Why Technology Didn't Produce Increased Leisure

[David Horn]

Let me posit the perfect-storm alternative. Look at the era when all this began. We had turmoil on an international scale. 1968 alone was devastating. Add-in the destruction of trust under Nixon, due to Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. The Right-to-Work movement began about the same time. Top it off with the first oil embargo in 1973, and most of what passed for institutional stability was under fire from all sides. Into the void stepped the financial elites, who had been waiting in the wings for decades.

The first act: move jobs away from unions, demagogue them so they don't emerge in the their new homes. Since the voices of the powerful economic interests were still given heed, and the use of fear was tried successfully for the first time in decades, people went along. Voices from the public sphere were considered corrupt, and basically ignored. The die was cast.

The real questions:

• Is 45 years of bad getting worse enough to break this paradigm?
• Is Trump enough to finally get the pendulum moving in the opposite direction?

If not, then this is the beginning of oligarchy on, potentially, an international scale. We already have autocrats running several nations. The rich and powerful couldn't be happier … for now, at least.