Unemployed ? Get used to it !

So why do I say this and who am I to make this claim. The answer to the first question is one word: efficiency.

The answer to the second. I worked in the IT industry for 25 years: 1980 – 2005. During that time, I worked in technical and sales roles visiting many industries and seeing the efficiency technology could bring. (until I fell out of it because I was over all the hype)

One thing the IT industry does well is to enable efficiency. I have on my mantle piece a 400 Megabyte drive that cost me $2,800. That was $7.00 per megabyte in 1991. Last week, at Officeworks you could get 4 terabytes (that's 4,000 megabytes) for $199.00. That's $0.05 cents per megabyte. Now, that's efficiency.

Efficiency is what every CEO wants from their business. And one of the most expensive resources is people.

And don't think the efficiency drive is new. When the pharaohs were building their pyramids and realised that it only took 200 slaves to drag a stone block that was rolling on tree trunks compared with the 400 required to move it when the stone was on the ground, they immediately started using more tree trunks as rollers.

As you sit and eat your Weetbix just consider what you are eating, and your environment.

The wheat for your Weetbix was harvested by just one person driving a combine harvester that can easily harvest over 100 acres over a 10 hour day. Go back 100 years and look at the manpower to do that work.

The milk you poured over the Weetbix came from a diary farm run by a farmer and his wife to milk a couple of hundred cows. Three times a day. Compare that to the labour required one hundred years ago.

The truck that picked up the milk carries thousands of litres a time to the processing plant which is highly automated. In the next 20-30 years (probably even less) that truck will be driving itself. Check this out. 

The wheat delivered to Uncle Toby's, to be turned into Vitabrits was processed in a plant that has been downsizing its staff since it was built. How do I know this? A friend of mine used to work at the Uncle Toby's plant in Wahgunyah, Victoria.

The car you are about to drive to work in is half-built by robots and no one reconditions engines anymore. They just replace them. It's faster and more efficient to simply throw another engine in and melt the old one down.

How do I know this? I spent a couple of years at Kangan Institute's Automotive Center of Excellence. A very smart auto technician I met there referred to fixing cars now as 'appliance maintenance'. They don't fix components anymore in cars. They replace the bit that's broken. Less time and more efficient.