Why are we working more and more with the development of technology?

In the 1930s, economist John Keynes predicted that as technology advances and human well-being improves, we will only work 15 hours a week. Indeed, in many areas human labor has been replaced by the labor of machines, and prosperity has actually increased, but for some reason we are working more and more. How did it happen that the forecast did not come true?

The first reason, as the British economist Robert Skidelsky writes, is that Keynes did not distinguish between the desires and needs of people. “Needs are objective and necessary things for a good and comfortable life - they are finite in quantity; however, desires are a purely mental concept, and they are infinite in quality and quantity.” - Skidelsky writes.

A new phone model, this season fashionable clothes, a more powerful car are not human needs, but desires. John Keynes believed that a person would not need to work when he satisfied all his needs, but he did not take into account the need to assert one’s social status. In addition, according to Skidelsky, in the past, religion, tradition and cultural norms have limited human spending.

Anthropologist David Graeber writes about where Keynes was wrong: "Choosing between less work time and more toys and more fun, we collectively chose the latter."

The second reason is precisely the development of technologies, which does not work for us: mobile Internet, high-speed coverage and social networks made it so that a person remains in touch almost 24/7. According to the US research center Pew Research Center, 35% of employees say technology has increased their work hours.

The third reason the Dutch writer and philosopher Rutger Bregman talks about without embellishment is that more and more people are doing work that we can do without. When seven thousand city janitors went on strike in New York in 1968, the mayor refused to make concessions, but gave up nine days later. Because one of the main metropolitan areas of the planet was littered with garbage so badly that the city authorities declared a state of emergency. "New York's recent move to chaos has shown that it is profitable to go on strike," was written later in Time.

But, as Bregman notes, this statement does not apply to all professions. The rebellion of most other activities is likely to go unnoticed by the world. Because these people do not create wealth, but redistribute it.

“Today, the United States has 17 times more lawyers per capita than Japan. Does this make American law as many times more effective than Japanese law? Are Americans 17 times more protected? Not at all!” Bregman writes.

Graeber echoes him: “A world without teachers or dock workers is likely to be in trouble, and without science fiction writers or musicians it might be less enjoyable. It is completely unclear how humanity will suffer if all the chairmen of the board, PR specialists, lobbyists, specialists in insurance calculations and telephone sales, bailiffs or legal advisers disappear."

And the paradox is that it is precisely those activities that are aimed at redistributing money that are best paid.

Throughout the past century, the number of people employed in agriculture and industry has been declining, that is, Keynes was right, their work has become automated. But at the same time, there has been sharp increase in the number of workers in the service sector, the administrative and financial sectors, technical support for these industries and additional areas of activity (for example, food delivery), which exist only because everyone else spends most of their time on other jobs.

David Graeber writes, “It’s as if someone is deliberately creating all these meaningless jobs just to keep us busy. And this is where the secret lies. For capitalism, this is exactly what should not happen. It is assumed that competition and the free market should solve just such problems.” But profit is important to the modern market. And the more wealth is concentrated at the top, the higher the demand for corporate lawyers, lobbyists and others who can make a fortune, not by creating, but by reallocating resources. And in order to do this, you need to improve your skills, get the appropriate qualifications and work many hours a week.

Keynes believed that the benefits from the increased level of productivity would be, as it were, distributed among all people, but in fact, as the American economist Nouriel Roubini argues, we will get a world where there will be two types of labor. The first is the highly paid work of entrepreneurs, people with valuable skills, and the second, in fact, is being gradually replaced by technology.