and it's time to go back to a truly cooperative society.

Cooperation, not hoarding, was the foundation of the beginning of civilisation.

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My ideal future resembles Star Trek: a world where money is obsolete (at least on Earth), and people pursue exploration, science, and the arts purely out of passion and curiosity.

A society driven by innovation, not profit.

There is no sequence of steps that takes us from where we are to the society depicted in Star Trek, or at least none has been outlined so far. If it were to happen, the world would need an abrupt phase change (e.g., First Contact). You may be tempted to call me a pessimist, but I am a realist. To convince a realist, one must show a sequence of steps.

I think you're dead on. Growing up I hoped for a Star Trek future. Now all I see is Alien without all the xenomorphs.