American democracy operates by the Golden Rule.
He who has the money makes the rules.
Every so often my old Rice University history degree kicks in. It forces me to remind myself of that fact. I have written about history here, off and on, since 2006. Being a mere B.A., I’ve gotten things wrong. I have engaged in wishful thinking and missed what drives political change.
The essence of the story is right. Each generation is dominated by an industry, which takes and then seizes power until another industry rises to take its place. Jefferson took power in the name of the “yeoman farmer,” Lincoln on behalf of northern industry. Franklin Roosevelt made us the arsenal of democracy. Barack Obama stood for technology.
But at some point, each industry given power decides it must seize power, and in doing so becomes the tyrant it came into power to protect us from. Jefferson’s farmers evolved into the southern slave power. Lincoln’s industry became Wall Street. FDR’s manufacturers became the Bush’ wars for oil.
That’s what has happened to technology. AI’s need for capital has corrupted the industry. Musk, Thiel, and their fellow oligarchs will now use the power of government on behalf of themselves.
It takes a weak man to give the people’s power to a bunch of whiny plutocrats. The Democratic Presidents after Andrew Jackson were very weak. Warren Harding was extremely weak. Trump may be the weakest of them all. These horrible Presidents set horrible precedents, and historians later wonder how they came to power in the first place.
The answer is simple. Follow the money.
Wars to Come
When an industry seizes power for its own pleasures, local observers often see no alternative to it, save war. That happened in the 1860s. Usually, it sets up decades of political struggle between the industry’s government and reformers, who eventually seek the help of a new industry to end that struggle “once and for all.”
The struggle is accompanied by violence and war. The slave power sought the Mexican War. Industrialists sought the Spanish-American war. Manufacturers liked the Vietnam War, and oilmen fought in the Middle East for decades. In every case later generations found those wars to have been useless, imperialist, and shameful.
Musk’s first act behind Trump is a tariff war. It’s insanely stupid and will redound against the economic forces it’s meant to protect. Tariffs are naturally reciprocal. You tax my exports, so I tax yours. No one exports, no one trades, and economic collapse inevitably follows.
Hiding economic policy failure usually results in domestic repression. Slaveowners murdered northern abolitionists. Labor wars drove the progressive era. The foreign wars of the 20th century are seared into our consciousness, as is the struggle against them.
American wars are created by industrialists but continue due to their religious element. We fight others, and ourselves, over our Christian faith. For 250 years, American missionaries have been the avatars of American imperialism. Religious leaders have also imposed our domestic hypocrisies on the rest of us.
This sort of thing will be roiling the world until long after I die.
What Comes Next?
I can’t leave my study of history without a prediction. I have spent my life looking around corners, and I’m not going to stop that now.
The industry that supplants computer technology will be biotechnology. It’s the industry my son is engaged in, currently as a Ph.D student. It holds the promise of eternal life, and that’s a big enough promise for any industry.
Biotech is going to use AI technology to make enormous leaps in the coming decade. We are going to see so many great discoveries it will be impossible for medical companies to hold their price points. We’re seeing this around the world, because the world outside America is not a protected medical market. We subsidize global healthcare, paying twice as much of our GDP to maintain our lives as other countries do, while dying faster than people in the other democracies.
If I were a young business reporter, this is where I would be focusing.
