Winning the future
One of the recurring themes of the Matt Lewis & The News podcast has been the plight of working-class Americans who are struggling to adapt to economic and technological changes. This has come up again and again, including my conversations with Salena Zito about her book The Great Revolt, Beth Macy about her book Dope Sick, and—most recently—Tim Carney about his book Alienated America.
You can draw a straight line from the decline of manufacturing to all sorts of societal ills, including divorce, addiction, and suicide.
Part of creative destruction is…destruction. There have always been people who were left behind by technological advances, but those are other people. What happens if we get to the point where MY JOB is automated?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently suggested that—if this happens—we can all just spend “more time enjoying the world we live in.”
Riiiiight. Humans need a purpose, and even if there were to be a universal basic income, I’m not so sanguine about a world where we have so much free time on our hands.
Nobody wants to be called a “luddite,” but I suspect that, deep down, a lot of us believe America would be better off if we just figured out how to hit the “pause” button.
As we ponder the thought of America taking a step back from technological advancement, consider the following headlines:
- “Russian President Vladimir Putin says that whoever reaches a breakthrough in developing artificial intelligence will come to dominate the world.” - CNBC
- “The United States believes that whoever controls fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, will have a global advantage for decades to come. The fear is that China is almost there.” – New York Times
The truth is that such protectionist policies won’t protect us from our adversaries. It’s in the best interest of all of us—the columnist and the erstwhile factory worker—for the USA—not Russia or China—to win this technological arms race.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be compassionate or prudent. But it is to say that it’s in the best interest of all of us—indeed, of the world—for America to win the future. Anything else should be unthinkable.
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