@johnarnold It shouldn’t be supported but it may have to be tolerated. An important distinction.

@johnarnold I’ve briefed this type of politician during my time in government and it’s as painful as you would assume it to be. Well intentioned, but truly hopeless.

Creative destruction is economist Joseph Schumpeter’s term for how innovation disrupts and replaces old industries, jobs, and technologies with better ones—driving long-term economic growth.

Tractors eliminated many farmhand roles but slashed food costs, boosted yields, and freed workers for factories, services, and new fields—raising living standards dramatically.

Autonomous vehicles will displace some drivers yet create roles in software, engineering, data, maintenance, and logistics while cutting accidents, congestion, and transport costs. Blocking them to “save jobs” repeats the mistake of resisting tractors: it preserves the past at the expense of widespread progress and prosperity.

@johnarnold Need to leave this god-forsaken country

Funny on many levels, though I don't understand Waymo taking the heat; they are dead man walking. Tesla will destroy that market, especially once they flip the switch and allow customer cars to UBER autonomously while their owners are doing other things. TURO will also have a difficult time surviving.

@johnarnold @grok explain creative destruction and its benefits

@johnarnold My Internal Plan is as follows📈

Details as follows 👇 👇 👇

@johnarnold That's an imbecilic analogy.

This was the exact response to the shipping container, which created global trade at scale as we know it and made globalization possible.

Reading “The Box” now, which is very instructive about the great resistance by entrenched labor to innovation (which actually ended up creating more jobs with exploding volume).

@johnarnold All jobs are at risk through innovation. That's kind of the point of pioneering an innovation, so that your solution is better, cheaper, or faster than the old method. Not to "take" jobs, but to create better ones.

@johnarnold Luddites

@johnarnold Let’s ban subways, such unfair competition for taxi drivers 🙄

@DSchillerTX @johnarnold Waymo has a huge head start. And they won't stand still.

@johnarnold @paulnovosad My guess is that you can find this type of response for all technologies.

@johnarnold People don’t trust tech leaders. Gee I wonder why? Crazy blind spot to not try and grapple with this question

It was.

Historical analyses of early mechanization describe widespread reporting on the social consequences: rural workers losing jobs, small farmers being pushed out, and migration to cities. One source summarizes this as “machines gradually took over the fields, thousands of rural workers lost their stable jobs,” reflecting the tone of many mid‑century retrospectives on early tractor adoption.

@johnarnold And how many extra vehicle deaths per year are they willing to live with to keep those jobs?

@johnarnold If that had been the response to the Tractor, perhaps Malthus would have been proven correct. Thankfully he was spectacularly wrong because we didn't embrace such silliness as this.

@johnarnold It was. We are all better off with tractors, and I think our descendants will be better off with AI, but people will experience pain today, much like the displaced farmhands of the past.