Andrew Yang Gets Us All to Think New and Ditch the Old

Op Ed By Haney Hong

By repacking old thinking, a lot of presidential candidates make us frustrated. A few might even make us angry.  But by offering new ways of tackling problems, at least one makes us think.

Andrew Yang’s whole campaign is highlighting that the way we create economic opportunities for Joe Q. Public is ever changing.  He talked on “Meet the Press” about how many of the problems we face today come from systems change in how each of us make a buck.  He’s noting that there’s something that’s just going to be fundamentally different for you and me, our children, and grandchildren.

For example, Yang has used a word that none of the other candidates have uttered: automation.  He’s pointing out that the rise of robots and machines changes where you and I as humans will engage the world.  And when we elect our leaders, we should be thinking about that.

Consider what happened in El Paso.  An angry individual killed over twenty people.  And just before going on his rampage, he released a disturbing manifesto.

New thinking: when Yang reads the manifesto, he sees the hints of our country’s underlying problems.  While clearly only a mentally ill person could write something so vile and filled with hatred, Yang picked up another signal: for all the shooter’s misdirection of blame towards immigrants for his station in life, this deranged individual also talked about automation.

Old thinking: when many of the other candidates read the manifesto, they zero-in on racism and the need for gun safety legislation.  And the media echoes by dusting off the same old thinking about our problems for the umpteenth time.

Yang gets us to think differently about the underlying issues behind the shooter’s anger.  With this candidate’s comments in mind, I’m now seeing this individual was also frustrated with robots potentially stealing his future job.  I can contemplate that his place in the world was and is being irrevocably altered by the rise of machine learning and robotics in productive activities.  I’ve learned this: he saw no going back with automation in the future, and so he got violent.

Many of the other presidential candidates get us to polish old thinking.  Case in point: Joe Biden last week goes back to a ban on assault weapons.  

These old thinkers press America on in the same tired ways.  The dialogue on guns has heated up to the point that we now even see Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell surprisingly committing to considering gun safety legislation.  But in the highly unlikely scenario that anything of substance gets passed and signed by the president, let’s not kid ourselves. You and I should still expect the threat of frequent mass shootings.  

Yang helps us as voters to see that the unicorn of gun safety legislation doesn’t likely tackle the underlying reasons why disturbed people burst out in violence.  Yes, background checks will make it harder for someone who we know has already committed a crime to acquire a weapon.  Technological innovations, like a fingerprint sensor to unlock a gun like you do your mobile device, could ensure that only legitimate bearers of arms can actually shoot.  

I’m not saying these ideas wouldn’t help, but something about Yang’s thinking is refreshing.  When I compare him to the other candidates, I think of the differences between Eastern versus Western medicine practices.  In my own life, it was only after some acupuncture treatment that my wife and I got successfully pregnant after some challenges.  Though the science isn’t quite there to explain why it works, Asian medicine looks at the system of your body to treat a problem. Western medicine, however, normally addresses and mitigates symptoms.  

This general difference in approach across cultures is why it isn’t surprising to this Asian man that it’s another Asian man trying to diagnose differently the core problems we need to face.  No one in the race for president is getting us to think in new ways with the exception of Yang.

The Asian candidate for president is evaluating the symptoms out there from his own experience as an entrepreneur to try to diagnose the underlying causes.  He’s listening in the discussions he is hosting across the country to come to a conclusion on what systematic issues we need to address as a country.  

The other candidates keep hitting us with talking points from yesterday’s old thinking.  I appreciate that Yang is getting me to think about America’s real problems and big potential answers.  In fact, that should be the slogan of his campaign: Make America Think Again.