5,200 Miles: Impressions of the US Economy
What's the value proposition of immersing ourselves in the real world?
Longtime correspondent Buck V. recently reminded me of a timeless quote from Yogi Berra: "You can observe a lot just by watching." Buck added: With the corollary being "you can hear a lot just by listening.")
Having completed a 5,200 mile camping trip around the American West, I had a chance to "observe a lot just by watching" and "hear a lot just by listening."
Everything I mention will sound so obvious that it doesn't seem worthy of comment, and that is why it's worthy of comment.
The real world is not at all like the abstract, symbolic "world" displayed on screens. Replacing looking at screens with looking at real life is a good example of "You can observe a lot just by watching."
The weather matters more than anything displayed on a screen. Drive a few thousand miles through the Western states and one observes large-scale agriculture. In drier climates, the primary crop is fodder to feed the animals we raise to milk, shear and eat. You will occasionally observe bright-green fields which are irrigated, generally by water from a river or extracted from an aquifer.
Most large-scale agriculture isn't irrigated. It depends on rain and cooperative weather.
Electrons in a data center and images on a screen cannot make it rain or refill an aquifer. The abstract, symbolic layer we pay so much attention to can't change the weather. This is too obvious to matter, until it does.
Convenience comes in one package: diesel. Grocery stores in small towns stock wonderfully fresh and affordable produce from distant lands, California or an even more distant foreign farm. The gas stations all have diesel and gasoline to fill our tanks. This abundance of convenience--too obvious to be worthy of comment--is remarkable. Equally obvious and therefore unworthy of comment is that all this convenience depends on diesel fuel.
The long trains--70, 80 or 100 cars in length, pulled by multiple Locomotives--are powered by diesel. So are the thousands of large trucks that distribute convenience to every corner of our remarkably large nation. All the rail and all the roads take a beating and must be constantly maintained. Roadwork is everywhere. This too is too obvious to be worthy of comment.
Those who own 90% of the financial wealth of the nation are drooling over the profits to be reaped by replacing 400,000 truck drivers with AI. Diesel doesn't seem to enter the picture. I know--too obvious to be worthy of comment. The screen is all about increasing profits by any means available, and nothing else matters. Until it does.
You don't see Tesla vehicles on the road or charging stations, because the distances exceed the limits of electric vehicle ranges. Not the theoretical range, the real-world range. There's a chicken and egg aspect: why invest in charging stations for so few customers, so nobody buys electric vehicles because there's so few charging stations.
What you do see are long 80-car trains of coal being pulled across the landscape. This is not a value judgment, it's an observation: "You can observe a lot just by watching."
If we tear our eyes from screens and look at the real world, all sorts of things become absolutely remarkable.
Those who own 90% of the financial wealth of the nation are drooling over the profits to be reaped by optimizing everything with AI. What's obvious--and therefore unworthy of comment--is virtually every aspect of the American economy is already optimized.
A relative handful of the workforce manages to grow hundreds of millions of tons of fodder and turn this into food for us and our pets. Every such enterprise is already optimized for efficiency. Every one requires special knowledge and deep experience.
What AI replaces is abstract, symbolic busy-work that takes place on screens, most of which is superfluous, an artifact of too much money seeking ways to make more money without producing anything real.
Most people are decent and hard-working. Maybe people don't want a robot to replace their neighbor the Walmart greeter just to make a Tech Bro billionaire and his pals even wealthier and more powerful. Maybe this is so obvious that it's unworthy of comment.
Yes, there is a place for screens and data and information and entertainment. The question isn't about that; the question is whether there's any space left in our lives to "observe a lot just by watching."
Ours is a big, beautiful land. It is still possible to escape the abstract, symbolic, intentionally synthetic, commoditized, addictive digital bubble, turn off the screens and the music and all the other distractions and just listen and observe. What's the value proposition of immersing ourselves in the real world? The only way to get an answer is to "observe a lot just by watching."
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