Balance of payments

Google cars is the text for this morning's worry. The full story being at reference 1.

Suppose google delivers a computer program which can drive all our cars and lorries for us.

Then lots of drivers get made redundant and a proportion end up on benefit.

Meanwhile, the work they used to do has been transferred to a small computer which was probably made with (relatively) cheap labour in the Far East and imported from there into the UK. Maybe most of the computer program was written out there too.

So all we have really done is put a lot of our chaps on the dole in order to take a few of their chaps off the dole, along the way making our balance of payments even worse than it was before.

While the chaps from google trouser a percentage, a percentage which they can use for good works - of their own choosing - in due course. Perhaps they are fans of Dame Trace, which would at least get some of the dosh back over here, back where it belongs. See reference 2.

PS: I associate to the problem which Aldous Huxley put his finger on eighty years ago. It is all very well getting machines to do all the work, but what are all the people going to do instead? How on earth are we going to keep them happy, given that most people are happiest when they are busy?

Reference 1: https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/detritus-3.html.