Robots are coming for your job.

When changes to the economic system are either proposed or predicted, it’s natural to evaluate the outcomes and the impact to those effected. You’ll notice a stark difference, however, in the reaction to those impacts based on which group it is that is effected.

For example, when a technologist or economist says, “Robots are coming for your jobs and you’ll all be out of work.” Very often the reaction to that is, “Oh well, that work will get funneled into new jobs and new businesses. People will innovate and create new economies.”

However, if you say, “Let’s simplify the tax code,” or, “Let’s get rid of our system of private healthcare,” the reaction often goes, “But what about all those jobs we’ll lose? Think about the thousands of tax preparers or the millions of insurance workers, what will they do?”

Why the difference? Couldn’t the Tax Preparers or Insurance Agents shift their work and innovate and make new businesses?

I think the difference comes down to who are the beneficiaries and the present systems of accountability.

Simply put, if the robots come for your job, those are jobs lost at the decision of a business. The business is the beneficiary of the lowered costs and so not much hand wringing happens for the poor workers that are losing their jobs. Se la vie, that’s just the cost of innovation.

People are well used to this sort of job loss. The company hired someone overseas to fill your job or found a contractor who could do it and they don’t have to pay benefits. What recourse does an employee have to these kinds of job losses? None. There’s nothing they can say or do to the CEO to change their circumstance.

On the other hand, when job losses happen through regulation, first and foremost that’s an affront to the business owners. Now it’s not just the workers that are facing the economic impact but the owner’s pocketbook is now impacted. And since these are often the people with access to media and the politicians themselves.

Secondly, this is a scenario where the workers have recourse. If a politician costs them their job, they can cost the politician his by voting him out of office, at least in a democratic(ish) country.

And so, even if the regulation of these industries might be beneficial to individuals (American’s routinely overpay the IRS and also doing your taxes sucks, right?), necessary to address climate change, or just help us get rid of bullshit jobs, we’re coerced via an unbalanced economic system and one-sided accountability structure into siding with businesses in this one key area.

What to do about it? The only thing I can think of is increasing unions and coops such that there is accountability in the private sphere as well as public. We can also, as a people, seriously redefine what work is, when it’s necessary, and what work pays… enabling the workers to have decision-making room in what they decide to pursue.