Is there anything technology can’t do? Drive cars, fly planes, beat us at chess, accelerate genetic engineering, secure endless supply of renewable energy, design robots to make more robots, diagnose and repair problems in everything from factory machinery to the human body, elevate artificial intelligence to the level of continuous learning and adaptation – no problem seems to be beyond it, except one: the problem of leaving the vast majority of humankind with little prospect of finding paid employment, because there will come a time when anything we can do, some labour-saving technology can do better (and much more cheaply).
Tech’gemony is coming. Contrary to the mantra of tech giants claiming that they are simply striving to make the world a better place for everyone, the trajectory of their power expansion points unequivocally to dominance by a few with no accountability to those whose livelihood they put at risk.
In the name of ‘progress’, the tech leaders build up their business empires by disrupting existing socio-economic arrangements. By continuously coming up with new, faster, more reliable approaches that render human input redundant, they amass wealth at an unprecedented rate.
As their financial resources rise exponentially, they are able to accelerate the wider adoption of business models that lead to even fewer paid jobs and more precarious employment, squeeze out firms that are lagging behind in applying labour-saving alternatives, acquire more land and assets, and buy up potential rivals who will henceforth serve their corporate goals.
At the same time, their economic strength enables them to avoid paying taxes by exploiting every possible loophole and contesting any public authority’s demand they don’t like with the best lawyers money can buy.
When the number of paid jobs not yet eliminated by technology dwindles to the point where there are simply not enough people with sufficient income to buy the output from tech-dominated industries, a critical choice will arise. Either the powerful corporations offer to provide their services for free (given free renewable energy sources, recyclable materials, machines with machine-building capability, it is a feasible option), or they turn inward and limit the access to their products/services to themselves. The former represents the utopian version many have talked about, forgetting that corporations dedicated to avoiding paying taxes to meet basic public needs are unlikely to share all they produce for nothing in return. The latter option is the far more likely dystopian scenario that will greet us.
What happens next will be the closing off of land, buildings, facilities that are owned by these corporations. Within their private ‘sovereign’ domain, with the help of the most advanced and ever improving technology, they can get whatever they want. But outside their well-guarded territories, the 99.9% will increasingly struggle as they can no longer afford to obtain the things that have become dependent on technology to produce – clean water, filtering out of polluted air, medication, safe food, fuel supply, and countless others.
While the few, having bought up most of the planet, can dispense with monetary transactions, and live in their earthly paradise with continuously improving technological solutions to every challenge they encounter; most of the world will be shut out in a rapid regression back to a Hobbesian form of life that is inescapably poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Of course it does not have to be like that. But if Tech’gemony is to be halted, governments must act now to curb tech-based corporate powers, and ensure that the fruits of technological innovation are to be shared on an open and democratic basis.
The digital clock is ticking.
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