But what if, as I’ve been saying for more than a year, technology is now destroying jobs faster than it’s creating them? What if America has hit peak jobs?

Here’s your answer: that’s a good thing…in the long run. Job loss isn’t actually a problem in and of itself. Instead it’s a symptom of something much larger.

Step back a minute. Way back. What precisely is the purpose of technological innovation? Why do we want to make things faster, smarter, better, healthier, new? To get rich? OK: to generate wealth, and ultimately, eliminate scarcity. The endgame, where we’re going as a species if we don’t screw up badly and destroy ourselves or burn out all our resources before we get there, is some kind of post-scarcity society.