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or jason pfeiffer dot com slash

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1:04

Build For Tomorrow.

1:07

This is Build For Tomorrow, a podcast

1:09

about the smartest solutions to our most

1:11

miss understood problems. I'm Jason

1:13

Pfeiffer, and in each episode, I take something

1:15

that seems concerning or confusing today

1:17

and figure out where it came from, what important

1:20

things were saying and how we can create

1:22

more opportunity tomorrow. I

1:24

have a very dorky annual

1:27

year end tradition, and it goes like this.

1:29

As we are about to enter a new year,

1:32

I start to wonder what did people

1:34

from hundred years ago

1:36

think this year would be like?

1:39

So for example, as we are to enter

1:41

the year twenty twenty three, I start

1:43

to wonder, what did people of nineteen

1:45

twenty three think twenty

1:48

twenty three would be like. And

1:50

as it turns out, this is not actually a

1:52

very hard question to answer because

1:54

of newspaper archives. Every year,

1:57

I just go to newspapers dot com,

1:59

which is the archive that I happen to use.

2:01

And I go to newspapers

2:03

from one hundred years ago. So for example,

2:06

in this case, I go to newspapers from

2:08

nineteen twenty three, and then I just

2:10

searched the term the year

2:12

twenty twenty three. What

2:14

comes up is always a amusing smattering

2:17

of predictions because people from a hundred

2:19

years ago loved predicting what

2:21

a hundred years later would look like.

2:23

It was generally a mixture of

2:25

experts and like school children

2:27

for some reason. And they say all

2:29

sorts of fascinating stuff. Some

2:31

of it is, well, incorrect.

2:34

For example, there was one year where I

2:36

saw them predict that Mexico

2:38

would be the world's leading power in a hundred

2:40

years and also that flying cars

2:43

would be so common that there

2:45

would no longer be doors in

2:47

the front of buildings down on ground level

2:49

because, you know, nobody would be entering buildings

2:52

from the ground So all the

2:54

entrance doors would be at the very top.

2:56

But like I said, there were also very

2:58

real predictions. For example, that in

3:00

a hundred years, people would be able

3:02

to control the temperatures throughout

3:05

their home. Which, of course, we can do right

3:07

now. And then also, that people would be able

3:09

to listen to an author,

3:11

read their own book. But,

3:14

you know, you wouldn't have to be

3:16

in front of the author to hear it. It

3:18

would come to you by some kind of magic

3:21

wire. Which is more

3:23

or less exactly what you are experiencing

3:26

right now. And I'm always

3:28

fascinated by this mixture because, you know,

3:30

what what you're seeing is people who are

3:32

they're looking into the future through a

3:34

pinhole. You know, they're they're they

3:36

see the new developments in

3:39

their own lives, which

3:42

back then was driven by the development of

3:44

electricity and new forms of transportation,

3:46

and then they were Well, extrapolating

3:49

it out, they were looking at

3:51

what limited information they had

3:53

about the things the forces,

3:55

the inventions that would shape the future,

3:57

and they were trying to envision what

3:59

would actually happen. And they get it a

4:01

little right, and they get it a lot wrong.

4:03

And that is more or less

4:06

the best that we can hope for today as we

4:08

have all these debates about how social

4:11

media or web three or shifting

4:14

cultural norms or whatever are

4:16

going to shape the future. We don't

4:18

really know. Point is

4:20

that it's pretty fascinating looking back because

4:22

it really is a great reminder. One

4:25

of how people try to understand

4:27

how their world will lead to the next

4:29

world and therefore the limitations

4:31

that we have in trying to anticipate the future

4:33

ourselves. So I went

4:35

back to the year nineteen twenty three

4:37

to see what they were predicting about

4:39

the year twenty twenty three. And this year

4:41

I have to say was different

4:44

from all other years that I have

4:46

done this. Because in the past, as I

4:48

have looked at newspapers in nineteen

4:50

twenty to see what twenty twenty is gonna be like

4:52

in nineteen twenty one and nineteen twenty two and

4:54

so on, there's always a real mix,

4:56

like I said, experts in school children,

4:58

just just tons and tons of predictions.

5:00

But in nineteen twenty three, There

5:02

was one. One prediction.

5:05

One prediction that absolutely dominated

5:08

the conversation. One prediction

5:10

from one man that

5:12

led to a national debate. And

5:15

that prediction was this. In

5:17

the year twenty twenty

5:19

three, Electricity will have

5:21

made the world so efficient

5:24

and so prosperous

5:25

that people will only need

5:28

to work four hours

5:30

a day. And Wiley didn't

5:32

come right out and say so, he

5:34

left us to infer that ice

5:36

cream and pie would be served

5:38

with each meal and everybody

5:41

would have an eye on dough on the front

5:43

lawn. That sums up a

5:45

lot of the reaction to this prediction, which

5:47

was that it was just so ridiculous and

5:49

fanciful. That particular line

5:51

was written by a syndicated colonists

5:53

who ran in newspapers nationwide named

5:56

Joseph Van Ralt. And

5:58

in that same column back in

6:00

November of nineteen twenty three, Joseph

6:02

FanRalt also captured another very

6:04

common reaction. While there's a

6:06

poor farm or a jail

6:08

doting the landscape, why

6:10

talk of the wonders that science is going

6:12

to perform in the year twenty twenty

6:14

three. In other words, we got a

6:16

lot of problems right now, so

6:18

it's pretty cold comfort to hear that

6:20

a hundred years from now when everybody

6:23

today is dead, we will have figured

6:25

things out. Why don't we instead focus

6:27

on how to solve our problems right now?

6:29

And those two comments basically sum

6:32

up how a lot of people felt about this

6:34

prediction back in nineteen twenty three. It was either

6:37

that sounds ridiculous or maybe

6:40

that's true, but it doesn't help us now.

6:43

But those weren't the only reactions. This

6:45

prediction from nineteen twenty three sparked a

6:47

huge debate about what it means to work. And

6:50

what it means to be human and how

6:52

much technology can really

6:54

change us. And that is an incredibly

6:56

relevant conversation because We're

6:58

having it again right now.

7:01

I mean think about it back then in nineteen

7:03

twenty three, Charles Steinmeth saw the

7:05

rise of electricity as a thing that

7:07

would ultimately replace a lot

7:09

of the work that we do. And

7:11

he thought that would be a good thing because

7:14

it would just free us up to have

7:16

more leisure time in our lives. Today,

7:19

we see AI and

7:21

automation as, again, something that

7:23

is going to take work away

7:25

from us, but we see that as a bad thing

7:27

because we imagine it will

7:29

just mean that there's less work to go

7:31

around and therefore people

7:33

won't have enough money to live. And

7:36

what's gonna happen? Well, we

7:38

already know humans are pretty bad

7:40

at predicting the future. But I wondered,

7:43

is there something about what happened

7:45

in the last hundred years that can inform

7:47

what happens in the next hundred? Because

7:50

here we are. It's been one hundred

7:52

years since Charles Steinmetz died.

7:55

And we know because we

7:57

are alive right now. We

7:59

know what happened. We

8:01

know how his predictions turned out.

8:04

But here's the thing. It's actually a

8:06

little more complicated than it seems.

8:08

So the first thing you have to understand, I think, is

8:10

that it it actually did happen just

8:12

not it just didn't go as far as they predicted

8:14

in certain dimensions. This is

8:16

Jason Crawford. He writes this

8:18

blog that's amazing called The Roots

8:20

of Progress. It explores the history

8:22

of technology and how progress

8:24

happens. We do work less than

8:26

we used to and work is more comfortable

8:28

than it used to be. And the very

8:30

idea of work, like how

8:32

we under stand work today

8:34

is completely different than what it

8:36

was one hundred years ago.

8:38

By looking back at what

8:40

Charles got right and what

8:42

he got wrong and why

8:44

the world didn't quite evolve the

8:46

way in which he predicted it

8:48

would. Can tell us perhaps a lot

8:51

about exactly what is coming

8:53

next. So that is what we are going to do

8:55

on this episode of Build For

8:57

Tomorrow. We're taking a glimpse into

8:59

our future by looking

9:01

at, well, someone else's

9:03

future, the future of one hundred years

9:05

ago, which just happens to be the world

9:07

we live in right

9:08

now, coming up after the

9:10

break. If you are

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ideas and trends that they're investing

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in. I really like this recent episode

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about what everyone gets wrong about

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the metaverse. There's obviously a

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lot of big money being spent there already

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and a lot more to come. So where are

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the actual opportunities? Well,

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that is the kind of stuff that they really dig

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11:19

We're back. So we're talking here about a

11:21

prediction from nineteen twenty three

11:23

that said in one hundred years,

11:25

AKA, our time right

11:27

now, people would be working

11:29

a four hour work day.

11:31

And although that never came true, it's

11:33

kind of funny that today the idea of a

11:35

shortened work week and for that

11:37

matter a shortened work week involving the

11:39

number four is very much in

11:41

the zeitgeist. I mean, Tim Ferriss

11:43

created a whole empire off of

11:45

a book called the four hour workweek,

11:47

and lots of companies these days are

11:49

transitioning to a four day workweek.

11:51

And if you rewind a hundred years back

11:53

to nineteen twenty three, Well, the

11:55

idea of a shortened work week didn't

11:57

come from

11:57

nowhere. It was also in the

12:00

zeitgeist. I picked up this the book.

12:02

I think it's not very well known today

12:04

called economy of abundance. Not an

12:06

Oprah bestseller. Well,

12:08

and as published in, I think, the thirties,

12:10

Stewart chases the THERE.

12:12

Reporter: FUNFACT, STORE

12:14

CHACE WAS AN ECONOMIST WHO WAS

12:16

CREDITED WITH COINING THE TERM

12:18

NEW DEAL. And Jason had a copy of his

12:20

book in hand that he was flipping through.

12:22

Beginning of chapter two, he's quoting

12:24

a whole bunch of different people who are all making

12:26

these similar predictions In the first

12:28

paragraph of the chapter, he quotes Steinmetz

12:30

or refers to Steinmetz says who saw a

12:32

two hour working day on the horizon. He

12:35

quotes let's say, Fred Henderson in

12:37

a book economic consequences of power

12:39

production said it would not be a

12:41

question of an eight hour a day or

12:43

a six day week, but more probably of a six months

12:45

working year. So I guess we would only have to

12:47

work half the time, which, since

12:49

Henderson, is already the rule for university

12:51

done. And then it just keeps going on

12:53

like this. You got somebody saying that it will

12:55

be a one day work week,

12:57

maybe even just one hour

12:59

of work on that day. You have people saying it'll

13:01

be a twenty four hour work week. And this

13:03

goes on for a few more pages. I won't bore you

13:05

with all of the stuff. But the intriguing

13:07

question is, why? Like,

13:09

what was happening at the time

13:12

that was driving all these people to make

13:14

these bold predictions about how little

13:16

we'd be working. A lot of progressive

13:18

social reformers didn't like the way

13:20

that the first industrial revolution had played

13:22

out because it had given us these, you

13:24

know, grimy cities and all this

13:26

coal smoke and people stuff together in

13:28

dense population centers. And so

13:30

they really thought with electricity, wow,

13:32

we have a chance to to remake

13:34

the world a second time and to do it right this

13:36

time because we'll have social considerations.

13:38

Which is crazy because that's not

13:40

that dissimilar to the way that

13:42

we talk now. Back then, they were talking

13:44

about electricity changing everything, and

13:46

now we're talking about digital

13:48

tools changing everything that

13:50

because we can all connect by video

13:52

chat and because we have all these asynchronous

13:55

platforms that we don't need to be in

13:57

person together anymore. Which means that

13:59

we can work wherever we want and

14:01

maybe even whenever we want and

14:03

also that we can make work

14:05

more efficient so we don't have to work as

14:07

often as we used to. And therefore

14:09

we can address things like burnout. And

14:11

did you catch that word I just used

14:13

there efficiency? Efficiency

14:15

is a big part of our solution

14:18

today, digital tools make

14:20

work more efficient. Efficiency

14:22

can therefore mean we

14:24

were fewer hours and accomplish the same

14:26

amount. When a company moves to a

14:28

four day workweek and says it has

14:30

maintained the same level of productivity that

14:32

it had during a five day workweek,

14:34

That is because of efficiency.

14:36

But also, of course, efficiency

14:38

can cut the other way. It

14:40

can produce well

14:42

cheap products, but at a

14:44

human cost. Like, the reason

14:46

Amazon is able to offer low prices

14:48

on products and deliver something to your

14:50

door within a day is because its

14:52

warehouses are built for maximum

14:54

efficiency, which means that its warehouse

14:56

workers must move around like robots with

14:58

every step track for maximum

15:00

efficiency. And wouldn't you know it one

15:02

hundred years ago as they were imagining how

15:04

work would transform for the better? This

15:06

was an era that was really obsessed with

15:09

efficiency, and especially the efficiency

15:11

that could come from better organization and

15:13

managements. Because they had just begun to

15:15

glimpse this So think about Henry

15:17

Ford and the assembly line.

15:19

Right? That was a system

15:21

where a better organization of

15:23

the factory led to this high

15:25

efficiency, high labor productivity and

15:27

low cost and higher wages.

15:29

There was also this guy who you may have heard

15:31

of, Frederic W. Taylor, who

15:33

was a quote unquote efficiency expert.

15:35

And he would go into factories and he would

15:37

do what are known as time and motion studies

15:39

and he would do a lot of other things

15:42

and he would sort of study labor and he would give these, you

15:44

know, give this advice on how to how to get

15:46

more work out of people, which the

15:48

laborers didn't particularly like. But, hey, Pretty

15:51

interesting. Right? I mean, here we have

15:53

two eras a hundred years

15:55

apart. The nineteen twenties and our

15:57

decade now and we are both witnessing

15:59

technological change to how we work and

16:01

an obsession with efficiency and we're

16:03

predicting massive changes as a

16:05

result, which makes me wonder Well, okay.

16:08

Why didn't things turn out the

16:10

way they predicted in the nineteen twenties?

16:12

Because I don't know about you, but I'm not

16:14

working a four hour workday despite

16:16

you know, like living in the future

16:19

compared to nineteen twenty three.

16:21

Now earlier you heard Jason

16:23

Crawford say that work

16:25

became easier than it was in nineteen

16:27

twenty three. So in a way, what they

16:29

predicted kinda came true.

16:31

And that is true, but it doesn't

16:33

account for why we still work the

16:35

number of hours we do.

16:37

And Jason had a couple really

16:39

interesting ways of understanding this. So let's

16:41

take them one by one. First,

16:43

he said it's not really meaningful

16:45

to track, change based on

16:47

the number of hours someone works

16:49

in a day. Instead try

16:52

looking at the number of hours they work in

16:54

a lifetime. It was not uncommon

16:56

to have something like eighty hour workweeks.

16:58

In the past to have six day workweeks,

17:01

enter twelve hours a day,

17:03

especially for factory workers. This was a

17:05

huge issue in the

17:07

thirties. And the two day the way, was not always a

17:09

standard. It used to be quite common for people to work

17:11

day, day and half of weekends. Having

17:13

paid vacation is a thing

17:16

thing that, you know, that that wasn't

17:18

always a benefit that people got.

17:20

By the way, we not only reduced

17:22

working hours in those ways, but

17:24

also in terms of sort of

17:26

working years. So we eliminated

17:28

child labor. Right? So that we freed up

17:30

children to no longer have to work and they

17:32

can go to school instead. We

17:34

also introduced retirement. So retirement

17:36

didn't used to be a thing. You pretty much just worked

17:38

until you dropped or you you worked until you

17:40

died or you worked until you couldn't The

17:43

result of this is born out in some pretty stark

17:45

numbers, so check this out. According to

17:47

the economic historians, Michael

17:49

Huberman and Chrismans, Back

17:51

in nineteen thirteen, the average

17:53

American worker worked two

17:55

thousand nine hundred hours a year.

17:57

That averages out to be about eight

17:59

hours a day, seven days a week.

18:01

In nineteen twenty nine, the average

18:03

American worker was working two thousand three

18:05

hundred and sixteen hours. So

18:07

nearly a reduction of six hundred hours.

18:09

And in two thousand and seventeen, which

18:11

was the latest data available, the

18:13

average American worker was working one

18:15

thousand seven hundred and fifty

18:17

seven hours. So that is

18:19

nearly well, let's do the math

18:21

here. It is exactly one

18:23

thousand one hundred and forty three

18:25

fewer hours per year that the American

18:27

worker is working compared

18:29

to nineteen thirteen. Now let's look at some

18:31

other big changes. Here's the other key

18:34

thing, lifetimes themselves increased.

18:36

So it used to be that the retirement

18:38

age was close to the life expectancy.

18:40

Now what's happened is we're living longer.

18:43

And so you actually now can expect to

18:45

have ten, twenty, or more years, you

18:47

know, after after you retire. Which is to

18:49

say that now the average

18:51

number of working hours per

18:53

lifetime is going down because

18:55

we're adding non work

18:57

years to life. And what does that look

18:59

like? Well, I found a

19:01

nineteen ninety five study in the journal

19:04

Tectal auditional forecasting and social

19:06

change, which found that the total

19:08

life hours worked shrank for the

19:10

average British worker from a hundred and

19:12

twenty four thousand hours in eighteen

19:14

fifty six to sixty nine

19:17

thousand hours in nineteen eighty

19:19

one. So that's a big reduction

19:21

in the number of working hours in a

19:23

lifetime and it's being spread across

19:25

more years in a lifetime

19:27

because people are living longer, which

19:29

now leads me to a different

19:31

question, I guess, which is Okay.

19:33

When people in nineteen twenty three predicted

19:35

that we'd be working less, they

19:37

were actually pretty correct.

19:40

But why are we then

19:42

still working so hard? I

19:44

mean, fine, academically speaking,

19:46

we're working fewer hours than we did a

19:48

hundred years ago, but the average worker today

19:50

sure isn't feeling that. We still

19:52

work a lot. Our days

19:54

are long and full and often

19:56

very hard. So why didn't

19:58

that change? Well, intriguingly,

20:00

I think that we can start to answer

20:02

that question by going back IN nineteen

20:04

twenty three AND LOOKING AT THE

20:06

COUNTER PREDICTIONS. ALL THE PEOPLE WHO

20:08

SAID BACK THEN, NO. NO. NO. THIS

20:10

IS IMPOSSIBLE. PEOPLE WILL NEVER

20:12

BE WORKING A for our

20:15

workday. For example, here's

20:17

what someone wrote in the New York

20:19

World in nineteen twenty three.

20:21

To meet the requirements of a generation to come

20:23

with its workday halved and

20:25

its playtime doubled

20:28

will necessitate take the invention of

20:30

new forms of recreation to

20:32

occupy the leisure of those who

20:34

have no taste for study

20:36

and self improvement. If it

20:38

is not to pull upon

20:41

them. Now, I think that that person in

20:43

nineteen twenty three was writing that

20:45

kind of sarcastically, you know,

20:47

like, well, If people are gonna have a lot

20:49

more time on their hands, someone's gonna have to

20:51

come up with something for them to

20:53

do. But of course, that's

20:55

kind of exactly what happened. But with an unexpected

20:57

result, to my

20:58

mind, that's probably the most important factor here. I

21:00

think all these predictions of ten,

21:02

twenty hour workweeks what they

21:04

kinda got wrong was what economists call the elasticity.

21:07

Though if your labor productivity doubles,

21:10

you could do anything from

21:12

work half as much earn the

21:14

same amount of money, you could work the

21:16

same amount to earn twice as much money or

21:18

anything in between. Right? You could decide to work

21:20

three quarters as much and earn one and a half times

21:22

as much money and and get a little

21:24

more leisure and a little more money both at the same

21:26

time. So I think they

21:28

failed to predict all of the stuff that

21:30

you would want to spend more money on. There

21:32

are, of course, infinite new

21:34

forms of leisure or all sorts of ways

21:36

that we can treat ourselves and enjoy

21:38

and entertain ourselves and travel

21:41

and whatever. And then there's all the stuff that

21:43

we can just buy for our

21:45

homes that makes our lives easier.

21:47

Refrigerators and vacuum cleaners

21:49

and all that stuff. It's an interesting failure

21:51

of imagination in a way because

21:54

Charles Steinmetz in predicting that

21:56

we would be working a

21:58

four our workday

22:00

back in nineteen twenty three was

22:02

sort of imagining that parts

22:04

of our world would

22:07

radically change all this new

22:09

innovation. But then

22:11

parts of our lives would stay

22:13

totally static that we

22:16

would have the same expectations for

22:18

our quality of life as we did

22:20

back in nineteen twenty three. I

22:22

mean, if we wanted to

22:24

maintain the exact same

22:26

standard of living that we had in nineteen twenty

22:28

three today. Well then, yeah,

22:30

we wouldn't need to earn nearly as much

22:32

money as we do. We probably

22:35

could work four hours a day.

22:37

But of course, that's not what we want.

22:39

Yeah. I agree that it's a failure

22:42

of imagination. It reminds me of

22:44

another failure of imagination that was pointed out

22:46

in the book where is my flying car

22:48

by Jay Stores Hall. He points out that

22:50

the futurists of the, I

22:53

guess, not not nineteen twenties, but just

22:55

a decade or two earlier, say, very

22:57

early twentieth century, they predicted

22:59

all kinds of of amazing technology,

23:01

and one thing that they missed was the

23:03

automobile. Now, they definitely envisioned

23:05

progress in transportation, but all the

23:07

forms of the transportation that they

23:09

envisioned were public were were

23:11

mass transit like, frankly,

23:13

what most transit had been up until that time

23:15

if you think of large ships and

23:17

locomotives and so forth.

23:19

Right? And what they missed was the the need and the desire

23:21

for a personal vehicle. Isn't

23:23

that interesting? Because their world

23:25

was one in which transportation

23:28

happened collective They imagined

23:30

innovations in which transportation would

23:32

just become better at collective transportation.

23:36

But they couldn't imagine just a total shift

23:38

in the way somebody would use

23:40

this thing. That is that's kind of

23:42

the failure of imagination that we often get

23:45

box into when we think about the future

23:47

is that some things will change,

23:50

but we can't quite imagine

23:52

how all things will

23:54

change. Anyway, before we move on to what the last

23:56

hundred years can teach us about the next

23:58

hundred years, I want to look at one

24:00

more form of complaint from nineteen twenty

24:02

three. This was One other way in which

24:04

people of the time said, the idea

24:07

of a four hour workday

24:09

is

24:09

ridiculous. And this one comes from

24:12

the Worcester Telegram. Spare

24:14

in a competition will have to go before the

24:16

four hour day comes. And here is a

24:18

similar concern from the

24:20

Indianapolis news. Where doctor

24:22

Steinmetz airs is in

24:24

believing that the average person

24:26

regards the work by which he lives

24:28

as unpleasant. There

24:30

are hundreds of thousands

24:32

of persons who are much interested

24:34

in what they do. All of which

24:36

is to say that people were saying wait a

24:38

second. People don't want to be liberated from

24:41

work. That would be kind of a

24:42

hell. Yeah. I think that's absolutely true. I

24:45

think there is a

24:47

psychological need to have

24:49

something to do. People

24:51

need a goal. They need a

24:53

project. They need something

24:55

to occupy them beyond just leisure. We don't need infinite

24:58

leisure. We need a way to

25:00

exercise our faculties,

25:02

our creativity, our ingenuity,

25:05

our, you know, whatever

25:07

it is that makes us come alive and

25:09

feel alive. I think it was Paul

25:11

Romer economist. Paul Romer who pointed out,

25:13

you look at Burning Man, And like, what do people

25:15

do? They've got a week off, and they and they

25:17

get together in the desert. What do they do? They

25:19

work. They create projects. Right? They're building

25:21

things. They're And,

25:25

you know, if you look at what people do in retirement

25:27

as well, I think it's I think it's it

25:29

seems like it's common advice that one of the things that to have

25:31

a good retirement is to, like, get busy,

25:33

pick something to do. Don't just sit around.

25:36

It's almost as if the chief

25:38

goal isn't to not work,

25:40

but rather to choose

25:42

the work you do. Yeah.

25:45

After that conversation, something occurred

25:47

to me. You know, this whole

25:49

time we've been talking about

25:51

how to measure and define

25:53

work. Is it work

25:55

hours per day or work hours per

25:57

lifetime has worked easier or

25:59

harder than it was before, but what

26:01

if we also need to talk about how

26:03

to measure and define leisure?

26:06

Because that was the other half of the

26:08

prediction. Remember, the prediction from

26:10

nineteen twenty three was that by the year

26:12

twenty twenty three, people would work

26:14

four hours a day and then enjoy

26:16

leisure the rest of their time. And I

26:18

started to think, you know, I'm

26:20

one of the lucky ones. I

26:22

have mostly chosen what to do

26:24

for a living and I really enjoy

26:26

it, which is a luxury.

26:28

Maybe for people like me, work

26:30

is a kind of luxury, a kind of

26:33

leisure. Maybe we are fulfilling

26:35

exactly that prediction from nineteen

26:37

twenty three because I don't know.

26:39

Maybe if I rallied it all up,

26:41

I'm doing four hours a day

26:43

of work, like

26:45

work I don't want to do, of

26:47

which there is plenty, believe me. And

26:49

the rest of it? Well, it's my version

26:51

of luxury. Maybe Charles

26:54

Steinmetz was right all

26:55

along. That is, at least for

26:57

people on one side of the

26:59

equation. Computers were invented in the nineteen

27:01

fifties or even the nineteen forties, but when

27:03

they became cheap and prevalent,

27:06

was in the nineteen eighties, and they had dramatically changed

27:08

work. And in non

27:10

uniform ways, not everyone has benefited.

27:13

This is David. David

27:15

Otter, I'm a Ford professor of

27:17

Economics and MIT. I'm a labor

27:19

economist. And when I brought this whole question to

27:21

David and I showed him these predictions, nineteen

27:23

twenty three. And I asked what he made of it.

27:25

He said, well, yes, all

27:27

of the explanations that you have just

27:29

heard throughout this episode are very

27:32

valid planations for why

27:34

the world didn't quite turn out the way that Charles

27:36

Steinmetz predicted. But if we're going to

27:38

draw lessons about what happened in the last

27:40

hundred years and apply them to what

27:42

could happen in the next hundred years, we have to take a

27:45

very serious look at one of

27:47

the consequences of

27:49

electricity, which was of course development

27:51

of the computer and the way that

27:53

the computer radically altered work

27:55

for everyone. So

27:57

if you do creative analytical, interpersonal

28:00

work, having access to information

28:02

processing and things that carry out all your

28:04

routine tasks is is terrific. If you

28:06

are a production worker, or

28:08

clerical worker or administrative worker, a lot

28:10

of that work has been automated. And

28:12

it's not been beneficial for people

28:14

without college degrees. Many of

28:16

them have been pushed downward into relatively

28:19

low paid personal services. Now,

28:21

to be clear, David is not all due in

28:23

gloom. He actually thinks that AI

28:25

and automation and new technologies can

28:27

play a really productive role

28:29

in creating more

28:32

opportunity for all, but it's going

28:34

to require us to be really really

28:36

thoughtful about the development and

28:38

the use of those

28:40

technologies. And that, he says, is going to be

28:42

the big question that defines the next

28:44

hundred years. So what does that

28:46

look like? How do we take? What

28:48

just happened from nineteen twenty

28:50

three? Coming up twenty twenty three and then apply it to

28:53

what's coming next. That is what we

28:55

will get into after the

28:57

break. Did you know that

28:59

the average podcast listener subscribes

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to six shows? Well, assuming

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you already subscribed to my show, then I have

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And honestly, Jordan is a friend of mine, but I

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Jordan dives into the minds of

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wisdom in each episode, all with the noble

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There's good reason that Jordan is the guy

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as in boy, i, n as in Nancy,

30:11

GER odd apple

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podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you

30:15

listen to podcasts. Alright, we're

30:19

back. So now it's time to turn

30:21

to the future. To see what we can

30:23

learn from the last hundred years and

30:25

how it can help us anticipate to

30:27

paint or shape the next hundred.

30:29

And the reason I called David Otter of

30:31

MIT is because, well, a few years

30:33

ago, I heard him on the planet money

30:35

podcast talking about a concept that feels

30:37

very relevant to this question.

30:39

It is a concept called

30:41

the lump of labor fallacy.

30:44

And if that sounds familiar, might be because I also

30:46

referenced it a few episodes on this podcast

30:49

using audio from

30:51

David when he was on planet money. But

30:53

now I've got him myself. The lump

30:55

of labor fallacy is the belief that there

30:57

is a fixed amount of work to

30:59

be done. Like, there is a limited

31:02

amount of work to be shared among

31:04

all available workers. And

31:06

if that's the case, then

31:08

when a machine does the work that a

31:10

human once did or if you

31:12

add more workers because of something like

31:14

immigration, then you're just putting

31:16

people out of work permanently. Because

31:18

now there are too many people for the

31:20

fixed amount of work. But

31:22

this isn't true for a couple

31:24

of reasons. Among them, when one

31:27

industry shrinks, another grows. In nineteen

31:29

hundred, for example, forty one percent

31:31

of the US workforce worked

31:34

in agriculture. But then machines

31:36

automated a lot of that work and a century

31:38

later only two percent of people worked in

31:40

agriculture. But here's the

31:42

thing. Total employment in the US

31:44

did not go down.

31:47

Why? Because those people didn't lose

31:49

their jobs on the arm and

31:51

then never find another job.

31:53

The automation instead freed people

31:55

up to do other work, work that

31:57

was created in part by the

32:00

automation. Now there was for example a growing

32:02

farm equipment industry

32:04

and also new industries that

32:07

served these who maybe now

32:09

made more money in less time

32:11

and wanted to enjoy themselves with

32:13

that free time and therefore were interested in

32:15

new forms of leisure like we talked

32:17

about earlier. And this is one of the

32:19

reasons why when you look across time, you see

32:21

that technology has driven a growth

32:23

in total income and a rising

32:25

standard of living even as

32:27

it has repeatedly replaced people's jobs.

32:29

So that's why I wanted to talk to David

32:31

because he has a good, nuanced

32:33

understanding of how these shifts

32:36

impact people And when we started

32:38

talking, he said, you know, you need to

32:40

appreciate the context in which all of

32:42

this change happens because

32:44

it's not a straightforward story.

32:47

Like, yes, national income has

32:49

risen significantly in the last one

32:51

hundred years, thanks to

32:53

electricity and everything that followed. But

32:55

Well, it's a question of distribution. They do raise

32:57

national income. Almost all of these

32:59

technologies raise national income. They allow us to

33:01

produce more output per hour. But

33:03

it's been a really strong decoupling between the

33:06

growth rate of productivity and

33:08

the growth rate of the median earner.

33:10

And so total earnings have gone

33:13

up a lot, but they've been so

33:15

upwardly distributed that a lot

33:17

of people have not benefited much

33:19

or at all. And that's the

33:22

concern about technology or at least the

33:24

way we use technology. There's no

33:26

question it will make us in

33:28

net wealthier. But it doesn't mean it'll make everybody

33:30

in the country wealthier. And this

33:32

gets us to what you heard David

33:34

say just a few minutes ago that computers

33:37

in automating tasks that were

33:39

once done by hand, made some

33:41

workers more efficient and

33:43

made other workers obsolete.

33:46

This meant that some workers moved up the economic

33:48

ladder and others, typically

33:50

lower educated workers, were

33:52

pushed downward into low

33:54

paying service jobs. And so that's the real

33:57

concern about technology and work. It's not

33:59

that we should worry per se

34:01

about the jobs being done by machines. It's great

34:03

when, you know, machines reduce

34:05

our burden. Question, well, how are many of us going

34:07

to have a claim on resources and

34:09

income if our labor is

34:11

no longer valuable? And how do

34:13

you solve this? Well, some people have said the solution is

34:16

redistribution of wealth. If some people

34:18

can earn, then those people

34:20

should be distributing

34:22

some of that earning to those who cannot. But

34:24

David said, that is just not

34:27

realistic because people

34:29

don't like redistribution. The people

34:31

who were being taxed, don't like it. Most people don't

34:34

like receiving it. Right? Most

34:36

people would rather feel like they, you know, they

34:38

earned a living based on their

34:40

own contributions. So what do we one

34:42

other arguments would be we have

34:44

to stop the technology or at

34:46

least put severe limits on

34:48

the technology. Because now the

34:50

technology is poised to harm

34:52

us. But David says, no, that's

34:54

also not the right way to look at it. The

34:56

technology is not developing itself, at

34:58

least not yet. We are

35:00

the ambassadors of that and

35:03

we can focus on how we want

35:05

to use it better or worse. And

35:07

there are many examples where technologies that we invent

35:09

are highly complementary to us and make

35:11

us better at what we do increase the value

35:13

of the skills that we

35:16

have. There are many other examples where it goes the opposite, where it just replaces

35:18

us. And so the question is

35:20

whether we can use it better

35:23

to get the results that we want. The

35:25

big problem that the US and many

35:27

rich countries, but especially the

35:29

US face, is the elimination

35:32

of kind of expert jobs for

35:34

people without college degrees. Right? There, you

35:36

know, there's lots of jobs for people without degrees. We

35:38

have an incredibly low unemployment Right? But

35:40

they're in food service. They're in cleaning. They're in trucking. You

35:43

know, they're not in areas

35:46

where you actually are rewarded for

35:48

your skills. Your specialized

35:50

skills where you get better over lifetime. Now, some

35:52

such jobs exist certainly in the

35:54

trades, right, in contracting,

35:56

construction, plumbing, and

35:58

In many medical para professions, they exist. But

36:00

the idea would be the ideal thing to

36:02

do would be to use technology, make

36:04

more work like that. Right, to use

36:06

AI to, for example, provide support systems and guardrails

36:09

to allow people to take on hard

36:11

tasks where they still use their judgment

36:13

and their interpersonal skills

36:16

and they have support to make good decisions.

36:18

Right? You know, if you wanna understand one

36:20

of the ways in which we have changed fundamentally

36:22

from nineteen twenty three to

36:25

now, IT'S IN THE WAY THAT DAVID JUST LAID THAT OUT,

36:28

THAT MAYBE THE FUTURE IS ONE IN

36:30

WHICH TECHNOLOGY ASSISTS

36:32

HUMAN

36:32

HANDS. Because back then,

36:34

they saw those things in

36:36

real conflict. Here's from the Cincinnati

36:39

Enquirer in nineteen twenty three.

36:42

He lacked fifty can never do the work of

36:44

the world. Human hands

36:46

and human brains in

36:50

coordination always must do that. Else,

36:53

we atrophy decay,

36:56

revert to the

36:58

unlovely and drying

37:00

situation of ancient barbarism

37:03

to devote but

37:05

four out of the

37:08

twenty four hours to work would be to take out

37:10

of life its chief

37:12

aspirational and

37:14

inspirational impulses.

37:17

That one really sounds like it was crawling out

37:19

of the crypt, didn't it? So anyway,

37:22

I asked David if he had a

37:24

good example of technology

37:27

being used right now to create more work

37:29

or to create a bridge

37:31

to better work. And he said a

37:33

good example is in nursing.

37:35

Where, of course, there is a nursing shortage right now

37:37

and so there are a lot of people

37:39

looking for solutions to make nursing

37:42

more

37:43

appealing and accessible. Yeah, nursing's have

37:45

been very skilled work. It's pretty highly paid, but it's very

37:48

stressful. The hours are long. It's

37:50

physically demanding.

37:52

It's actually somewhat dangerous not because, you know, people get injured, lifting patients, and

37:54

so on. And there's a lot of it that is

37:56

not the fun part of nursing, not the care part, but a

37:58

lot of the menial work, the custodial work.

38:02

And, yeah, it's quite possible that technology could help this work better.

38:04

You know, one of my colleagues who worked in

38:06

this area said to me, you know, being like the

38:10

charge nurse on a floor in ICU. It's like being an air traffic

38:12

controller without any radar. Right?

38:14

It's so technologically primitive

38:16

and you're trying to do an

38:18

incredibly complex coordination job and

38:20

yet you don't have the sport. So yes, this work

38:22

could be made better

38:24

and allowing people to specialize in what they do

38:26

well. So for example, in

38:28

Japan, which is the world's

38:30

oldest industrialized country in terms of average age of the

38:32

population and does not have a lot of

38:34

immigrants and does not have a lot of young

38:36

people's result. They are ahead of the world in creating

38:38

assistive robotics that basically

38:40

help with Enercare. When I say help, I don't

38:42

mean that they are, you know, sitting and comforting

38:46

elderly people. But they help lift of and

38:48

them, which is one of the very

38:50

demanding and actually dangerous in terms of

38:52

likelihood of injury

38:54

jobs for a

38:56

caregiver. So, yeah, so it certainly is possible that

38:58

we could improve that work.

39:02

And ideally, allow people

39:04

who don't have to have ten years of medical

39:06

school, right, to do that work.

39:08

And similarly, you could imagine, like,

39:10

in skilled repair,

39:12

if you go to school, you become a mechanic, you learn how to repair things, but then you

39:14

have to deal with a new jet engine that you happen

39:16

to work with or a new vehicle. Well, you would

39:18

have technologies like something like, you know,

39:20

the Google

39:22

class of your. Right? They would display information and help you make it so

39:24

that's the that is the ideal use of the technology.

39:26

And and let me just I wanna make this

39:28

as plain as possible. AI

39:31

is an incredibly plastic technology and it's gonna be used for

39:33

anything. But I by plastic, I mean, in the majority of

39:35

sense of, you know, kimchi, I mean,

39:37

in the sense of valuable,

39:40

flexible. But what it will be used for is really a

39:42

question of societal choice. Let me just illustrate, you

39:44

know, China has the world best

39:47

surveillance technology and the world's best content

39:50

filtering technology made possible

39:52

by extraordinary AI and tons and tons

39:56

of computing. That's not because AI is intrinsically good at senior surveillance

39:58

and content filtering, so they made a huge

40:00

investment to get that. Right? That was what they

40:02

prioritized. You

40:04

could use prioritization

40:06

to reduce medical error and

40:08

make a lot of medical care cheaper and

40:11

more accessible to people everywhere. You

40:13

can use that technology to make

40:16

education more accessible, more

40:18

immersive, less expensive. You can

40:20

use that technology to support you workers

40:22

in better decision making to make

40:24

them more expert or act more

40:26

like experts in many things. So

40:28

what we invest in is what we will get. And so

40:31

we should not think that

40:33

the technology is driving the

40:35

direction we're

40:35

going. We are.

40:38

So that doesn't immediately tell you vote for this, do that,

40:40

and you know, this is what you should buy. But

40:42

it it breaks people out of mind that I

40:44

hope of the notion that the future is just something

40:48

we're supposed sit around and wait for it to happen and then adapt to it.

40:50

Because it's something we're actively

40:52

creating through incentives, through

40:54

investments, through choices, you know,

40:56

every day. And the

40:58

future that we are creating is a future we'd be living

41:00

in. So it it would be good

41:02

to make that a

41:04

good future. The future we are creating is the

41:06

future we'll be living in. It

41:08

doesn't get any simpler or

41:10

more profound

41:12

than that. And it is

41:14

really the greatest truth to be born

41:16

out of the last hundred years and the

41:18

greatest mission for the next

41:20

hundred. Because, you know,

41:22

consider it Back in nineteen

41:24

twenty three, when Charles Steinmetz made

41:26

his prediction about the four hour

41:28

workday. He and the people of his

41:30

time were only beginning

41:32

to glimpse awesome power of what they had built. Less

41:34

than half of American households had

41:36

electricity back then. The future was

41:38

theirs to

41:40

shape. And so they did. They set in motion the

41:42

creation of our world. And

41:44

it is a world that would be

41:47

at once familiar and totally unfamiliar to them.

41:49

I mean, depending on how you slice it, Charles

41:52

Steinmetz was absolutely correct

41:54

about life in twenty twenty three.

41:57

We fewer hours than before. Our

42:00

lives are more comfortable than

42:02

ever. But he wasn't

42:04

correct in imagining that the shape

42:06

of our lives and of

42:08

society would change so

42:10

radically. Because those things

42:12

are more fundamental, I guess,

42:14

we still work hard and long.

42:17

And yes, we are overall better off than

42:19

we were in nineteen twenty three as

42:21

a people. But overall benefit

42:24

doesn't mean all that much of people who aren't

42:26

prospering individually, which was

42:28

surely just as true back then as

42:30

it is now. So here

42:32

we are, once again. In twenty twenty three, people

42:34

will make predictions about the next

42:36

hundred years. They will point to

42:38

things like

42:40

chat, GPT, and they will say it'll change everything

42:42

as we know it. It will eliminate

42:44

work, never to be replaced, that

42:46

we have lost control of our creations.

42:50

But in truth, as David Otter said, the future

42:52

is always ours to shape.

42:54

We build the machines.

42:56

We create the technology. And

42:59

we have the opportunity now and

43:01

always to say what do we want

43:03

that to look like. And

43:06

then instead of just imagining what'll happen in one hundred

43:08

years or figuring that we have no

43:10

choice in the matter, we put our

43:12

heads down and we figure out how

43:15

to make tomorrow even better

43:18

than today. And that's

43:20

our episode. But hey, I have one

43:22

last way to understand the change between

43:25

nine team twenty three and now and it isn't

43:27

about dollars and it isn't about

43:29

economies, it is about how we

43:31

feel about our place in the world. I

43:33

will share that in a minute, But

43:36

first, if you are going through a big change at

43:38

work or in your life right now, then you

43:40

need a copy of my new book

43:42

build for tomorrow. It combines

43:44

lessons from this podcast with lessons from

43:46

the smartest entrepreneurs of today and

43:48

provides a step by step action plan

43:50

for how you can thrive in

43:52

changing times and find opportunity in adversity. It is

43:54

available in hardcover audiobook

43:56

and ebook. And the audiobook, by the way,

43:59

I read myself just go wherever you find books

44:01

or to jason pfeiffer dot com slash

44:04

book. And if you want even more

44:06

advice and encouragement

44:08

on how to adapt fast, then sign up for my newsletter. You

44:10

can find it by going to jason

44:12

pfeiffer dot com slash newsletter

44:15

You can also get in touch with me directly at my website

44:17

jason pfeiffer dot com or follow me on

44:20

Twitter or Instagram. I am

44:22

at paypfeiffer.

44:24

This episode was reported and written by me, Jason Fiverr,

44:26

Sound editing by Alec Bayless. Our theme

44:28

music is by Casper baby pants. Learn

44:30

more at baby pants music dot com.

44:34

Voice acting by Gia Mora. You can find her at gia

44:36

mora dot com, and thanks to

44:38

Adam Socklitz for production help. This

44:40

show is supported in part by the stand

44:42

together trust the stand together

44:44

trust believes that advances in

44:46

technology have transformed society for the better

44:48

and is looking to support scholars,

44:50

policy experts, and other projects and

44:52

creators who focus on embracing

44:54

innovation, creating a society that fosters

44:56

innovation and encouraging people to

44:58

engineer the next great idea.

45:00

If that's you, then get in touch

45:02

with them. Proposals for projects in law, economics, history,

45:04

political science, and philosophy are

45:06

encouraged. To learn more about their partnership

45:08

criteria, just

45:10

visit stand together trust dot org.

45:12

Alright. Now, as promised, one

45:14

more factor that shaped us into the

45:17

people we are When I

45:19

was talking to David, he said, yes, things

45:22

like rising standards of living in the

45:24

way that one declining industry creates

45:26

new work. And another can all

45:28

help contribute to the reason

45:30

why we still work long work

45:32

days rather than getting to that four hour

45:34

work day that was once predicted. But

45:36

he said, you know, You also

45:38

need to take seriously this

45:40

important fact. It's not just a

45:42

matter of how much wealth people

45:44

have, but about how over

45:46

time they feel about the

45:48

wealth they do have. What is considered normal

45:50

and what is considered a good standard of

45:52

living changes whenever an alpha standard of living

45:54

So you might actually, you know, living as a middle class person in nineteen

45:56

twenty two, you felt middle class. If you lived

45:59

to that living standard right now, you

46:01

would feel poor. So that might

46:03

affect how much you would enjoy not enjoy that standard of living. And

46:06

therefore, how much you would work to

46:08

maintain or rise

46:10

above it? Nothing in world

46:12

is static, not the number of jobs,

46:14

not the size of the economic pie, not

46:16

the way we feel about what we have and

46:18

don't have and want to have.

46:21

That's all for this time. Thanks for listening.

46:23

I'm Jason Feifer, and let's keep

46:25

building for tomorrow.