Tim Dunlop opens new avenues of thinking about climate change

(Each fortnight I write a column for Shepparton’s daily newspaper, The News. It’s quickly becoming obvious that our adaptation to climate change will not be as many people might have imagined. Climate change is going to be socially disruptive for a host of reasons, but one prospect we might not have thought about is us living in a workless society as suggested by Tim Dunlop in his book, “Why the future is workless”. My latest column was inspired by Tim’s work – Robert McLean)

Tim Dunlop takes us into
a workless future.

Hold on readers, this could be a wild ride!

The Goulburn Valley of today is the product of work, damn hard, concentrated, committed and thoughtful work.

Let’s put that in context a little – that was, however, another and different world; a world in which much of what happened was only possible because of human effort, mostly physical and then increasingly intellectual.

With the closing of 20^th Century and now being well into the second decade of the 21^st Century, those roles are quickly being reversed – we stand on the cusp of a technological era in which work, as we now understand it, will be something fewer of us will do and unemployment will be the norm.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily so, particularly if we are prepared to embrace the technology our large brains have afforded and at the same time let go of trenchant ideas of jobs and growth, the mantra Australians voted for at the last federal election.

Today’s technology has the capacity to easily, effectively and economically replace people through automation with research illustrating that we are edging toward being able to use artificial intelligence for nearly half of the jobs now held by humans.

Yes, the Goulburn Valley has been built on hard work; work that has brought many practical and social benefits, but that work, driven by an obsession with wants rather than needs, has become so distorted that many of our fundamental human characteristics have been sacrificed on the economic altar.

Much of what is good about being human has been purloined by the jobs and growth paradigm with our inventiveness, sociality, and our inherent need to thrive almost surreptitiously directed at enhancing the wealth of just a comparative few.

A workless future in which computer controlled machines do most of the work -  a computer loaded with the appropriate algorithms have been shown to be consistently more reliable than medical doctors - we must begin with the restructuring of our existing, and predominately market and profit-based economic system.

Any suggestion that we divest ourselves of capitalism, which in its modern iteration is neo-liberalism, is an anathema to those who profit from what exists.

However, Tim Dunlop wrote this year in his book, “Why The Future is Workless” about a universal basic income (UBI) for all and said: “A world that no longer revolves around paid employment, one unpinned by a universal basic income, opens up the possibility of a life of, for instance, more civic, social and community engagement.

“Of using our skills for personal satisfaction and free exchange rather than channeling into the need to earn income or profit,” Dunlop wrote.

Nelson Mandela - "It seems
impossible until it's done".

Later he says: “Equally it follows that if technology causes rising and sustained unemployment and we don’t introduce a UBI, then we are dooming ourselves to massive social dysfunction where a small band of elites will prosper and most everyone else will live hand-to-mouth in the most obscene version of what is called trickle down economics.”

Having people with their shoulder-to-the-wheel and locked into an economic system that favours only a few, makes those working more governable and so the elite will immediately argue such an idea is impossible.

However, remember what Nelson Mandella said: “It seems impossible until it’s done.”