Rhyme, not Repeat

Capitalism, in combination of industrialism, led to more and more inequality. Eventually, as Anirudh Suri reminds us in The Great Tech Game, that inequality led to a backlash and to the rise of Marxism and communism. And then communism lost favour, with the fall of the USSR.

 

Today, we seem to be on the cusp of history repeating itself. Well, not repeating. Rather, as Mark Twain famously said:

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”

 

Suri elaborates. The tech companies of today have become unimaginably rich, with the likes of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook becoming trillion-dollar companies (not a typo, that’s “trillion” with a “t”). At the same time, these companies don’t generate employment on the same scale as manufacturing behemoths of the past. They do more with far, far fewer employees. Which is why Suri worries:

“As technology and capitalism combine to create some of the same structural inequalities and class conflicts, new socio-political movements might evolve over the next few years or decades. We must not forget the lessons from the rise of the industrial era-derived movements.”

 

Even worse, as tech companies automate and bring more and more services online, they wipe out many existing jobs. Online retail. AI that can generate art. Self-driven cars. Tax filing at your fingertips. You get the idea.

“If technology and capital make labour more productive, that will be a good outcome for all. But if technology ends up replacing labour as a factor of production, then countries or groups within countries that are rich in labour will fight back.”

 

All of which is why Suri hopes the leadership of countries remembers and learns from the past – last time around, excessive inequality led to the rise of communism and fascism, and eventually war… will nations take the necessary measures wrt tech before things spiral out of control?

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