Dear PM,
I listened to your report (1st. December 2016) on the 89 year-old man who who went job-hunting because he was "bored" and, although I was entertained (and informed) by the points you made about boredom, I do feel that you missed the really significant point regarding this piece of news ...
The real point was (for me) that human beings need activity, interaction with others and "purpose" and that this pensioner had decided to go out and find those things. Bravo to him!
But what of our modern world with globalisation, automation and artificial intelligence? Somehow we seem to have assumed that everyone desires "leisure" and that these advances will be "good" with us then sitting back while the machines do the work. Of course we all know that this will not be the case and that there will be upheaval and unemployment but, even if the hi-tech revolution were to be implemented optimally and we all got this supposed holy-grail of "leisure", is that really what we want?
Why not, instead, simply not bother with self-driving cars, automated check-outs and employees who are "rationalised" to the bone and then replaced by "the cloud"? Yes, why not let "human beings" do the work and, in-so-doing, save energy (needed for the machines), save on a whole lot of psychiatrists (needed to treat people who feel alienated and worthless) and make the world simply "normal" (instead of Sci-Fi).
Indeed, let us not forget that, in the current model of globalisation, one person's "leisure" (or, more often, unemployment) is someone else's "sweatshop" (e.g. in Bangladesh) which, for me, is getting damn close to a bi-polar "slave-wage society".
So, dear PM, please don't ignore this ENORMOUS elephant in the room!
Regards
