The trilemma: (most famously pointed out in recent times by Dani Rodrik but its been floating around for longer as I remember having this pointed out to me by some anonymous Canadian trade negotiator in the mid 1990s.)
we can have two of the following three, but not all three.
1 democratic governance at the local/state level,
2 nation state and independent laws, the norm up until the 1990s, and what most people think we still have, wrongly.
3 globalized economic governance - sort of global governance for corporations, it seems in practice, and the so called economic integration it is alleged to bring (and its alleged 'efficiency gains' - of job losses- what you were talking about - saying it wouldnt work, you're totally right, if you mean wont work for people, if people are no longer needed, they are no longer wanted).
Those who don't have money to spend, a group which is bound to grow in the coming years unless we drastically change course and start investing more money back into society in the form of education and social services, (both barred by little known international agreements to dismantle them)
which would mean taxation which countries are loathe to do because the rich and their money are extremely good at gaming national systems and they will take their money elsewhere or stash it offshore in tax havens.. The deregulation is to puff up the value of economies that are built on imagined wealth and unrealistic valuation. 'Churning' Not actual wealth creation.
Technology like electronics is an oasis of actual wealth creation. In terms of economic activity, technology driven wealth is getting cheaper and better, or should be. When it can be done without taking from anybody, and international agreements, as exist should attempt to do the opposite of what they do now. Or nothing. Nothing should be set up to limit democracy because it will always be rigged.
that wealth should be shared by all, for example, by limiting certain kinds of patents to ever shorter periods. (because of exponential growth in technology it actually makes sense to have petent terms get shorter and shorter.) certainly, life saving patents of any kind, such as drug patents should never be evergreened.
But in many cases it isnt being shared at all. Quite the opposite. We're seeing what amounts to a global second enclosure. (<Reference to the British Enclosure Acts) In the form of trade agreements.
The public domain is actually shrinking in almost all respects. Just as natural resources are being looted and land held informally or in commons is being stolen and given to corporations.
Technology, democratized could allow poor farmers to stay on their lands, by allowing them to utilize the same productivity enhancing technologies that larger faming operations use, like GPS-assisted agriculture.
Technology-democratized could rein in the giants and IF society decided we needed resiliency (and we do) allow small scale e-commerce to be just as efficient as the huge stores. That would preserve jobs.
Otherwise, the ordinary people, more and more and more of us, will increasingly be left out to dry without services or education or means to pull themselves upward - without anything - Even jobs will vanish to cheap labor arrangements that game the global wage gradients to cut costs - The common folk are being quietly removed from the picture.
Because the system which really they should, we should all own (if we lived in a democracy of by and for the people) is really owned now by a very few and for that reason it fears them and it wants to wash its hands of them and this 'dull care' - its obligation. Noblesse oblige is dead. or dying.
Whether that means automation before its really ready, or offshoring and outsourcing of their jobs and means of survival, it is human nature among the wealthy. Emerging from guilt. The common people have a wisdom the wealthy lack and they see through these schemes in a minute.
This is why democracy has been quietly subverted by trade agreements. The people of our planet and and their basic human needs, are at best feared by politicians because they show how broken the so called perfect system really is getting for most of us and worse, in countries with high levels of inequality, very likely, the people are more and more likely to become the targets of efforts to marginalize them in large numbers, really mean spirited ones. "Poor is the new black".
The whole world really needs an honest discussion about what future we all want (a future which depends on trust which we're rapidly losing) and class, which its never had the guts to have.
Instead, enabled by high technology which is making it possible for business to exist without the people it has employed in the past, sacrificing on its altar - what you pointed out, its engine of prosperity, the middle class (and the idea of a middle class) Without a light at the end of the tunnel, for many more, we'll soon be - In some countries, we're already sliding back into the abyss.
Nobody in their right minds wants this.
Whats happening is happening in no small part because of something, a form of institutional dysfunction, self-reinforcing bad decisionmaking, called 'groupthink'.
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