Lesson 14. Technological Socialism

Don’t let the title of this section scare you. “Technological socialism” is a term coined by Dr. Harry Kloor, an American scientist, filmmaker, and entrepreneur. In traditional Socialism, the “state,” or the government, takes care of its citizens, providing everyone access to infrastructure and services ranging from healthcare and education to security and transportation. The inevitable problems traditional socialism faces are, first, corruption and, second, inefficiency.

However, consider that an app like Uber is actually a socialist ideal: the sharing of assets amongst people. The same applies to YouTube for entertainment and the Khan Academy for education. The difference is that an algorithm—rather than a centralized, inefficient government—matches supply and demand.. 

Technological Socialism refers to a future in which technology, not the government, manages the commons and serves the citizenry.

Indeed, once you learn to recognize it, you’ll notice that technological socialism is emerging around us, making once expensive and scarce services available to everyone. The gig economy itself can actually be seen as a socialist endeavor, as it enables the sharing of work amongst a large group of people.

This technological (“enabled”) socialism works because algorithms do the heavy lifting of hyper efficiently matching supply and demand, without the interference of human bias and corruption, and at superhuman speeds. The last is important because one of the biggest arguments against traditional socialism (as opposed to a market economy) is that a centralized system is incapable of dealing with billions of transactions per day or distributing resources fairly and effectively.

Apply this model to widely distributed, essential resources such as energy, healthcare, etc., and a whole new model for society emerges. The weakness of centralization is overcome because decision-making is distributed and networked across hundreds of thousands of sensor-equipped nodes located at the sites of production and consumption.

Technology holds the enormous opportunity not only to meet our every need but also to distribute resources most effectively to maximize happiness and productivity in society. This is what the ongoing convergence of AI, sensors, and networks will deliver. ExOs will be the how. We will be able to achieve a “small S” socialism without the materialistic soul, the obsession with class struggle, and all of those other concepts that set “big S” socialism on the wrong path.