The fate of monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus, is one of the very few cases in which invertebrate conservation has been on the radar–the other famous case being Apis mellifera, a domesticated species that is not rare, not in decline, and a threat to biodiversity rather than being remotely plausible as a cause célèbre for biodiversity or environmentalism. Environmental activists may as well unite behind Prunus dulcis and Zea mays as behind Apis mellifera. Leaving Apis mellifera aside, the ordinarily cited threat to Danaus plexippus is herbicides. Herbicides do what we intend them to do, but too well. A few decades ago, our herbicides were not terribly effective. We intended to make our row crops free of weeds–a category in which every agriculturalist would include all species of Asclepias–but we weren’t all that good at it. So there was still a fair amount of one or another species of Asclepias around, and especially in the parts of the midwest that were formerly tallgrass prairie but which have been converted quite thoroughly to row crops (mostly corn, wheat, and soybeans), all the Asclepias we couldn’t kill was an important food source for Danaus plexippus. As our herbicides have become more effective, that food source has become scarce.
The standard environmentalist ‘sell’ at this point is that this or that herbicide is evil and should be banned. This is absurd. The problem is not that a particular tool has made it easier for us to act on the incentives provided by our socioeconomic system, the problem is the incentives provided by our socioeconomic system. We’ve decided that row crop production is the highest value for this part of our country. Making it more difficult to maximize that value misses the point. So long as we’re trying to eradicate Asclepias, worrying about the tool is kind of a pointless rearguard action. It’s like trying to get the guy who wants to murder you to use a knife rather than a pistol–if you can’t change the guy’s motivation, sure, it’s better he use a knife, but the pistol isn’t the problem. The guy trying to murder you is the problem.
For biodiversity, herbicides aren’t the problem, agriculture is the problem. Making agriculture less efficient is not good for biodiversity. If yield per acre goes down while demand for the crop remains constant, guess what happens? Acres in production go up. So long as the same incentive structure remains in place, lower efficiency per acre means more acres are needed. If we want milkweeds to do well, we need to provide land owners in the midwest with new incentives. So long as our incentive structure tells them to kill milkweeds, making it harder for them to do so is self-defeating. The tool, the herbicide, only looks like the problem so long as our society tells farmers to use it for ill.
Apply also to, “AI is going to take our jobs!” If your self-valuation depends on your being able to perform a particular function, and it turns out that an automated system can perform better, that’s a problem. The problem is not that AI can perform that function better. The problem is about valuation and incentives. If right now you’re doing a job that can’t be easily replaced by automation, don’t feel smug. That’s an accidental fact of current technology. If automation can do your job two years from now, will you still value yourself? Will your society still value you? That’s the question. Technology will be whatever it will be. All the questions about value are not determined by technology, they are determined by us.
An example I heard a while ago, I don’t remember where, is of a locally owned business selling cupcakes. If we value the delivery of some mass of cupcakes to some set of consumers, it doesn’t make sense for any of us to bake or sell cupcakes. Every step in that process can be done better through automation. But what if we value going down to the local shop to buy cupcakes baked by members of our community? You can’t automate that. What if we value the ability of the other members of our community to follow their dreams, whether those dreams be based in pure efficiency, or directly opposed to efficiency? That’s not a question of technology, that’s a question of what we want our society to look like. Automation wins if we place value on that which can be achieved by automation.
By viewing the problem as “technology” or “AI” or “automation”, we simply create an external object, a scapegoat, for our own choices. Societal valuation is not done by technology, it is done by us. We look for an external threat, but when we look around… well, there’s no one else here. It’s just us. OK, maybe that guy over there is causing more of the problem than I am. Well, if I try to externalize, to “other” that guy over there, I don’t solve the problem. I just artificially divide it. That guy over there is also us. We have met the enemy and we can pretend whatever we like, but we know he is us.
If we suppose that this externalization is accurate, the problem really is that guy over there, is the problem solved by division? Does that guy over there cease causing a problem because you have drawn a sharp line between “us”, the folks suffering from the problem, and “him” (or “them”), who created the problem? Obviously not. That act of division, of polarization, even in the rare cases in which its justification cannot be doubted, solves nothing. The cause of the problem is now ostensibly not “us” but “them”. We should ask ourselves now, who can we better have a conversation with, who can we better influence? “Us”, or “them”? Does making that person a “them” make it easier to make positive change, or just make it easier separate responsibility for the problem from “us”?