Transcriber: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Amanda Chu
I have a dream.
But I have to admit it's a nightmare.
(Laughter)
You know, like some people,
they have this one same dream coming back, haunting them every once or twice a year.
They fall from a cliff
or lose all their teeth or get hit by a train
or something like that.
In my bad dream, I have a job.
It's always the same:
I get this fancy offer, for a cool position in a trendy company.
And I can hear myself say, "Okay, sign me up. I'm on board!"
And just like that, I have a boss.
I need to ask for permission if I want to go on vacation.
I have Monday morning meetings.
And I ... I wake up, and I realize, oh, it was just a bad dream.
I don't have a job.
So I can be here with you today and do this
even though I didn't ask for permission.
Now, to set things straight,
just because I don't have a job, doesn't mean I don't have work to do.
We all have work to do:
preparing for this TED Talk,
traveling here, doing this -
it's hours of work.
But it's not my job.
I don't have to be here; I don't get paid to be here.
I'm here just because I want to.
I have some thoughts that I want to share with you,
and by doing that,
it feels like I'm contributing to something bigger than me.
It feels like I'm part of something.
It gives me a sense of meaning and purpose.
The point I'm trying to make and the first key to the future of work
is quite simple.
It's two letters: u, n,
as in "un-."
Some people are employed; others, like me, are unemployed.
And as you probably figured by now,
being unemployed is not a negative thing in my mind.
To be able to stay unemployed
is one of my top priorities and most important goals in life.
(Laughter)
To me, this whole concept of employment was always kind of bizarre.
I mean,
if I'm old enough to be responsible for all these things in life:
pay my bills, I have my house,
I buy groceries -
and I mean not only ice cream, broccoli and stuff -
and I raised children.
But then for some reason, eight hours, five days a week,
someone else need to step in and take charge of my priorities.
You probably think of the future of work -
I'm coming here to tell you about the future of work -
and you probably assume that I will talk about robots and A.I.
I'm a futurist,
and we all know that either new technology will take all of our jobs
or we will all have new high-tech jobs in the future.
But the idea I want to share with you today
is not about tech disruption, more or less jobs.
First of all, because I don't know if there will be more or less jobs.
There are buzzwords,
like "technological unemployment,"
"jobless growth";
but the number of jobs depend on many different trends
in politics, technology, human behavior, economy.
You know that critical difference between complex and complicated?
Complicated problems,
like brain surgery, quantum physics, rocket science,
are hard to solve.
But with the knowledge, rules, recipes,
we can.
"Complicated" often means predictable.
Complex, however, is the opposite:
too many interrelated factors, too many unknowns.
A car is complicated; traffic is complex.
A job might be complicated; the number of jobs is complex.
So I don't know if there will be more or less jobs in the future.
No one does.
Second, and more importantly,
I don't think that this focus, this fixation on the number of jobs
is helping us.
You probably heard the old anecdote about the economist Milton Friedman.
And back in the 1960s when he was travelling in Asia,
he was visiting a work site where they were building a canal.
And he was shocked to see how the workers were using shovels
instead of modern tractors.
So he asked about it, and the bureaucrat replied and said,
"You don't understand. This is a jobs program."
And Milton said, "Oh,
I thought you were building a canal.
If it's jobs you want,
then why don't you just give these workers spoons instead of shovels?"
If our overall objective is to create as many jobs as possible,
then that's quite easy.
We should just stop innovation, give the workers spoons;
back to the good old days,
when people had to spend a day in the library to find an answer -
you know, no more computers, Internet, Google, anything like that;
legislate against dangerous technologies like digitalization -
my God, didn't you hear that story about those poor Kodak employees?
Self-driving cars? Are you kidding me?
What about taxi drivers?
And doctors?
I mean, what if we can't text and drive anymore?
Thousands of people who get injured and need to go to the hospital every day
would just not need to go to the hospital.
They would stay safe, alive.
Now we have to create even more jobs for them too.
You see what I mean?
Again, to focus on the number of jobs
is not helping us.
Maybe we should be bold enough to do the opposite,
strive for fewer jobs - the fewer the better.
I just told you the paradox about automation versus jobs.
We can't seriously say that we want both.
We either protect our jobs
or we automate to try not to do those jobs.
There are more paradoxes,
like the one between the environment and jobs.
Do we want fresh, clean, urban environments
with drinkable water, clean air,
or do we prioritize more jobs
even if those jobs means increased pollution?
So instead of talking about AI and robots or the number of jobs,
let me bring you another perspective to the future of work.
And this is the idea that I want to share with you today.
We. Don't. Need. Jobs.
And I know this is provocative.
I mean, you might need a job badly right now,
and I also know that I am very privileged.
I don't mean this on an individual level here.
Now, I mean for us as a society,
for the future, we don't need jobs for real.
You are all familiar with the work of Abraham Maslow,
"The Hierarchy of Needs."
We all have the same needs.
Down here in the bottom are the basic ones:
food, water, shelter.
And then, as we solve these needs, we can strive for more:
love, friendship.
And eventually, up on top is self-actualization.
Jobs are nowhere to be found in the hierarchy of needs.
(Laughter)
Now, the way we solve the basic in the modern world today
is with money.
So we can replace the basic needs with money.
We need money.
Money is important, but it's not enough,
and you don't need to be rich to know that.
Just think of the ones who do have more money than they need.
What's the one thing we know about them?
They want more!
So what more?
We need money and ... meaning.
If you have that in life, if you have money and meaning,
you probably have a good life.
And yes, in today's world, in a developed nation like this,
the way we get money and meaning,
most of the time,
is through a job.
But that doesn't mean it's going to be like that forever.
I mean, if you think about our time on this planet,
humanity,
we have been here for 200,000 years.
Most of that time, people didn't have work.
You had work to do but as unemployed.
I mean, like hunters, fishermen
woke up in the morning and did what was needed.
But if what I'm telling you now is true,
if we don't need jobs, then what are we afraid of?
Let's just focus on what we know.
We know the number of people is growing.
7.7 billion of us today.
Took us 200,000 years to get to one billion;
200 years to get to seven billion.
So we know we can't just keep on focusing on linear growth;
we need to change to circular sustainability.
But if we don't need jobs, then what are we afraid of?
Well, since we have this system going,
we have a hard time to see the alternative
as anything but extreme, irresponsible, crazy, expensive,
quite like the environmentalists some a decade ago.
But that has changed.
Today, the extreme position in environmental questions
is to argue for business as usual,
and no change.
We know that the opposite of sustainable is just unsustainable,
but what if the opposite of jobs is just free time?
I can see what you're thinking now -
he's just naive, we can't afford that.
But before I go into cost, the cost of free time,
let me just address the costs of our current system.
Does everyone who go to work create value?
It's a serious question.
I mean, you know some people do work that is harmful for health,
maybe even lethal -
pollution, stuff like that.
I don't necessarily need to talk about weapons or tobacco
or something like that;
we can talk about something as simple and ordinary as food.
Today, more people on this planet
die from eating too much rather than too little.
That's a fact.
Obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease
kills more people annually than malnutrition, globally.
Developed world - it's not even close.
And then to add on this,
we throw away 30 to 40 percent of the food we produce.
So again, does people who go to work eight hours a day
to create something that is bad for our health,
maybe even lethal,
or nothing but garbage.
Do they create value?
One might argue the opposite.
We need to ask them to stop immediately,
"Back off. Go home. Don't do this."
In many cases, society will earn money by giving workers more free time.
According to the World Wildlife Foundation,
we have wiped out 60% of all animals on this planet
in just 50 years' time.
So let's not pretend
that our current system doesn't have costs.
But back to the costs of free time.
That's a question of economics,
and economics, as you know,
that's the science of production, distribution and consumption.
I shouldn't say science; it's more like a philosophy, or ideology.
There are many different models
believed to be working, accurate, and the best;
and the most famous ones, of course, are communism and capitalism.
Now, you know communism lost that battle with the fall of the Berlin Wall,
and since then, we sort of agreed that capitalism is the only way to do it.
And the problem with the undisputed champion like that
is that, when you have a winner, it's hard to argue against that winner
without being heard as support for the loser.
A bad loser, that is.
But we have to be able
to talk about the problems with capitalism without being heard as communists.
Capitalism can't help us
if we want to understand the value of free time,
just like capitalism can't help us
if we want to understand the value of sustainability instead of growth.
Let's play with a future vision.
We have this high-tech future.
And in this high-tech future, machines took all our jobs.
The A.I. can do everything, provide for all our needs.
Now, in a capitalistic system, in a high-tech future,
then the owner of the machines takes it all.
And the rest of us?
Just poor losers.
But if the winner takes it all and the rest of us are poor losers,
then sounds like game over, doesn't it?
The capitalist needs a market.
Without customers, the capitalist has nothing.
So let's change
and think about a future vision
where we have a civilized, high-tech future.
In a civilized high-tech future, we start to focus more on distribution.
And if we can create a solid sharing economy,
then obviously no one need to worry about the costs of free time.
But as you know and remember,
the money thing was not all - you know, that's not it.
We have this meaning; we need money and meaning.
So what's the purpose of life if you don't have a job?
We have problems like depression, domestic violence, suicide.
These are all problems related to unemployment.
So to me, this problem, this question is probably trickier than the money part.
If you want to know the future of work, this is my suggestion:
don't ask people what they do.
Ask them why.
Maybe it's not a recommendation -
I've done this at some dinner parties,
and I can tell you
you don't always get invited back if you start asking, "Why do you work?"
(Laughter)
People will say something like this:
"Why? What do you think? I mean, I have bills to pay."
And if you then say,
"Yeah, sure. Obviously, I also have bills and we need money;
but you're not in this only for the paycheck, are you?
There have to be something more in it. You see what I mean?"
you might not get invited back.
But whenever you meet someone that can give you a good answer,
can tell you why they go up every morning
and do that thing they do eight hours a day,
then you know
you are talking to someone that is telling you about the future of work.
My "why" is to inspire you to embrace change.
There is so much change ahead of us.
With technologies like artificial intelligence,
we in here today can't even imagine
how society will look like in just a couple of decades.
I have a dream,
and it's not only the nightmare I told you about in the beginning.
In that dream,
people all over the world work not because they have to
but because they want to.
In that dream, it's quite clear that we can't afford not to go this way.
And for now,
I just need you to remember one thing
whenever we talk about the future of work:
we don't need jobs.
Thank you.
(Applause)