Contents

A World Without Work - Daniel Susskind [Book notes]

Published 2026-05-23

TL;DR

Because of technological progress, we are seeing a trend where we will likely have less and less work available for humans. Within this trend, there are problems of inequality of wealth, unregulated power of big tech, and loss of meaning. The proposed solutions are to have the big state intervene - through providing conditional basic income, regulating the political power of big tech (not just economic power), and providing meaningful unpaid work to society.

Notable quotes

Three new problems. The economic problem that haunted our ancestors , that of making the economic pie large enough for everyone to live on , will fade away , and three new problems will emerge to take its place .

First , the problem of inequality , of working out how to share this economic prosperity with everyone in society .
Second , the problem of political power , of determining who gets to control the technologies responsible for this prosperity and on what terms .
And third , the problem of meaning , of figuring out how to use this prosperity not just to live without work but to live well .

Problem 1: Inequality

The pattern: increasing inequality. the United States , for example , from 1981 to 2017 , the income share of the top 0.1 percent increased more than three and a half times from its already disproportionately high level , and the share of the top 0.01 percent rose more than fivefold .

Status division on top of economic. What is emerging is not just an economic division , where some earn much more than others , but a status division as well , between those who are rich and those who serve them .

Orwell pulled no punches. As George Orwell warmly put it , they are “an entirely functionless class , living on money that was invested they hardly knew where … simply parasites , less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog .”

Today we share through work. How should we share our society’s economic prosperity ? Today , as we have seen , a large part of our answer to that question is “through work .” … Properly responding to technological unemployment , then , means finding new answers to the question of how we share out our prosperity , ones that do not rely on jobs and the labor market at all .

Proposed solution: Big State. In calling for a Big State , however , I mean something different : not using the state to make the pie bigger , as the planners tried and failed to do , but rather to make sure that everyone gets a slice . Put another way , the role for the Big State is not in production but in distribution .

Taxes. Not everyone has to share the enthusiasm of the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes , who once said , “I like to pay taxes . With them I buy civilization .”
Smooth the transition. This means that the Big State has a middle ground between trying to change our direction of travel and passively going along with it . It can be the labor - supporting state : stepping in to support workers during this transition , to make sure that whatever jobs remain are well - paid and high - quality . The purpose is not to change our final destination , but to make sure the journey is as smooth for workers as it can be .
Income conditional on contribution. In the century to come , questions about distributive justice , how we share out resources in society , will become more urgent . But these questions about contributive justice , how we make sure that everyone feels their fellow citizens are giving back to society , will become more pressing as well .

Problem 2: Unregulated power over how we live

Broader defn of politics. But politics , properly understood , is much bigger than that . It is about how we live together in society.

Tech shapes liberty, democracy. In the future , Big Tech will be ever more politically powerful in this broader sense . As described in Future Politics , these companies will set the limits of liberty — think of a driverless car that cannot go above a certain speed , for example . They will shape the future of democracy — think of an electorate reared on political facts curated to their personal tastes and served up by algorithms . And they will determine questions of social justice — think of someone who finds their request for a financial loan or health treatment turned down on the basis of personal data they never agreed to give away

Proposed solution: Need new regulator. Instead of nationalization , then , what is needed is a new regulatory institution — set up in the spirit of competition authorities that regulate the economic power of these large companies , but tasked with constraining their political power instead .

Distinct from antitrust. Importantly , this new authority must be distinct from our traditional competition authorities . This problem is a political one , not an economic one , and the economists who tend to populate our existing agencies are not the right people to grapple with this challenge . The conceptual tools they deploy to think about prices and profits , however insightful and effective they may be , tell us nothing at all about ideas like liberty , democracy , and social justice , and whether they are under threat .

Problem 3: Loss of meaning

Find meaning elsewhere. In a world with less work , we will face a problem that has little to do with economics at all : how to find meaning in life when a major source of it disappears .

What work provides

Social status. Work matters not just for a worker’s own sense of meaning ; it has an important social dimension as well , allowing people to show others that they live a purposeful life , and offering them a chance to gain status and social esteem .
An outlet for violence? Freud believed that work is “indispensable” for human beings , not so much for an income as for letting us live harmoniously in society : it is a necessary outlet for the deeper , primal impulses that everyone carries within them . Better to punch away violently on a keyboard in an office cubicle , Freud seems to suggest , than at each other’s faces . 5
For striving. The worry , as Keynes put it , is that “there is no country and no people , I think , who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread . For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy .”

Proposed solution: state to provide non-economic work

State can create work. The existence of these Odysseus - like people creates another role for the state : to help those who want to work find such work . One possibility is that the state may actively create work for people to do . This is not as radical as it sounds : in fact , governments already do this on a huge scale .
Less paid work. Until now , I have spoken about “a world with less work .” What I have really meant , though , is a world with less paid work . … They might draw on tasks that machines could do better , but human beings want to do anyway in spite of that . That might sound inefficient , but if this work is done for noneconomic ends , in pursuit of purpose rather than productivity , then economic worries about “efficiency” are a mistake .
Chosen vs required activities. If it is adopted , it means that , in the future , the daily lives of those without work are likely to be divided in two : not between leisure and paid work , but between activities that they choose and others that their community requires them to do .
Arts, politics, care. Some communities , populated by people like Keynes and Russell , might be satisfied if those without work spend their time in pursuit of artistic and cultural ends : reading , writing , composing beautiful music , thinking deep thoughts . Others , channeling the ancient Greeks , might ask people to take their role as citizens more seriously ; to engage in politics , to support local government , to ponder their obligations to others . 61 Beyond such recreational and political activities , I believe that educational , household , and caregiving activities will be recognized as important as well .

Machines vs humans

Beware of false argument - increased demand for what? Growing demand for goods may mean not more demand for the work of human beings , but merely more demand for machines . We can already catch a glimpse of this phenomenon at work . Take the UK agricultural sector , for example . This part of the British economic pie has grown dramatically over the last century and a half , yet that has not created more work for people to do in it .

Some tasks remain. It is indeed entirely plausible that some tasks will remain for us : those that prove impossible to automate , others that are possible but unprofitable to automate , and still others that are both possible and profitable to automate but remain restricted to human beings due to regulatory or cultural barriers that societies build around them . There are also tasks that might remain out of reach because we value the very fact that they are done by human beings , not a machine .

Humans doing it matters. why , in 2018 , millions of people went online to watch Magnus Carlsen … but spectators valued not only the particular movement of the chess pieces but the fact that they were being moved by human beings .

We value the process. It also explains why diners in a fine restaurant might feel shortchanged if they discover that their coffee was made by a capsule - based machine rather than by a highly trained barista , even though capsule - based coffee is often preferred in blind tests : people value not only the taste , but the fact that a person brewed the coffee for them . 27 Throughout life , we can point to certain tasks — crafting furniture , tailoring a suit , preparing a meal , caring for one another in old age and ill health — where we value the process behind them , and in particular the fact that they are done by human beings , rather than just the outcome that is achieved .

Education, and its limit

Education can’t fix demand. education will also struggle to solve the problem of structural technological unemployment . If there is not enough demand for the work that people are training to do , a world - class education will be of little help .

Ex of how skills shift: Calculators. The challenge here is not new : decades ago , basic calculators shifted the emphasis of much mathematical instruction away from brute - force calculation to mathematical reasoning and problem solving . ( British students , for instance , take specific exams where calculator use is required and questions are tailored accordingly . )

Stop teaching dying tasks. do not prepare people for tasks that we know machines can already do better , or activities that we can reasonably predict will be done better by machines very soon .

Skills aren’t always attainable. this is the first limit to education : for many people , certain skills simply may not be attainable .

Human skill plateaus. As noted before , we are already reaching the point where workers’ skill levels are plateauing . There are some limits on how effective education can be in making human beings more productive .

Machines have no ceiling. What’s more , no comparable limit appears to exist in how productive machines could be in the future .

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