Pollyanna on LSD - part the first

Most of the time, a piece of news will end up as a quote, which may or may not end up someplace in the site. This one from Sal Khan goes so far into Pollyanna Land, that further consideration is demanded.

The killer quote

I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don't yet realize. In less than a decade, Uber and Lyft shrank the taxi industry. Self-driving cars could replace human drivers — among the largest occupations for men in the United States — just as quickly.

That bit, as you no doubt realize, isn't Pollyanna. But what follows in the essay surely is. Khan never addresses the Elephant in the room.

Because of this, my friend has decided to commit 1 percent of his firm's profits to help people learn new skills for jobs, demonstrating what leadership looks like in the A.I. age. I believe that every company benefiting from automation — which is most American companies — should follow this lead and dedicate 1 percent of its profits to help retrain the people who are being displaced.

What's missing?

Even corporations will suffer if A.I. dislocates large parts of the labor force — because the newly unemployed will no longer be able to afford their products and services.

As quoted in these here parts, on occasion:

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.
-- Marriner Eccles/1951

Most econ types understand that this doesn't rise to the level of unusual insight. It's merely a tautology; the arithmetic has to add up. IOW, only if most of the people have most of the money, can an economy survive. At least, when the society/economy is sorta kinda democratic. Dictators don't give a shit. In fact, the whole point of dictatorship is to steal 99.44% of the GDP. Nor do capitalist oligarches. When Eccles wrote this, the USofA was, more or less, level set. Not so much today. To put it another way: if a domestic economy is dominated by financial services for the oligarches, dislocation of serfs is a non-quesion; they don't consume such services.

And that's the Pollyanna bit of Khan. He never, ever, gets to specifics of what sort of jobs will be in demand once AI replacement gets a head of steam. My guess: the sort of mindless nail pounding jobs. Granted, most nail pounders these days use air guns, not hammers. And, may be, some wise fellow in Silicon Valley will invent a robotic nail pounder. Who will take a Waymo to the job site.

Again, it's been an article of faith among the Pollyanna set (and oligarches) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: creative destruction of current jobs leads to more, better skilled jobs later. Of course, for those only capable of nail pounding, such is cold comfort. They can't do such jobs. The MAGA know this all too well. Name one company that actively re-trained buggy whip craftsmen when the Model T ate the world.

The trick, and it is no more than a trick, is to create high paying jobs for those only capable of low value/low pay jobs. That's the reason American Bidnezz sent all its low skill jobs to low pay (and, mostly, dictatorship) countries. Who's going to force ABZ Inc. to pay a high wage to a nail pounder? Bone Spur Samurai^© and his minions? That's, basically, what he promised to the MAGAthugs. Hasn't turned out that way.