The Straight-to-the-Point “The End of Work: Why Your Passion Can Become Your Job” Review
For a focused overview of economist John Tamny’s thought-provoking ideas on the future of work, read this comprehensive review highlighting his main arguments around how we are not actually headed towards a jobless future.
In his provocative book The End of Work: Why Your Passion Can Become Your Job, economist John Tamny makes a contrarian case against widespread predictions that automation and artificial intelligence will lead to permanent mass technological unemployment.
Tamny argues that while automation will continue displacing certain jobs, an expanding economy stimulated by innovation, capital investment, and specialization will also generate new, more fulfilling work. He contends that as long as entrepreneurs can innovate, investors provide capital, and consumers have wants and needs, human work will never permanently disappear.
Work vs. Jobs A key part of Tamny’s thesis is distinguishing between traditional full-time jobs and the broader concept of “work.” He defines work as any productive economic activity driven by market needs. This encompasses full-time jobs, but also includes activities like:
- Part-time and temporary contract work
- Consulting and freelancing
- Driving for rideshare services
- Selling products on eBay or Etsy
- Blogging or vlogging
- Participating in the sharing economy via apps
- Creating instructional videos or courses
- Drop shipping products
Tamny argues that technological advances and platform economics are enabling these more flexible forms of work to grow. Workers can monetize their skills, knowledge, and assets in customized ways aligned with market demand.
Historical Precedent Today’s anxiety about automation is not new — Tamny points out that concerns over technology destroying jobs date back over 200 years to the Industrial Revolution in England.
Yet in the long run, technology has never led to sustained increases in unemployment. While certain jobs are eliminated, new ones emerge. Tamny highlights how most American workers were employed in agriculture in the 1800s before manufacturing and services boomed. The automation of factory work in subsequent decades also failed to permanently increase unemployment.
Tamny argues we are underestimating how the same dynamics will operate moving forward. As long as consumer wants exist and are unfulfilled, human work will be needed to satisfy market demand.
Productive Work, Not Just Jobs Tamny also contends that “meaningful work” is not just a modern phenomenon. He argues that even seemingly mundane jobs throughout history provided autonomy, mastery, and purpose to workers. Whether craftsmen, farmers, or shopkeepers, most people have historically had significant control over their working lives contrary to popular perceptions. They were not helpless cogs in industrial machines, even during the 19th century heyday of factories.
Therefore, automation today will not remove humanity’s only chance at purposeful work — productive and meaningful work has always emerged from market needs, not top-down design. Technological advances will continue to enable more people to match their skills with market demands.
Why Work Won’t Disappear So why is Tamny convinced human work will never permanently vanish, despite the coming waves of automation and AI? His main reasons include:
- Labor is limited. There are only so many working age people, regardless of productivity levels. Their skills may shift, but humans will remain in the workforce.
- Consumers have unlimited wants. Human desires are endless, meaning there will always be new problems to solve and jobs creating value.
- Entrepreneurs innovate. Creative individuals relentlessly look to improve processes and satisfy demands in new ways, generating work.
- Investors enable new ideas. Continued capital investment gives innovators the resources to invent new technologies, goods, and services.
- Specialization increases productivity. As productivity grows, costs fall and living standards rise — fueling even more consumer demand and problems to solve.
Essentially, Tamny views an economy as a complex, evolving ecosystem. While automation changes the types of skills and jobs needed, it cannot make human work obsolete. The ecosystem simply shifts and recalibrates.
Critique of Universal Basic Income Tamny skewers the idea of universal basic income (UBI) — paying all people a regular stipend regardless of employment. He argues UBI would:
- Require tax increases, reducing capital needed for innovation and job creation
- Incentivize idleness over productivity among workers
- Impose paternalistic government restrictions on how funds could be spent
- Fail to satisfy people’s sense of purpose and self-worth
Instead of UBI, Tamny believes policy should focus on fostering skills, flexibility, entrepreneurship, investment, and growth. This will allow new, meaningful work aligned with market needs to naturally develop.
Preparing for the Future Given the pace of technological change, Tamny concedes that transitions may be rocky in the short-term. Some people and communities will struggle with dislocation and skill gaps.
He believes education reform focused less on college and more on flexibility, entrepreneurship, and lifelong learning will help. Safety nets to smooth transitions make sense, but sustaining long-term idle unemployment does not.
Tamny argues work provides meaning and dignity. Preparing people to adapt and remain integrated in the workforce is the wisest policy course according to his vision.
In summary, John Tamny provides a bold counter-perspective to predictions that automation will lead to a jobless future. His faith in market economies powering the endless creation of meaningful work is thought-provoking. This focused 2000 word review summarizes his iconoclastic ideas around why, from a long-term historical perspective, your passion truly can become your job in the automation age.
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