Roger Partridge: The Market for Doom - Why We Keep Predicting the End of Work

Last month’s Schumpeter Comes to Wellington argued that the outcry over public service cuts in New Zealand sits in a long tradition of failed catastrophism. This month’s Long Read widens the lens and asks why generation after generation makes the same mistake – and why warnings about AI destroying work are no more convincing than the warnings that preceded them.

Thirty years ago, Jeremy Rifkin predicted the end of work. Within a generation, he wrote in 1995, automation would leave most of the world’s workforce without work. The book was a bestseller, was translated into multiple languages and made its author a celebrity. The generation is now up. Global unemployment stands at about five per cent, employment-to-population ratios are at or near record highs across the OECD, and Rifkin has moved on to his twenty-third book.

Lushington D. Brady: How They Control Language to Control Us

There’s a reason the Climate Cult keep changing their terms

First, it was “global warming”, then it became “climate change”. Next minute, it was “dangerous climate change”, then “climate emergency” and “climate crisis”. If you’re bewildered and frightened by all this linguistic prestidigitation, then it’s doing its job. Because scaring the pants off you and stopping you from thinking rationally is the whole point.

The people behind this stuff know exactly what they’re doing.