JOHNNY CAB CONFESSIONS: Tom Friedman Ditches Cabbies, Embraces Our Robot Overlords.
Friedman has always seen the future — this is a man who once revealed the world to be flat, but not before accurately predicting that McDonald’s would end armed conflict. And he is sounding the alarm bell once again with his newest shift: he’s moved on from cabs to the post-human future. Yes, Friedman has thrown in with the bots and declared himself a “Waymo Democrat,” adopting the name of the driverless cars that he claims are the bellwether technology of a better, more sensibly centrist future.
While respecting Friedman’s dogged adherence to the one successful rhetorical framework he has ever properly known — he will forever be the Man in the Backseat— we should be at least mildly amused and/or alarmed that he has cast his lot with our robot overlords. His answer to the question “How do we get more Americans making stuff again” is to become the country of “advanced manufacturing and AI.”
By this he means that a productive new generation of American manufacturing would see the United States winning the race to replace ourselves with machines that no longer require the use of human beings at all, save for mechanical upkeep or oversight. Why? Because Friedman drove in robo-taxis in China, Phoenix, and San Francisco and is convinced that this represents the automated future of all mankind.
From his point of view, that might be for the best, considering his rather misanthropic view of mankind: Benjamin Kerstein: Thomas Friedman is decadent and depraved.
There is a stunning amount that is wrong about this rant. In fact, there is everything wrong with it. But the key phrase is: “Ours is, for now, still a free country*, and if people aren’t engaging in violent acts, or harassing other students in or out of class, they should be free to say whatever they want, including advocating a Palestinian state of whatever size they want.”
But these people are universally engaging in violence, harassing students, and advocating for a Palestinian state not just of any size but one that replaces Israel entirely while slaughtering and/or expelling its Jewish population. Friedman, with the walls of privilege around him, feels free to ignore all of this, and this is a terrible and unforgivable dereliction. The reason is the human cost of his apologetics.
* Often much to Friedman’s chagrin: “Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.”