(Audio version) The Case Against Naive Technocapitalist Optimism
the case against naive technocapitalist optimism though technological progress provides industrialized nations with near universal increases in standard of living it also brings side effects such as labor shortages increasing wealth inequality and artificial scarcity a central premise of technocapitalism is that technological innovation is the fundamental driver of history adherents of this ideology believe consciously or not that it is technology that determines the shape of social life and the fate of civilizations rather than the actions of individual humans coordinated groups cultural trends or structural forces furthermore they believe that technological innovation is necessarily created by private enterprise and in particular through the institution of the startup funded by private venture capital funds this worldview has found no greater proponent in recent years than the investor mark andreessen who for example read an essay crediting the technology industry with saving the world during the covet 19 pandemic going so far as to predict that the introduction of remote work through zoom slack and other apps was a permanent civilizational shift this ideology is unsurprisingly most common among those who work in the technology and venture capital industries particularly in silicon valley but also in secondary tech hubs like seattle or austin to explain their beliefs techno capitalists will often point to moore's law which states that the number of transistors on a microchip should double every two years this idea is often generalized to mean that technological advancement occurs at an exponential rate with accompanying exponential decreases in costs many commercial technologies have indeed followed this pattern of improvement but techno-capitalists extrapolate this process of exponential technology-driven progress further to encompass all parts of society not just technological progress this view does not fully capture the complex and highly evolved relationship between technology society and economics in the wake of the industrial revolution the increasing complexity driven by globalization bureaucracy and automation has given rise to an economic system in which theories such as moore's law no longer scale though technological progress provides industrialized nations with near universal increases in standards of living it also brings side effects such as labor shortages increasing wealth inequality and artificial scarcity global wealth is increasingly concentrated with one percent of the world's population controlling approximately 46 of all wealth this wealth gap persists both despite and because of technological progress economic surplus driven by increased technological capabilities concentrates wealth at the top rungs of society this is because owners of large fortunes and creators of intellectual property reap the largest financial returns even as new technology increases standards of living yet many technologies can be radical social equalizers despite their effect on wealth concentration due to their accessibility and wide adoption a study of 120 countries between 1980 and 2006 found that a 10 increase in access to broadband could increase gdp by up to 1.3 percent and these technologies are ever easier to employ and distribute similarly it is possible that technological solutions could mitigate catastrophic risks such as climate change which would have a profound impact upon future global standards of living technocapitalists believe that innovative technology can be used to bypass restrictive socioeconomic conditions in this view intellectual property in the form of patents or inventions is the backbone of social progress intellectual property is commoditized and distributed via corporations but in a manner that appears to upend the stakeholders first corporate ethos technocapitalism is the innovation economy the ecosystem of entrepreneurial organizations startup accelerators and grant funders all of which provide the infrastructure for quasi-utopian social hacking experiments in response to global crises the techno-capitalist economy acts as a benevolent experimental force generating solutions from corporate money but often taking revenue from traditional corporate stakeholders such as department stores and newspapers because the driving force of wealth and progress as a matter of information and social systems rather than physical infrastructure and material goods as seen most clearly in platform companies like uber or airbnb many otherwise intractable problems are overlooked despite these pro-social aims techno-capitalism is potentially too tied to the capitalist model to fully deliver on them throughout history free market capitalism has led to the social issues that technocapitalism now seeks to address technocapitalist interventions may prove little different allowing corporations to participate in a superficial charade of social change rather than addressing the root problems though technology is a powerful equalizing force if money is involved someone always stands to profit exactly who in this case is a matter of debate to understand the economic landscape that made technocapitalism possible it is important to begin with the historical movements that gave rise to capitalism in the first place the enlightenment of 18th century europe was the critical period in which the power of capital began to take hold prior to this point the west was largely agrarian with estates sustained by the labor of the surf class the enlightenment brought about a redefinition of societal power structures during this period figures such as rousseau and locke invented social contract theory which stated that individuals freely consent to organize into states voluntarily sacrificing certain rights in exchange for the protection of others under the law and ultimately the persistence of the social order at the same time the emergence of mercantilism the economic policy of maximizing a nation's exports while minimizing imports began to increase global connections tying the social order and its products directly to national power ocean voyages for the purpose of trade increased and international commerce agreements were established by the growing merchant classes though the mercantilist era is often described as the age of discovery it would be more accurate to describe it as the age of trade this trade was often the first step on the path to conquest and colonial subjugation this trade was often the first step on the path to conquest and colonial subjugation in a profound change from agrarian economies the primary source of value under mercantilism was not basic subsistence but production instead of economies centered on farming mercantile commerce generated value by serving as an intermediary with natural resources processed and refined for export in for-profit enterprises by maximizing exports and minimizing imports a state could reduce its deficits via tariffs and in the process promote colonial expansion and enforce imperial hegemony mercantilism success was a protectionist doctrine based upon a large employed population that contributed to the nation's system of trade as participation in labor was tied directly to the persistence of the state under mercantilism the foundations for capitalist ideologies began to form competition was the driving force of a mercantilist economy with governments safeguarding proprietary tools and equipment against export using their role as the sole possessors or producers of these goods as a means of capital exclusivity the foremost aim of trade during this period was the accumulation of gold and silver as there could only be a fixed amount in circulation the movement of valuable resources through global economies was almost a direct stand-in for conquest a country drained of value was unlikely to wage war whereas a country flush with it could ensure its own supremacy the total wealth of the world was considered stable it could only be tugged in various directions by enterprising states the work of adam smith was central to the establishment of the era of free trade in the wealth of nations smith refuted the idea that a nation's security was tied directly to the size of its treasury and that total extant wealth was fixed instead smith argued that free trade benefited all parties more than the hoarding of resources and that protectionist policies should decrease in developed economies complex systems of manufacturing and commerce introduced interdependency to the market distributing ownership and allowing for greater efficiency these changes led to the interconnectedness of global supply chains today as demonstrated by current international reliance on china and india for raw materials processing the movement of wealth under this system is varied with inequality decreasing in certain parts of society and increasing in others participation in sequential industrial production increases wealth among poorer countries though this process does not necessarily determine the distribution of wealth between richer countries in this manner the advancement of industry determines where wealth is concentrated smith urged the decoupling of government and industry to facilitate this process of wealth distribution the free market described by smith self-regulates when functioning properly with industries growing and shrinking based on demand a natural result of this system is that profits are concentrated amongst industries experiencing high demand but this is viewed as an expected byproduct of market efficiency the population freely chooses where to spend and this freedom of choice concentrates wealth in corresponding sectors of the economy smith did not only view this function of a free market as a demonstration of individual wills he also considered it to be demonstratively moral in nature his theory of the invisible hand posits that the individual in a capitalist system will instinctively make choices for the greater good smith believed these decisions to be a matter of divine providence but the theory still works with religious motivations removed individuals acting in their own self-interest will facilitate social benefits because everyone wants to live well and in this way the will of the individual is a reflection of the will of a society this isn't far from social contract theory in that it frames the individual as opting into a social code to improve their quality of life in balance with the rest of society this idea was extrapolated by figures such as kant and want to skew into the concept of ducomas or capitalist peace which stipulates that as commerce becomes the dominant philosophy of developed nations war becomes undesirable or simply unprofitable further development of this theory holds that economically inter-reliant states are unwilling to court conflict at the risk of alienating foreign investors as stephen pinker observes when it's cheaper to buy things than to steal them people don't steal them also if other people are more valuable to you alive than dead you're less likely to kill them you don't kill your customers or your lenders so the arrival of the infrastructure of trade and commerce reduces some of the sheer exploitive incentives of conquest later in his career smith introduced the idea that the value of goods was not fixed but rather was determined at the time of sale products were exchanged for more than they had previously been worth due to the value of procuring transporting and retailing them as a result smith distinguishes between the value of productive labor or material goods and unproductive labor services with regard to national economic growth productive labor increases net societal wealth whereas unproductive labor does not here smith touches on a concept we will revisit the market for intangibles the accumulation of excess capital can enable a shift from the production of goods to service industries this is because services are not effective for rapid capital accumulation but can generate additional value from capital created by goods production in times of prosperity this theory held throughout the industrial revolution which was enabled by technological progress in automation the industrial revolution expanded the role of private industrialists as the primary architects of economic growth and concentration surplus became a widely achievable effective industry and increased mechanization led to finer divisions of wage labor and an expansion of the working and middle classes protectionist economic policies were mostly abandoned in favor of globalization as the value of exchanging goods and services began to outweigh the value of their use capital in this period was worth more than labor which led to an increase in the per capita wealth and a corresponding reduction in wages where wealth increasingly concentrated in the upper classes this wealth gap persists today despite a temporary amelioration between the 1940s through the 1970s industrialized countries now lead in economic inequality the effects of the industrial revolution can be viewed from both optimistic and pessimistic perspectives one side argues that increased access to wages in the lower classes raise standards of living by allowing for increased market participation and self-determination the other side argues that increased access to wages lowered standards of living by making the livelihoods of ordinary people dependent on market dynamics far beyond their control admittedly there have been very few times in history in which some level of economic stratification did not exist it is a natural second order effect in economies in which demand exists at all yet the rise of surplus capital made wealth increase for the upper classes much faster than it did for the lower classes and stay that way itinerant generalist labors did not have many options for social mobility though the suffusion of wages into general society did more to distribute wealth than the generational inheritance of property the benefit for the lower classes was increased mobility within their limited economic bracket the atomizing force of the free market which used individuals rather than families or other social groupings as its basic unit of account also reduced socioeconomic security by replacing careers passed down generation to generation with employment dependent on market demand the employment data is scant for this period it has been noted that even among older workers employment tenure drops during periods of high industrialization of course the free market was never fully uncontrolled though relatively low taxation and enforcement helped england industrialize quickly this did not happen because of the power of unfettered supply and demand it was planned the banking act of 1826 restricted banks from issuing their own banknotes and encouraged the formation of joint stock companies additional law making expanded these companies ability to acquire limited liability this all served to increase access to capital giving nascent industries a boost by contrast after the great depression england left the gold standard and decreased the value of the british pound forcing an economic stimulus by increasing domestic demand and putting more money into circulation in more recent decades monetarism has been used to control the supply of money in circulation to stabilize the economy monetarism is the function by which the economy is now bailed out after periods of recession though such an artificial condition is subject to diminishing returns unless permanent reforms are instituted this is one of the factors that smith's invisible hand fails to recognize it does not account for the externalities of monetary policy governance steps in to course correct the economy after periods of crisis rarely does the economy course correct itself this is close to the rebuttal of the invisible hand popularized by economist joseph stiglitz who argued that some regulation is necessary for the market to function otherwise it would be overrun by side effects such as runaway environmental pollution stagnant research environments or issues of the intellectual property the market innovates around the restrictions of the government and the government enables the market to avoid damaging externalities reciprocity is needed for either to function sustainably in adam smith's conception the free market is a liberating force for society this liberal view holds that the more choice people have in the market the more they are naturally empowered to do good for the world yet free market capitalism has inequalities built into it as a matter of routine free trade may allow consumers an unprecedented level of access to consumer goods and the income needed to purchase them but simultaneously restricts access to the surplus capital that is generated in this way the benefits of free market capitalism are heavily subjective technocapitalism is comparable to the theories of early liberal economics at the core of its ideology is a similar belief that the machinery of wealth that is the technological innovation spurred by private enterprise is what drives social progress the silicon valley entrepreneurial class first began to believe in technology's potential to catalyze social change in the 1990s having witnessed early online communities bring people together in novel ways this new techno-optimism held that a knowledge-based technology-driven economy could oust the capitalist mode of production instead it was thought that the course of progress would promote a stateless collaborative counterculture similar to that of the 1960s but with a sense of the possibility of the transcendence of humans from the merely physical world to a higher state enabled by advanced technology this new line of thinking was perhaps best exemplified by the cyber activist john perribero's 1996 declaration of the independence of cyberspace in which among other things he declared that we will create a civilization of the mind in cyberspace in this experimentalist economy creativity would replace commodities and would be distributed through online networks to consumers in this way innovative information rather than surplus could drive improvements in living standards this ideology is exemplified by then contemporary media such as wired magazine or the anti-consumerist ad busters which also drew on the work of canadian philosopher marshall mcluhan emphasizing aesthetic and cultural critiques of pop culture as a means of escaping from the capitalist mindset this social movement is often categorized as a libertarian one but it is ideologically distinct from the more culturally conservative tendency of the tea party movement and other right-wing subgroups that emerged during the 2000s a critique of this dot-com neo-liberalism by andy cameron and richard barbrook titled the californian ideology suggests that the movement is simply technological determinism and cannot be considered radical at all since it originated with the technology industries elite such as netscapes marc andreessen or microsoft's bill gates and was dependent on their for-profit technology it could only serve to maintain the class rigidity of capitalism in effect these early stages of technocapitalism strengthened the privileged positions of its proponents ultimately upholding western capitalist hegemony cameron and barbrook go so far as to say that silicon valley technological optimism is a form of reactionary modernism similar to that of nazi germany with its rejection of liberal democratic values in favor of futurist social engineering there is a contradictory nature to this claim in that silicon valley's ideology is closely aligned with enlightenment conceptions of economics particularly those of adam smith both have in common an emphasis on the self-determination of the individual through market participation as well as the idea that the system can regulate itself into producing social progress by the very nature of its existence in this way 1990s technological optimism embraces contrasting left and right wing ideas about the nature of progress it needed capitalism's mass-market distribution of products to enable the flow of information yet it found the same flow of information to be a usefully disruptive force with the potential power to circumvent the woes of capitalist society this conflict is still apparent in technocapitalism today these intangibles include intellectual property such as software products or access to proprietary platforms like amazon marketplace or app stores technocapitalist products may be defined typically as disruptive innovations in the words of clayton christensen they are ideas that begin as inferior alternatives to existing offerings and enter play either at the foot of the market or in a new market altogether the underlying technology is significant because it can provide cost-effective novel competition to ideas that are already in production research-intensive industries such as computing and biotechnology are at the forefront of these efforts with public funding for scientific research on a steady decline since the latter half of the 20th century private funding is increasingly needed for viability in this environment research must consistently prove its value to its funder in order to persist a well-known example of this extrapolated from data gathered in the 1990s is that over 75 percent of all medical research is privately funded as a result rare disease research relies disproportionately on private funding this effect is mirrored in other fields and has increased in proportion between 2012 and 2016 academic industry collaborations more than doubled globally the pharmaceutical industry is notoriously fickle about what constitutes marketability and is therefore likely to pass over areas of research that are not clearly profitable private funding can offer flexibility by bypassing public bureaucracy and technocapitalist campaigns often emerge as efforts to reduce red tape for example when the gates foundation began funding research into experimental pandemic response efforts their proposed solution until approximately 2015 was for a nato-like organization to handle public health policy and they worked extensively with the who and the gavi vaccine alliance a public private enterprise however the who's sluggish ebola response between 2014 and 2016 prompted the gates foundation in 2017 to provide backing for sepi a vaccine research accelerator and in 2020 the gate foundation's coveted response efforts largely bypassed intergovernmental organizations instead utilizing direct private funding to pivot existing research initiatives into covid testing trials these redirections of private research provided data that outstripped the who by a critical few months before the fda halted the program due to regulatory approval issues a cause for concern however is that private funding has private goals and that this may impact trustworthiness of private research objective empiricism is questionable when it is connected to corporate objectives and this has the potential to reduce public trust in the research process privately funded studies are demonstratively more likely to reach conclusions that favor sponsors interests one analysis of medical industry funding found that privately funded research is four times more likely to provide a favorable assessment of a drug than publicly funded research it also appears that the public is generally speaking in on the plot a meta-analysis of pharmaceutical trials suggesting that trials with disclosed financial ties to industry are perceived as less interesting important relevant valid and believable than those without financial disclosures though a consistent quantitative effect is difficult to document due to a limited sample size a significant portion of patients and clinicians may feel that disclosed financial ties reduce research quality and can discourage patients from participating notably corporations themselves are also experiencing a reduction in internal science funding the proportion of corporate funding allocated toward the research side of industrial r d dropped from 28 in 1985 to 20 in 2015. the same review of scientific publications found that the rate of papers being published by corporations dropped significantly between 1980 and 2010 indicating that it is most cost effective for companies to rely on existing data as opposed to producing new data this is because market pressures favor applied research in the interest of green lighting products not higher risk investments in foundational science that are likely to pay off at a later date in the interest of budget conservation research may be dropped patents increase the value of innovations and in turn stimulate continued r d in the interest of inventing around or around existing innovations as a result there is a disproportionate focus on development rather than research as the most profitable approach for a corporation if both the public and traditional private sectors are experiencing funding squeezes the techno capitalist investment sector should be a great source of support for the technological and scientific communities however the techno-capitalist disruptor efforts are subject to the same issues choking the industry funding they favor low-risk research with high payoffs research that requires a 15-year timeline to produce tangible effects is passed over in favor of disruptive options these initiatives can have limited shelf lives due to regulatory issues or poor adoption rates optics remain an issue for the techno capitalist sector private organizations with enough disposable income to fund grants are backed by the exceedingly wealthy and as a result these organizations will almost always function in the interest of self-preservation those who have accrued excess capital typically make efforts to maintain it the gates foundation the most robust organization in this field has a history of furnishing other major corporations with unneeded charitable donations in the interest of obtaining favorable alliances with regard to public policy some of the most highly documented technocapitalist projects have little to no use value elon musk's boring company's reworked subway system beneath los angeles turned out to be a tunnel for tesla vehicles jeff bezos's earth fund spent between 300 and 400 million dollars of its 10 billion dollars total to name an nhl stadium after itself singularity university ray kurzweil and peter diamandis's unaccredited innovation hub exists mostly as an advocacy group both richard branson and jeff bezos recently spent fortunes launching themselves into space for a few minutes the balance of public relations and institutional respectability is delicate it could be argued that techno-capitalist projects have inherent value if only because they increase public interest in the sciences at the center of this argument is an ethical issue does the effect of private institutions reducing trust and data mean their contributions to their fields are morally suspect or should they persist because they draw new interest to those fields in a way that may be more effective than traditional institutions left unchecked the commercialization of the sciences may reduce the overall quality of work available to the public academic researchers who receive private funding are more likely to select projects that have a high potential for commercial use despite an increased association with publication delays and confidentiality restrictions since a larger portion of this work will remain proprietary this framework essentially withholds information from academic peers cheapening the epistemic value of scientific research by raising its exchange value a potential option then is that perhaps techno-capitalism shouldn't remain unchecked the u.s congress has held hearings on
limiting tech companies in various ways increasingly public funding apparatuses are taking note of the efficacy of the technocapitalist funding model and are incorporating their structures the eu's horizon europe program is split into high-value missions to prompt research in a manner that bears similarities to the gate foundation's grand challenges framework the us government has its own startup competition the incorporation of private funding into public distribution methods for example through the formation of public-private enterprises could create environments for innovation that are less susceptible to corporate priorities it is worth keeping in mind that this has notable downsides with one of its sole benefits being a bureaucratic structure that is familiar to venture capitalists and civil servants alike a mixed funding model may ultimately be subject to the same biases and ambiguities as private funding this conflict is already evident in the function of certain government agencies the fda is a prime example a portion of the fda's review budget is furnished by the pharmaceuticals industry nfda scientists have self-reported that the agency's regulatory processes appear vulnerable to industry pressures despite increased transparency efforts this points to inter-agency mistrust about which standards should be enforced and which definitions of integrity are considered most valid yet unless the dwindling availability of research funding resolves over the next few decades there appears to be little room for options other than pooling public and private resources further clarity on the ownership of research outputs would be necessary for this system to be at all functional in the end the goal for society should be to preserve the use value of science and technology instead of turning them into tradable commodities the unfortunate reality is that most capital has strings attached a funding dependent epistemic sphere free of market forces may be untenable without fundamental changes to our current economic system under our current model of public and private power this goal may be an impossibility the best we can do as technologists financiers policy makers and above all citizens is to find ways to pursue innovation in an experimental and flexible manner with a conscious focus on improving society as a whole without a spirit of collaboration we may be limited by ideologies like technocapitalism which promises inevitable progress and epistemic certainty while concentrating economic power debasing public discourse and failing to live up to its grand ideals
2021-11-08 03:29
