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A PMC Revolt Will Hold Us Back From The Glorious Automated Future
I've heard a few variants on this. When Tyler Cowen was on Dwarkesh, he said that people will be the bottleneck to automation. His prediction seemed part mechanistic, but part hearkening to the Luddites, that automatable members of the PMC will band together to do whatever it takes to save their weak, deplorable skins. Pass destructive policies, regulations, restrictions, maybe even try to physically break the machines. A minor variant on the Woke Capitalist Wrecker, if you will; the PMC wrecker.
Some might be concerned that these sorts of predictions are a bit vague. What will they actually do? What will it look like? How could we watch events unfold and categorize what is happening? Of course, as the old joke says, fascism comes with smiley faces and McDonald's, so it's unlikely that their activities will be immediately apparent on just a surface glance. Thus, I will turn to the impetus for this post and submit that one need look no further than current events.
This morning at the gym, I listened to Phil Magness, an economic historian who specializes in tariffs, on Reason's Just Asking Questions Podcast. Then, when I got home, I read Alex Tabarrok's latest on Marginal Revolution. They both pointed out something that I had not realized. America still manufactures a lot of value. More value than ever before in history. In real terms. So why all the hullabaloo about manufacturing? Jobs. And why are jobs somehow impacted? It can't be that China has stolen all of the manufacturing value add from us; we've already established, from the data, that we're doing more of that than ever before.1 Nah... it's automation. We're manufacturing gobs more value with fewer human laborers.2
This is the backlash to automation. This is the "wrecker class" implementing destructive policies in response to being automated away. This is just what it looks like. It doesn't say it on the tin. The talk is always about jobs, but the blame is misplaced for why they're going away. It's automation. It can cause people to reach for whatever tool can possibly cause shortages and contract the economy, just hoping that doing so somehow reverses the impacts of automation. Nevermind that the intermediate steps are "cause shortages" and "contract the economy".
If you're worried about how the PMC will eventually sabotage the progress of automation or just want to find a way to model how humans might be a bottleneck on the way to a glorious automated future, one might need look no further than current events.
1 - Perhaps one wants to just compare total manufacturing value add. China does have approximately double of that than the US does. China also has approximately four times the population of the US.
2 - It also does not seem to be purely a population growth phenomenon.
I find it rather interesting to claim that the PMC, the class most opposed to Trump, is somehow wrecking things. That's some 5D Chess with multiversal time travel right there, not checkers.
Not to put words into the OPs mouth, but that's not what I took from the post. Rather, tariffs are an example of a generalized anti-automation protest which will provide an example for future PMC types to follow when AGI or similar eventually arrives
Just look at this sentence:
Not how the PMC are sabotaging progress, but will do so in future
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What does Trump have to do with this?
There is an inherent contradiction between:
The most charitable interpretation is a proof-reading error, otherwise it clearly claims that the PMC are both currently "wrecking" things and this is the way they might wreck things in the future. Given that the PMC, as we understand that class, are not in charge of the stupid economic policies instituted by the Trump admin, and likely the ones most against it, it seems ridiculous to blame them for the latter's actions.
Unless, of course, someone has a convincing argument for why the PMC is somehow responsible that I'm missing.
No, it doesn't. Multiple other people read it correctly.
Fair enough. I can see what you meant.
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Trump is presumably who OP says is instituting harmful policies
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