When we talk about the creator economy, we’re talking about people doing creative work, on their own or with a few others.
Here’s the thing.
If you’re not in the creator economy, I have some bad news for you: you’re out of a job. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But some day, and for the rest of your life.
Pretty soon, the creator economy, along with the caring economy, will be the economy.
That’s a good thing. Here’s why.
Thank Ludd for machines
When machines started to take over manual work – mining, farming, spinning, weaving – it was devastating for the miners, farmers, spinners and weavers who lost their livelihoods.
In the early 19th century, followers of Ned Ludd took action. They smashed the textile machinery that was making their hard-learnt skills redundant.
200 years later, we think of the Luddites as regressives. These days, less than 3% of us are employed in textiles, farming and mining.
No one is clamouring for more people to be employed chipping away at a coal face with a chisel or cutting through wheat stems with a scythe.
We now have machines to do these things, and that’s a good thing.
The Office
What’s odd is that even though less than 3% of us are employed in the age-old sectors of textiles, farming and mining, we don’t have 97% unemployment.
Instead, we have close to 0% unemployment.
Why?
Well, when machines started to take over manual work, people started to switch, slowly, over generations, to administrative work.
I use the word administrative deliberately.
I’ve heard this transition referred to as a switch to mind work, but I don’t think we’re there yet. Anyone who’s ever worked in an office knows how wide of the mark this term is. Organizing contracts, invoices, accounts and all the other paperwork of the late 20th century office isn’t mind work. Quite the opposite: it’s completely mindless.
Which is why now, in the early 21st century, we’re slowly liberating ourselves from it. Machines are starting to take over administrative work. There’s surely not a single profession that’s not being disrupted by countless SaaS startups’ software, so that people no longer have to do all that mindless work organizing contracts, invoices and accounts.
We now have machines to do these things, and that’s a good thing.
All in the mind
Just as in the early 19th century, people worried that machines taking over manual work would leave us all unemployed, so now, in the early 21st century, people worry that machines taking over mind work will leave us all unemployed.
I think those fears are unjustified. Here’s why.
For one thing, machines aren’t taking over mind work, yet. They’re taking over administrative work. For now, most of the software that’s eliminating jobs is eliminating the most boring jobs we have, all that mindless work organizing contracts, invoices and accounts.
But there’s a deeper reason why those fears are unjustified.
Machines will eventually take over the mind work, too.
It’s already happening. And it doesn’t even require anything as complex as machine learning.
Until recently, if I wanted to get information about a particular health issue or legal issue, I had to go to a doctor or a lawyer. These days, I can often find better information, and certainly freer information, on the web. The web is already replacing doctors and lawyers. No machine learning required.
The truth is, doctors and lawyers are in the same place right now as spinners and weavers were 200 years ago.
Just like the Luddites, they’ll fiercely resist redundancy. They won’t do it by smashing the machines. They’ll do it with the well-worn anti-competitive tools of the professional classes: regulation and licensing requirements.
And just like the Luddites, they’ll lose.
When we realize that machines give better medical treatment and better legal advice, we’ll simply stop consulting doctors and lawyers.
So why am I not worried?
Can I get a human on the line?
Imagine a future where the podcasts you listen to are hosted by machine-generated voices reading machine-generated scripts.
I bet you can’t.
Given the choice between a human podcast host expressing human ideas and a machine podcast host expressing machine ideas, you’ll always opt for the human.
People follow people.
People don’t follow organizations. I follow @patrick_oshag and listen to Invest Like The Best, because I really like Patrick O’Shaughnessy. I don’t follow @joincolossus or listen to Business Breakdowns, because it’s just not as good as Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal on Acquired.
And people won’t follow machines.
It’s not that computers can’t be creative. As I argued in my long out-of-print book The Human Computer, they can and they will.
It’s just that we won’t care about machine creativity, in the same way as we care about human creativity.
Machine creativity will be extremely useful to us in the future. Machines will come up with creative theories and creative policies beyond anything we humans can imagine. Machines will invent new materials and new proteins beyond any conceived by humans.
But as long as humans are still around, we’ll still be listening to podcasts hosted by our fellow humans, reading novels written by our fellow humans, and watching films directed by our fellow humans.
The caring subroutine
It’s the same with caring work.
Imagine a future where, when you’re dying, your physical needs are met by a robot rather than a human nurse, your emotional needs are met by a computer rather than a human counsellor, and your spiritual needs are met by a computer rather than a human pastor.
You might want to live in such a future.
I don’t.
And I bet I’m not the only one.
It’s the economy, stupid
When machines took over most of our manual work, there were those who worried that we’d all be redundant. Turned out that we weren’t. There was plenty of administrative work for us to do.
Now that software is taking over most of our administrative work, there are those who worry that we’re all redundant. Turns out that we aren’t. There’s plenty of mind work for us to do.
When machines take over most of our mind work, there’ll still be those who worry that there’s nothing left for us.
I, for one, am not worried.
There’ll always be caring.
There’ll always be creativity.
No matter how good machines get at simulating human caring and surpassing human creativity, we’ll still want caring and creativity from humans, not machines.
So let’s stop calling it the creator economy.
The creator economy, along with the caring economy, is the economy.
Or will be soon.
Having spent so much of my life doing mindless administrative work, as well as some pretty soul-destroying mind work, I can’t wait for the day when we’re all doing creative and caring work instead.
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“less than 3% of us are employed in textiles, farming and mining” – 2,349,000 in agriculture, 684,000 in mining and 444,000 in textiles out of a total of 147,795,000 employed in the US in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics