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The Zero Economic Value Citizen
I have an article today in the Harvard Business Review, co-authored with legendary Silicon Valley marketer and venture capitalist Bill Davidow. It’s the first piece Bill and I have co-bylined since we wrote The Virtual Corporation twenty years ago. I don’t know if it will have the same impact as that book did, but it should.
In the article, Bill and I note that the current pace of technological change (though few people noticed, Moore’s Law basically went vertical in 2005), combined with the rise of artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things, means that our machines are rapidly assuming an ever-greater role in our economic life. Henry Adams despaired in the 19th century that the rate of progress — about 2 percent — was almost too much for mankind to keep up with. We’re now running at 40 percent.
You’ve read the warnings from Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and other forward-thinkers that AI poses a potential long-term existential threat to humanity. In fact, we don’t have to look that far. As a growing number of jobs — mostly manual labor, but increasingly blue-collar and soon white-collar— disappear to automation we are already creating what Bill and I call the Zero Economic Value Citizen: people for whom artificial intelligence has rendered their skills or jobs without value. We suspect that many of those millions who have already dropped out of the workforce are just such ‘ZEV’ citizens.
What is the solution? We’re not sure there is one. Government is too slow and stupid. Education, even if the unions weren’t resisting change, probably can’t keep up either. And as our machines get smarter they will continue capturing jobs ever further up the IQ scale.
Are we all destined to become ZEVs? A good question. And what do we do then? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Published in General
I’m baack!!
Anyway, you flatter me. I’m only one person, speaking only for myself, and I suspect what I have to say here has very few fans.
But since I regard what I take as your vision of “economic freedom” as roughly similar to a southern plantation owner’s view of “economic freedom” I welcome your disdain.
Thanks for taking the time to say so!
And I like to say that I loved your comment #77, which was pure succinct awesomeness.
Forgive me, but I still must disagree. For one thing plenty of people claim that there are no losers and no tradeoffs, and argue from that position. In my view this argument fails miserably, and I recall even Mitt Romney noted that the American middle class was having difficulties.
For another- and as I have already noted- this sort of tradeoff has been going on a long time. Since the Founding, no doubt. Again, what has changed is the American political system’s response. Once upon a time we had tariffs, then eventually immigration was restricted, but now we apparently have government organized airlifts to bring in more illegals immigrants because illegal immigration from Mexico has slowed to a trickle. That American citizens oppose this- well, the political class simply doesn’t care.
I get the sense that most of the leftist-dominated political class pays attention to such things as market forces only because they have internalized that market forces means wages go down. When wages do not go down, they conclude something is awry, and hasten to enact policies so that wages will go down. Plus, I note that the US now has the same tariff policy as advocated by the Confederate Sates of America, circa 1861, and also that Al Gore faced off against H. Ross Perot to argue in favor of NAFTA on Larry King Live, many years ago.
I watched that live, and I thought that Gore won, but now I think Perot was correct. Vast numbers of economically viable jobs have departed the United States- and the response from the folks making policy for the United States has been to pretend everything is rosy, and to claim nothing can be done.
This won’t end well, one way or another.
And that cheap goods from Walmart are an obviously sufficient counter.