THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

The writing is on the wall: we are in this predicament now.
From as far back in history as anyone can trace, people have been
identifying with their jobs. We still describe ourselves as stone
cutters, professors, bankers, and computer experts. In fact, many of
our most common family names are derived from various jobs and
professions: Smith, Fletcher (arrow maker), Potter or similar titles in
living or dead languages. It goes back all the way to the Stone Age. In
the earliest Sumerian tablets, the writer identifies himself as 'So-andso,
the Scribe'.
If Keynes is right, we will for the first time in history be forced to
reinvent ourselves, to find other ways to identify who we are. We
won't any longer be able to identify ourselves with these 'production
labels'. In other words, we will be forced to seek other identities,
other reasons that give a purpose to our lives. Keynes concluded that
'no country can look forward ... without a dread' to this
unprecedented historic shift.
Nor was Keynes the only one to foresee such problems. Norbert
Wiener, the originator of cybernetics, was also one of the very first to
warn us of the social implications of computers: Let us remember
that the automatic machine [i.e. computer-driven production
equipment] ... is the precise economic equivalent of slave labour. Any
labour, which competes with slave labour, must accept economic
conditions of slave labour. It is perfectly clear that this will produce
an unemployment situation in comparison with which the present
recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant
joke.
But are there not already some telltale signs of what that may look
like?