The democratic individual wants to judge for himself, yet no individual can judge everything for himself. We lack the time and capacity to investigate every proposition we depend on, so we have to accept much of what we believe from others.
…The democratic problem of knowledge runs deeper, then, than “think for yourself”. We have to trust others, but the harder problem is learning whom, why, and when.
…Citizens who administer towns, serve on juries, and live with the consequences of political choices learn the same respect for particulars. Political participation does more than disperse power; it teaches people how to discipline reason.
…Tocqueville refuses to resolve the tensions equality creates. It encourages independent judgment and delivers people defenseless to majority opinion. It weakens inherited authority while creating a need for new authority. It stimulates self-improvement while indefinite perfectibility breeds restlessness.
The widespread popular dissatisfaction with the working of modern American capitalism may be the product of some real, objective problems in the way American capitalism is working: income and wealth inequality on a scale not seen in a century; the concentration of economic, cultural and increasingly political power in a class of technology leaders whose products are dissolving the bonds that keep society together; the tightening nexus between business elites and the people who control the political process; rampant corruption and a political establishment that doesn’t seem interested in accountability
I stress again the contrast with the Web. In the early days, the Web dispersed power. As of now, AI concentrates it. The concentration of epistemological power in the AI models, in contrast to the democratic mind described by Tocqueville, is particularly jarring.
Liberals have always been rightfully suspicious that the super-rich would use their wealth to sway political opinion. But before the 2016 election, attitudes toward tech companies were broadly benign on the left. What changed was the narrative that disinformation (“fake news”) on Facebook swung the election to Trump.
And this carries over into hostility toward AI and toward data centers.
It is hard to accept political opposition on its face. Those of us on the right would like to blame academia for brainwashing students, even though studies of student beliefs show little or no effect from faculty ideology. And those on the left want to portray conservative tech executives as manipulative.
Healthy suspicion of the influence of money in politics is one thing; seeing all of economic history as a clash between rich technologists and democracy is just silly.
Smith predicts,
Popular fear of AI, and the data centers that power it, is leading to a grassroots democratic backlash against the very industry that Acemoglu and Johnson peg as the greatest threat.
No amount of Big Tech money or Marc Andreessen blog posts is going to stop this backlash. Henry Farrell’s worldview will be proven wrong, even as his policy ideas are vindicated. In the end, the government will probably end up quasi-nationalizing the big AI companies in some way, in order to ensure that this powerful technology serves the interest of the nation.
For “interest of the nation” substitute “interests of a particular political faction.” If Smith is right, the market will be superseded by a European Union style elitist class.
Interviewed by Brink Lindsey, Jonathan Rauch says,
voters in America and the world don’t know how good they’ve got it. They enjoy a level of peace, freedom, prosperity, and knowledge, which is unparalleled in human affairs. And that’s especially true of the United States of America, which has never been more prosperous, more secure. Life spans have never been longer, two-year dip recently. And you know you can recite all those things as well as I can. And so aren’t they being more than a bit spoiled to think that now is one of the worst times in American history? Isn’t there just at some level a fundamental failure of perception here …there’s almost a kind of immorality in people’s not understanding and appreciating how fortunate they are to be Americans and how fortunate they are to be alive right now.
Lindsey uses his time to talk about the plight of non-college-educated white men. But the ingratitude is worst among the college educated. This conversation frustrated me.
substacks referenced above: @
@
@
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.