The next US President must be able to lead America into the future
For the past three years, we’ve seen divisive identity politics and populism take over America, which has given us an administration that threatens America’s standing in the global order. Much of this comes from economic discontent, driven by the simple fact that making a living is harder than ever for working class Americans. However, politicians who point fingers at Mexico and start trade wars with China are not solving the root cause of these economic ills; foreigners aren’t taking are jobs, software is.
The idea that “software is eating our world” is nothing new: in 2000, Bill Joy wrote on some of the dangers that new technology brings to the human race (albeit with a more dystopian perspective). The discontent we see today is simply an ugly manifestation of a post-software society, where “many workers in existing industries will be stranded on the wrong side of software-based disruption and may never be able to work in their fields again.” A PwC study shows that 5% of jobs in America could be automated by the early 2020s, which could more than double the unemployment rate. This number rises to 26% by the end of the decade — a decade that will span the next two Presidential terms.
But the future doesn’t have to be a dystopia. In the fictional universe of Star Trek, technology has made poverty obsolete, leaving everyone free to pursue their passions and better humanity without worrying about having a roof over their head. That’s a future I’d like to live in.
Andrew Yang is the Presidential candidate that gets us a step closer to that utopian future. The center of Yang’s campaign is the “Freedom Dividend”: give every adult in America $1000 a month, no questions asked. But what’s more important than this policy idea itself is the thought process and man behind it — I’m supporting Andrew Yang because he’s a leader for the 21st century.
Software disrupting our economy doesn’t have to look like shiny robots doing our bidding, nor does it only affect blue collar jobs. In the early days of commercial aviation, there was a member of the cockpit crew called the Flight Engineer, whose job was to monitor and control the different flight control systems. The advent of computers in the 1980s basically eliminated this job, as the flight control systems became digitized and automated. Many flight engineers either retired along with the older planes they flew, or retrained to become pilots (after all, we didn’t have self-flying planes back then). But in today’s economy, the pace of innovation exceeds the pace at which people retire or retrain — even tech workers have a tough time keeping up with new innovations as programming languages and the devices we use change.
I know a thing or two about automation. I previously worked at Uber, which likely permanently erased a lot of jobs for taxi dispatchers with an algorithm (Uber’s currently working on permanently erasing the job of “driver” entirely). I worked with some engineers who automated the work that highly-paid operations employees did, like calculating how many rider discount codes to send out the next week, or producing analytics reports for management.
Andrew Yang also knows a thing or two. He founded a tech startup in his early days, and worked with a lot of startups through his organization, Venture for America. He understands that what most Americans think of as the “future” is actually just around the corner — and we need to be ready as a nation to address the challenges of a vastly different economy. The Freedom Dividend is part of that — ensuring that we can share the prosperity that technology brings to our society.
This understanding of technology sets Yang apart from the other Democratic party candidates, who have some interesting policy ideas, but too often look backward to the 20th century more than they look forward into the 21st.
Elizabeth Warren’s plan to “break up big tech” only reveals her lack of understanding about tech, while Bernie Sanders thinks that we can just will jobs into existence. And Joe Biden? While an admirable statesman, the strongest argument going for him is that he was Obama’s Vice President — a rather un-progressive thought.
Unwinding the Facebook / Instagram merger sounds great, until you realize mergers are actually the most common exit option for entrepreneurs. A $15 minimum wage sounds great until you realize it just increases the return on automating lower-wage jobs — it’s almost guaranteed that startups like Dishcraft Robotics are going to get a fresh round of funding if that happens. And hoping to create jobs by committing to massive infrastructure projects like we did in FDR’s New Deal ignores the innovations in construction machinery since then, which significantly reduce the amount of workers needed to build things in the first place.
Andrew Yang is a leader for the 21st century, with 21st century solutions.
Getting your rally crowd to chant “PowerPoint” might sound wacky, but it actually makes sense to bring a slide deck into the State of the Union — corporate CEOs have to use PowerPoints during quarterly shareholder calls, so why shouldn’t the CEO of America? And Andrew Yang wants to regulate “big tech” as well, but his policy proposals are focused on the real, 21st century challenges for technology — everything from data privacy to cryptocurrency and AI. While Warren wants to destroy “big tech”, Yang wants to create new tech — in a responsible way.
What inspires me is that Andrew Yang can unite Americans in a shared vision for the future, moving us forward as a country — instead of moving us left or right (or worse, backward). Yang has support from some former Trump voters, demonstrating his ability to reach across the proverbial aisle. His ideas are rooted in a deeper understanding of modern technology than those of the other candidates. This understanding is not only invaluable in solving for our new-found economic ills, but it applies to other American challenges like healthcare or climate change (Andrew Yang wants to invest in geo-engineering technology to roll back the effects of climate change).
Today, you don’t have to agree with my views on how technology is disrupting America, or my optimism about Andrew Yang. The Democratic primaries are a few months way, and we still haven’t had our first debate. But I do think you should start paying attention to the Asian guy talking about math, and start treating him as a serious contender.