Elon Musk is all over the place.\u00a0 Everywhere you look he\u2019s involved in any number of important and cutting-edge endeavors.\u00a0 And this is in addition to his business ventures.\u00a0 He runs a space company (SpaceX), a satellite communications company (Starlink), an electric car manufacturer (Tesla) and whatever X is.<\/p>\n
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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And based on the favorable results of Argentina\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re currently in.\u00a0 As things currently stand the last fifty years of computer advancement have revolutionized the efficiency of the workplace.\u00a0 Programs like a world processor and a spreadsheet have allowed on person to do the work that previously required whole departments.\u00a0 The secretarial pool is a thing of the past.\u00a0 Even the technical departments have been pared way back because a pc on every desk means that a computation department is unneeded.\u00a0 At most you need a couple of IT nerds who troubleshoot network issues.\u00a0 And in the factories, machinists have been replaced by CNC machines.\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s say they\u2019ve been replaced ten to one with a CNC technician.\u00a0 And so on and so forth.\u00a0 Even engineers and scientists have seen the handwriting on the wall.\u00a0 AI will begin to make them redundant too.\u00a0 And supposedly it will replace authors, musicians and other kinds of artists.\u00a0 And finally, AI is supposed to eventually replace software coders too.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a tech entrepreneur you are probably saying to yourself, \u201cDuh!\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s supposed to happen.\u00a0 That\u2019s efficiency and progress.\u201d\u00a0 And from your point of view, you\u2019re right.\u00a0 Better, cheaper, faster.\u00a0 But if you\u2019re a human being and the parent of human beings you\u2019re saying to yourself, \u201cThen what the hell do we do?\u201d<\/p>\n
And that is what the big brain guys should be thinking about.\u00a0 People like Jeff Bezos have been perfecting a way to eliminate ninety percent of the humans who sell us stuff.\u00a0 And then they want to whittle down that last ten percent forever.\u00a0 Instead, what we need is a plan to keep one hundred percent of Americans gainfully and happily employed.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a libertarian you\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
I disagree.\u00a0 Machines are more efficient and cheaper to use than humans.\u00a0 That\u2019s proven.\u00a0 But we are human beings.\u00a0 If the machines aren\u2019t benefitting us then they are the enemy.\u00a0 And we should fight back against them.\u00a0 In a sense, that\u2019s what this recent election was about.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 But in the long run efficiency will triumph.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t, then one day the forgotten men may come visiting the tech lords.\u00a0 And they may be armed with the proverbial pitch forks and torches.\u00a0 And despite what we saw in \u201cTerminator,\u201d my money is on the peasants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elon Musk is all over the place.\u00a0 Everywhere you look he\u2019s involved in any number of important and cutting-edge endeavors.\u00a0 And this is in addition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[2517,1151,16],"class_list":["post-31499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-maga","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n