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

I think there is another word for this.

read To The Finland Station by Edmund Wilson.

There are only a very few cases where Democratize ownership worked and it was under a benevolent dictator. After the dictator died, everything fell apart.

The book you referenced appears to be about the rise of Marxism. I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the GP when I say this, but I think it's worth pointing out that you can democratize ownership under capitalism, e.g. a worker cooperative [1] is a business owned by the workers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative