Speech #10: John Henry
Oh! John Henry told his captain,
That a man ain't nothing but a man,
But before I let that steam drill beat me down,
I'll die with a hammer in my hand, Lord! Lord!
I'll die with a hammer in my hand.
That is an inspirational song, and this is to be an inspirational speech, but that song's message is not the one that I want to project. Sure, John Henry out drove the steam drill 12 feet to nine, but he died in the process. Some things are worth dying for, but proving that a man is better than a machine isn't one of them. In fact, men and machines' histories are so interlinked that one can't really say what men are, except from a religious point of view, without referring to machines.
John Henry wasn’t scratching into the rock with his fingernails; he was using a sledgehammer to drive in a steel drill. The steam drill was doing the same thing, the difference being the motive power, human muscles vs. a steam engine. A few years after that legendary contest, the steam drill would have easily out-driven John Henry’s record. If John Henry were alive today, he would probably be in the NFL, but if we could lure him away from that lucrative profession, he could do better as well. He could use an ergonomically shaped sledgehammer with a graphite-reinforced handle. The drill would be titanium with a diamond-tipped bit to slice through the rock. He would use Nautilus machines to build up his muscles and he could take Zocor to avoid the fatal heart attack. The challenge to man isn’t just to do better than a machine on some particular task. The challenge is also to man’s ingenuity to build a machine that do better than the best ever. That is why one definition of man is "the tool using animal". But sea otters use rocks to break open clams. Therefore, a better definition would be that man is the tool-making animal.
The point isn’t whether a human powered set of machines or an engine-powered set of machines is better in the absolute. As they say, “there are horses for courses”. If I want to refinish the hardwood floor of my living room, it is worthwhile to go out and rent a mechanical sander, bring it home, use it, and take it back. If I want to touch-up a scratch left from moving some furniture, it is far quicker and easier to do it by hand. Which combination of machines and motive power is best for the task at hand?
Consider, for a moment, a world without machines, and one basic human need, thirst, an example I borrow from an Austrian economist. The cave that you live in isn’t right by the stream, so when you get thirsty, you walk down the stream, take a drink and then go on about your business (mostly hunting and gathering). Of course you will get thirsty again and have to take time out for a walk to stream and back. After a few trips, you realize that it would helpful to have a container to carry back some water for future use. You spend some time looking for a suitable gourd, or pick up a sharp rock and use it carve a bucket out of a fallen branch. With your bucket you can make only two trips to the stream a day, so you swiftly save more time than you spent making the container.
You could carve another bucket and reduce that to only one trip daily. If you were good at it, you could even go into the bucket carving business, trading the buckets for food and clothing. Someone else, like a colorblind gatherer, might specialize in just carrying water.
This would work well until someone thought about all the trips the tribe made to the stream in a day. They could arrange a series of hollow logs from a point further upstream, diverting part of the flow of water right to the cave. This would take several days work, but the time and effort would be repaid over the course of a year or so by the savings of not having to make all those daily bucket runs. Buckets wouldn’t become obsolete, they would be used to supply water to places not on the water system, away on hunting parties, at the back of the cave, etc., but there would be less need for them.
Should the runner who could get down to the stream the fastest feel diminished by the invention of the bucket? Should the person who can carry the most buckets quickly yet without spilling feel diminished by the installation of the water pipes? The value of their contribution to the tribe is less, because an easier way has been found to accomplish their specialty task, but the tribe is better off. They should try to shift to something more valuable, whether it is back to gathering, or into something new like pipe maintenance.
We have come along way from the caves, but the lessons are still applicable. Our community (the tribe) standard of living improves because of innovation and investment to put those innovations in place. When a new tool comes along, it pays to learn how to use it. The bank's previous diversity mantra "continuous learning - continuous improvement" says exactly the same thing. Intellectually, I think we all agree, but emotionally, there are reservations. Let us take a look at what they might be…