Where is the Progress?

Ted Gioia says that tech is flourishing, but humans are not

[Reminder. Join Brian Doherty and me at 1 PM NY time tomorrow. All welcome. We will be discussing the Jennifer Burns biography of Milton Friedman. You must register first.]

Ted Gioia writes,

The discourse on progress is controlled by technocrats, politicians and economists. But in the current moment, they are the wrong people to decide which metrics drive quality of life and human flourishing.

He argues that life has gotten worse either in spite of or because of technological progress. I plead guilty to thinking about progress like an economist.

It is very rare for economic progress to be “pure,” creating only gains with no losses. Instead, progress consists of what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. There are always some people who lament what gets destroyed. There are people who lament the fact that very few of us learn how to milk a cow. Gioia laments the replacement of the old-fashioned turntable and vinyl records by MP3s.

Creative destruction responds to other people’s tastes that you may not like. If Ted Gioia doesn’t like the way other people find MP3s a convenient way to listen to music, let him try jogging with a turntable.

Gioia says that his mother grows food according to “the farming standards of the Middle Ages.” I’ll bet $1000 that she does not actually do that. She must use at least some tools that were not available 700 years go.

And what if we did go back to farming as we did in the Middle Ages? A lot more of us would be farming, because productivity would be far lower. And we would not be thrilled with our diet. We can thank modern preservative and packaging techniques for allowing us to enjoy food out of season, regardless of local droughts or insect infestations, and that will not grow in our local climate.

Gioia complains that for all our investment in medical technology, lifespan is going down. But average lifespan is affected by people dying young, from homicide, auto accidents, and substance abuse.

Suppose you have five people who would have lived to age 80 if nothing in society had changed. Now suppose that four of them live to age 90 because of better medical care and public health measures, and one of them dies at 40 from a drug overdose. This gives the same average lifespan of 80 years, in spite of the improvement in medical care and public health measures.

Something like this apparently has occurred. In 1970, there were 0.4 million people over the age of 90 in the United States. As of 2020, this figure was 2.8 million. That increase in people living to age 90 has been offset by adverse trends among younger people.

The ultimate test of whether there has been progress is to ask the question of whether you would be willing to live in some earlier time. If you go back 50 years in terms of health care, you can certainly save a lot of money. But you probably would not make that choice.

(Imagine creating a health insurance policy that only covers the medical procedures that were available in 1970. My bet is that such a policy would be very cheap today. If I am correct, that might imply that complaints about how health care has gotten “expensive” need to be softened.)

A few years ago, I needed a root canal. I can remember when “root canal” was a metaphor for torture. “It was like having root canal,” people used to write. For me, it was painless.

People generally have the option of rejecting new technology. You do not have to use a smart phone. You do not have to patronize “fast casual” dining. You can stay away from “ultra-processed food.” (“Ultra-processed” seems to be a hipster epithet, like “ultra-MAGA.”) As you reach my age, you can choose not to get a knee replacement or a colonoscopy to screen for colon cancer.

Economists say that your embrace of contemporary technology reflects “revealed preference.” You must get satisfaction out of it, or you would not be using it.

What Gioia is questioning is people’s taste. He thinks that if people had better taste, then they would reject the latest technology, and they would be better off for it.

He could be right. It could be that we are tricked by corporations into believing that their technology is good for us. Gioia is hardly the only public intellectual who argues that it is addictive and harmful—Jonathan Haidt has been insistent on this concerning young people and smart phones. Echoing Haidt, Gioia writes,

What does it tell us about progress if the most influential technological innovation of the century is clearly destroying lives on a massive scale?

This is a strong claim. Has Gioia been convinced to throw away his smart phone? Or is “Smart phone for me, but not for thee” what he really would like to see?

It seems to always be tempting to take the benefits of something for granted and instead to denounce it for its faults. The market has many flaws, but if you think you know better how to run the economy, you will find that you have taken its benefits for granted. Government has many flaws, but if you look at Haiti, you will find that you have taken the benefits of government for granted. And contemporary technology has many flaws, but if you think that there has not been progress, chances are that you have taken the benefits for granted.

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