Human growth hormone has apparently replaced jelly donuts as the favorite snack of law enforcement. In cities across America, cops are getting busted for buying and selling steroids as the thin blue line bulks itself up in an attempt to maintain parity with today’s faster, stronger criminals. That the police officers we rely on to protect us may be raging juiceheads is simultaneously comforting and frightening. We’d like them to be able to collar bad guys with the ease that Barry Bonds once knocked fast balls out of the park, yes, but we’d also like to keep every routine traffic stop from turning into a UFC cage match.
Eventually, someone will create a reality TV series that illuminates the pluses and minuses of extremely fit super-cops with severe mood swings. In the meantime, can cops be the only ones seeking a pharmacological edge in these tough economic times?
Traditionally, it’s professional athletes who resort to drugs to enhance their job skills, and their motives are obvious. Competition is fierce, potential payoffs are huge, obtaining even the slightest edge can have life-changing consequences. But professional sports may also be the one blue-collar industry in which the number of jobs have actually increased over the last few decades. Every year, it seems, brings new NBA franchises, new women’s sports leagues, new ways for fearless 15-year-olds to earn large sums of money doing gymnastics on their skateboards, bikes and snowboards. If you are blessed with any kind of athletic gift, it is easier than ever to get compensated for your efforts.
True, there’s a professor in Japan who has created a pitching robot that can reportedly hit the strike zone 90 percent of the time. Similarly, engineers around the world are determined to build a team of autonomous humanoid robots that can beat a human world champion soccer team by 2050.
But that’s still 40 years away! For millions of Americans, robots and other technological breakthroughs are already making us obsolete. Nearly two million jobs have been lost in the construction industry over the last few years, and according to experts, they’re never coming back. The same goes for countless other professions. Manufacturing has lost six million jobs since 1997. Secretaries, mail room clerks, record shop staffers, photo lab employees, journalists, advertising copywriters, ticket agents and file clerks are just a few of the victims of long-term structural changes that will make it increasingly hard for everyone who wants jobs to find them. Automation, computer technology and outsourcing is making American business so productive we just don’t need as many workers as we once did.
If you’re in construction and you’re still employed, you’re probably inclined to do whatever it takes to be the fastest hammerer on the job site. If you’re a public librarian determined to hold onto your position even as America’s library schools churn out far more information specialists than a country that spends most of its free time watching “Jersey Shore” needs, you may start popping Provigil in your valiant quest to answer user queries as fast as Google does.
As consumers, we can expect a golden age of service to commence. Dishwashers with the endurance of a Tour de France winner will keep our restaurants tidier than ever. Hold times to technical support hotlines will decrease as representatives wired on Adderall achieve new levels of efficiency.
Everything’s going to get better and better, and then everything’s going to get much worse. Juiced-up workers in industries of all kinds will grow even more productive and essentially perform themselves out of their jobs. As jobs grow scarcer, drug usage will grow stronger, accelerating this vicious cycle. Twenty years from now, America is going to be filled with rage-filled out-of-work construction workers armed with jackhammers and disaffected Ritalin junkies who can’t find programming jobs but know 50 ways to hack your Facebook account before breakfast. It’s going to be even worse than our most nihilistic videogame developers can imagine — at least until they up their daily Provigil doses and start working a little harder themselves
