Dear readers !
I had a driver, Sasha. About five years ago I said to him: “Sasha, you know, soon there will be no drivers, only automatic driverless vehicles. Isn’t it time for you to switch jobs lest you end up with no work.” “Nope,” he answered me, lazily turning the steering-wheel, “Not going to happen, this country’s too backward.” And he went on to celebrate the builder’s day (he was a former builder, tank driver, taxi driver, etc., so he often found a reason to celebrate professionally).
And so a few years ago, on November 11, the government established a new professional holiday — the Day of the Economist — in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Free Economic Society, on the date of its foundation (!). And it was the right thing to do. It was high time to pay tribute to the country’s most popular profession. Given that we already had the Day of the Tank Crew, the Day of the Artillerist, Day of the Medical Worker …
But the fact is it is time to start abolishing many of the professional holidays. Why? Those professions will soon disappear! Under the burden of technical progress. Fifteen years into the future it will be a lot of fun — there will be a Day of Communications Officer and yet
no communications officers, or will that holiday turn into a Remembrance Day for the last communications officer, or tank driver, or taxi driver, or metallurgist — to help people remember what professions became obsolete due to scientific and technological progress.
This is not because some professions are more important than others, and some can be left behind — no. This is because professions as such will disappear — and will be replaced by competences.
But economists are here to stay, because it is not so much a profession as it is a competence. They will disappear as a class only with the disappearance of economy as a sphere of fulfillment of people’s needs through their economic activities.
Not a bad prospect in comparison with taxi drivers-lawyers- journalists! How distant it seems from realization! Is it not time for us, gentlemen of the jury, as the famous Ostap B. said, to go into — no, not into apartment management, they too will soon be replaced by robots — but into economics?
P.S. Oh, it seems, I’m not the only one who thinks so. There have been a lot of economic graduates lately.
