An old question, freshly urgent
A very old question
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, predicting that by 2030 most people would work a 15-hour week. Productivity has risen roughly as he expected. The working week has not. Something about how the gains got distributed failed to match his forecast, and the question 'what happens to work?' never went away.
Three recent waves of alarm
In 2013 Carl Frey and Michael Osborne estimated that 47% of US jobs were at high risk of automation. In 2014 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee published The Second Machine Age. In 2020 Daniel Susskind published A World Without Work. Each book made the question harder to wave away.
What 'post-labour economics' names
Post-labour economics is not a single author's theory. It is a label for a growing literature asking a shared question: could an economy function, and function well, if human labour stopped being the main thing that produces output? Contributors include David Shapiro, Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, Thomas Piketty, and teams at the OECD, IMF, and ILO.
Why this course exists
There are loud voices on both sides — technological doom merchants and breezy optimists. Most readers want something in between: the evidence as it actually stands, the risks taken seriously, the opportunities named honestly, and the tools to form a view of their own. That is what the next 19 lessons try to offer.
When you imagine your grandchildren's working lives, what do you picture? What makes that picture feel plausible or implausible?