Zack Kass

We drive around the planet and we go, everyone's a jerk these days.

I'm a nice person.

I remind people of this because it explains one of these incredible phenomenons, which is that the world is in fact getting better all the time.

We are just overexposed to the bad stuff.

And I should have raised this issue because the zombie apocalypse phenomenon plagues our brain.

There are a number of biases that cause this, but it really does reinforce this idea that the world is getting worse, but I...

I have salvation.

I am okay.

And actually, most people are okay.

Most things are going okay, right?

If you live in the United States, and frankly, if you live in most of the Western world, and actually, at this point, if you live in most of the world, you're doing okay.

There are some pockets that are not, and there are some people that are not, but on the whole, you are doing way better than your great-grandparents and all of our great-grandparents for that matter.

And you are simply now overexposed to the few people that are not doing well, and you're very sensitive to the things that break.

Where I think the future of work and job displacement gets so tricky is that we're stepping left foot, right foot right now, and we cannot see past ourselves.

And I tell a story to reinforce this point, and I tell the story in the book, and it actually, in many ways, galvanized the book for me because it brought into focus one of the most complicated and controversial issues at a moment that I think needs a lot more clarity and nuance.

In October 2024, the longshoremen went on strike, and the head of the longshoremen union, Harold Taggart, informed the 45,000 of his longshoremen to walk off the job site and shut down the ports on the morning of October 1st, basically crippling our import-export business.

And he went on CNN on the morning of October 2nd for an hour-long interview.

He sat in front of the camera and very calmly pointed at the camera to open the interview or at some point early in the interview and said,

The American people have no idea how powerful and dangerous I am.

I will cripple you.