We say no to a future jobs fund, so should all

Yvette Cooper is succumbing to the planning delusion once again. The argument is that automation will put lots of people out of work. This has the merit of being true so far. Therefore there should be some system of support for those put out of work. This is also true so far. But then the leap into the planning delusion:

This time, in the face of a bigger crisis, ministers must go further. We need a new future jobs fund on a much bigger scale as part of wider government support for the economy. The final report of the Commission on Workers and Technology will call for a jobs guarantee scheme to prevent the scarring effects of long-term unemployment for young and older workers – focusing on areas of need such as green technologies.

The entire point about technological change is that we don’t know. The universe of things it is possible to do is c hanging, expanding - that’s what technological change means. We don’t actually know what it is that can be done until we have rung the changes through trying out these new technologies. Further, until those things that can be done have met the consumer we don’t know what it is that we, the people, would like to have done.

We have only one manner of efficiently sorting through these possibilities and desires. Markets. Markets with free entry - anyone can try any combination of whatever - and markets where those who produce something of value get rich - the incentive to do so. That is, our only useful response to technological change is capitalist free marketry.

Sure, there should be a system of making sure those waiting to find out where they will be gainfully employed don’t starve and all that. We have a welfare state and even if we’re less than convinced about the current structure of it the base idea is fine.

But Cooper - and all those supporting this idea - is making that leap to the state being able to identify what of these new possibilities will work. For only then does it make sense that the state determine who is trained for what and how. But no one knows what will succeed.

No, really, no one does. We’ve no idea, even collectively, even among those wise folk in Whitehall. To take just one obvious example, autonomous cars, if they ever properly work, will kill the rail and bus industries. Will they work? Who knows? Or, sticking with the same rail industry, the change in working habits as more have done so from home, will that continue? Are we about to see a 10, 20, 40% fall in daily commutes? No one has any clue - therefore this is something that cannot be planned for.

It is precisely the uncertainty of the future that kills the ability to plan. The greater the uncertainty therefore not the more government must direct labour, as Copper is arguing, but the less it is able to do so.

Exactly the fact that we’ve not the slightest scooby is the reason that planning won’t work.