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An Intergenerational Justice Approach to Technological Unemployment

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Abstract

Technological unemployment is a very real phenomenon that should be addressed by governments and businesses alike. This paper argues that current approaches to technological unemployment are short-sighted in that they focus predominantly and primarily on current generations. This kind of approach results in harm such as ignoring impending meaning-crises and propagating a potential form of human-quota-driven tokenism in the process of implementing automation in the workplace. Arguably, current generations can (and should) benefit from communal resources insofar as they do not harm the least privileged of future generations. That is the threshold that is set in this paper and this threshold can serve as a guiding principle for leaders when making decisions about whether automation should be implemented, the degree and scope to which automation should be implemented, and the policies regarding the process of the implementation and the regulation of automation in the workplace. An intergenerational justice approach is a novel approach to the problem of technological unemployment and can inform decision-making and policy-setting alike.

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Data availability

The author confirms that the data supporting the findings in this paper are available within the article. Any additional information is available from the corresponding author, upon request.

Notes

  1. This is not to serve as an analysis of the relationship between society and labour as this literature is too vast to cover in this paper. For more on the connection between human labour and society, see Arthur (1986), Bottomore (1991), Hegel (1967), Weber (1978, 1999)

  2. To note, the term tokenism is adopted here as a form of human-quota-driven tokenism. This discussion in no way wishes to take away the complexity and very real issues surrounding current tokenism as it pertains to minority groups.

  3. Other contract theories that could potentially be applied here are Hobbes’s radical liberalism and the Lockean inspired Gauthier’s bargaining framework. For more on this, see Hobbes (1651), Locke (1690), and Gauthier (1986).

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  1. SolBridge International School of Business, 128 Uam-Ro, Samseong-Dong, Dong-Gu, Daejeon, Korea

    Danielle Swanepoel

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Swanepoel, D. An Intergenerational Justice Approach to Technological Unemployment. Asian J Bus Ethics 12, 239–256 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13520-023-00172-7

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