I admire Yang's intelligence, and think it is a shame that we do not filter our leaders more for cognitive ability, as Singapore does. This is almost enough to make me want to vote for the man.

However, his big policy item, BIG justified by Luddism, is confused economics. Comparative advantage basicly guarantees human employment until robotic labour is 100% as capable as human labour. True, after that point the value of labour declines below subsistence. But this implies human-level, or more likely, smarter than human AI. At that point, economic policy is pointless as all that matters for human welfare is the objective function of the AIs.

For it is they who will have the power to shape the world. Let us hope they are coded with care.

The lump of labour fallacy is itself a fallacy, as it would fail to be true if we had robotics and software that could do 100% of all economically relevant cognitive tasks. Economists who don't mention this limiting case when denouncing Luddism really do annoy me.

Still, in practice it appears to me to be a very good heuristic for the reasons mentioned above. Ironically, the Luddites are wrong for the "right" reasons, applying economic theory dogmatically to realms where it ceases to matter. And the Economists are right for the wrong reasons, ignoring a limiting case that is obviously possible and probably inevitable.

On a related note, congratulation to president tsai being re-elected yesterday! Thank god the evil Chinese communist party was not able to infiltrate and plant their own candidate

Taiwan is a shining example of democracy in Asia, hopefully inspiring people in Singapore, China, and others