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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It explains why hearing people make this argument drives me nuts:

"Rationally, the poor should vote Democratic, as Democrats give them better safety nets and transfers."

First, these people aren't terribly rational in most instances. Second, as this author notes, transfers and safety nets won't redress the loss that ails them -- their lack of importance.

If these people were smarter on average, it might make sense to argue to them that they are not alone. They are simply the first line of people to be replaced by tech.

The author misses a huge issue -- the Knowledge Economy is easier to replace than the manufacturing economy. Algorithms are already replacing most traders and analysts. Wall Street, which works with numbers, is the most easily replaced sector of them all. (Google a bit on the flattening of bonuses and the layoffs hitting banking.)

The Knowledge Economy is basically the Data Economy, and no human can interpret data as well or as quickly as AI. At least the guy in the auto plant had a few years before the robots could be perfected and installed. The Knowledge Workers are, I think, going to be rendered obsolete at a frightening clip. Why? Because their work is largely fungible, and its easier to build and set loose a learning algorithm than it is to build and maintain a physical robot. That which can be done in one's head, using simple math or rational thinking, can be done a million times faster and more accurately by a computer. A variant of Moore's Law will apply to the tech eliminating Knowledge Workers that didn't so ruthlessly apply to the people who worked with their hands.

Stated more simply, your plumber is a lot less fragile than your broker. The former's work has a barrier to entry the latter will never enjoy.

But I understand... this is cold comfort to the under-educated and the left behind. They don't get it. And the condescension that angers them, which this author explained brilliantly, will not abate so quickly. As AI wipes out the Knowledge Workers, I think they will do what the displaced Trumpkins are now doing -- punch downward. They'll be exceedingly resentful because they'll have done what they were supposed to do and still wound up losing. And they'll have no one to punch up against.

That's when you get really interesting revolutions. They almost always gestate in the upper middle class. The real crazy stuff, I think, is going to start in 10 or so years, when the Knowledge Workers start falling prey to the algorithms in mass numbers.

If you were going to change the Democratic Party to better represent these folks, what would you do?