The Future
Monday, August 25th, 20081. Jobs
Manufacturing jobs have already been replaced by automation, and, rapidly, service jobs are also vanishing: ATMs, voice menus, and automated check-out systems have reduced the need for bank tellers, operators and cashiers. Soon, the only jobs left will be in policing and security, and so everyone will be a police officer or security guard. Walking the streets you’ll see nothing but a sea of blue uniforms, everyone friendly, but suspicious. We’ll feel so safe!
2. Crime
As a result of the universality of policing jobs, crime rates will soar, because “the blue wall of silence” will protect everyone, regardless of what they do. Of course, with no civilian populace to prey upon, the police will have to look elsewhere for victims. They can’t prey on members of the same police department, because then they’d lose the cohesion that protects them from prosecution. So instead we’ll see large groups of rival officers from neighboring towns and cities meeting on the borderlands, fighting and dancing a la West Side Story. It will be very beautiful, and very sad.
3. Celebrity
We’ll all be paired off into groups of 200, and you won’t be allowed to learn anything about anyone not in your group. But within your group, you’ll be terribly famous, as future research will show that most people can name exactly 200 celebrities (this will be known as Wenner’s Law of 200 Celebrities.) Everyone will learn about your exploits in gossip rags and “news” programs. You can choose to be a washed-up star appearing on a celebrity exploitation show, or a young rising star, embroiled in a sex-tape scandal, or politically aware star, exhorting your fellow stars to give up fur and oatmeal and such.
4. Politics
Since everyone will be a celebrity, no one will be able to run for office, because no one will vote for a celebrity. So elected offices will go vacant, and the government will be run by low-level bureaucrats. As a result, government efficiency will increase 1000% because the wavering, emotion-driven concerns of the electorate will be set aside in favor of rational, careful, and responsible administration. After a few years, the world will be divided into the intellectual “ruling class” and the appetite-driven “celebrity/policing” class, but only the ruling class will know this, because it won’t be reported in People magazine.