Shunning “Friends” To Live In A “Whiplash” World

While much of the United States was with their families on Christmas, enjoying one of the only nationally sanctioned days when large numbers of us are allowed to disengage from work, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk were exposing a rift in MAGA-world over the idea of work itself.

The spat, ignited by a post from Ramaswamy on X, was ostensibly about immigration. He argued that American culture, which venerates jocks over nerds, is the reason we need to bring so many skilled immigrants to work in the tech industry.

Ramaswamy was referring to a narrow subset of technologically skilled immigrants, not to the large swaths of farm and factory laborers that are often at the center of debates over immigration. However, that didn’t matter to the Steve Bannon wing of the MAGA coalition, which argues all types of immigration should be halted and mass deportations should begin.

The short of it is Musk, who has been tapped to run a newly created department to identify areas to drastically reduce the size of the federal government, sided with Ramaswamy, his co-director in that project. This created an incident many in the media labeled “Tech Bros vs. MAGA Bros.” Trump eventually sided with the Tech Bros.

Although many saw this as a skirmish about immigration, Mark Cuban, an early billionaire “tech bro,” named it for what it was really about: work.

As Musk and Ramaswamy’s dialogue pitted immigrant and American work ethics against each other, Cuban shifted the conversation to the growing trend to steer U.S. students away from college and toward skilled-labor careers.

In a post on X, Cuban asked, “Which of these jobs won’t be done by a robot within 25 years or sooner: electrician, plumber, forklift operator, etc.? All the jobs everyone wants you to skip college and train for.” Cuban then answered his own question with, “None of them.”

His argument was in service to a more narrow conversation about immigration and culture. Still, it echoed some of the almost century-old thoughts of the British philosopher and economist John Maynard Keynes about the future of work.

In an essay written in 1930 titled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” Keynes considered the rapid rate of change in his time and speculated what society would be like when the need for work was reduced or eliminated altogether. He imagined in a hundred years (right about now,) the need for human labor would be drastically reduced.

Keynes suggested that fifteen-hour work weeks might become the norm, and most of that time would be just to satisfy an innate human need to labor. The rest of our time would be spent perfecting “the art of life itself.” Leisure would be the norm, and our days would be spent learning how to navigate a world with abundant resources and a decreased need to toil.

For Keynes, this new world would be ushered in by an accumulation of wealth brought about by “science and compound interest.” Keynes’ speculation was full of naivete.

He assumed certain conditions would be met to reach this goal, such as no massive population increases and the cessation of war. The world has four times as many people now than in 1930, and we all know how his visions of peace turned out.

But one of his other assumptions has proved even more challenging to realize. Keynes believed there would gradually be more people for whom the “problems of economic necessity have been practically removed,” to the extent that “the nature of one’s duty to one’s neighbour is changed.”

He added what I believe to be the crux of the problem our Tech Bros are arguing about on X: “For it will remain reasonable to be economically purposeful for others after it has ceased to be reasonable for oneself.” (Emphasis mine.)

Ramaswamy and Musk’s concerns aren’t about H-1B Visas or the values of one culture over another. They are about who will work longer hours for less pay to pad the already enormous wealth of company executives and shareholders. And all of this is with no regard for workers.

It is telling that, in his original post, Ramaswamy said we needed more movies “like Whiplash” and “fewer reruns of Friends.” For all its flaws, including a cast who didn’t look like the neighborhood it represented, “Friends” was a story about young people who worked, but whose identity was centered around their community, not their jobs.

“Whiplash” was the story of a jazz band conductor who physically and psychologically abused young musicians to drive them toward perfection. He drove one to suicide.

Vivek Ramaswamy wants us to shun “Friends” to live in a “Whiplash” world.

Mark Cuban and John Maynard Keynes are on to something, but both overestimate the capacity of the Elon Musks and Vivek Ramaswamys of the world to factor in a love of neighbor in their professional endeavors.

What will happen when the robots do all the jobs and a small handful of people, mostly men, have all the money? Will these men give away all (or even a fraction) of what they have for the common good? Will they develop a capacity to imagine a world where everyone, regardless of how or how much they contribute, has enough to thrive?

Or will they give us all whiplash, needlessly working the world until our collective fingers bleed, just because they can? Or will they follow the countercultural, “first is last, last is first,” wisdom of Jesus and other great spiritual leaders?

I have doubts, but I’ll say my prayers and write my words. I’ll then rest as hard as I can as part of the collective cry of humanity for the reign of God to be realized in this world.