The All-Collar Crisis: When White Collar Work Meets Blue-Collar Reality
Hold onto your collars. The AI-generated crisis of work is here, and the storm will concentrate on white-collar workers from the professional economy. According to Julia Hobsbawm, founder of Workathon.io, these workers are about to experience the dismal reality of blue-collar redundancy. 50% of the US workforce will be freelance by 2030, some experts warn, making this transition the biggest shift in the nature of work since the Industrial Revolution. Humans can't be completely replaced by machines, Hobsbawm says. But enough will be replaced to create mass suffering — the same conditions that generated the revolutionary movements of the 19th century.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Episode 2012: David Donnelly on the catastrophic costs to humanity of Silicon Valley surveillance capitalism
Episode 2011: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Peter Wehner
Episode 2010: How everyone, even business school professors, are joining the anti big tech church
Episode 2009: Keith Teare on why Big Tech might be getting even BIGGER
Episode 2008: Chris French on the Science of Weird S**t
Episode 2007: Bethanne Patrick's guide to a literary March madness
Episode 2006: Everything you wanted to know about sex but didn't have the imagination to ask
Episode 2005: Why the Pete Rose story is as much about the rise and fall of America as it is about the fate of Charlie Hustle
EPISODE 2004: Jacob Heilbrunn on conservative America's 100 year romance with foreign dictators like Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini, Pinochet, Orban and Putin
Episode 2003: Martin Sixsmith on Vladimir Putin and the return of history to Russia and the West
Episode 2002: Elaine Lin Hering gives voice to the "Unsilent Generation"
Episode 2001: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Adam Hochschild
Episode 2000: Keith Teare on why the Congressional attempt to ban TikTok is astonishingly dumb