The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. . . [A]s this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniencies for which it has occasion.
–Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
[M]achines may soon be ready to perform many tasks that currently require large amounts of human labor. This will mean rapid productivity growth and, therefore, high overall economic growth.
But — and this is the crucial question — who will benefit from that growth? Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to make the case that most Americans will be left behind, because smart machines will end up devaluing the contribution of workers, including highly skilled workers whose skills suddenly become redundant. The point is that there’s good reason to believe that the conventional wisdom . . . is all wrong.
Paul Krugman, Is Growth Over?
What exactly would you expect to happen when labor–that is, the work product of a human being, whether by physical or mental effort–is no longer required to create wealth? What if labor is useful to the production of wealth only to the extent it (labor) can be obtained at rates that are below the survival cost (food, clothing, medical care, shelter, etc.) of the laborer?
For one thing, you would have to characterize those kinds of labor conditions as at least virtual slavery. The laborer is forced to give up labor without a fair exchange of value, and must find a way beyond that to survive. The laborer pays for the undervaluation through misery, depravation and death; their lives become more primitive–hunting, foraging and black market economies–to try to fill the gaps. People eventually rebel against misery and depravation, but rebellions take time to develop and can be “managed” with population segregation and the careful application of force and terror. So it is for the denizens of the Districts in The Hunger Games.
For another, there are obviously beneficiaries of those conditions: those who by virtue of being in the right place at the right time are part of an elite population positioned to enjoy the benefits, and those who exercise ultimate control over the assets of the society. The latter will be very few in number and control the wealth of the society.
Welcome to the Capital of Panem.
Welcome! To the General Electric Carousel of Progress. Now most carousels just go 'round and around without getting anywhere. But on this one, at every turn, we'll be making progress. And progress is not just moving ahead. It's dreaming and working and building a better way of life.
–Faceless Narrator, GE Carousel of Progress, New York World’s Fair 1964/65
audio file from the exhibit (the musical intro is long)
Ah, progress. We all know what that is, right? Labor saving devices giving housewives relief from ‘drudgery’ and gaining time for leisure? But progress didn’t stop at the washing machine factory. Oh no. It has produced all manner of ways to dispense with labor, in the name of productivity, efficiency and, of course, the almighty “bottom line.” One construction worker with the right machine can do work that used to require ten laborers. Think of all the occupations that, over the last few decades, have either disappeared or employ a steadily shrinking pool of people–like secretaries, an honorable and formally useful occupation, now supplanted by computers and their software (there’s a template for that), voice mail and instant messaging.
Or consider the devaluation of a type of labor such that it can’t be done economically in this country. But, wait, if you still need the labor in the same amount or maybe even more, how can you possibly devalue it? By using technology to enable people in a less wealthy county whose time and effort is valued on a lower scale to do a job that would normally be done here. Even high skill jobs are not immune from technology-enabled international arbitrage that effectively reduces its value and cost, such as legal work outsourced to India (though, trust me, those white shoe types in NYC still think they are worth a couple thousand an hour. I’ve yet to meet a human being who actually measures up to that standard.).
Here’s the kicker: its about to get much worse because of Artificial Intelligence. From Adam Smith’s time until the twentieth century, progress was largely evident in the shift from manual labor to machines, and many new occupations arose, many of them requiring more skill and commanding more value. AI is moving out of the realm of parlor tricks and its technologies are increasing embedded in everyday things. Now occupations involving even higher skills are under threat, and the economic value of skills (which are still productive in their own right) is diverted from the skilled laborers to those who don’t possess the skills at all but control the machines that dispense the product of those skills. AI is nothing but another tool. Like all tools, how you use it matters and has real consequences.
You think we have a One Percent Problem now? My friends, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Even though today’s ubiquitous computing technologies are still just a fancy collection of binary switches (that will change in the coming decades), the massive amount of computer processing power at our fingertips now makes brute force approximations of intelligence available on devices as small as a phone. With massive computing power, software can emulate human response with increasing effectiveness, handling the intricacies and incongruities of human language and interactions. If you are a call center professional you probably already know your days are numbered.
As much as Artificial Intelligence has regularly failed to live up to its billing in the past, we are on the cusp of an explosion of AI capabilities that will make doctors, lawyers, engineers and even computer programmers less needed if not outright obsolete. In the absence of strange little niches that skilled people can sometimes create, the skill-based income of the remaining practitioners will plummet. AI will continue and accelerate the recent trend of disconnecting people from the profits of economic activity.
Like all major junctions in human history, this one provides opportunity for human evolution (that’s what Ray Kurzweil believes). Evolution Kurzweil imagines would require a whole new way of thinking; disconnecting the human from the problem of survival and enabling the exploration of ideas and modes of living without the worry of the next grocery bill. Long term space exploration and even colonization of other bodies might become highly desirable alternatives to normal earth life. We might even start to think differently about wealth; where the pursuit of wealth in the form of asset control is neither practical nor desirable.
Or it could all go to hell. Unchecked, the normal patterns of greed and self-dealing in our society will continue the aggregation of wealth into the hands of a few, guaranteeing the emergence of clear over- and under-classes. A growing population that is no longer able to earn a share of the wealth becomes a “problem” to be dealt with. Every new technology becomes a lever to be deployed against the problem.
Suzanne Collins’ world of Panem is very much the latter world I describe, where it all went to hell, and it is not difficult to imagine how they got there. Panem’s leaders possess and use technologies to enslave most of the population through denial or control of personal technologies, and through the use of coercive technologies against the population. At the same time, technology supports and enhances the life styles of the privileged citizens of the Capital. AI is at the root of many technologies Collins describes or alludes to; it is a technological development that pushes society toward the unknown.
Lets imagine a successful business person in a country–a big country–under stress. Lets say there is a little climate change with a side of natural disasters and a dash of economic chaos. Leaven that with a rebellion fueled by every pent-up rage you can imagine. The rebellion is put down and now you and your company are in the position to influence the outcome. The leadership depends on your support and good will to survive, and you know it. Your priorities are clear; making your business dominant in its arena and continuing to enhance your income and other benefits that flow from economic power. Technology is something your company creates for its own purposes; other uses demand a licensing fee, but that’s business. Government’s purpose is to stay out of your way while at the same time providing the key infrastructure and population control that you deem necessary for your business interests. How they go about that, well . . . that is not your problem, so long as you get paid. They had better make it effective if they want your support. Human labor is a cost to be constrained; isolating populations so they can’t rebel and reducing the cost of sustaining them to a bare minimum is a business decision.
From there, with all the ability to apply force to a situation squarely centered on one side of the equation, it is hard to imagine any less toxic outcome than Panem. People are never altruistic when they possess all the essential power and believe it is their right to do so.
In my lifetime it has been widely believed that authoritarianism flows top down from an “evil” leadership. That seemed to fit figures like Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. The problem with that perspective is that it ignores the fact that in all political systems leaders only reach and sustain that position with the support of others. Political idealism aside, the most important support is the money, the fuel that makes acquiring political leadership possible. That German, Japanese and Italian industry supported their regimes gets forgotten. One can view political philosophies like communism and socialism as an attempt to cut out the middle men; to directly join politicians and control of money at the hip; some impressive repression came out of that bitter stew. Stalin pulled it off, but his successors found it increasingly difficult to sustain. Ironically, it appears that in the end the middle men win.
Collins’ Panem suggests that it would be naive to assume that the interests of business are necessarily aligned with democracy and liberty. In the right scenario, the interests of business tend to strongly align with those who wish to exercise deep control over the social fabric. Yet the assumption that the “free market” and “political freedom” are the same thing underlies much of contemporary American political discourse. The displacement and destruction of labor in this country are largely accepted as a consequence of this pernicious equation.
As we know from contemporary experience, business only cares about ethics and morality when it gets caught publically deficient in both; it only cares about freedom in the context of its ability to make money as it wishes. Panem will arise from the ashes of our denial of this simple but inescapable dynamic within our society.
***
This the fifth installment of an occasional series inspired by The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins' devastatingly brilliant Young Adult trilogy about a fictional place not far in our future. Ms. Collins has reminded me, and I hope others, that the difference between freedom and tyranny is more than just a matter of form. I hope in this series to try to detect the telltale signs showing where our path is taking us and talk about why we should be afraid if we cannot find the way or the will to change course.
I am told that today (August 10) is Ms. Collins' birthday, so Happy Birthday Suzanne!