Sometimes I have to depart from research on our ecological collapse, the Earth's carrying capacity and exctinction and climate change and all that existential "bottleneck" stuff, and focus on the human world of work (the economy) to see what lies ahead so I can keep writing a near future novel that isn't too unrealistic.
Look at this latest news of the world of work as reported in the CBC - barely one fourth of the globe's working age population has a stable job! And how stable are the ones that are "stable"? How can California, for example, keep employing folks if there is no water?
We are nearly all "precariats" now. There are 54 million refugees (probably more), many of them fleeing bad economic conditions rather than war/genocide. How many will there be next year?
A futurist novelist who doesn't want to depart completely into fantasy or magic realism must keep this all in mind. Perhaps the robots will save us (I don't think so).
