In the past year, two short stories have come to Ron and Ed's attention that provide some economic insights: Somerset Maugham's The Verger and Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. In The Verger, a church employee is fired even though he does his "work quite satisfactorily." Bergeron is a cautionary tale of the notion of equity - equality of outcome.
For those who would love to do read these short, short stories before catching up on the show, links can be found here:
Here are the show notes:
“The Young-Adult Appeal of Kurt Vonnegut”, Kyle Smith, National Review, November 23, 2021 - https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/the-young-adult-appeal-of-kurt-vonnegut/
“Kurt Vonnegut - Unstuck In Time” is a new documentary on Vonnegut. Here is the link: https://vonnegutdocumentary.com/
We have some seriously GREAT sponsors on The Soul of Enterprise and wanted to say thank you! So….THANK YOU to Fyle, next generation expense management software. You can find them at https://www.fylehq.com/ and @FyleHQ
“The damage done in pursuit of equality surpasses the damage done by inequality, by orders of magnitude.” —Ron Baker
“The envy of excellence leads to perdition; the love of it leads to the light.” —George Gilder
Our second story on today’s show was written by William Somerset Maugham. Here is a link to his background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham
Here is another seriously great sponsor! 90 Minds sponsors our Patreon page at Patreon.com/TSOE where you can find bonus and commercial free episodes. 90 Minds is a community for ERP consultants and resellers. If you need a mind, you can find one 90Minds.com or @90Minds
“Capitalism offers nothing but frustrations and rebuffs to those who wish - because of claimed superiority of intelligence, birth, credentials, or ideals - to get without giving, to take without risking, to profit without sacrifice, to be exalted without humbling themselves to understand others and meet their needs.” —George Gilder
“At the heart of capitalism is the unification of knowledge and power.” —George Gilder
“Nothing is more deadly to achievement than the belief that effort will not be rewarded, that the world is a bleak and discriminatory place in which only the predatory and the specially preferred can get ahead.” —George Gilder
“In every age everybody knows that up to his own time, progressive improvement has been taking place; nobody seems to reckon on any improvement in the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who say society has reached a turning point—that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason…. On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” —Thomas Babington Macaulay
We also answer a listener email during the show from Askel:
Ron & Ed,
Love the podcast. Possible free rider topic re: AI stealing jobs
I hear a lot of people talk about how AI will take away jobs, and you guys even broached the topic briefly on the podcast 6 years ago. I don't understand this line of thinking. When the industrial revolution happened and multiple technologies replaced human labor (think agriculture) with machines, it wasn't like the 80% of the human labor force previously devoted to agriculture just sat on their bums and never worked again.
Instead, the technological innovations freed humanity up to pursue work that was far more productive than before due to leverage. Think of construction - 50 men digging with shovels can be replaced by one man piloting an excavator while accomplishing more in a fraction of the time. One man driving a combine to harvest a field can replace hundreds of laborers. So why are so many people still saying that when AI replaces truck and taxi drivers, or personal assistants, or bookkeepers, or ______, that there will be this large swath of humanity that just has nothing to do?
I, for one, welcome our future robotic AI overlords. I don't know what the jobs will look like in 50 years, but I would bet money that they leverage machines, AI, and other advances so that one human can produce and create far more than was possible today, and seemed unfathomable 50 years ago.
Keep up the great work guys, please feel free to chop this up into something usable if you address it on the show. Would love to hear both of your thoughts on this topic as well!
Thank you,
Aksel
