Avoid the avoidable
The start of a new year is usually accompanied by numerous analyses and predictions about what will happen. In some cases, guessing is easy; in others, the uncertainty is almost absolute, especially regarding things beyond human control, like an earthquake. On the other hand, what depends on our will is easier to predict, and when something is going wrong, it should be avoidable, at least in theory. But not everyone understands this because there are events or processes that depend on our decisions and yet are perceived as inevitable.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is technological determinism, that is, the belief that technology advances autonomously from human decisions and that we can do nothing to stop it. A current example is artificial intelligence, a technology that can have very positive applications, but which quite reasonably raises some concerns about its potential uses. There is a significant debate surrounding all of this, but many of the messages we receive implicitly convey the idea that its deployment is inevitable and that, in any case, any attempt to regulate or limit this technology would be a mistake that would put us at a disadvantage compared to other countries. Although it may seem convincing after repeated use, this argument is fundamentally perverse, because the same reasoning could be used to defend the reintroduction of slavery in our country if others do so, in order to avoid losing competitiveness. Furthermore, it is not true that scientific or technological development cannot be stopped or limited, and in fact, there are real examples, such as the prohibition on developing the technology that allows the creation of human clones. What is clear is that this belief benefits a powerful economic sector, whose activity, under this pretext, remains outside of political control. In practice, this means that decisions about how this technology will affect us are not made in parliaments but in corporate boardrooms, without citizens having any say. This situation is nothing short of a form of tyranny.
Do these companies really have that much power? The short answer is no. The real problem is something else entirely, and it has a lot to do with the decline of politics in general. It's no coincidence that today, talking about politicizing any human sphere always carries negative connotations, that politicians refuse to present themselves as such and prefer to do so as managers, or that debate forums are losing influence to committees of experts. The causes of this are diverse, but one of the most relevant has to do with another determinism, as false as the technological one: the idea that the economy has its own rules and that any human intervention can only follow technical criteria that respect them, even if it causes side effects such as poverty or marginalization.
Faced with economic or technological challenges, the only legitimate path in a democratic society is for politics to reclaim its rightful place. This does not mean, of course, that expert opinion should be ignored, but rather that it cannot replace political decision-making, which must have a much broader vision and be based not so much on criteria of efficiency as on criteria of justice.
