What Would An American Renaissance Look Like?
Imagine two worlds.
In one world, the smart and industrious companies who are already working on automation and robotics succeed.
All transportation becomes autonomous. Workflow companies automate most of basic business and government administration. Even checkout clerks and fast food workers get automated.
In this world, the founders of these inventive companies become deca- or even centi-billionaire. That means Travis Kalanick, who is currently worth $6B as the CEO of Uber, ends up being worth $100B.
The investors in these inventive companies also become ultra-wealthy with the winning investors showing 1000x returns on their investments.
Each of these winning companies also employ a few hundred programmers and these programmers become extremely well off. They’re not quite wealthy, but they will pay cash for their children’s college tuition.
In addition, many millions of Americans no longer have to do their jobs. Or rather, capitalism would prefer that robots do these jobs instead. Robots are better and cheaper.
In one year, 3 million truck drivers are asked to stop. That’s followed by another 3 million fast food workers. In a single decade, automation replaces the jobs of 30 million people.
In this world, which we’ll call the status quo path, 30 million people are looking for new jobs.
To fill the demands of new job seekers, our country’s existing pathways for retraining are retooled and reinvented. Some of this improved training is provided by bigger government. The rest comes from corporations who are desperate to fill their job openings. Many of these jobs require relocation.
However, many of the newly unemployed don’t want to relocate and that forces a quick transition to something close to universal basic income. The first version of basic income passes easily — it’s just a reworking of current entitlements so that every adult is guaranteed $11,000 dollars cash just for being American.
The rest of America is relatively happy with this version of basic income because it doesn’t require any increase in taxes — it’s just a reworking of existing entitlements. That basic income combined with reduced costs of goods allows every American daily access to a hamburger and large soda. There’s a lot of desperation and anger, but at least most people aren’t starving.
In summary: the capitalism hustle continues.
But…
Do we want a future with a few rich robot owners and billions of anxious poor? No, the robots should work for all of us.
So, let’s imagine that world. It’s potentially a lot grander — but also a lot harder to imagine fully because there are more unanswered questions.
In this second world, we have a human renaissance. The level of wealth increases for everyone and is matched with an increase in leisure.
In this renaissance, robots do most basic jobs and create wealth for all of us. Wealth inequality still exists — but there is a country-wide decision to do a major rebalancing of wealth.
Think of this rebalancing like the fights we’ve seen in recent years between sports leagues and their players. The owners own the teams and take the initiative to find and build lines of business. But without players there are no games and nothing to sell. So these two sides are forced to find a balance.
In the NBA, the balance is 49% of revenue to the players and 51% to the owners.
Theoretically, the NBA players could form their own league and take 100% of the revenue. But they share revenue because the owners already have customers and are working hard to find even more customers. NBA owners are pretty good at growing the business for everyone.
NBA revenue doubled over the last 15 years. By sharing revenue, players now make as much money with 49% of the league today as they would as 100% owners of the previous version of the league.
In America, the balance is between the people and the owners. Without the people, there is no country, no market, no one to do work and no business. The owners role is fund progress.
In the current balance invention is owned by the wealthy and they take 90% of the wealth. The rest of the country, 99 out of 100 people, share the remaining 10% of our wealth.
So, imagine this second world has a massive rebalancing. For the purpose of imagination, lets say wealth is rebalanced to be 50/50.
That rebalancing still leaves plenty of wealth to incentivize owners and to incentivize people who want to become owners.
And it also vastly changes the fortune of everyday people.
In this world, universal basic income is $55,000.
On top of that, the government gets involved in basic services. Through direct work and through incentives, robots begin providing basics for living.
Robots grow our food and deliver it. Every American eats healthy for free. And their basic income lets them eat a large dose of unhealthy too.
Robots get in the business of building shelter, wiring, plumbing, and road building. Every American is entitled to a home. And through the internet has unlimited, free entertainment.
In short, every American now has three things: basic needs covered, a small amount of means, and a large degree of free time.
What this second world doesn’t have yet is purpose.
In the first world, people were being forced to make tough, scary decisions. They lost their job and had to go into retraining for a new career, and often leave their homes, just in order to make ends meet.
In Maslow’s Hierarchy, these are people driven to fulfill physical and safety needs. They’re operating in a state of fear.
However, motivation doesn’t disappear in the second world of universal American wealth. It just moves up the hierarchy.
Now people are driven by love. A high basic income is probably the best thing that could ever happen to dating sites. There will be lots of time for dating.
But people also want so much more than that. That’s where people’s drive for purpose creates the potential for a renaissance.
Every person will have the time and means to create and serve according to their own personality.
What do you think that leads to? Art. Music. Beautiful buildings. Incredible online worlds. Insanely competitive club sports. Different forms of entrepreneurship.
This question of “What would an American Renaissance look like?” is so important because we’re not guaranteed to have it.
It’s just as likely, if not more so, that the country falls prey to fear and greed. In that world, a handful of people steal all the wealth for themselves.
But before they do that, I want to paint a picture of what they’re stealing. And so, I pose it to you as a question:
What would you do in this second world with housing, food and a $55,000 income?
I’ll answer separately in a response to this post. I’ll also post some of the HAMR concerns — there’s a lot of back-of-the-envelope math in this post and I wonder what the real math looks like.
Last, if you spent the entire post wondering why this is an American concern — good for you. These decisions are made country by country. But there’s no clear reason for America to lead other than that I live here and want it to.
