Robots, Race, and Liberation
Robots can do repetitive tasks far better than people can. They make fewer mistakes. They don't get bored. And, most important, if one of them starts making mistakes, it can easily be replaced or repaired.
PIN-MAKING
I have no doubt that people are going to be replaced by the hundreds of millions when it comes to repetitive tasks. This is altogether good. Something that Adam Smith mentioned, and Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized, was this: by breaking down the production of pin-making into many new tasks, businesses can get enormous increase in the production of pins. But it is a horrible life for an individual. Both Smith and de Tocqueville recognized that a society that rests on people who were reduced to pin-making is not a good society.
In the very early stages of technology, we see the equivalent of pin-making. In automobile production, Henry Ford took men and turned them into something like robots. In such circumstances, the invasion of the robots is not a disadvantage; it is a form of liberation.
We have today an outlook that says that some people are just too innately stupid to be anything except pin-makers. Liberals are the ones who say this, but they don't say it openly. They say that robots are going to replace people who work on assembly lines. Well, not many people work on assembly lines in the West. Assembly lines were steadily phased out after 1945. The percentage of people who work in assembly-line manufacturing in the United States has steadily decreased since 1953. This is not some new phenomenon.
THE PLANTATION OWNERS' OUTLOOK
What those people who are fearful about robots in the workforce keep telling us is that there are "certain people" in the population -- no race mentioned -- who just can't do anything more than menial labor. Nobody is going to say exactly who these people are, or what group they represent, but everybody knows who these critics have in mind. The subtlety of language is not that subtle. They're talking about blacks. To a lesser extent, they're talking about certain white subcultures. They are talking about Mexican-Americans. We are back to the worldview of white plantation owners in 1859.
I don't see any of these white liberals going around saying that the robots are going to replace Asian-Americans. Nobody is wringing his hands because Jews are going to lose jobs. Isn't that strange? It's "all them other folks."
I really get tired of this. Everybody has something useful to do in life. We live in a world of scarcity. There is always something to be done. There is always somebody willing to pay somebody to get something done. At zero price, there is greater demand than supply. But liberals don't believe this. They have never believed this. They believe that nature is not -- dare I say it? -- niggardly. They believe that nature is this enormous cornucopia of wealth, and only human institutions keep this wealth away from us all. They don't like private property, because they think this is part of an institutional system that is bottling up the inherent wealth of nature.
Once you buy into this nonsense, it is easy to buy into the nonsense that we have to create a massive welfare state to support all those now-unemployed pin-makers of certain unmentioned racial backgrounds.
Every time you see somebody saying that robots are going to replace millions of laborers, prepare yourself for the pitch that the government has to intervene and tax the rich, who are profiting from the robotics revolution, and then hand the money over to unemployed and forever unemployable people. It's one more pitch for the welfare state. They can't look at any problem, and not conclude that what we need is more government intervention, more wealth redistribution by coercion, more permanent dependence on the state. "The poor, ill-equipped, not-too-bright people need government intervention."
What do the future unemployed people need? They need private education, preferably online. They need to get out of the public school system. The government locks them up at the age of six, and it will not let them go until they're 18, unless they drop out. Dropping out is legal at age 16. If they drop out, the government lets them go. So, they drop out. No kidding! They don't want to be cooped up by the government for eight hours a day, so they seek a way out. Furthermore, they may get paid by the government to drop out. Then, lo and behold, the market responds. If you pay somebody an above-market wage to supply a service, the person is likely to supply the service. The service that is supplied is the production of bastard children. That's what the government pays for, and that's what the government gets. Will wonders never cease?
There was a recent special report on PBS on robotics. It has some interesting information. But what I want you to pay attention to is the statement by the show's number-one critic of robotics. He has written a book on it. He predicts worldwide unemployment. He actually says that what is going to happen, unless the government intervenes -- the euphemism is "humanitarian action" -- is widespread starvation. Unemployed workers are literally going to starve to death. This guy says this with a straight face. This was posted on July 30 -- "hot off the press."
PAUL SOLMAN: And the age-old fear of displaced workers, says Kaplan, is finally, irrevocably upon us.JERRY KAPLAN: What happens to people who simply can't acquire or don't have the skills that are going to be needed in the new economy?
PAUL SOLMAN: Well, what is going to happen to them?
JERRY KAPLAN: We're going to see much worse income inequality. And unless we take some humanitarian actions, the truth is, they're going to starve and live in poverty and then die.
PAUL SOLMAN: Kaplan offers that grim prognosis in a new book, "Humans Need Not Apply." He knows, of course, that automation has been replacing labor for 200 years or more, for decades, eliminating relatively high-paying factory jobs in America, and that new jobs have more than kept pace, but not anymore, he says.
Mr. Solman and Mr. Kaplan are not recent Mexican immigrants. What do they know that Mexican immigrants don't know about poverty and how to relieve it?
My answer: they don't know as much.
INCREASING INEQUALITY
It is possible, and I think probable, that there is going to be an increase in inequality worldwide. People who understand how to innovate, or sell whatever is innovated, will prosper. People who are not creative, who are not good salespeople, and who do not keep up with technology, are going to be hired in low-paying jobs. Putting it bluntly, people with IQ's above 120 and who are not employed by the government will get richer, and people who are less intelligent and less creative will get richer, but a lot slower.
Here is the famous bottom line. Robots don't buy Fords. They don't buy consumer goods. They are not motivated to be productive. They don't make decisions in terms of the future. They don't seek out better employment opportunities. They don't find ways to serve other people in the community. People do these things; robots do not. People are motivated; robots are not.
People will take menial jobs. But the menial jobs will enable them to buy products that have been produced by robots. Nobody goes to the expense of inventing a robot, marketing a robot, or implementing a robot, unless the person expects the output of the robot's activities to lead to profits. Nobody puts robots on the assembly line if there are no buyers of the products that roll off the assembly lines. This is economics 101. But liberals never took economics 101. Even Keynesians understand this principle, but the anti-robotics people do not.
Somebody has to buy the products produced by the robots. That means somebody is benefiting from the output of the robots. This means somebody is producing a good or a service that other people want to sell, which enables these people to buy the output of the robots. Whenever the output of the robots is not purchased, the owners of the robots will have to sell them for scrap metal.
KANT WAS WRONG
Robots serve people. People don't serve robots.
On this point, I go back to the mid-1960's cartoon that I regard as the most insightful cartoon I have ever seen.
This cartoon summarizes the number-one theme of Western philosophy since the time of Immanuel Kant. It illustrates what is sometimes called the science/personality dualism or the nature/freedom dualism. It illustrates the supposed triumph of machines over mankind. The point that it makes is utter hogwash, but it is basic to understanding modern social philosophy and modern philosophy in general. The dualism that Kant presented in the late 18th century has led intellectuals to believe in the triumph of science over humanity. This cartoon illustrates it.
The implication of this is that ethical decision-making is impotent. The only thing that matters is neutral science, neutral technology, and computer programming. This idea is a threat to society -- a far greater threat than robots.
We're in pursuit of the great liberation of mankind from the killing restraints of poverty. If we can solve the energy problem, we can solve the problem of poverty. The free market is doing this daily. Poverty has been eliminated more on a worldwide scale in the last 50 years, than anything imagined by economists in 1950. Yet in the midst of this liberation, we have people who honestly believe that worldwide poverty is going to increase on such a massive scale, that hundreds of millions of people who are presently alive, are somehow going to starve to death. Urban people are going to starve. The enormous advantage that urbanization has had in making people richer over the last 250 years is going to be reversed. These poor people would be happy to exchange places with some Indian, Chinese, or African villager over the next 30 years.
These people are taken seriously. They get interviewed on PBS.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Robots are dumb. So are liberals. Robots are not a threat to society. Liberals are.
CONCLUSIONS
I know what bothers them. The free market is making people rich, and they can't stand it. I'll tell you what else bothers them. The robotics revolution is going to increase economic inequality, and this bothers them even more. They make their money with their brains. Yet they are outraged by the fact that people with brains, who can compete in the free market, are going to get rich, but university professors and news broadcasters, who are just as smart in terms of IQ, are going to get richer a lot more slowly.
Back in 1942, Joseph Schumpeter described all this in his classic book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. He wrote about the fact that university professors were deeply resentful of capitalists, who were not formally educated, but who were enormously wealthy. This seemed unfair to the academic scribblers in 1942, and it still seems unfair to them.
My attitude is simple: let them rant. Let them wring their hands on the sidelines of life. The robotics revolution is coming, whether these people like it or not. The robotics revolution really is a revolution. It is a revolution of liberation. It is going to make almost everybody richer, and it is going to make hardly anybody poorer. It is going to take advantage of the productive possibilities of the division of labor on a scale never before imagined.
The robotics revolution is going to increase economic inequality, but everybody is going to be better off -- except for envious liberals.