When Technology Sets Off a Populist Revolt
If you think globalization, immigration, trade and demographic change have contributed to displacement and political anger, wait until robots take away millions and millions of jobs, including those requiring the use of a well-trained brain.
.. “It seems likely that the top 10 to 20 percent of any profession — be they computer programmers, civil engineers, musicians, athletes or artists — will continue to do well,” he told me. “What happens to the bottom 20 percent or even 80 percent, if that is the delineation? Will the bottom 80 percent be able to compete effectively against computer systems that are superior to human intelligence?”
Others in Silicon Valley, most notably the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have dismissed this concern as Luddism, assuring people that new jobs always replace the ones that vanish.
.. And it is hardly surprising for stalwarts of an industry to claim it won’t harm anyone. What is more notable is what sometimes is called “argument against interest” — people criticizing a thing from which they stand to benefit.
.. The only answer, he believes, is massive economic redistribution via something like a guaranteed minimum income. The idea has been gaining ground.
“Does capitalism need to be reinvented for modern technology? I’m absolutely convinced it does,” he said.
.. To be plain, Mr. Khosla and others of like mind in the valley are not radicals. They are speaking of a new social contract, in which an undisrupted few assume new obligations to the disrupted many, in order to be freed to go back to their disruptive works.