Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity

How is technology reshaping our society, and what can we do to make sure these changes are positive for more than a minority?

Simon Johnson discusses #PowerAndProgress, a new book co-authored with Daron Acemoglu.

A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.

The wealth generated by technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages was captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence undermine jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once—and may again be—brought under control. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders.

With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the vision needed to reshape how we innovate and who really gains from technological advances.

@mit @MITSloan @miteconomicsdepartment6806

[menudobucket]

The suggestion to elect different officials who think in these terms is, I think, a bit naive in that both political parties are interested only in the maintenance of the status quo. If either of them were going to entertain the possibility of a move away from the damage caused by the corporate state, it’d most assuredly be the Democrats; but after being sued for fraudulently naming Hillary Clinton as their 2016 nominee, the court sided with the party saying that they had no legal obligation to abide by their own bylaws, nor the will of the voters; so the question is: even if we found a candidate having this kind of mindset, how would we ever get them elected?

[willardchi]

If, for example, technology like artificial intelligence suddenly could do half the work of a company's employees, rather than fire half the employees, keep them at the same pay and have them work 4 hours a day instead of 8.

That is what Americans expected would happen when fifty years ago, futurists predicted that technological development would enable workers to do a day's work in a fraction of the time.

The result, everyone expected, would not be half the employees losing their jobs but instead, employees working fewer hours for the same pay.

The futurists also predicted that the big problem to solve would be how workers might find enough fun things to do with all their new time off.

And they concluded growth industry of the future would be recreation and leisure.

That was back when people had a reasonable chance of working for an employer until they retired with a pension.

And employers were too scared to fire anyone for fear consumers would boycott their products, the media would pillory them, and the very best workers would not want to work for them.

[Danny_Handford]

Regardless of which part of the world humans settled after migrating out of Africa, about 80, 000 years ago, or what type of physical features they developed (White, Black, Brown, Asian, Caucasian etc.), they have usually evolved to live and behave in ways that are extremely beneficial to some but be extremely harmful to others. I do not think any other species on this planet behaves this way.

Like all life on earth, humans have had to compete for survival. They also competed for power and for status among themselves with little or no regard for human life especially toward the more primeval or with different physical features. They have done this by conquering and invading lands and territories of their fellow humans and by killing, torturing, raping, exploiting, oppressing, lying stealing and enslaving. Competing by aggression and violence and fighting wars remains popular to this day. A lot of this aggressive bad behavior has also been used to compete in modern day governments, corporations and businesses.

Humans also organized themselves in hierarchies such as caste and class systems or political parties and even into criminal gangs and the lower on the hierarchy they are the less rights they have and the more abuse they suffer from the those above them in the hierarchy. Humans were also forced or tricked into worshiping and defending Kings and Queens and even supernatural Gods and made to believe that the bad behaviors were justified by these supreme authorities.

The way this can begin and improve peace and fairness at the same time is when our business, government and academic leaders along with our wealthiest and brightest and smartest among us and this would include people making YouTube videos can learn to be much more truthful, honest and trustworthy and learn how not to be greedy and learn how not to become corrupt and along with a majority of us can start to understand that the wellbeing and happiness of others benefits everyone and is the bases for morality.


The idea and thinking that the economy always has to grow for there to be innovation, progress and prosperity may be a problem on a finite planet with limited resources and the focus now needs to be on sustainability not on growth! Presently if the economy is not growing, it is considered a failure. This type of thinking cannot go on uninterrupted on a finite planet with finite resources. There needs to be flexibility in the system for the economy to expand and contract and for a contraction to be considered normal and not a problem or a failure. The contraction needs to be just as prosperous and productive as the expansion. For this type of thinking to work, there needs to be some new economic theories and models developed along with some new types of money and financial systems based on economic sustainability not on economic growth and money inflation. I am sure there will be some Nobel prizes awarded to the academics, economists, corporate CEO's and business leaders and of course politicians and government officials that can figure out how to make a sustainable economy work and how not to devalue the nation’s money in the process.


Progress toward peace, fairness, kindness and wellbeing for all humans has been made over the centuries but, I think for further progress to be made, humans will need to be much more truthful and honest and learn to compete for survival in much more respectful and compassionate ways and for those that like to accumulate as much wealth and power as possible learn how to be a little less greedy and a little less selfish.


I try to remain optimistic and it would be fantastic and amazing if the levels of trust and respect among humans can rise to a point where they will no longer need to commit resources to manufacture weapons that can wipe out most of the life on this planet and from there start working towards reducing and eventually stopping the manufacturing of any weapons of war.

I think the future challenges for humans on this planet is to learn and educate themselves how to live responsibly, sustainably and healthy in peaceful, fair and respectful ways and the amazing new technologies that have been developed in the last century including computers, the internet and now artificial intelligence should be able to help humans achieve these goals.

[VladBunea]

It would be great if guests were allowed to speak more than the host in these interviews.

[thomasbentele]

Found some companies with different visions
Lets have different shift in different directions and see what they can deliver...
First INET discussion i finally like.
If he ads some solutions that carefully changes what we live in,  
manly to fight and end our super corruption, without to destroy what's good
(Friedrich List, Richard Werner),
I really enjoyed it.

[tonywilson]

*TO ALL ECONOMISTS EVERYWHERE:*
Can you all please stop making claims about Automation that are NOT TRUE.
Simon Johnson makes the statement (46:04) "Now automation always replaces people."
That is NOT TRUE and NEVER HAS BEEN.

I am an engineer who works in industrial control systems and automation. In most cases automation in manufacturing DOES NOT COST JOBS it improves the productivity of people. Go look at the industrial revolution and what it did for the production of cloth and with that the availability of everything made from cloth including sails which then enabled massive amounts of goods to be transported. After that cam steam power and with it even more products became available to more people. With no doubt automation changes workplaces and at times does cost jobs, but in many of those cases those jobs either were already lost because of the economics.

Automation made many manufactured goods available to a wider percentage of the population. Most likely more than 99% of all the items in your life are due to automation. If you want to challenge that fine, so far I have won every argument anyone has ever presented. You forget that anything you buy that's made from metal, plastic or came packaged from a factory directly involved automation. After that almost everything else came indirectly via automation.

Economists find it very easy to point a finger at automation because there's NO OPPORTUNITY for engineers to push back. My throw back as an engineer to every economist is: *If economists are so clever at understanding how economies work then how come so many economies are under stress? How can there be recessions if economists know what they're doing?*

This is just one of the arguments I have with economists.

[screenarts]

I thought the idea of technology was it does take all our jobs, work is a choice. Free time for all. To get there shorter and shorter work weeks, heavy tax on ai labor to pay all humans the profit each instance of ai to put all humans on the beach if they desire the beach. Productive work would be a choice, humans could work at their dreams create. But from what I see today, with the growing numbers of homeless is they will slowly kill us off. They have no plans on letting your genetics into their future. Prove me wrong? Please

[mikeriddell]

Why doesn't the interviewer do less talking than the person being interviewed?