Technology is something that effects everything about the way market economics works. It has been one of the leading factors in the increase in many economic variables and measurements over the past 200 years. Some of the changes have been overwhelmingly positive but some have also been debatably bad for the people within our economy. It is also a place that has needed to be regulated and needs to be kept in mind when discussing policy options. With more and more jobs being replaced with machines we have to wonder what will happen to labor markets as the number of people living on Earth continues to increase and the number of professions that have always required man labor continue to be made obsolete by technology.

            An item that has been fantasized about technologically since the Model T was made is the self-automated car. It would be a technological advancement that would change everything about modern day society and it is within reach. Technological advancements have made serious pushes toward making the driverless car a reality. The thing that has been the biggest roadblock however has been the fact that our economy is not ready for it. Millions of people are employed as drivers and with people losing their jobs in other areas people have been switching to driving in order to make money through apps such as uber. With labor markets already saturated with people willing to work for cheap wage labor can our economy withstand the barrage that would take place if everyone who was currently employed as a driver became unemployed overnight. Hopefully in the future all undesirable jobs could be done by machines, which would thus end the saying that every economy needs a ditch digger, but is it realistic? We currently are neither economically nor technologically ready for the self-automated car despite its impending creation. One answer to this problem could be approached from the economic policy side. A policy could be implemented that would give some job security to professional drivers but also allow the recreational use of self-automated cars. This would give us more time to handle the more serious problems of how to get unemployment under control before we allow the self-automated car to take even more jobs away from actual people.

Stuart Huston