Imagine a time when all undesirable work is done by automated systems or robots. What would it mean? Would there be a financial crisis? What would happen to labour and capital?
These are some of the deeper questions economists are asking when not preoccupied by short-term worries about the fiscal cliff, a Chinese slowdown or the eurozone.
At the heart of their inquiry lies an assumption: that technology will improve no matter what. Ever since Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microchip would double every two years, it has been a hard presumption to ignore. The theory, which was dubbed Moore’s law on account of its accuracy, is still to be disproved.