The problem, roughly stated, has three parts. First, there are a lot of people on the lower end of the IQ scale, and the number of jobs for such people are few, and disappearing fast. Second, as automation increases, the IQ required to be productive will increase, putting more and more people in the “not bright enough to be productive” category. Third, people without meaningful work are miserable and prone to get in trouble.
One alleged solution to this problem is education and training. People who view humanity as a blank slate, or wet clay, which can be fashioned into what society needs, will prefer this solution. Unfortunately, it’s very unlikely to be realistic. Some people are simply born less intelligent, and there’s not much that can be done about that.
Another alleged solution is to redistribute wealth from the productive people and hope the non-productive people find something meaningful to do, like art or something. That idea sounds lovely in some ways, but I don’t think it’s realistic because less intelligent people are not going to be making good art. I have a hard time believing that millions of people are going to be satisfied with hobbies in which they make crappy stuff that nobody wants.
Then there are make-work projects, where we get people to do jobs that we don’t really need. That sounds too much like Sisyphus to me.
I suppose it’s important to mention the Nazi solution, just to be thorough. I.e., kill off the people who are unproductive. I hope nobody believes that, but I would not be surprised if the idea resurfaces as this problem gets worse. (A related idea would be the eugenics solution, where we selectively breed for intelligence.)
A possible short-term solution that I’ve heard would be to cut the number of hours a person is allowed to work every week. That would artificially create more jobs and spread some wealth around, but it would also lower wages, so I don’t know if that helps.
What do you think? Are we simply destined to have a lot of unemployable people, or is there a solution to this?