Founder of LoCo Think Tank

Greetings to the LoCommunity! - I hope you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  

Jill Bear and I travelled down to the Hartsel area, along with Julian, our new-ish exchange student from Germany, and celebrated a 50th birthday party with about a dozen other friends.  We played a lot of Molkky, had an all-day cornhole tournament, threw the football around and played a lot of euchre - oh, and ate a lot of great food and drank too much beer - America!

I took my computer down, and I was supposed to write my blog over the weekend, but here I am on Tuesday morning, up bright and early, writing it instead. But I did do some research because I was curious about the roots of this great American holiday that is the unofficial end of summer. And I was a little bit surprised by what I found - in a way, this holiday was created to fend off the commies emerging in the late 19th century - in America and across the world.  

This creates an interesting intersection for me because the roots of communism harken back to the tension between capital and labor. The owners of the means of production, the farmland and the factories, versus the labor inputs necessary to do the work and make profit - the higher the wages, the lower the profit. But now, with the rise of AI, and robots that can do everything from welding on cars in a factory to (soon) doing advanced open heart surgery, thinking and labor are both attainable with capital. So this begs the question for me, will we still celebrate Labor Day when robots do all the work? 

We had four teenagers in camp with us, all between the ages of 15 and 17, and I wondered (even over the weekend, if I were them or their parents) what line of education I would encourage them to pursue. Almost nothing seems safe. 

There's definitely a movement in America to encourage more blue-collar-type work (HVAC, plumbing, roofers, and similar things), because it is assumed that it will take longer for the robots to make the field in those areas. 

The areas of study that used to be pathways to high-income-earning jobs, however, seem to be among the most endangered. Doctors and lawyers need to study so long because there is so much to learn about the human body, or the field of law. However, one well-trained AI can understand virtually all of the case law in history, and know more about the human body than a doctor that has practiced for 50 years. Kinda.

Where the AI has a big gap is that it does not have a body! Embodiment seems to enhance understanding in a way that these large language models, held together only by electricity and silicon chips, fail to grasp. Which is why robots are so intriguing, especially robots in the general shape of humans. They might not be able to tell you that their tummy hurts, but even having spatial understanding, walking on legs, and being out interacting in society is sure to enhance their understanding in a way that we haven't seen yet with language models alone.

According to this article by IBM, It is estimated that as much as 30% of current human activities will be automated by 2030, so if companies don't find new things for those workers to do, there's sure to be layoffs in great magnitude. In past technological revolutions, job losses created by new technologies were typically offset by job gains provided by access to those technologies. 

But if those new jobs are filled by AI agents and robots, what will those unemployed people do?

Overall, the IBM article was reflective and not terribly pessimistic, the enhancement of human productivity and the opportunity for companies to find new and innovative roles for individuals could prove to be a net gain for humanity over time.

It's also easy to find much more pessimistic articles, such as this one from Christianity Today. They warn of not just the displacement of income from workers, but also the displacement of purpose from not having work to do. 

The Pope’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitis, takes on this question with much more depth than I can in this essay - it’s long but worth a read.  

But let's get back to the history of Labor Day, since I teased you with that earlier.

The history of Labor Day in America goes back to New York City in the spring of 1882. There's actually a pair of competing theories on who founded the movement.  A man named Matthew McGuire was Secretary of the Central Labor Union and a man named Peter McGuire was Vice President of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union.  Regardless of who put it together, there was a big parade with at least 10,000 participants on September 5, 1882.

However uncertain the foundations, the idea spread like fire. By 1887, Oregon was the first state to officially recognize Labor Day, and by 1894, 30 states had made it official.  In the meantime, the traditional European holiday of May 1st, or Mayday as we often call it in America, had been claimed by the socialists and communists and labor parties as International Workers' Day.  

A bloody strike and protest on May 4, 1894, known as the Haymarket Affair, was a catalyst for Labor Day becoming a federal holiday in the fall of that year, and September was chosen specifically to move away from the communistic notions of the May 1 holiday. 

There have been many solutions that have been proposed for the employment disruptions that appear to be ahead of us. One is a universal basic income that the government would pay to those unemployed workers, or to everybody, perhaps.  

Others are more optimistic, such as Elon Musk, who recently shared that the massive productivity gains provided by AI and robots will create a deflationary effect on the price of goods and services. There will be enough economic growth and prosperity to provide everyone with a universal high income.

That sounds nice, and though I am quite concerned about the lack of purpose for many, I know that I'm happy to spend my time camping in the woods and playing games with friends and eating good food, so for me, at least, I will continue to celebrate the long weekend at the end of summer, and hope that Elon is right yet again!

Cheers all, have a great week!