I happened to read this article in SCMP, As China’s population falls, 300,000-strong robot army keeps factories humming, and the ending annoyed me: “By 2030, the country is projected to face a shortage of 50 million high-skilled blue-collar workers, according to a report published by China’s Human Resources and Social Security Information Centre in April.”

I have always hated this paradox: with modern productivity, the creation of the NECESSARY products and services for a decent living should be accomplishable with FEWER workers per capita than in the past. You know the old utopian mantra, “We’ll work four hours a day, and we’ll use the rest of the day to educate and entertain ourselves.” Then why is the world “in a shortage of workers”?! This is not just about China.

There are a few obvious factors, mostly related to the fact this isn’t anymore about “survival needs” or “decent life standards.” Modern lifestyle requires a lot of technology just to be able to do basic things that were done much more “low-tech” in the past.

Then, we’re not anymore in the times of Mencius, when “just about everyone want[ed] to have a roof over their head, a decent income and safety for their family.” (This quote is from an excellent article, How imperial China’s political ideas inform today’s Western societies: Martin Powers; use Bypass Paywalls Clean to read it.) People have rising expectations, often unreasonably high ones. Everyone wants and pretends to be “middle class” now, and the bar is increasingly higher.

Note that the article was about high-skilled blue-collar workers; this is mostly not about services such as healthcare, education, entertainment, or elder care, but about the production of goods. So this is less about the aging population and more about capitalism and artificial demand.

In my opinion, as long as such expected production outputs are way beyond “survival needs” and more like a luxury due to unrealistically high expectations, then the shortage of workers should eventually raise the prices for such “unnecessary” products. Then, people would then think twice before even wanting a €100,000 car instead of a €25,000 one or a €3,000 computer instead of an €800 one. They would also prefer more durable goods than expendable ones that need to be replaced every couple of years at best.

Notice the “should.” It should, but it won’t. This isn’t happening. Prices are rising, but expectations don’t falter. People refuse to downgrade their lifestyle expectations. Look how they complain about inflation and raising prices for food and energy, yet they “cannot live” without international vacations, expensive cars (in leasing), and shit.

Unfortunately, governments and corporations also oppose such “automatic adjustments” (prices going up, demand going down) by importing workers from less developed countries, subsidizing industries, automating aggressively. There is a reason for that: capitalism cannot survive if GDP isn’t continually increasing. Moreover, pensions, investments, government budgets all assume GDP keeps rising.

To add insult to injury, modern economies run on credit, and this creates artificial demand that persists even when it’s economically irrational.

Finally, “shortage” means “shortage at the wages we want to pay” more often than not. Companies want skilled workers but at basic blue-collar wages. They don’t want to pay them more, and they don’t even want to train them! If they truly faced a shortage, wages would skyrocket until enough people found the respective professions attractive and trained for those jobs! In a truly free market, appropriate wages would restore the balance, and more people would become high-skilled blue-collar workers instead of graduating in sales, marketing, PR, HR, or philosophy. Not to mention the too many MBA holders and the absurd number of “bosses”—there’s never a shortage of top managers, is there?

There would be a fix to this if society collectively decided that “maybe we don’t need all this stuff.” But degrowth can’t happen in our “instant gratification society” that’s ruining humanity’s future.

Funny thing, before this AI mania, there was a shortage of software developers because the computerization of everything eliminated many menial jobs but increased the need for high-skilled white-collar workers. And most people just cannot do that, the same way they could not be nuclear scientists even if they wanted to.

Now that the C-suites have decided that many software developers are redundant even if the AI is unable to replace them, the focus is on experts in designing AI models. More makers of Dutch tulip bulbs, yeah.

AI and robots. The society of the future is one by robots, for robots.