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The One and Only Question about AI
Back in February I wrote a piece on AI, and I said:
Before the Industrial Revolution government was not all that powerful. Then, not later than the 20th century with oil and autos and mass production and mass media it learned to control everything (and made a complete hash of it).
Then I asked:
Is AI going to make government even more powerful, or will it create ways for humans to dodge and weave around the politicians and the administrators and the activists and the intelligence community?
Isn’t that the fundamental question about AI? Not whether everyone will lose their jobs. We already know they will. Not whether journalism will be taken over by AI. It’s already happening. Not whether DEI bureaucrats will be replaced by AI slop that regurgitates their wokey rubbish seven ways from Sunday. Actually, the DEI-AI will probably be an improvement on the human DEI drudges.
No, the big question is whether AI will help us clog up the gears of Big Government. Not to mention Big Media and Big Everything Else.
It’s a fascinating question. Because the whole point of the administrative state is to churn out conventional wisdom as determined by the educated class and distribute it as a Direct Command to the plebs, wherever they are.
And it just seems to me that, after a century and a half of the Domination and Hegemony of the Educated Class through the Administrative State, it is Time for a Change.
Because the key takeaway of the last century and a half is that the educated class is Not That Smart. If they were smart we would have dodged:
The Spanish-American War.
The Crash of 1907.
World War I.
The Crash of 1929.
The Failure of the New Deal.
World War II.
The Cold War.
The Inflation of the 1970s.
The Mid-east Wars.
9/11.
The Rust Belt.
Obamacare.
The Climate Change Scam.
The COVID Scam.
The Autopen Scam.
Seriously. When you think about it, all the bulleted events were avoidable. Anyone with half a brain would have dodged them. But we didn’t dodge them.
And all the time we were ruled by the experts and administrators and the activists and the staffers of the educated class.
Could it be merely “events, dear boy, events.” Or a Conspiracy? Or just a double-blind proof of Hanlon’s Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
But back to my initial question:
Is AI going to make government even more powerful, or will it create ways for humans to dodge and weave around the politicians and the administrators and the activists [and the staffers] and the intelligence community?
I earnestly hope for the dodge and weave option, and so should you.
| Tue, 05 May 2026 21:54:26 GMT |
What Lefty Intellectuals Get Wrong
As I’ve been re-reading Jerry Z. Muller’s The Mind and the Market I’ve been trying to figure out what the lefty intellectuals in the tradition of Marx to Lukács to Adorno to Marcuse thought they were doing.
Stephen Soukup in “Revolutionaries without a Cause” points out the problem with the lefty revolutionary “march through the institutions”:
They never anticipated, therefore, that they would repeat the mistakes of their Enlightenment-era predecessors, that they would tear down the institutional and moral frameworks of their era, only for them to be replaced with nothing of consequence, leaving a lost generation (or more).
One of Lukács’ criticisms of capitalism is that of “reification,” meaning experiencing everything as objects:
In capitalism, human social relations and activities appear as relations between things (commodities, bureaucracies, institutions) with a “phantom objectivity.”
Yes, corporations tend to objectify the production and distribution of goods. They tear down the old city community of the guilds and replace them with the purely economic institution of the corporation.
But corporations come and go: the average corporation in the Dow Jones Industrials only gets to be there for 20 years. On the other hand, there has never been anything like the objectification of everything with Communism and the Administrative State.
And another thing, mentioned by Stephen Soukup in “Fenway Park, College Basketball, and the Loss of Community.” He discusses a video of Fenway Park reliving the old days of the 1950s, how it prompted everyone to realize that there was a sense of community back in the day that had since been lost.
[T]he need for community is deeply embedded in man’s character. It is something that we absolutely require, that we crave, that enables us to live in tranquility and contentment.
Earth to lefties: in the 19th century, when capitalism was supposedly objectifying everything, there was a world of voluntary community organizations, all kinds of fraternal societies, lodges, and mutual-aid societies. And everyone belonged.
But your welfare state has destroyed all that “community.”
When Marx prophesied life under socialism he wrote that people would “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner.” Nothing there about “reifications” and bureaucracy and administration. Nothing about politics. Everyone was just doing their thing, without expert supervision and objectivity.
But when you fight for a revolution you tear down the pre-existing “institutional and moral frameworks,” and after the revolution you start again from zero. And because you are believers in politics you replace the old institutions with government and administration and bureaucracy. In other words, you “reify” — objectify — society, and “human social relations and activities appear as relations between things (commodities, bureaucracies, institutions)” just like in the capitalism you deplore.
In Soukup’s account, the purpose of all the lefty revolution and the “march through the institutions” is to place Marxist intellectuals in important roles in society ready for Phase II, the creation of new norms and structures.
The problem is that politics and government don’t set up new norms and structures. They just bash away at the ruling class’s enemy and gift the ruling class’s friends. Because government and politics can’t get beyond the political and its friend / enemy distinction.
The result of this permanent revolution is what we have now. We have lefty activists calling for revolution, and we have lefty politicians twerking the welfare state with “affordability” initiatives to try an alleviate the failures of the previous generation’s government programs.
But that doesn’t solve our problem. Our problem is to let people create and grow organic organizations and mutual-aid societies and clubs in which people work together and create community and help each other, because that is what humans do when they don’t have a club in their hand.
So NY Mayor Mamdani completely missse the point with his comment:
We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
Currently we don’t have “the frigidity of rugged individualism;” we have the frigidity of rigid government programs and regulations and funding and fraud. The “warmth of collectivism” would be a network of voluntary and organic institutions completely independent of government and politics and power where people come together voluntarily in community to help each other.
And it would feel great just like the crowd at Fenway Park back in the day seemed like something that anyone would want to experience and enjoy.
| Tue, 05 May 2026 01:38:47 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Hitler hated Jews; feminists hate men. Explain.
Critical Theory creates cultural gang warfare.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic:
