The impact of robotics on the economy.

For years, industrial robots have enabled the automation of simple tasks, and so far, this has not led to higher unemployment. However, I argue that this is about to change.

The additional wealth will therefore accrue entirely to a select few: the owners and managers of (large) companies. Initially, the gap between rich and poor will widen further. First, lower-skilled workers will lose their jobs, and there will be no replacements for them. In the Netherlands, they will end up in the social safety net of unemployment benefits and welfare. In other countries, such as the USA, this will lead to bitter poverty much faster. It is not difficult to imagine that this could lead to enormous discontent and perhaps even revolutions. But that is merely an interim period, albeit one that could strongly influence the outcome of this development.

Ultimately, however, this development cannot be stopped, simply because it is possible and because robotization can generate a great deal of money and power.

If, in the end, even the highly educated are forced into unemployment by artificial intelligence, the government will inevitably be forced to intervene by redistributing wealth between the (by then) super-rich and the unemployed. Because national governments will no longer have sufficient influence over multinationals at that point, this will require cooperation between national governments. Let us assume the positive, and that they will eventually manage to achieve this. We would then live with great freedom, leisure time, and prosperity until the moment the last job is replaced by smarter robots. At that moment, or just before, the economy as we know it will disappear, and everything will be free. After all, robots will make everything, including the extraction of raw materials, and since they do not demand compensation, they will do so at no cost, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The prices of products and services will therefore continue to fall until they eventually reach zero.

What then? The economy has disappeared; being rich no longer has any purpose because everything is free.

Will a shadow economy emerge, like the one that currently exists between the underworld and the upper world, or will we try to distinguish ourselves in other ways? At the moment, I do not know. What I do know is that the above scenario is realistic and that we must be prepared for both the period between now and the disappearance of the economy, as well as the period that follows.