Adios Presidente: On the Passing of Hugo Chavez

I used to write a bit about the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  I moved on, there are only so many world affairs one analyst can follow.  Here is a link to past blog-posts about him.  Better, visit the fantastic Caracas Chronicles for serious analytical work on Venezuela under Chavez (and buy their book!).

In retrospect, as far as dictators of the last century go he was a piker.  He was a bully, he expropriated property, and was pretty tough on his opposition.  He tried to export his "revolution" across the region, but without much real success.  While he wrecked Venezuela's economy and marginalized independent media.  During his rule, Venezuela became a drug-trafficking haven and the murder capital of the world.  But, there were no forced labor camps and no mass murders.

It cannot be ignored that Chavez did not arise in a vacuum.  Venezuela is blessed (or cursed) with vast oil wealth.  But Venezuela's elites had failed to govern effectively and the country remained - on the whole - poor.  Chavez appealed to that popular frustration, although unfortunately long-term his policies will only handicap the country further.

Ultimately Chavez was seen as an international buffoon.  He ran the country through his TV talk show Alo Presidente where off-the-cuff pronouncements became policies.  But for all of his zaniness, there were very nasty ideas embedded in his rhetoric. Below is an article I wrote about his Christmas Eve speech of 2005.  (Side-note, my wife translated it for me - if translating the rambling ravings of Hugo Chavez isn't love, I don't know what is!)

Nasser was also seen as a buffoon, but he destroyed much of the modern human capital of Egypt (from which the country has never recovered) and started several awful wars - including a much forgotten war in Yemen in which he used poison gas.  Chavez wasn't that bad.  Is it because he wasn't quite that much of a villain, or because liberal democracy is more firmly rooted in Latin American than in the Middle East and his ideas could only go so far?

It is an interesting question, but hopefully Latin Americans will not see many further experiments along these lines.

Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)

Blast From the Past

Hugo Chávez veers into anti-Semitism while explaining how to create a workers' paradise.

Aaron Mannes

January 11, 2006 11:00 PM

ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez's Christian-socialist cant drifted into anti-Semitism. "The world is for all of us," he said, "then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendents of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendents of the same ones that kicked Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession all of the wealth of the world . . . "

These sentiments were not new and Chávez, for his part, has long associated with anti-Semitic figures. One of Chávez's early mentors was the Holocaust-denying Argentine social scientist Norberto Ceresole. Shortly after ascending to the presidency, Chávez wrote to the imprisoned terrorist known as Carlos (who is a Venezuelan national) calling him a distinguished compatriot. In 2000 Chávez became the first head of state to meet with Saddam since the first Gulf War; he even received a Human Rights Award from Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. In December, Chávez hosted a meeting of the U.N. Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

But most seriously, Chávez has established an alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has long been the leading state sponsor of terrorism internationally and against Israel. When then Iranian President Mohammed Khatami visited Caracas in March 2005, Chávez voiced his support for Iran's nuclear program and awarded Khatami Venezuela's highest honor, the Order of the Liberator. (There is a Simon Bolivar Street in Tehran.) During this visit the two countries signed 20 agreements to cooperate on economic development projects. These warm relationshave continued under the new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has explicitly called for Israel's destruction.

Chávez's anti-Semitism is not restricted to rhetorical support for others, though. In late 2004, after a state prosecutor (and Chávez ally), was assassinated in a car bombing, the state-run television darkly referred to Mossad links to the killing. Venezuelan security forces raided a Jewish private school in Caracas as the school day was beginning. No evidence of any connection to the car bombing was found. It surely cannot be a coincidence that the raid occurred while Chávez was visiting Iran.

Carlos Blanco, writing in the leading Caracas daily, El Universal, noted that, "When a Jew is attacked for being such, we enter a zone of total and absolute risk for the free thinking and existence of all, Jews and non Jews alike." His fears have been borne out.

SINCE CHAVEZ'S FIRST ELECTION IN 1998, Venezuela's ranking in the Freedom House survey of World Freedom has dropped from Free to Partly Free. The report states that in 2004, "Chávez devoted considerable attention during the year to advancing his influence over the judicial system, media, and other institutions of civil society." Chávez's measures include media laws that could be used to imprison reporters for insulting public authorities and institutions and packing the Supreme Court by expanding its membership from 20 to 32 justices. The Chávez government has also undermined property rights by imposing price controls on staples (leading to the predictable shortages) and seizing "underused" ranches without compensation.

Chávez also expanded on these broader ambitions in his Christmas Eve address. According to Chávez, Jesus was "the first socialist of our era . . . and for that they crucified him." He exhorted Venezuelans to be ready "to sacrifice ourselves for others, for the country, for the collective . . . that is how we will save our country and we will help save the world from here."

Most tellingly, he called for the building of a utopian paradise on earth:

To leave the room of poverty is to arrive at a life of dignity, where there is no misery, nor poverty is the Kingdom of God that Christ came to tell us, the Kingdom of Equality, of love, of justice. We have to build that kingdom here, because it is totally false that this Kingdom is in the clouds and that one goes there when one dies. Lie! . . . No, heaven and hell are here among us.

THE LANGUAGE AND SENTIMENTS are distressingly familiar. But Chávez appears determined to initiate his Utopian revolution and buoyed by record oil prices, he has the resources to pursue this vision in Venezuela and to export his revolution throughout the region. Within Venezuela he has launched numerous initiatives. Some, such as building new medical facilities throughout the country, seem laudable (although Fidel Castro provides the medical staffs). Other initiatives are eccentric, such as the government's printing and free distribution of 1 million copies of the classic novels Don Quixote and Les Miserables. Some programs expand Chavez's authority, such as the establishment of Bolivarian Circles. These armed citizen militias were ostensibly formed to defend the country against a U.S. invasion, but have been deployed for violent confrontations with anti-Chávez protestors.

Regionally, Chávez funds radical groups and buys allies with cash and subsidized oil. He has sticks to accompany these carrots. Chávez is funding a regional satellite TV network--a Latin Al Jazeera--to broadcast his vision. Chávez also provides safe havens for Latin America's largest terrorist organization, FARC. His rhetoric and interference in other nations' internal affairs have sparked several high-profile spats with other Latin American nations, most recently with Mexico and Peru.

Internationally Chávez is seen as a populist loudmouth and while his anti-Semitism is condemned, much of his rhetoric is ignored as braggadocio. But his forays into anti-Semitism are merely symptoms of a broader, dysfunctional worldview. Chávez appears intent on replaying the most disastrous political projects of the last century.

Al Gore Redux?

Sunday morning I caught Al Gore on Fareed Zakaria GPS hawking his new book - The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.

He will be 68 years old in 2016 - he could make another run for the Presidency. 

I don't think he will. He is having a good time writing books (his first career, before politics was as a journalist) and making lots of money. Being a politician is not all its cracked up to be, the truth is being a journalist is more fun. His split from Tipper and the sale of Current TV to al-Jazeera might be fodder for the opposition.

Plus, campaigning is hard work and by most accounts Gore did not love it - not the way Clinton did. And running brings with it the risk of losing - one can easily imagine that Gore is not ready to go through that again.

Finally, politics can be like TV - the people want a new face. This goes for many leading political figures. Gore has been on the national stage since his first run for the Presidency in 1988 (25 years ago). This also applies to some other likely candidates. Hillary, in this regard, suffers from her association with her husband - we've now had 20 years of Clintons on the national stage. Biden first entered the Senate in 1973 and ran for President in 1988. Jeb Bush, on the Republican side, suffers similarly. After two Presidents Bush and a Bush in national office for 20 of the past 32 years there is no particular hunger for another President Bush.

The irony is that these well-established figures often have the resources needed to win the nomination, but then can't win the general election against a fresh face. None of this by the way is a comment on the merits of a any of these figures as a potential President. But still, it is an intriguing possibility. If, for whatever reason, Hillary and Biden opt out and none of the Democratic party's 2nd team gets traction in the 2016 primaries, is a draft Gore initiative out of the question?  He remains and impressive, engaging figure who brings up issues that resonate with much of the party's base. And Gore has the intriguing quality of "what might have been" had things in 2000 gone just a little differently.

It makes me think of the end of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises:

“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”

Earl Weaver: A Man in Full

I grew up with the Orioles of the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were an exceptional team with many great and good players - future Hall of Famers like Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, and Jim Palmer. But what made them champions was not their stars, but the deep bench of players who, when played in the right situations, could be effective. Setting these ever-changing line-ups was the chess-master, the late Earl Weaver.

He was best known for his frequent altercations with umpires. But this was merely a surface, beneath which his keen strategic intelligence operated. Now, in the era of Moneyball, everyone knows about the applications of statistical analysis to baseball. But time and again, analysts have found truths that Earl Weaver discovered on his own. He famously kept files of statistics of every batter he had against every pitcher they faced and every pitcher he had against every batter they had faced. He carefully designed his line-ups to maximize his advantages - while keeping his options open. Baseball is ultimately a game of percentages. A batter has roughly a 30% chance of doing something effective. Weaver would do everything and anything he could to increase that likelihood because over a 162 game season increasing that chance to 31% would pay off. So he would keep players like Benny Ayala around. Ayala was not a great fielder and wasn't fast, but he could hit a certain class of pitcher. Other managers would focus on what Ayala couldn't do - but Weaver saw what he could do and determine if he needed those particular skills enough to keep him around.

One example, summarized from his terrific Weaver on Strategy gives a sense of how he thought things through (but bear in mind he did this about everything):

In 1981 I wrote Steve Stone into my lineup every day as the designated hitter. Stone is a pitcher, and I naturally did not expect him to hit. In fact, the first time I did it, Stone wasn't even with the club-he had flown ahead to the next city on the road trip... During this season I often platooned Benny Ayala and Terry Crowley as my designated hitters. Let's the Orioles were playing Cleveland and Len Barker was staring for the Indians. I'd have Terry Crowley in the lineup against the right-handed Barker. But suppose the first five hitters get to Barker and knock him out. The Indians bring in Rick Waits, a lefty. I wouldn't want to use Crowley against Waits, so I would have to bat Ayala for Crowley. In the process, I've lost Crowley without him making an appearance. That's wasting a player. Or what if the pitcher takes the mound, throws to a couple of hitters, and the leaves because his arm hurts. It may only happen twice a season, but there is no reason to waste a player if it can be avoided. By listing a pitcher such as Stone as the DH, I have the option of sending up Crowley or Ayala.

People have observed that Weaver won because he had great pitchers. True, but... Besides Palmer, none of the Oriole pitchers were all-time greats and many of them were only great under Weaver. One element was that Weaver combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of baseball - he had a very shrewd eye for baseball talent. He could look at a capable journeyman pitcher and see how much better he would be in Memorial Stadium with Weaver's defense around him (Weaver was big into defense.) Also, Weaver - again long before this was analyzed systematically - had a great sense of when a pitcher had had enough. He stayed with a four-man rotation till the end, when almost everyone else had turned to the five-man rotation. He believed - and it has since been validated - that as long as you don't force a pitcher to throw too many pitches in a game he didn't need the extra day of rest (and if you did push a pitcher's arm past its limit the extra day of rest wouldn't help anyway.) He describes in detail the signs that a pitcher is really tiring and I read somewhere that he was one of the first managers to systematically use radar guns during the game because he knew when a pitcher was losing velocity he was done.

All of this came at a cost. To run a time this way, Weaver had to be tough with the players. He had to be ready to cut them from the team when they weren't useful and he didn't dare get close to them. It was an attitude he forged in the minor leagues when he had to cut hopeful kids and "look every one in the eye and kick their dreams in the [butt] and say, 'Kid, there's no way you can make my ballclub.'"

Weaver continued, "If you say it mean enough, maybe they do themselves a favor and don't waste years learning what you can see in a day. They don't have what it takes to make the majors. Just like I never had it."

In a beautiful column about Weaver after his recent death renowned Washington Post sportswriter Thomas Boswell wrote about the toll this took on Weaver and how exhausting Weaver found it to always be "the grown-up." On Brooks Robinson Day (honoring the beloved Oriole 3rd baseman, Weaver said, "I'd like to be like Brooks, the guy who never said no to nobody, the ones that everybody loves because they deserve to be loved ... those are my heroes."

Weaver knew himself and learned that truth illustrated in novels that shapes our lives, that within each of us, beneath the surface lies the opposite. Nothing exists without its contrary and we must each come to terms with that.

Weaver retired early, he was only 52 (he made a brief, unsuccessful comeback a few years later.) He gardened, walked on the beach, took his wife out to dinner, and went to Hialeah to play the ponies.

Did Earl Weaver, the "sorest loser that every lived," a man who exerted every iota of a rather formidable genius for tiny advantages, find peace at the track knowing full well that, "all horseplayers die broke?"

Penny for your Thoughts: Mali & COIN Light

Now that France has boots on the ground and is doing real shooting everyone is an expert on Mali. I'm not, I won't claim any familiarity with the dynamics of that corner of the world. But from a superficial standpoint it looks like Afghanistan. There are enormous differences in the specifics (cultural, ethnic, linguistic, geographic, historical - I get it, they are totally different countries.) I also have nothing insightful to say about the terrible - and possibly related - events in Algeria.

The big similarity is that Mali, like Afghanistan, is in a difficult to reach place, is large, poor, and in real danger of being taken over by Islamists. The failed state in danger of being taken over by Islamists is a danger in many other places and the big question is what are realistic policy options.

From the experience of Afghanistan, dropping hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of troops is problematic. It is very, very expensive, it may have limited efficacy, it will distort local politics and economics, and the intervening power may not be willing to sustain it. The troops and resources needed to intervene in Mali on that scale don't exist anyway so what else is in the playbook?

Plan Colombia as a Counter-Example
In the 1990s the Colombian government was in real trouble. The whole country was insecure and the drug-financed FARC was an existential threat to the state itself. The United States engaged in a long-term capacity building program which provided technical assistance, training, money, and intelligence to the Colombian government. There were limited US personnel involved. Overall, the program was a success. Solving the fundamental social problems of Colombia was probably not in the cards, but the country's economy is growing while the FARC has been pushed to the margins and the security situation has been vastly improved.

Plan Colombia is a model program that required a substantial, but not overwhelming US commitment. Unfortunately, its applicability is limited. There was a lower level counter-terror capacity building program to Mali, but it was tiny, subject to bureaucratic differences, and ultimately de-railed by a coup that was not recognized by the US.

Capacity building won't work well when there is very little initial capacity. At its worst moments the Colombian government and security forces were a model of effectiveness compared to the truly failed states. In particular, the Colombian military was a professional force that needed support to adapt to its internal counter-insurgency role. Colombia also benefitted from exceptional political leadership that had the vision and capability to support the military.

None of these things exist in Mali, Somalia or other likely candidates for failed state status. But this lower level capacity building commitment at least provides a useful counter-point to the massive COIN commitment present in Afghanistan (a yin-yang thing.)

Just Right Policy
First, even weak, inept national governments can be useful. Handling things on the international stage requires an address - otherwise where can you send mail/aid/weapons etc. Waiting until that inept government is overthrown and letting Islamists (or other bad guys) run the country is a much less advantageous position.

Some troops are needed, enough to take out the bad guys and make sure they cannot mass forces. In Mali, it is looking like France's brigade with airpower (and US support) may be able to do the job. Naturally augmenting a core Western force with local or regional forces (ie Malian army and African peace-keepers) is useful. But regardless the forces needed to fully secure the country are not available (and might not succeed in any regard.)

However, if a nation is going to commit to stabilizing a country like Mali it means this kind of force will have to stick around for a long-time. To use that force effectively (and also to deliver economic aid and manage relations with sub-national actors - such as local warlords) will require the slow and painful accumulation of highly specific knowledge about that country. Developing that kind of knowledge means that governments have to be prepared to invest in personnel - effectively guaranteeing a number of people across agencies that they can have careers (ie several decades focusing on one area) as "Mali hands" or "Somalia hands" or whatever other area comes up on the national radar screen. This is not the old British civil service in India with tens of thousands - but rather a few hundred. They will need to be structured so that they work across a swath of agencies and continue to harbor a diversity of opinions.

(Caveat: I am not writing that this is what the French are doing! They probably want to get out ASAP. But this is the sort of thing they should do if they want to take a stab at ensuring they don't have an endless cycle of crises. The US should also look into building these kinds of capabilities to deploy in other dangerous areas of the world.)

This requires a broader institutional capacity to build this capacity. It will also require political patience with very long-term approaches and a tolerance for limited results and - quite frankly - deals with some really awful people.

The situation is not hopeless, these abilities exist in a limited form already.

Still, if failed states are going to continue to viewed as an international security problem than the proper tools are needed to address them.

Surprising Influence? The Age of Biden

The last week with the dramatic fiscal cliff negotiations should have been case study gold for this vice president obsessed PhD candidate.

Biden, as all but those sensible enough to turn off the news, must know negotiated a settlement with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to avoid going headfirst over the fiscal cliff.

Many, many articles touted Vice President Biden as "the most powerful" or "the most influential" vice president in history (or at least the 2nd most powerful - tough to rival Cheney). This one, in the Atlantic.com pretty much hits the tone. There was so much of this sort of thing that in The New Republic, Timothy Noah wrote:

What we can say with some confidence is that the vice presidency has always been worth a good deal more than a bucket of warm piss, and that at least since Harry Truman became president in 1945 it’s been a pretty reliable steppingstone to the presidency. In the modern era vice presidents have tended to be powerful even when they didn’t become president, probably because their selection has been based less on party loyalty or geographic, demographic, or ideological balance and more on perceived aptitude and compatibility with the chief executive....Powerful veeps aren't news. Time to stop pretending that they are.

A few fussy points (if I'm going to be an academic, I have to learn to be fussy.) My dissertation is about the question of influence, when the vice president effectively makes policy. Is that what happened here? Biden managed the negotiations with McConnell and reached an agreement, but was that influential or more a matter of carrying-out a difficult task? This is not to downplay Biden's role, and it is a role other VPs have played in the past. Gore negotiated all kinds of difficult issues with Russia, Ukraine, and South Africa - but he was effectively carrying out policy, not making (there were cases where he pushed for policies within the White House and he was often successful.) Mondale handled sensitive issues with the Senate on Carter's behalf, most notably the Panama Canal Treaty. But the Treaty was Carter's idea, Mondale just helped make it happen.

On many other issues, it appears that Biden has been influential, but as important as his role was, I'm not sure if it is necessarily influence.

Brother or Uncle
I have observed before that age may be an indicator in President-VP relationships. The strongest relationships were between virtual contemporaries. Carter is four years older than Mondale, while Clinton is two years older than Gore. Reagan, on the other hand, was 13 years older than Bush, while Bush was 23 years older than Quayle. I am working on some analytical methods of rating vice presidential influence, but eyeballing it would make it appear that the closer the President and Vice President are in age, the more likely the vice president is to exercise influence. Mondale and Gore were pretty influential, Bush Sr. less so, and Quayle's influence was limited.

But what about a case in which the VP is older? Cheney is five years older than Bush 43 and Biden is 19 years older than Obama. These two figures are also towards the top of the scale in vice presidential influence.

Of course there are other variables. Obama was one of the least experienced President's in modern history. Bush 43 was much more experienced and had very little background in foreign affairs, which quickly became central to his administration. Bush Sr, while younger than Reagan, was extremely experienced but faced internal opposition from Reagan loyalists. There are obviously other factors determining vice presidential influence. But still, the trend is intriging.

Deep Thought 7: When Machines Rule

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.
Flannery O’Connor

In my last post I wrote about how computational capabilities are capable of displacing humans from many, many jobs. With computerized, self-driving cars within technological reach the postal service, Fedex, UPS and innumerable other enterprises could quickly cut their labor costs – and that is just one example. A huge range of human endeavors could be automated, including some of those conducted by professionals such as pharmacists.

Given that scenario, what would people do? Stuff would be cheaper, but it would be a lot harder to make any money – presumably there would still be some jobs. There might be particular functions that were extremely difficult to automate even with access to massive computing power. (I can imagine clothing sales still being a human function – I just can’t imagine a machine saying in a compelling way, “That outfit works on you.”) People will probably still produce entertainment and some business and political leaderships will still be needed to make critical decisions. Algorithms might identify various optimal distributions of goods and services, but people will need to consider the less easily calculated moral and emotional aspects of these decisions.

Broadly there are two future scenarios. This is not an immediate future, it is worth remembering that for most of the world’s population these technological advances are far from their everyday lives.

The utopian version is one in which everyone enjoys plenty (or at least freedom from want). Some people will pursue regular careers that bring them modest wealth. Many work for a time at a few critical human-dominated fields before “retiring” early. But many take advantage of this plenty to become professional hobbyists – earning modest livings through part-time endeavors as artists, chefs, entertainers, history buffs etc. In short, in the future the world is a vast artists colony in which comfortable people pursue self-actualization. This is the vision of humanity as a bunch of modest trust fund babies.

In the dystopian version, the world resembles a vast government housing project in which almost everyone is given just enough to get by and no one has much of anything to do. People pursue worthy hobbies such as alcoholism and hooliganism.

The truth is the future probably has a bit of both of these scenarios. More and more people are finding extremely interesting things to do (look at all the professional bloggers out there – in my case I look with jealousy.) I’ve been listening to the WTF podcasts by stand-up comedian Marc Maron who does this really cool engaging show out of his garage. He’d never find a mass market on a network, but thanks to the low production costs and ease of distribution he is able to find an audience.

On the other hand, most of the Western nations with well-developed welfare systems have seen the growth of a permanently under-employed class (this isn’t just in the US, Western Europe has it too – just with less violence.) This could expand as more and more people find themselves with minimal employment prospects. But this expansion could have very nasty consequences; particularly as this environment of anomie is also a wonderful breeding ground for extremism and violence. People need to feel useful to be satisfied.

To keep things in perspective, these are “rich people” problems. Medieval societies didn’t suffer from unemployment because almost everyone was involved in backbreaking labor to avoid starvation. The poor in Western societies live a life of unimaginable luxury compared to most of the people who ever lived (which is not to ignore the very real challenges they face or the need to ensure that they have better access to the opportunities of a modern society.)

But the future then looks like the present only more so, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Presumably, even in the heavily automated world of plenty the creative, ambitious, and talented will find things to do. I worry about everyone else.

From a policy standpoint there are limited options. No education system will turn dumb people into composers or astrophysicists. But even a mind of low intelligence is a very impressive thing. Just as I know I can never be an athlete, but I can press my body within its (very) limited capacities. Everyone can be taught/habituated to use his or her mind more fully. In doing so, we can also help focus on what humans really are good for.

Finally, the Utopian scenario may not be all it is cracked up to be. Europe at the turn of the 20th century was a worldly, wealthy, sophisticated civilization. Yet the entire continent turned on itself with an unbelievably fury. Human nature is a constant - we'll find ways to make ourselves crazy.

Deep Thought 6: The Mind in the Machine

I recently read an article about the business philosopher Clayton Christensen.  His core idea is about how well established businesses are overtaken by disruptive innovations at the bottom of their market.  A classic example is the steel mills being overtaken by mini-mills.  At first big steel was happy to cede the low end of the market to the new mini-mills.  The low end of the market was re-bar (reinforcing bars) that were buried inside concrete to add strength.  It was the cheapest steel and had the lowest profit margins.  The big steel companies were happy to cede this aspect of the business.  But the mini-mills started getting better, moving up the ladder of sophisticated and profitable products until they were challenging big steel at the top of their game.  Big steel had enormous physical plants and sunk costs and suddenly could not compete.

This has happened in industry after industry according to Christensen.  When transistor radios first came out they were junk compared to the sophisticated vacuum tube radios, but they were cheap.  Teenagers, who didn’t have any money, bought them.  Over time the transistor radios improved and tube radios basically don’t exist anymore.

This also occurs in military affairs.  When the Bronze Age Greek civilizations were over-run by the iron using Dorians, it wasn’t that the Doric iron weapons were better.  The bronze weapons of the sophisticated Greek civilization were quite advanced – but they iron weapons were much cheaper and easier to make.

Here is what struck me as I read about Christensen.  Computers are getting better and better at what they do and automation is replacing a lot of jobs humans do – and not just in clerical tasks – but also potentially in some sophisticated ones.

Watson, the IBM computer that defeated several Jeopardychampions (and my old boss) equaled the human mind in a very specific area and occupies several rooms.  But, soon enough Watson will be living in your phone (Siri is a very bad, but relatively cheap, fore-runner).

Your Personal Robot DJ

The Muzak Corporation no longer develops the cheesey, bland sound-track known as elevator music.  They generate sophisticated packages of music for different environments, including custom-made selections that add an audio dimension to a carefully tailored environment (retailers are the major customers.)  In this New Yorker profile, one of the Muzak architects asks the author a series of questions about himself and creates a “personal audio imaging profile” and a six-song personalized CD.  The author is struck that while he hadn’t heard of any of the artists on the CD, he really liked it and even bought some CDs of the artists.

Could a computer do that?

Not yet, but consider the automatic iTunes recommendations based on past purchases (personally, I know very little about this).  Right now they may be of limited utility to serious music aficionados appear eons away from the sophisticated capacities of the Muzak Corporation.  But the algorithms of iTunes and other online music sellers will become continually more sophisticated.  What happens to the company when an individual or business can subscribe to a highly personalized music selection service for a far lower price?

This example is at the high-end, but there are innumerable examples at the low-end as well.  Automated cars are close to being a technological reality.  How many people work as drivers around and what will they do when robot vehicles do all of the driving.

One can imagine the Muzak architects finding new and interesting things to do.  But what about the many, many people who drive for a living?  Will they start writing screenplays or becoming research scientists?

This scenario will play out in industry after industry.  The very best maps are still made by hand, but computer generated maps are cheaper and usually good enough.

This would seem to be the argument of the “buggy whip makers” who were put out of business with the coming of the automobile.  But I don’t think so.  Most inventions replaced human brawn – which isn’t what people are best at anyway (pound for pound most animals are far stronger.)  People still had hands, minds, and mouths, which could (particularly in combination) perform functions that were not easily automated.  But these new capabilities are edging into core human functions.

Are we sliding into the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano in which machines do all the work and people are left with nothing to do?