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<\/p>\nEven if you think the American Constitution is the most brilliant political document in human history (and it arguably is), it was written in the late 18th century, which means it\u2019s a product of a very different world than the one we currently inhabit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
America was an agrarian slave society at the time of the founding. The citizenry was confined to white, property-owning males. People lived in small, self-contained communities. All of these anachronisms are reflected in the Constitution, not just in the treatment of race but in the structure of the government itself. The Electoral College, the unrepresentative Senate, the Supreme Court \u2014 these are all deeply undemocratic institutions and they\u2019re becoming unsustainable in an increasingly polarized society.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
We could change the Constitution, of course, but there\u2019s a problem. While the Constitution is open to revision, the truth is that it has become almost impossible to revise. The result is a political system that feels permanently stuck.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and the author of a new book called No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States<\/em><\/a>. Chemerinsky\u2019s book makes a pretty convincing case that we\u2019re in trouble if we don\u2019t find a way to seriously reform \u2014 or even rewrite \u2014 the Constitution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sample from the interview:<\/p>\n Sean Illing<\/strong><\/p>\n What are the biggest problems with the Constitution at this moment?<\/p>\n Erwin Chemerinsky<\/strong><\/p>\n Right now I would say the Electoral College and two senators per state are what pose the greatest threat to democracy. But if you asked me what was the worst choice historically, I\u2019d say it was what the framers did with regard to slavery and race \u2014 that has haunted this country from the beginning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, for all the sins committed in America’s past, conservatives simply don’t want to hear about them, or let children know about them.<\/p>\n \\\\\\<\/p>\n NY Times, Emma Goldberg, 3 Aug 2024<\/strong>: Will A.I. Kill Meaningless Jobs?<\/a>, subtitled “And is that so bad?”<\/p>\n This has been a theme of Harari’s: the need for everyone to work will drop as productivity rises, via AI and other technologies. Thus, siphon off that productivity into a universal basic income, and whatnot. This piece begins, as so many effective pieces do, with an anecdote.<\/p>\n When Brad Wang started his first job in the tech industry, right after college, he marveled at the way Silicon Valley had turned the drudgery of the workplace into a sumptuousness of game rooms, nap pods and leafy hiking trails. This is what it must have felt like to be a guest showing up for a party at Jay Gatsby\u2019s house, Mr. Wang thought.<\/p>\n But under the glitz was a kind of hollowness. He hopped from one software engineering role to another, toiling on some projects that he felt were meaningless. At Google, he worked for 15 months on an initiative that higher-ups decided to keep pursuing even though they knew it would never launch. He then spent more than a year at Facebook on a product whose primary customer at one point described it to the engineers as unhelpful.<\/p>\n Over time, the pointlessness of his work began to incense Mr. Wang: \u201cIt\u2019s like baking a pie that\u2019s going right into the trash can.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a long tradition in the corporate world of clocking in only to wonder: What\u2019s the point? During the pandemic, tens of thousands of people joined the subreddit page r\/antiwork to share quips about rejecting drudge work and, in most cases, all work. In the 1990s, \u201cOffice Space\u201d parodied the grind of corporate life, making famous the sentiment<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s not that I\u2019m lazy, it\u2019s that I just don\u2019t care.\u201d Long before that, Herman Melville\u2019s \u201cBartleby, the Scrivener\u201d followed a law clerk \u2014 the original quiet quitter \u2014 who responds to every one of his boss\u2019s demands by saying \u201cI would prefer not to,\u201d until he is put under arrest, and, eventually, dies.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/07\/31\/business\/03Idea-AIJob\/03Idea-AIJob-superJumbo-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp\")
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