Economy

The economy is basically divided in 3 sectors (three-sector hypothesis):

1. the primary sector (agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining)
2. the secondary sector (manufacturing)
3. the tertiary sector (services)

Economic development has been divided into three phases:

First phase:
This phase corresponds to the Middle Ages and current developing countries, where the workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 70%
• secondary sector: 20%
• tertiary sector: 10%

Second phase:
This phase corresponds to industrializing nations. More machinery is deployed in the primary sector, which reduces the number of workers needed. As a result, the demand for machinery production in the secondary sector increases. The workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 20%
• secondary sector: 50%
• tertiary sector: 30%
  

Third phase:
This phase corresponds to developed countries. The primary and secondary sectors are increasingly dominated by automation, and the demand for workforce falls in these sectors. It is replaced by the growing demands of the tertiary sector. The workforce is divided like this:

• primary sector: 10%
• secondary sector: 20%
• tertiary sector: 70%

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You might see a pattern here, that is, employment in every sector grows at the beginning and after a while it starts to shrink, because of automation. Nowadays, a few percentages of the workforce can feed the entire world, because of modern agriculture. Industry needs fewer workers as technology advances because they are replaced by machines.

As the first two sectors shrink because of automation, only the third sector is left to absorb the workforce. The third sector has already started its automation.

My mother used to work in a bank and there were a lot of people employed there but one day they brought computers and a lot of people were laid off because of increased efficiency. This is technological unemployment, where technology makes you redundant.

In this sick society it is normal to fear technology because it can replace you. As the third sector becomes more efficient and it needs less workforce, what will happen?

In a sane world, people should rejoice when new technology is developed, because it should make life better and reduce the work hours for everyone. This does not happen. Indeed, the work hours seem to get longer and more stressful.

People fear losing their jobs to machines and to other people (there's always an army of unemployed waiting to take your job). In another interesting twist, people become xenophobic as foreigners are willing to work for less money and are more docile and subservient. Fear makes us lose our dignity. This society is a spineless society.

The current trend is to brainwash people so that they buy more things (which they don't need) so that they can keep this absurd system going. This is why a lot of companies spend more money on advertising than on actual production. This system creates the desire to want more, to want to be rich, to own as much as possible. Of course, as one man owns more, others own less, so, the system is encouraging selfishness. Is this the direction we want to go in?

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At one point the system will fail. That point will be reached when less and less workforce is needed for the three sectors. At that point, unemployment will rise sharply. As people don't have a job, they can't afford some things. The first sector to suffer will be the tertiary one, because people need food more than they need haircuts. They will go less to restaurants, restaurants will close and so on, this leading to rising unemployment and rising unemployment taking down the economy with it.

Employers want to have as few employees as possible, because they will have more profit. As technology will be able to replace more humans, employers will do just that, they will replace humans with machines. So people have to find new things to produce and convince the others that they need them, even if they don't really need them. This is already happening, as the market is full of stuff nobody really needs, but they are convinced they need them.

When supermarkets open, a lot of small shops close, because supermarkets are more efficient and need less workforce than those small shops put together.

The end of the system will be like this: few people will produce a lot but only they (who produce) will have money to buy what they produce, so it will be a closed circle. All the land, all the factories, everything will be owned by them, by those who produce. Nothing will be owned by the rest of the people. So those who produce nothing will try to do stuff for the producers in return for money. This leads to a continual depravation of society, where every service possible is sold for survival and every possible thing is produced and resources are exploited in vain, just to create more trash. Damn, we are here already. Everything can be bought.