Back then people were mostly farmers, but we already automated that job away.
replyNot completely, but compared to the middle ages we 50x'd their output. Which is a great illustration what it means to make a job 50 times more productive. We went from 80-90% of the population being required to barely make enough food for everyone to survive, to 4% of the population producing such an abundance that consuming too much food has become a systemic health issue
At the mere cost of destroying soil, and polluting water and the atmosphere in only 200 years! Possibly this will also play out well, and there is a huge market of... maybe social media influencer economy to pick up those being automated out of their previous work... or rather identity, as actually much like in the middle ages, the modern world also makes the profession largely the identity of the individual.
replyI'm pretty skeptical on the outcomes and the costs also (natural and social as well), but possibly we can have 50x or even more software in the end! The phrase will be truer than ever:
> Software is eating the world!
There definitely were what could be considered knowledge workers in the (high) middle ages, it just wasn't the majority of work like today. The knowledge workers then were just a tiny, elite faction, mostly employed by the church or directly by nobility. Kindgoms were still big bureaucracies and needed scribes, theologians, academics, lawyers.
replyRelatively few anyway. Monks (who wrote and edited books and managed libraries, and also taught), artists and musicians, bookkeepers/treasury/exchequer, scribes/chancery (who were the administrators of the kingdoms), and bankers all existed in European "middle ages". But a significantly smaller part of economy/society compared to "western world" now, yes.
replyThere wasn’t 20x value to pay for in the middle ages either.
replyAre you sure? Any functional organization requires keepers to oil the machine. First the government. The best examples were the chinese empire, the catholic church, and the various kingdoms. Or do you think that everyone was either fighting or farming? Stewardship is knowledge work. Bookkeeping is another.
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