Technology May Cost Elf Jobs

Originally written in 2014

From the Wall Street Journal

Washington D.C. – Yesterday Federal District Judge Francis Talbot imposed an emergency injunction forbidding Santa Claus or anyone affiliated with him from distributing presents to children.  The injunction was granted on behalf of a consortium of large corporations including Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Mattel and Samsung.  In 2012 this consortium launched legal action against Santa Claus and the North Pole government claiming massive violations of patents and copyrights owned by these corporations.  In the intervening years, other corporations joined the lawsuit against Santa so that now, over 25 large corporations are involved. 

Jennifer Chang, a lead attorney for the consortium said yesterday:  “We are pleased that Judge Talbot has seen fit to uphold our point of view.  We stress, however, that we do not oppose the distribution of gifts to children in principle.  We believe this is noble and highly beneficial to everyone.  What we do oppose is the fact that Santa’s Elves continuously manufacture our products without our permission.  Distribution of these products on Christmas Eve has caused large monetary damage to the companies represented in this lawsuit.”

Apple has estimated it loses over $3 billion a year in revenue due to North Pole manufactured iPhones and iPads alone.  In a statement released to the press last week Apple affirmed its right to distribute its own goods.  The statement points out that “A lot of time and money goes into R&D and we funded the costs for all of that.  Therefore we deserve to profit from all our hard work.”

This lawsuit has been further complicated by speculation and rumours over Amazon’s unwillingness to join the consortium against Santa Claus.  Last month noted physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out that the ever increasing population means that Santa’s Reindeer must distribute presents to an ever increasing number of children in the same roughly 31 hour period of Christmas Eve when you take the earth’s rotation into account.  “Think about this,” said Mr. Hawking.  “When you consider Santa must attend all those shopping malls and deal with all those children’s requests for presents, it’s a wonder he has any time left for anything else.  Given this and the workload increase on the poor reindeer, it makes sense that Santa might consider online ordering and outsourcing some of the presents distribution.  A company like Amazon would be ideal for Santa.”  This comment might have passed merely as the whimsical musings of a brilliant mind were it not for Jeff Besos’ – founder of Amazon.com - unexpected unwillingness to respond in any way to these comments.  This silence on his part gave momentum to the idea that Santa is indeed exploring an arrangement with the world’s largest internet retailing company.  It is believed that Amazon’s world-wide distribution and warehousing capabilities could nicely complement the one sleigh Santa traditionally employs.

Judge Talbot’s injunction is unlikely to have any effect on Christmas Eve since Santa Claus has made it very clear in the past he does not recognize the jurisdiction of any US court in this matter.  But Hawking’s comments and Jeff Besos’ silence brings up an interesting question.  Noted Economist Dennis MacKenzie speculated that while technology may assist Santa, it may also hurt Santa.

“If you look at it from the angle of reindeer workload, a partnership with Amazon makes perfect sense, assuming Santa can negotiate the fact he does not employ money in any way in his operation.  But you have to look at it from other angles as well.  What effect, for example, will the growth of 3D printing have on the whole North Pole operation?  Traditionally, elves have toiled away in workshops manually creating toys and other items children desire.  While the elves have obviously kept up with the times as is demonstrated by their ability to manufacture their own iPads and PlayStations, we also know that manufacturing based economies have taken a massive hit of late due to the fact that technology renders many manufacturing jobs redundant.  In short, will Santa soon have unemployed elves on his hands?”

More children means more presents.  If Santa continues to employ a highly manual labor intensive mode of operation as he has done in the past, either he needs a corresponding increase in the elf population, or he needs to radically increase technologically based manufacturing methods and this inevitably leads to the loss of jobs.  “3D printing and robots will and have dramatically changed the landscape of manufacturing,” said McKenzie.  “At least it has for us here in the USA.  It is hard to imagine how Santa could be immune to such changes himself.”

Critics of this view point to last year’s admission to Oprah by Santa that in the late Middle Ages, he obtained vast supercomputers from the courts of heaven itself.  He did this, according to Santa himself, to help him keep track of who was naughty and who was nice.  Is it really a stretch to imagine that if Santa employed such vast computing power hundreds of years ago, that he must also have long used highly advanced manufacturing techniques?  Perhaps Santa already has nanotechnology and perhaps the image of elves toiling away in fireplace heated workshops was simply an image given to relatively primitive humanity.  Perhaps Santa does not need many elves at all and that, in fact, the North Pole population is very low.

The North Pole has to date made no comments on Judge Talbot’s injunction nor on any pending agreement with Amazon.  This leads the Journal to believe Christmas present distribution will continue on schedule as always.  While last year’s candid interview with Oprah was revealing and shocking – theologians are still coming to grips with some of his revelations – many mysteries remain and perhaps that is what makes Santa Claus and his elves so special.  Fortunately for Apple and the other companies in the lawsuit, people buy their products the other 364 days of the year and, of course, adults do not receive presents from Santa and they like tablets and PlayStations almost as much as children do.  So perhaps in the long run, a bit of charity and good cheer caused by Santa and his Reindeer is not such a bad thing.

Note:  The Judge and economist mentioned here are completely fictitious.  And of course, it goes without saying that Stephen Hawking made no such comments as represented here.