MINDLESS MUSINGS

The average worker never seems able to keep up with inflation. Prices go up a lot, while their wages only go up a little, if they’re lucky. The mega-rich are getting giga-rich, and the middle class is slowly vanishing. Who were the ‘middle class’?

Those people who were well-off but did not consider themselves rich. The working class and poverty stricken thought they were, but they were all still at the whim of the economy. Small business owners, professionals and other white collar type jobs; and of course, those in the right trades and unions. In corporation terms you would have to be a few rungs up the ladder; middle management sounds about right!

They had their mortgages paid, under-control or were trying their hand at investment property. They didn’t have to worry about basic bills and groceries, had a fair amount of disposable income and were basically comfortable. I’ll get into demographic and status competition in another post. For now, we’ll settle for a large chunk of people in the same boat as the working class, but they were up in the better seats; business and first class.

A small percentage of those premium people managed to rise into the private jet elite, but most of them have found themselves squished back in economy with the rest of the plebs. Fighting for scraps of what the elites deem suitable to be tossed down. Watch ‘The Platform’ (2019) for a scathing allegory on this.

The corporatisation of the world is slowly eroding the comfortable centre section of the income spectrum, and we all need to accept that this is the new norm for the foreseeable future. The way most of us earn a living is a fast changing (and getting faster) landscape, and it is getting harder and harder to predict what types of skills will be sellable in the future.

Here’s a clunky idea: you know how energy cannot vanish (or something like that)? The same number of atoms always exist. Blow something up and they just disperse; they don’t cease to be. You may die but those subatomic particles that made up you never leave. Where was I? Oh yeah, money. The money (or numbers on the screen) is always there. It gets shifted around and never seems to be spread equally, but it is always there. It’s not a perfect fit as far as similes go, but it’ll have to do.

Nowadays it seems that the top 1% have finally gotten their hooks into the flow of those cherished numbers. They have almost completely fixed the plumbing on that damn trickle-down economics bullshit.  Us working stiffs can only dream of those few drops that manage to get past the damn. Chances of getting on the soggy side are slim to none. Best we can do is prevent destitution – cheery stuff ay?

Climbing the corporate ladder high enough to get yourself a good enough nest egg for if/when the rug gets pulled out from under you. Making it in showbiz somehow, although that seems to be providing ever more diminishing returns for the actual artists than ever before. Most of us already know our chances at sporting glory are long gone, if they ever were at all. Those tradies will still be in demand for a while yet, but the haven of the strong union jobs for slobs are drying up fast. That’s about all the options for an honest pleb. The days are numbered for the unskilled workers and which ‘skills’ will be replaced by computers and machines is getting harder to predict.

The other positive outcomes are mere fantasies: win the lottery, some rich person leaves you a shit load, go viral on the internet AND figure out how to capitalize on it before it fades. Buy a dusty old record in an op shop and learn it’s worth a motza! Slip on a trail in the Blue Mountains and dislodge a large rock to reveal a nugget bigger than The Welcome Stranger! Stumble on a shootout in the middle of nowhere and everyone is dead; millions in cash and drugs sitting around in leather bags…Not happening.

The concept of ‘clocking on’ and getting paid by the hour to do stuff is eroding relentlessly. AI may not be literally intelligent at present, but it can already replicate many of the basic decisions needed to run a profitable business. The more it learns, and it learns at incredible speed, the more it will be able to factor in the complicated variables and contingencies required for the more specialised professions.

AI has already infiltrated into the other wonder of our consciousness and higher reasoning – art. It can create images and videos of startling complexity. It can write passable letters and stories; if you can convince the reader that you have poor grammar skills your AI stuff may very well be accepted. This will of course improve exponentially and there will eventually be no need to pay someone for this crucial piece of our humanity.

Shit! Once the machines figure out how to replicate the opposable thumb, humans may be truly obsolete in the world of business. The elite may choose to pay a human orchestra to play something AI can already do perfectly, just for the novelty of having flesh and blood musicians perform. Fucken hell! Holograms and a digital maestro would be able to infuse different ‘emotion’ into any chosen performance.

Let’s avoid the computers wiping us out scenario for now. Instead, we’ll go with universal basic income and a world of comfort and ease: Everyone has a clean and safe place to live, enough to eat and nothing but spare time. Your limitless entertainment is all provided and free; all created by AI of course.

I suppose art would still exist as a hobby and I can’t imagine people would not still want to compete in sport and games. Gardening would be a niche past time in the same vein as having an aquarium – purely for display.

Yet again I have tumbled down a warren I was not planning on. I wonder if AI will have such whimsical tendencies. Either way I can’t dispel the sinister feeling that this utopian life of leisure would be spirit crushing.