The commander of D-Day knew a thing or two about planning. After plotting the 1944 assault on Nazi-occupied France, Dwight Eisenhower would say: “Plans are useless, planning is essential.”
Eisenhower knew that in the heat of battle no plan would survive the first shot. But that did not mean that planning was a waste of time. If you failed to prepare then you were preparing to fail.
Eisenhower’s dictum is worth thinking about as we consider the possibility of mass technological unemployment. We have no idea how the future will pan out and therefore we can devise no sensible plan. But, given what we already know about the rise of the robots, it would be reckless not to plan for the possibility of extraordinary disruption.