LAST week, I was listening to a short debate regarding the topic of tech and deindustrialization. The debate was part of a much longer interview featuring geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan, by the Ark-Invest podcast, an investment management company.
One side argued that technology will be able to sustain industrial and economic output, despite the existence of an energy crisis, a food crisis, semi-conductor problems and the possibility of different regional wars. The other side of the debate, Peter Zeihan, believed otherwise. I want to comment on this topic because it has been popping up almost everywhere I look.
The world is in a state of crisis, and with it, comes the very real threat of deindustrialization, that is reverting to less advanced technology and infrastructure. If you don’t think this is possible, just look at the price of oil at the pump. Look at the cost of smart devices and computers. If this continues, past a certain point, it would force certain parts of society to revert back to a level only sustainable by autarky. People who follow and love tech believe that sufficient application of technology can prevent this.
Now, I enjoy tech. I even invest in tech. But I also know its limitations. What technology does is that it reduces the required input and expands output. The motor engine, for example, allows people to travel long distances, but it can’t do anything without fossil fuels. The engine makes travel efficient, but at the end of the day, it still requires a certain level of sustenance.
The pro-high tech crowd believe that Green Energy, Artificial Intelligence, Electric Vehicles, Algorithmic Processes and other will be enough by transitioning global supply chains from non-sustainable model to sustainable one.
My answer to that is that those changes will be localized, assuming they do work. Not every country or region in the world will be able to sustain the necessary tech infrastructure – whether because of politics, corruption, conflict or a combination of them all. Secondly, tech that has been developed in the past few decades has been brittle, dependent on several different parts. If one of those parts goes down… Well, we have seen examples of that recently.
Finally, I would also add that all tech, despite its improvements, still require human input. I don’t think we will ever reach a point, where we will have a self-sustaining AI society. And in that sense human problems will remain human. We can’t rely on algorithms to fix them for us./PN
