Don't trust economists about the future of work

While no-one can accurately predict the impact of the current digital revolution on our jobs, perhaps we should be pessimists about the future of work.

Inaugural lecture—Professor Nicholas Agar

September 2017

Economists would have you believe that we shouldn’t worry about increasingly automated workplaces. Apparently, we’ve seen it all before, and for every existing job that is done away with by technological progress, a new one is created in industries we can’t imagine.

That general rule might have been true in the past but, Professor Nicholas Agar argues, this optimism is misplaced this time around. While no-one can accurately predict the impact of the current digital revolution on our jobs, perhaps we should be pessimists about the future of work.

This is Professor Agar’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Ethics at Victoria University of Wellington.

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