But If Thomas Friedman Fires All The Non-Robot Taxi Drivers, How Will He Write All His Columns?
Your New York Times dollars at work.
Even though democracy, the economy, and a fair chunk of New Jersey are all on fire this week, some things in America can still be relied on. The Mariners are breaking our hearts, cat pictures are plentiful, and Thomas Friedman is once again saying stupid shit in his New York Times column (gift link). You know what kind of week it’s been when we approach mocking a Thomas Friedman column as a pleasant diversion.
Friedman explains how Democrats can fix America’s problems and beat Trump all in one go. Like stuffy old square Mr. McGuire hoped to set young Benjamin Braddock on the road to success with “One word: Plastics,” Tom Friedman hopes Democrats will just settle down, stop making a fuss, park that preppy ‘66 Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider for good, and embrace his advice: “Robotaxis.”
Yeah, really. He’s very big on the robotaxis.
I struggle these days whenever someone asks me for my political affiliation. But if you really force me, I’d describe myself as a “Waymo Democrat.” Waymos are the self-driving electric taxis started by Google. My party’s bumper sticker would read, “A chicken in every pot and a Waymo in every city.” And our TV ads would say: “Trump is for he/him — his grievances, his revenge, his corruption — and for bringing old stuff back ‘again,’ like coal and gasoline cars. Waymo Democrats are for ‘We the People’ and reinventing American industry anew.”
Yes, but if we fire all the taxi/Uber/Lyft drivers, Thomas Friedman will never have anyone to interview ever again.
Ever attuned to what America wants, Friedman cites as an inspiration David Brooks, who says that “Donald Trump is often the wrong answer to the right question,” a more temperate complaint than Brooks’s recent mild-eyed milquetoast “comprehensive national civic uprising” rhetoric.
Friedman is happy to credit Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for attracting tens of thousands of people to their rallies against Trump, but finds their action plan lacking, since all they offer is “lazily bashing billionaires” and a call to protect Social Security and Medicare from noted billionaire Elon Musk and his fascist chainsaw, how banal.
Never mind that billionaires are literally stripping America for parts and tax cuts right now, or that Americans are terrified by the chaos already wrecking VA hospitals, Social Security offices, and other government services. Of course there is also the tiny detail that Friend of the Working Class Thomas Friedman himself married into a billionaire family, so we can see how he might be a little sensitive to seeing his pals called mean names.
It’s a hell of a lot for Friedman to handwave away with a bland call for Democrats to “unify the nation” (we’re trying that again?) instead of the very urgent, time’s-running-out job of keeping our institutions out of the wood chipper. As for the related crisis of the moment, Trump’s desire to deport our neighbors and maybe us, Friedman never mentions it. At least David Brooks found the mass deportations appalling.
But resisting oligarchy is boring, and besides, what if we just enlist the oligarchs in Friedman’s grand vision of revitalizing American manufacturing with ROBOTAXIS, isn’t that EXCITING? Friedman always takes Waymos when he’s in any of the four cities where they’re operating, and everyone will love them as he does! Huge opportunity! Growth Industry!
Also, says Friedman, who has Been To China, that country isn’t yet making robotaxis, so that’s a chance for the new generation of Waymo Democrat Achievers to beat China to a market sector, if they’re smart.
What’s more, Friedman argues he can’t think of a “more obvious moonshot project to spur advanced manufacturing in America” than aiming to have fleets of robotaxis trundling through every city in America, bringing back all the manufacturing jobs!
Because if you look under the hood of any Waymo, it is made up of chips, batteries, sensors and other components that also go into every part of the 21st-century industrial ecosystem — including robots, drones and flying cars — all infused with artificial intelligence.
He goes on for quite a bit about the AI souls of these new machines and how much good building them would do for the economy, especially once robotaxis can be kept from dragging the odd jaywalker to their death, a little bad-publicity downside. But hooray, studies suggest robotaxis are already safer than human drivers, and we all know how persuasive “studies suggest” is when overcoming widespread fear.
We’ll admit, it’s not a terrible argument, in a purely abstract sense. Especially if you’re a climate nerd like me who still thinks that the technology of the clean energy transition — already underway thanks to Joe Biden’s now-abandoned industrial policy — is already a hell of a good way to revitalize American manufacturing. It’s great for the economy and the planet. But most Americans either never heard about it, failed to find it compelling, or buy the the current administration’s lie that it’s literally a cause for criminal prosecution.
Friedman seems to have missed that, or thinks that somehow going all in on the autonomous-EV slice of clean transportation will be far more popular. His enthusiasm just doesn’t seem very road-tested, as it were.
Friedman offers a smidge of empathy to all the working-class folks who’d lose their jobs when Democrats embrace autonomous vehicles and the robot factories that will build them.
And while I don’t enjoy seeing anyone put out of work, taxi drivers are not in a growth industry. Whereas the number of better-paying jobs supporting a robotaxi network — A.I. researchers, engineers, data scientists, chip designers, blue-collar mechanics, electrical engineers, marketers, maintenance workers, software designers, data-center construction workers — constitute a growth industry, with good incomes for more people.
That will certainly win over the red-hatted folks on Twitter who for over a decade have been jeering laid off journalists with “LEARN TO CODE.”
We have to wonder whether anyone at the Times pointed out to Friedman just how much his message sounds like Elon Musk’s “Fork In The Road” message to government workers. Musk advised them that “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” because government is not a growth industry either.
Elon, who seems to have abandoned EVs anyway in favor of his own robotaxi fantasies, would have a prominent role in Friedman’s paradise, if only we’d all just lay off the poor sociopathic billionaire and appeal to the (entirely notional) better angels of his nature.
[We’d] say to Elon Musk: “Stop wasting your talents and hurting America with your DOGE craziness and finally get the Tesla robotaxi that you have been promising for a decade out on the road. The greatest gift you could give America today is to junk your stupid chain saw, replace it with car tools and create a nationwide competition with Waymo for robotaxis.”
How could Elon resist that? Probably by tweeting Friedman’s name with three pairs of parentheses around it and accusing him of being an agent of George Soros and globalism, because how dare he try to distract from Donald Trump’s holy mission.
In conclusion, if Democrats want to win back the working class, we must fire the taxi drivers and auto plant workers to usher in Robotaxi Paradise. And if Friedman can’t learn about the world from cab drivers anymore, it’ll only be temporary. Eventually the taxis’ AI will be so good that he can credit his most recent Waymo for its pithy robot-car-on-the-street insights.
[NYT (gift link)]
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In the last week I've mocked Tom Friedman & David Brooks. Just wish I'd joined Wonkette in time to use the headline "He Ain't Heavy, He's David Broder."
I'm not a huge AI booster but one job that can be 100% outsourced to AI is writing Thomas Friedman columns.