A society in which most workers are self-proprietors – shopkeepers, independent professionals, or artists – and set their own terms of employment while making an adequate living is feasible only when economy-wide productivity is already very high. High-productivity services – such as IT or finance – require well-trained workers, not the unskilled kind that poor countries have in abundance.
如果答案是肯定的，那么未来可能怎样尚不清楚。一个社会中的大部分工人都自我就业——成为店主、独立专业人士或艺术家——有各自的就业条件，同时能够过上体面的生活，这种社会只有在全经济生产率相当高的情况下才可行。高生产率服务业——如IT和金融——需要受过良好训练的工人，而不是穷国遍地都是的低技能工人。