Matt Walsh is wrong about AI. First off, you have no right to employment. Rights are inherent to you, and you can never have a right to another person’s labor and property. Therefore, a right to employment is inherently flawed from the start. You cannot force other people not to build automation simply because you are afraid it is going to take your job.
Second, mass unemployment is not as big of a problem as people say it is. This is for two reasons:
- It takes a long time for this technology to diffuse. Many businesses are still only in the early stages, and they do not move quickly compared to those on the frontier.
- Just as jobs are being destroyed by AI, it also makes it easier than ever to start your own business. The barrier to entry used to be very high. There were so many random operational things you needed to know and details you couldn’t have known without high-quality advice, which is now available to everyone at their fingertips.
Third, the idea that some people will become trillionaires while everyone else loses everything is flawed to begin with. How do you think somebody makes money? The answer is through the exchange of goods and services. Milton Friedman said, ‘the most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.’
This means when these AI companies sell their subscriptions or API use, nobody will be paying for them unless they are getting more value out than they are putting in. Every one of these exchanges creates value. That is how the free market works, and it applies here just like it does everywhere else. If you are a motivated individual who has agency, you can learn what these tools can do, take advantage of them, and make a life for yourself. That is the American Dream.