One of the points that Professor Holland made in her last lecture is that the way we treat different animals depends on the categories that we use to describe and think about those animals. For instance, we treat dogs very differently than we treat pigs. What we regard as acceptable behavior in connection with dogs is very different from what we regard as acceptable behavior in connection with pigs. Why is that? Well, we might say dogs are animals that we think of as pets whereas, pigs typically, at least, are not animals that we think of as pets. To think of an animal as a pet is to think of it as an animal that you can love and care for without demanding anything in return. Without demanding from it any particular labor or food, or anything else. You might want affection from a pet but you don't demand it. If a pet stops being affectionate towards you, you don't therefore stop taking care of it. And so pet is an animal that you love and care for even with no expectation or demand of anything in return. And we don't think of pigs that way. So that's why we treat them differently. But notice that the category of pet, that category itself is a category that can only exist and be used under conditions of sufficient leisure and affluence. Let me explain what I mean. Think about pre-social humans who constantly had to work in order to survive. They constantly had to be on the lookout for food, for shelter, for other humans. They had to work in order to stay alive. They wouldn't have had the time or energy to take care of an animal that wasn't offering them anything in return. They wouldn't have had the time or energy to keep a pet. Now sure, they might have lived with other animals, but the other animals that they lived with were animals from which they demanded work or food or something. But they weren’t just taking care of other animals just for fun. In the same way, when they had kids, those kids were put to work helping them to survive as early as possible. Pre-social humans had to work hard in order to survive and they didn't have the luxury of taking care of creatures that could not offer them anything in return. Now I've just been talking about the category that determines how we treat animals. Are there categories like that that determine how we treat people? Well one of the most important categories that people used to think about themselves, at least that adult humans used to think about themselves, is the category of the kind of occupation that they have. Doctor, lawyer, banker, firefighter, or what have you. Those categories tend to structure our thinking of who we are and what we want from our life. Those are categories that have structured adult human thinking about our lives for a long time, because for a long time, it's been true that these different occupations are different ways of making a living. But of course, that wasn't true for pre-social humans. Pre-social humans were all on their own. They had forage for food or hunt for food, or find shelter all on their own. They couldn't think of themselves as doctors, lawyers, bankers, fire fighters, or having any other specialized occupation. Right, that's because they were pre-social. So whatever needs they had, they couldn't buy those needs, they couldn't get those needs met in the marketplace, from other humans. So they had to satisfy those needs for themselves. Today, of course, we have markets where people can exchange goods and services. So the needs that I have for food and shelter, needs that I can get met not by growing own food or building my own shelter, but by buying those things with the money I make as a teacher. So I make money, and then I go and use that money to satisfy my needs for food and shelter. And the rest of you expect to be doing the same. But notice, just as the social conditions for thinking of ourselves in terms of our occupation had to come into existence with the socialization of human beings and the eventual division of labor. So too those social conditions could eventually go out of existence. Think of a lot of the different occupations that human beings do right. Some human beings work in manufacturing. Some human beings work as drivers. Some human beings work as matchmakers of a certain kind, either romantic matchmakers or matchmakers in the labor market. And yet, all of these kinds of work are about to be very suddenly automated. 3D printing is going to automate manufacturing. Self driving vehicles are going to automate driving, and predictive analytics is soon to automate human matchmaking. So eventually the occupations that people now fill will be automated away. And this brings us back to the question of why you're in college. You might think exactly, see I'm in college because I want to have an occupation that isn't going to automated away like that. I want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a banker, or something like that, where my work isn't going to be automated away. But how do you know that it isn't going to be automated away? If you talk to doctors, lawyers, bankers, and other people and highly compensated white collar professions, what you'll find is that the technical tools at their disposal now are many, many times greater than the technical tools that were at their disposal ten years ago. But if that's the case, then why couldn't the technology eventually take over all of their professional functions? The diagnostic function that doctors perform, the case writing functions that lawyers perform, the investment functions the bankers perform. Why couldn't all of those functions be automated away? And if and when that happens, and I saw when because I think it is very likely to happen, if and when that happens, we'll have to start to find new ways of thinking about ourselves. Instead of thinking about yourself using the category of labor that you perform in order to make a living. That is to say the category of labor that you perform in order to make money so that you can buy your food and shelter, instead of thinking of yourself under that category, you'll have to start thinking of yourself under a new set of categories. Notice this is why even some very conservative economists have argued that eventually we'll need to sever the connection between the labor and survival. If only for the efficiency of the labor market, so that people can perform labor most efficiently, can sell their labor most efficiently. We'll have to put them into position where they don't have to sell their labor in order to survive. When someone has to sell their labor in order to survive, they'll do whatever they can to sell it even if their attempt to sell it results in inefficiency. All right, if you want an efficient labor market, then you have to separate the connection between labor and survival. And that's what a number of economists, both conservative and liberal economists, have been arguing recently. But that would mark a huge social change, not just in our economy but in the way that we think about one another and the way we think about ourselves. Right now I'm a teacher. That's how I make money. What happens if teaching becomes automated? Well, how do I think of myself then? It's a separate question. How I make money then, right? Money could be provided from some universal basic income or it could be provided through some alternative model of compensation. But however I make money, the trickier question for me is how do I think about myself? What am I if I'm not a teacher? And that's a question that all of us are going to have to confront if our jobs get automated away. Now some of you might think well so you're telling me that I shouldn't go to college in the expectation of getting a job? I should just go to college in order to pursue what makes me happy? No, that's not what I'm telling you either. The most unhappy people I know were the people who spend their time thinking most about what makes them happy. Rather than thinking about what makes you happy, you might as well get used to the fact that being human is going to require you to face lots of challenges and to confront lots of sufferings, both your own and that of other people, including people you love. So rather than thinking about what makes you happy, why not think about what matters to you enough. What's important enough to you that you're willing to confront all that suffering in order to accomplish it. In order to achieve it, what is it that is that important to you? If you spend your time your thinking about that, thinking about what's important enough to you that you are willing to suffer in order to achieve it, then I predict your going to have some very productive years here at Carolina. Good luck.
