Jasmine Sun

And there are different theories for why this is true.

But one of the strongest theories is that in the 20th century, automation mostly affected factories that had strong unions that basically sat down at the union bargaining table and worked with the automators to figure out, okay, we're going to have wage guarantees for the people who keep their jobs.

We want workers' wages to go up if productivity goes up.

So like let's tie workers' wages to productivity gains.

And also you had like the expansion of federal level welfare.

in order to sort of, again, reassure people that the jobs would be better jobs, that they would be taken care of, that they would share in the gains.

I think most people want to live in a growing economy.

Most people want to be more productive.

They just want to know that they are going to get a piece of that.

And if their company ends up making more money because technology increases productivity, they want to get an equal or like some part of that as well.

And I think that's the part that's broken.

I don't know that today unions are the right people to be doing that bargaining.

One is like, it's not, we're not affecting unionized industries anymore.

We're talking about software engineers and marketers and whatever.

And most of these people are not in unions.

But that kind of what is the bargaining table is the thing I now think about, like, I

think when there's not a legitimate channel to have those kinds of conversations, that's when you see things like political violence or you see these data center moratoriums because you don't have a place where you can actually negotiate.

So like with things like Waymo, I'm like, is there a way for the cab drivers and Waymo to come to the table and to

figure out some kind of arrangement where Google, which is a very profitable company and is going to make even more money in a world where Ramos are everywhere, can they somehow share some of that with the cab drivers who are affected, fund training programs?

I don't know what it is, but these are the conversations that I'm really interested in.