Artificially intelligent machines took our jobs!!!

Well, we didn't like those jobs anyway. Good riddance. I thought I'd throw this article out there for the people who are, or soon will be, unemployed due to technological advances. Before I go into the details of how to survive, I'll give an example of the typical unemployed person's scenario; and this may help to explain why it may take 10 years to resolve the unemployment dilemma.

I give you Bob. He was an automotive technician at a major American car company. He made $25/hr, had a great union, pension, health care, and could raise his family and live the American dream with one job. The company moved production to Mexico, closed the factory he worked at, and he was laid off. He was eligible for a retraining program and he took it. It was supposed to teach him about technology and get him a great, modern job. Instead, they trained him to work in a call center where he made $15/hr. The call center was closed and moved to India. He now works at Walmart for $9/hr. Every day, he reads news articles about how he will be replaced by machines. You all know the story...

I went through a similar dilemma and am now on my 12th year without a job so I'll save you some heartache. I worked in call centers until they were outsourced, then in corporate in-house support until the H1-B workers arrived from India, then worked gigs as a contractor until the market was flooded with other gig contractors, then I hid in the University system for a couple years to get that allmighty degree which would mean nothing in the job market. At some point, I realized that I would never be hired. I had become a part of the growing unnecessariat.

When it happens to you, it's very upsetting. Many people wrongly blame themselves. They get depressed and think they are useless. Some resort to prescription painkillers, some to suicide, some to sleeping on the streets, etc. So this is where I'll begin.

1. Get over it

It's not you, it's them. The machines do it better and work for less. You could be the best taxi driver in the world, but that self-driving car is perfect and costs a fraction of what you charged. Instead of spending 40hrs/week applying for jobs as a taxi driver, just move on to bigger and better things. Sure there may be 1 or 2 highly paid taxi drivers for wealthy people who want that vintage human driver, but the other 20,000 drivers who are unemployed are competing for those jobs and out of all of the best of the best of them, it will boil down to who has a better smile and makes people feel happy.

2. Realize that you are on your own

No help is coming. People will just shrug their shoulders and say' "Damn, that sucks dude". There isn't going to be an uprising. No government jobs program is going to come about. Universal basic income will never happen. For the next 10 years, people will say "Go to the job center" or "Hey, I found some company hiring". Meanwhile, you get nothing. No income, no work, nothing. You need to take care of yourself because nobody else will.

3. Move on

Do whatever it is you want to do next. In my particular case, I wanted to go see the world... so I sold all my useless material possessions by holding a garage sale, and then I got on the next plane and flew across the planet. That was when I really began to live life. I'll save that story for a separate article but mention that I had the time of my life, met my true love, and lived the American dream. It cost me about $400 for the ticket and I had a job shortly after arriving.

I'd recommend going to college if you can. Don't worry about student loans. Consider it a free education because you and everyone else I know will never be able to repay those loans, never work again, and never have good credit anyway. Don't do it to get a job either, do it to learn and improve yourself.

Another idea to get the creative juices flowing is: I know several trans-gender people who changed their sex and now live whole new lives and even changed their country. The key here is to think big and follow your dreams, even if society is not on board.

4. Secure the essentials

There are some social safety nets such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, obamacare, public housing, etc. I'd recommend taking advantage of as much as you can so that you can put what limited resources you have left into things that will help you for years to come. In my case, I went and did my own garden... then my own greenhouse... then my own farm... etc. I started with just a couple seeds and soil. I talked to some elders who survived the great depression and listened very carefully to what they said and implemented their advice. I now am getting about 50% of my food from my own farm. I literally have to walk 50ft to my chicken coop to get fresh, organic, free-range eggs and it costs me nothing but will feed me and my family eternally... how's THAT for social security? Free food for life? What, you didn't know that food just grows on trees? You didn't know that water freely falls from the sky?

Secure as much as you can and do it in a very conservative manner. How much money will you have if you save $1? What if you save $1 a million times over the next decade? I may only save $1/day on eggs today, but in 10 years that will be $3650. It's a way for me to utilize my labor as an investment. Ironically, as an unemployed person, all I have is tons of labor to invest. Instead of spending all my time chasing jobs, I'm chasing returns on my labor. Instead of being the most productive walmart stocker, I'm being the most productive home-brewer and home-grower.

5. Wait it out

Give it 10 years. Enjoy doing what you love the whole time and enjoy eating like a king. As technological employment becomes a larger and larger problem, the system that props it up will become unstable and this will trigger the kinds of things that should have been implemented a long time ago like: shorter work week(until it reaches 0hrs/wk) and a universal basic income.

If you're still employed, I made a video on how to prepare for technological unemployment here: