H.O.P.E.

Elon Musk is all over the place.  Everywhere you look he’s involved in any number of important and cutting-edge endeavors.  And this is in addition to his business ventures.  He runs a space company (SpaceX), a satellite communications company (Starlink), an electric car manufacturer (Tesla) and whatever X is.

Most recently Musk has volunteered to assist the nascent Trump administration in taking a chain saw to the federal bureaucracy (the imaginary D.O.G.E. or Department of Government Efficiency).  And considering that Musk fired about 80% of the employees of Twitter to make X less unprofitable, it makes sense that he might be supremely qualified to pare back the Washington payroll.  And based on the favorable results of Argentina’s experiment with government reduction I wholeheartedly endorse Trump employing Musk, Ramaswami and any other tech bros who want to help us get the national debt under control.  Amen.

But if Elon Musk really is a very smart guy who understands how automation and other technology breakthroughs can be integrated into a livable world order then that would be a much more worthwhile contribution to the mess, we’re currently in.  As things currently stand the last fifty years of computer advancement have revolutionized the efficiency of the workplace.  Programs like a world processor and a spreadsheet have allowed on person to do the work that previously required whole departments.  The secretarial pool is a thing of the past.  Even the technical departments have been pared way back because a pc on every desk means that a computation department is unneeded.  At most you need a couple of IT nerds who troubleshoot network issues.  And in the factories, machinists have been replaced by CNC machines.  Well, let’s say they’ve been replaced ten to one with a CNC technician.  And so on and so forth.  Even engineers and scientists have seen the handwriting on the wall.  AI will begin to make them redundant too.  And supposedly it will replace authors, musicians and other kinds of artists.  And finally, AI is supposed to eventually replace software coders too.

If you’re a tech entrepreneur you are probably saying to yourself, “Duh!  That’s what’s supposed to happen.  That’s efficiency and progress.”  And from your point of view, you’re right.  Better, cheaper, faster.  But if you’re a human being and the parent of human beings you’re saying to yourself, “Then what the hell do we do?”

And that is what the big brain guys should be thinking about.  People like Jeff Bezos have been perfecting a way to eliminate ninety percent of the humans who sell us stuff.  And then they want to whittle down that last ten percent forever.  Instead, what we need is a plan to keep one hundred percent of Americans gainfully and happily employed.  If you’re a libertarian you’ll say that competition is a good thing and allowing Amazon to bankrupt every retail seller except Walmart is a good thing that brings down the price of goods and helps everyone.

I disagree.  Machines are more efficient and cheaper to use than humans.  That’s proven.  But we are human beings.  If the machines aren’t benefitting us then they are the enemy.  And we should fight back against them.  In a sense, that’s what this recent election was about.  The people who have been made obsolete by automation and globalization and efficiency voted to throw out of office the people who represent the people who make, run and own the machines.  They want Donald Trump to turn back the clock and bring back a world where they could work in a factory that made cars or toasters or pencils and make enough money to raise a family.

Well, he can try and he can do a lot of things that will tilt the playing field in favor of those that have been left behind.  But in the long run efficiency will triumph.  So instead of a Department of Government Efficiency I think Trump and Musk and Ramaswami would be better off inventing a Human Optimization Planning Effort (HOPE).  And they could use the existing monopoly laws to force people like Bezos to design their processes and systems to accommodate a new parameter; human happiness.  If they don’t, then one day the forgotten men may come visiting the tech lords.  And they may be armed with the proverbial pitch forks and torches.  And despite what we saw in “Terminator,” my money is on the peasants.