Machines Like Me

by Ian McEwan

I went on one march, then gave up after I read about a new car factory starting production outside Newcastle. It built three times as many cars as the factory it replaced—with one-sixth of the work force. Eighteen times more efficient, vastly more profitable. No business could resist. It wasn’t only the shop floor that lost jobs to machines. Accountants, medical staff, marketing, logistics, human resources, forward planning. Now, haiku poets. All in the stew. Soon enough, most of us would have to think again what our lives were for. Not work. Fishing? Wrestling? Learning Latin? Then we’d all need a private income. I was persuaded by Benn. The robots would pay for us once they were taxed like human workers and made to work for the common good, not merely for hedge funds or corporate interests. I was out of step with both protest factions and their old struggles and missed the next two marches.