Illusions Lost - An Elegy in Three Parts (I)

Part 1: A World Without People

Part 2: Progress

Part 3: Growth

Requiem

Bibliogaphy

In 1817 David Ricardo - that great advocate of free trade to exploit the wealth-enhancing benefits of comparative advantage - admitted the Luddites were right. Replacing paid workers with unpaid machines permanently reduces the need for human workers and renders the human population "redundant" to the owners of the machines. {David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Chapter XXXI On Machinery (1817)}

200 years later we are approaching the logical conclusion of that process. Here's what it looks like.

Machines replace people.

Machines don't "supplement" people.

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