Something missing from this account is the importance of regulation in response to disruption. I acknowledge we have to be careful about this. Regulation has to make progress better for people rather than block it. But nonetheless, robust regulation seems important to me.
Take the Industrial Revolution. It destroyed the livelihoods of many craftspeople. These livelihoods were very empowering: they involved working out of the home running an independent business, using a complex skill the craftsperson had mastered.
What replaced these jobs? Long hours doing grueling, repetitive, dangerous work in factories serving the whims of authoritarian bosses. No wonder there was a backlash, even if GDP may have been higher.
We shouldn’t have stopped the industrial revolution from happening, but maybe we could have implemented the kinds of labor norms and regulations we take for granted today back then. Things like overtime pay, minimum wages, OSHA, sick and parental leave (still an ongoing fight!), the two day weekend, mandatory lunch breaks, and bans on child labor.
I’m not exactly sure what the equivalent of these regulations are in the case of housing or AI disruption, but we shouldn’t be closed to regulation in general as a solution. We just have to weigh trade offs.
I'm reminded of a comment I made here last week, condemning capitalism generally, and capitalists in particular, for disregarding the value of lifetimes or even generations of labor which had built the same opportunities for growth and change which you've mentioned in this essay. My comment was a reply to the claim that America had in fact *not* failed the inhabitants of the Rust Belt from the 1970s and on, despite how blame for this failure is usually assigned.
Laborers in the Rust Belt, along with their families, were made into "losers" because the capitalists who employed their effort and who had inspired them to settle and build in Rust Belt cities, callously abandoned them to take advantage of the very same new opportunities which these working men and women had created for them. Working families were left with aging homes on worthless properties, which they could no longer afford to keep up or improve. This inspired many to leave right away. Those who stayed saw their neighborhoods pitch into sharp decline, as the "abundance" which moved the "line go up!" graphs on economic ledgers made "winners" out of suburban and exurban dwellers, and even (and often) inhabitants of cities in other regions of our country — and, in fact, other countries.
These exploited men and women could have been made whole if capitalists would have simply reinvested in the same places where they'd established themselves, but they chose to throw these workers, and their families, away like used napkins…
There is obviously a way to take on projects which expand and grow our economy without destroying what has already been built, along with the lives of the men and women who built it. Redistribution is needed, as stated, for the sake of preserving the dignity, utility, and potential (!) of those who've been unable, for whatever reasons, to participate in the "abundance" of growth and change — but perhaps this process should consider the preservation of the gains made by the our legacy industries as a *primary* action. I mentioned the example of moving solar panel manufacturing into Appalachia, where it could be done with the labor of former coal miners, for the sake of honoring their lifetimes and generations of contributions to our economy and society within the energy sector. Distributing investments with labor in mind would eliminate the need to redistribute for their assistance, because these laborers would already be thriving from their roles in the growth of their own "abundance".
This idea applies to the entire neoliberal project. The original principles of free trade and comparative advantage from Ricardo always included the idea that gains from this system would be redistributed to help those who lost out from the economic changes. But somehow the second part never happens
Something missing from this account is the importance of regulation in response to disruption. I acknowledge we have to be careful about this. Regulation has to make progress better for people rather than block it. But nonetheless, robust regulation seems important to me.
Take the Industrial Revolution. It destroyed the livelihoods of many craftspeople. These livelihoods were very empowering: they involved working out of the home running an independent business, using a complex skill the craftsperson had mastered.
What replaced these jobs? Long hours doing grueling, repetitive, dangerous work in factories serving the whims of authoritarian bosses. No wonder there was a backlash, even if GDP may have been higher.
We shouldn’t have stopped the industrial revolution from happening, but maybe we could have implemented the kinds of labor norms and regulations we take for granted today back then. Things like overtime pay, minimum wages, OSHA, sick and parental leave (still an ongoing fight!), the two day weekend, mandatory lunch breaks, and bans on child labor.
I’m not exactly sure what the equivalent of these regulations are in the case of housing or AI disruption, but we shouldn’t be closed to regulation in general as a solution. We just have to weigh trade offs.
!
I'm reminded of a comment I made here last week, condemning capitalism generally, and capitalists in particular, for disregarding the value of lifetimes or even generations of labor which had built the same opportunities for growth and change which you've mentioned in this essay. My comment was a reply to the claim that America had in fact *not* failed the inhabitants of the Rust Belt from the 1970s and on, despite how blame for this failure is usually assigned.
Laborers in the Rust Belt, along with their families, were made into "losers" because the capitalists who employed their effort and who had inspired them to settle and build in Rust Belt cities, callously abandoned them to take advantage of the very same new opportunities which these working men and women had created for them. Working families were left with aging homes on worthless properties, which they could no longer afford to keep up or improve. This inspired many to leave right away. Those who stayed saw their neighborhoods pitch into sharp decline, as the "abundance" which moved the "line go up!" graphs on economic ledgers made "winners" out of suburban and exurban dwellers, and even (and often) inhabitants of cities in other regions of our country — and, in fact, other countries.
These exploited men and women could have been made whole if capitalists would have simply reinvested in the same places where they'd established themselves, but they chose to throw these workers, and their families, away like used napkins…
There is obviously a way to take on projects which expand and grow our economy without destroying what has already been built, along with the lives of the men and women who built it. Redistribution is needed, as stated, for the sake of preserving the dignity, utility, and potential (!) of those who've been unable, for whatever reasons, to participate in the "abundance" of growth and change — but perhaps this process should consider the preservation of the gains made by the our legacy industries as a *primary* action. I mentioned the example of moving solar panel manufacturing into Appalachia, where it could be done with the labor of former coal miners, for the sake of honoring their lifetimes and generations of contributions to our economy and society within the energy sector. Distributing investments with labor in mind would eliminate the need to redistribute for their assistance, because these laborers would already be thriving from their roles in the growth of their own "abundance".
This idea applies to the entire neoliberal project. The original principles of free trade and comparative advantage from Ricardo always included the idea that gains from this system would be redistributed to help those who lost out from the economic changes. But somehow the second part never happens