Less Work, More Leisure

Peter Diamandis writes in Evidence of Abundance #1: More Leisure, Less Work that: This first blog in my "Evidence of Abundance" series is about an Increasing Abundance of Leisure. My goal, with your help, is to get the data out as far and wide as possible. Evidence of Abundance: Work and Leisure It's easy to forget that for centuries — for millenia — the "workforce" was ALL of us. A few people lived in luxury, but the vast majority were slaves and serfs who did the work. In 1750, 75 percent of people on the planet worked to support the top 25 percent. The more interesting question is how we are going to deal with the fact that most jobs are going to disappear. Just today, IBM announced it would be building an artificial human brain. Not only will it have just as many neurons as a human brain, it won't use any more power than a human brain. And, it will think much faster than a human brain because electronic circuits run millions of times faster than a human brain. Remember, this is the company which produced Watson, a computer which defeated the two best Jeopardy champions. It won't be long before the term “labor” will be as obsolete as the horse-drawn carriage. Jobs will be done by computers. We will have leisure, but will we have income to go around?

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