Another great article! I think you're absolutely right about forecasting the impact of technologies in any even remotely detailed way. In part that's because it's practically impossible to predict whether, when and how distinct technologies will cross-fertilise to create new impactful technologies. I recall that on the eve of the launch of the iphone Orange's CEO was describing their mobile data revenues as 'rounding errors' and The Economist magazine was predicting that the future for mobile phones was a range of different handsets each designed to perform a specific function. Then a person in Apple with a general design remit happened to run into someone in another department working on laptop touchpads and the touchscreen was born. Once technologies (or indeed any variables) start to interact like this over a prolonged period of time, forecasting starts to resemble gambling.

My slight concern about the Dutch and German examples is whether this type of approach is 'available' in the English-speaking economies. Most Northern European countries (plus Japan and Korea) have vertically disciplined cultures which engender stable partnerships (between owners, management and workers or between links in the supply chain) and a long-term focus in business. But these features of the European 'social market' model don't seem to come as naturally to businesses in the 'Anglo-Saxon' economies - US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand - which are more fluid, innovative and individualistic but less stable and less naturally distributive of wealth and income. That's why I think some form of government intervention may be required in countries like the UK and US. At least a readiness to intervene swiftly, retrospectively for the sake of maintaining a minimum level of social cohesion. Preferably something like Basic Income to strike the right balance between social welfare and the relatively fluid labour-force that appears to be a natural feature of Anglo-Saxon economies.