Technological Unemployment, Leisure Occupation, and the Human Project

摘要

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes published a masterpiece that should be a compulsory reading for any educated person, a short essay entitled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (Keynes 1930, 1972). It was an attempt to see what life would be like if peace, prosperity and techno-scientific developments were increasingly part of humanity's future. Of course, things went otherwise. The Great Depression begun in the same year, and World War Ⅱ soon followed. In the subsequent decades, other disasters, conflicts and crises awaited humanity. The essay became a philosophical exercise that could collect dust in the libraries. Yet the fact that history took such terrible and tragic steps back does not in any way detract from Keynes' brilliant insights. And to a generation that never saw enemy tanks in the streets of Paris or Rome, and will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War Ⅱ, the essay has plenty of lessons to teach, especially about what we want to achieve in the future, our human project.