Louis C.K. Helpfully - and Happily - Reminds Us How Good We Have It
Louis C.K. is a disgraced comic, understandably held in contempt for sexual harassment. But, whatever else one thinks of him, he does offer some insight into the way most people take technologies for granted and fail to recognize how much or how quickly our society has advanced.
In a long-time riff of his, Louis C.K. describes his first experience using Wi-Fi on an airplane: “It’s fast and I’m watching YouTube clips. It’s amazing – I’m on an airplane. And then the Wi-Fi breaks down. And the guy next to me goes ‘this is b.s.’ I mean, how quickly does the world owe him something that he knew existed only 10 seconds ago?”
Good question. We are living in the best of places, in the best of times. We have easy access to technologies that make our lives better, more prosperous, and healthier – technologies that our parents or their parents would never have imagined. The reason we have these things is capitalism. Modern capitalism has made life infinitely better for virtually everyone, by spawning new technologies, new ways of doing things, and new goods and services that make our lives better.
But how easy it is to forget how much the market accomplishes and how quickly. The fellow sitting next to Louis C.K. on the plane? Someone might have pointed out to him that he was sitting in a vehicle that was speeding through the air, taking him from one coast to the other in about five hours – something mankind dreamed of for millennia. It was just a little over a century ago that the Wright brothers invented the first airplane. At the time, even they didn’t come close to grasping the enormous potential of this new technology to change the world, expecting that it would mostly be useful for exhibitions and competitions.
Today, we can fly from New York to London in less than seven hours – compared to the weeks it used to take for a passenger ship trip. The first international flights were available less than a century ago, and then only flights between the United States and Canada. The first jet aircraft wasn’t even invented until 1947, and the first jetliner was introduced only five years later.
And yet today, we also have the unprecedented opportunity to complain when free and speedy access to the Internet – which itself has only been available for about a quarter-century – breaks down briefly, on a jet travelling hundreds of miles an hour, while we are served food and drinks. The failure of many to grasp the tremendous power of progress (driven by capitalism) is hardly restricted to the cavalier way many regard air travel, the Internet, cell phones and Wi-Fi – all of which have already benefited us enormously and, like the Wright brothers’ one-seater aircraft, will no doubt will benefit us even more in the future.
Moreover, in addition to the technologies that bring convenience, efficiency and entertainment into our daily lives – like laptops, Uber, online shopping, Google maps, Alex and Siri, HDTV, and Netflix – we have seen crucial breakthroughs in techniques and devices that help us live longer, healthier, better lives.
Many Americans, of course, understandably worry about the cost of health insurance and their ability to hang on to a job that provides it. But one of the reasons health care is so valuable today, and so expensive, is because considerable technologies and procedures have been devised over the past few decades to help us live longer and better. In the early 1920s, the son of the president of the United States died of an infection that would be easily cured just a couple of decades later – when antibiotics were invented. In the 1970s, MRIs were in only their initial stages of development. Just since 1980, technology has given us surgical robots, the first vaccine for hepatitis A and B, laser cataract surgery, lithotripters capable of fragmenting kidney stones in less than an hour, artificial limbs, bionic eyes, stem cell research and the first human liver grown from stem cells, among many medical innovations. Many understandably worry about opioids, and criticize (perhaps unfairly) those who made it available. But the same economic system that spawned opioids has also given life to every pharmaceutical medication we use today, most of them available for just the past 25 years – including statins, beta blockers, anti-cancer drugs, and for that matter Viagara.
Cars are safer, cheaper, less polluting, and more convenient. Houses are bigger, warmer and more efficient. Air conditioning is widely available. Clothes are cheaper, and offer far more choices of style. Just 500 years ago, Henry VIII was king of England and one of the wealthiest people in the world – yet he died because he didn’t have enough fruit and vegetables. Today, both – along with other great things to eat – are available all year round, from all over the world, and all we have to do to access it is press a few buttons on a phone.
Capitalism has made all of these things possible, by bringing together people who are prepared to invest capital with people who can use it to create new products and services that improve our lives. There is a price to pay, but it is a necessary one, and one worth paying: Creative destruction, or the abandonment of old technologies as new ones are developed to take their place – and as capital continually chases its most efficient use.
Creative destruction is not always popular, at least not among people who feel the destruction before they feel the positive impact of the creativity. It eliminates jobs, and renders valuable technologies redundant as the old gives way to the new. When the PC hit the market, it was a giant leap forward; but it also put typewriter manufacturers out of business, and all the people who worked for them out of a job. When Netflix became available, it was a boon to all who make use of it; but it also shut down thousands of video stores, and eliminated the jobs of tens of thousands of people who worked at them. Yet, despite dislocations like this, unemployment rates are at levels lower than we have seen in decades.
You can’t have the creative without the destruction. When a new technology is developed, it replaces an old one – because it provides the same benefits or more, faster, better and cheaper.
Human beings are by nature acquisitive and demanding. In many ways that is a good thing, one that is essential to making progress, as we quickly demand the opportunity to do more things and do them better. But next time you use Wi-Fi on a jet, just remember that you have relatively inexpensive access to goods and services that were not available to our parents or to theirs. And remind yourself that these tools of a better life are available only because capitalism makes it possible for them to be created.
