Dynamic Economies Need Ordinary People

We need more economic participation and inclusion for those with average abilities, not less. "Average is over" is not an optimal equilibrium setting! When supply and demand takes ordinary human wants and capacities into account, societies are more likely to prosper in sustainable ways. Societies always have a chance of doing well, if they embrace more than just the contributions of only the best and the brightest. Every city and community needs the chance to remain an active part of economic dynamism.

For as long as anyone could remember, tradable sector activity made ample space for the average citizen to participate. Indeed, the mass manufacture of tradable sector dominance must have felt more inclusive for many citizens, than does the dominance of today's non tradable sector activity. For one, tradable sector employment did not require the same extensive credentials which came to be expected in non tradable sector roles. Is it still feasible to recapture the economic inclusion that encouraged communities of all sizes and abilities, to participate?

Meanwhile, experts in every prosperous region, live lives increasingly distanced from those of the average individual. Some of these even lament how America has lost faith in expertise! Nevertheless: If the economy has become "too complex" for ordinary citizens to even take part, is that really rational? Only consider how long tradable sector activity made production simple enough for average individuals to contribute in the workplace. And - at least until relatively recently - tradable sectors were willing to build products that made life simpler for consumers and producers alike.

Non tradable sector activity will need to take simpler production approaches, if future citizens are to be enriched by the knowledge and skills potential of the present. Average citizens in every town need to be actively involved in production and supply side potential. No community can expect to flourish, if its inhabitants are limited to consumer roles, or else employee roles in enterprises designed to maintain the shield between the elite and everyone else.

It would be a mistake to take progress and prosperity for granted, should ordinary people remain excluded from the processes which make them possible. Daron Acemogul recently expressed this quite well:

Recent innovations have vastly increased productivity in manufacturing, improved communication, and enriched the lives of billions of people. But they could easily devolve into a high-modernist fiasco. 

Frontier technologies such as AI, Big Data and IoT are often presented as panaceas for optimizing work, recreation, communication, and healthcare. The conceit is that we have little to learn from ordinary people and the adaptations they have developed within different social context. 

The problem is that an unconditional belief that "AI can do everything better" to take one example, creates a power imbalance between those developing AI technologies and those whose lives will be transformed by them.

One danger we face (among many), is should elites elect to isolate AI so it can't contribute to the potential of individuals and communities everywhere, they may succeed. However: That success may come with a long succession of autocratic rulers who are willing to enforce the power of the elite over ordinary people, in part because of the rewards the elite would provide their governments in return. Let's ensure this does not happen. Let's make certain that technology and applied knowledge will become shared in ways which give meaning, and real purpose, to the lives of ordinary people and their communities.