Dana Blankenhorn

On Merit

What tripped up the technology industry in 2016, more than anything else, was the question of merit.

Technology is a meritocracy. We want the brightest, most engaged, most passionate minds we can get, and we don’t care where they come from, what sex or race they are, or who they love.

But for those who fail the meritocracy test, and it’s assumed that will be most people, tech today has nothing for you. This, is why technology lost the election. People who work with their hands, people who don’t go to prestige colleges, feel locked-out of the game, except as drudges. They took their revenge in November.

The problem is made worse by the behavior of the elite institutions. Increasingly top colleges are taking students from overseas. They’re taking the elite from China, charging them full freight, and they know the kids can do the work.

Put those two things together and you get Trumpistan’s nightmare. Their kids can’t get into the game, and all the money from that game is funneling into fewer-and-fewer hands. The assumption is that technology, which cut out middlemen, then salesmen and retail clerks, is now coming for anyone who drives. What are their kids going to do?

It’s enough to make you a Luddite.

What Can You Do for Your Country. Stay

Since November, some friends have been talking seriously about leaving the country.

What are the rules for German citizenship, they ask? Would we be welcome in New Zealand?

I speculated on this back in 2005, after Bush somehow beat John Kerry, writing a still unfinished novel in which Richard Branson and Mark Cuban led a bunch of American exiles to start an unregulated market in Johannesburg, South Africa. In my imagination, they even re-built the Twin Towers, right in the middle of Jo-Burg. And naturally, they had to hire a smart man like Dana Blankenhorn to handle their PR.

The book presaged concepts behind Bitcoin, and described aspects of financial piracy that do exist. But it was fiction. After making my son, then in high school, into a character who could secretly translate Arabic and Chinese on the fly, I found my footing in studying history and dropped it.

That’s what I’d advise my friends who are thinking of leaving to do right now. Drop it.

Trump may indeed be Hitler. I think he’s more Berlusconi, but what if he is the sum of all our fears? What if America has been taken over by Nazis and fellow-travelers? What good would it do, then, to abandon your country in its hour of need? Where will you go that will be safe from American power in the hands of a madman?

Nowhere. Besides, Americans don’t run from a fight.

Your New Technology Overlords

“A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people, recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles.” – Thomas Jefferson

True political realignment begins when a newly-dominant industry becomes politically partisan.

As technology rose to economic power, from the 1970s through the 2010s, its political wishes were accepted by both parties. Barack Obama was essentially given power by technology in 2008 – his cloud infrastructure was Google-like – but technologists could have lived with Mitt Romney as well.

This changed in 2016.

The political priorities of technology are human capital, free trade, political stability and a concern for the planet. Donald Trump opposes all these things, loudly. He sees capital in terms of money and physical resources. He is against free trade. He likes political instability. He has no concern for the health of the planet.

This is forcing technology to align itself with Trump’s political opponents, aiming at the complete destruction of the current Republican Party.

But there’s a second thing that must happen for such a realignment to happen. Trump’s political opponents must align themselves with technology, and accept the technology industry’s leadership over them.

This is the way it has always been. Just look at past political cycles.

The Fall of Trumpism Starts Now

Despite the ongoing depression of my Democratic friends, Trumpism is doomed.

There is nothing he can do about this, because his politics are based on a fading economic model in resources and manufacturing, he rules by instinct rather than through data, and his allies practice a rigid ideology out of step with the times.

Nothing illustrates this better than his selection of Reg Tillerson as his Secretary of State. Tillerson’s job is to make peace in the oilpatch, or at least bring about a détente among producers that can result in higher profits for Houston’s majors (like Exxon), and save the economies of Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are failing under the pressure of a war President Obama did little to discourage.

Oil and other resources, meanwhile, are becoming fungible under the onslaught of technology. Right now, oil and gas are only competitive in the West because of infrastructure built out over decades. Emerging economies don’t have the capital to both build out an oil infrastructure and continue paying the price of oil, not in the face of decentralized renewable energy systems and the pressure of efficiency, which is only going to increase as 2020 approaches. Nor do they need it.

Stoopid Does It

Usually an election offers two similar, if contrasting, economic programs, both of which are equally valid.

The 2016 election was different, offering a simple choice between smart and stupid. Voters chose stupid.

So, you’re going to get stupid. I think you’re going to get Stoopid. Trump and his Republican friends are too stupid to merit a correct spelling.

As the advance of technology has accelerated, evidence has become more-and-more important to policymakers. Trump rejects that reality and substitutes his own personality. His followers substitute a rigid ideology.

This is the epitome of Stoopid.