Our best hope for a decent and affordable adult social care must be minimizing the intermediaries’ takes, whether these are private or public

Sir, Diane Coyle when discussing the possibilities and need for organizing for instance adult social care, and thereto taking advantage of new methods to connect demand and supply and as exemplified by Uber, expresses concern for “the treatment and status of workers in platform public services (although it is not as if these are high-status jobs at present)” “Algorithms can deliver public services, too” December 19.

What’s missing though in that good analysis, is not having contemplating additional tech advances. For example Uber wants to buy self driven cars, in order to get the complications of human drives out of their way, but without realizing that consumers might at one point take direct contact with those cars, in order to get Uber out of the way.

The same will happen for workers in public services, though of course the increased demand for adult social care should help to keep up the demand for many of them. But, even in this case who knows? If you think of yourself as an older person soiled with your own feces, what’s currently is delicate referred to as an “accident”, who would you feel most comfortable with cleaning you, a not too human 1st class robot or a human? 

Sir, the way our generation, and governments have gone on a debt binge, to anticipate current consumption, there will come a time for a reckoning. If we do not find ways to minimize the intermediaries’ take, we will not afford the basic services we need and want.

Of course intermediaries are workers too… and that is why even for them we need to create decent and worthy unemployments.

@PerKurowski

An Ättestupa for Mr Lind

Sir, Mr Michael Lind in his “A labour shortage can be a blessing, not a curse”, June 9, sees himself in old age pampered on a chaplinesque modern times assembly line, and happily concludes that technology will take care of the current demographic imbalances. 

Of course, his vision, where it would seem that all the remaining young concentrates on helping the elderly, ignores that a country besides that very laudable activity, also has to think of a present and a future, and generate that kind of economic growth that will help it among other to educate their new young, defend themselves and service their debt. 

If going down the Michael Lind route then the applied technology will more probably be in line with going down an “ättestupa”, meaning those high and steep cliffs supposedly used by the Nordic elderly a long time ago to throw themselves from when their time to serve society had passed. By the way, when discussing immigration with those who vigorously oppose, it is amazing how a “well if you want to take care of repaying you public debts on your own so be it” dilutes much of the certainty in their eyes. 

Sent June 9, 2006 

Note: For this letter I based myself on myself as in my Voice and Noise you can read

The practical solutions available for solving the shortage of caretakers in developed countries are the following four:

 

1. Increase their productivity, but unless you wish to run the risk of being dehumanized on a Charlie Chaplin Modern Times assembly line cared for by robots… there might be a limit to how much this can help. 

2. Move the careneeders to another place (if there are caretakers available anywhere else), and this you should do as early as possible if at an older age you do not appreciate finding yourself in strange surroundings as much as you did when younger. 

3. Import caretakers, and this you should do as early as possible if when older you do not appreciate finding yourself in the company of strangers as much as you did when younger. 

4. Give incentives for having more children and grandchildren—which is not such a crazy idea when you start considering how much society is, one way or another, currently rewarding people for not having children. (Talk about externalities!)