When I was growing up the 70’s feminists were ruffling a lot of feathers. What was hard to swallow is that, as a group, they assumed all women supported their efforts. After all, activists like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Kate Millett believed they were working on behalf of all women. But just because they believed it so doesn’t mean it was.
In Matt Ridley’s book, How Innovation Works, the author suggests that it is a group of inventors most often working on a new technology. He cites the light bulb as an example. As many as twenty inventors may have been the first to produce a successful prototype. And Ridley feels that if one or two of the leaders had fallen away, then it would have just been a matter of time before another from the group would have succeeded. The way he describes groups of people with a common ambition reminds me of types of legions, all walking in step and yet replaceable.
I’d suggest that this no harm no foul quality of group members is one way to distinguish who is on a team and who is not. It’s a good way to test for slippage. That way in policy conversations it is easier to keep track of whether the actors are appropriately portioned off.
A thoughtful new conversation between Russ Roberts and Daron Acemoglu was released last week on Econ Talk. They mull through the good and the bad impacts of technology since the start of the Industrial Revolution (IR). And they list off many different groups which makes for a fun review. Here are the ones I tracked in just the first bit of the show. (times are approximate)
2:49 We. This appears to refer to present-day dwellers. And rightfully true, everyone on earth has a greater standard of living from something that stemmed out of the IR.
4:30 Innovators. This group refers to the individual who successfully laid claim and also ownership to a piece of new technology. I’d say this is a bit of slippage as not everyone working as an innovator gets paid. In fact, many toil with no reward. So this is slippage.
4:59 Replaced Worker. I think this group is rightly described when talking in such general terms. Upon the implementation of a new way of doing things, there will be changes to job structures. If the conversation were focused closer to a particular event, then more details on the various levels of impact would be necessary to keep the members of each group interchangeable.
7:00 Peasants. There are a number of points made in the conversation that rely on social and class status versus wage and monitary status. I think this is a type of slippage.
The circumscribing of these first four groups differs in quality. The general big group WE allows for a sweeping claim. Yet the sheer size of it makes its delineation only interesting as a starting point to a conversation.
The loose use of INNOVATORS is problematic. Most people will assume that all parties to the group extracted a tidy sum. Yet so many people work on new ideas at their expense and never are reimbursed. This leads the public to believe that entrepreneurs are greedy as they expect so much for not more than a sure thing. A more accurate group notation here would avoid that misunderstanding.
Part of whether the grouping makes sense is based on the context of the conversation. In this talk, there was mention that the REPLACED WORKER in the US only lost out on a good-paying job for a portion of his career. Whereas in the UK, history shows that technological innovations sometimes depleted worker opportunities for several generations. So it seems here the term is too general to make a worthy representation of the group in one of the two scenarios.
There were several references to groups that describe a class rather than a worker. PEASANTS, lords, and ladies, the Abbotts. To me, this switches the analysis from activity that generates objects bought and sold in a market, to life outcomes of both workers and their families based on social status. It switches from an unfettered exchange of some form of monetary compensation to reflections on health, access to food and supplies, voice and power within a community.
There are a lot of reasons to name a group correctly. But the best reason is to do no harm to those too busy with life to speak up and object.
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