Ezra Klein: prediction

Transcript context

…But that’s not really up for grabs — and to enjoy it and to kill animals. And we’ve evolved so our intuitions don’t make us so squeamish about doing that. Now that may, in some very long timeframe, change. Given that that’s one of the core things that we are, much as we’re evolved to, say, enjoy sex or have friends, why think that’s the one thing that’s going to change? It seems to me that’s one of the least likely to change. I don’t see it that way. I’m not sure it’s the only thing that will change, but I’m using it as the thing here. Because I’m a technological optimist, in a lot of ways. I’m not a political optimist, I don’t think we’re going to pass a bunch of laws that are going to change this, but I think that we will see technologies change it. There are things like this before. Child labor, I would actually put a little bit in this category, where, for a very long time, you would say, “Well, we’ve always put kids to work.” In fact, that’s why you have kids, so you have all this extra labor laying around when you need it. Then we got better at automating things, and workers became much, much, much more productive. And families want to educate their kids.…

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