Put Out to Pasture...Our Changing World

Put Out to Pasture

 In 2020 author Kurt Anderson released his book, Evil Genuis, The Unmaking of America: A Recent History.  Four years after reading it for the first time, I took the book off the shelf for a second review.  I found myself amazed by how much more of what he had predicted had happened.

The book points out how technology has always changed labor, but the distinction for today is the extent that human labor is being replaced by machines and AI.  Jobs simply disappear.  As machines and AI replace skilled labor, without new jobs of the same skilled level replacing them, workers are left with unskilled jobs at lower wages, if they can find jobs at all.

He uses this analogy:  When automobiles replaced the horses used to pull carriages, the horses were put out to pasture.  Labor adjustments of the past created new jobs for skilled labor, but today's displacement of skilled labor with machines and AI often reduce the need for skilled labor. Executives and those few needed to oversee the machines and AI continue to be needed, but many jobs simply disappear. In effect, many skilled laborers are simply put out to pasture or forced to take jobs that require fewer skills with less pay.

Fantasy writers of the past anticipated the risks of making workers obsolete.  Kirk Vonnegut's book Player Piano, published in 1952 was about the negative impact of machines, but even earlier Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World in 1932 and George Orwell's book 1984 in1949 also sounded the alert, as well as other books.

All of this might sound like an urban problem, but we should look around.  Farmers in our own communities have monster equipment which allows one operator to do in a few hours what took my father days, not hours, to do.  Small farms have been sold or leased to large farming operations, who must own or rent more land to justify the expensive massive equipment they use.

I have blogged about the screen writers who felt endangered by AI and went on strike to gain some security about their livelihood, threatened by generations of writers having had their work fed into AI to allow a machine to use the unpaid for work of generations of authors to create their stolen manuscripts.  Perhaps it isn't as easily understood as equipment displacing skilled laborers, but the real and potential impact is the same--lost jobs.  

Four years ago, when I first read Evil Genius, I had not fully recognized the threat.  Now I better understand.  This is not a problem for our children and grandchildren to confront.  The problems have already arrived!

Kurt Anderson saw the impact before most of us did, as is evident in the title of his book, The Unmaking of America.  Maybe we don't pay attention until it impacts us.  I saw the machines that were changing factory workers' jobs, but if I gave it any thought it was probably that those people doing heavy or boring repetitive work, day after day, were probably glad to be free of such jobs.  I did not consider whether the replacement job, if any, might be worse.  Like many of us, I didn't pay much attention until it impacted things relevant to me, like AI displacing artists and authors. 

Kurt Anderson is not entirely disheartened.  He writes, "I think we could prevent America from turning into a permanent dystopian horror show.  We might even manage to make it better than it was before..."  There is much food for thought in his book about ways we might adapt to changes, but for many of us, first we must see the impact of these changes before we can consider adjustments.  If you can buy or borrow or find a copy of his book at your local library, I recommend it.  We humans are not ready to be Put Out To Pasture!