Editor’s Note: The 2025 Buckley Essay Contest had this prompt: “Many Americans worry about the challenges posed by AI, digital monopolies, and new social movements. How can economic freedom ensure a bright future for America?” We received submissions from students across the nation who have just begun their sophomore or junior years of college. The winning essay is published below.
While the scale of the impact of artificial intelligence is debatable, there is no doubt that automation will continue to replace jobs. The real question is how society will choose to respond: Will we restrict technological progress and rely on the government to preserve existing professions, or will we trust the free market to adapt as it has done successfully throughout history?
In 1880, more than half of all Americans worked in agriculture. Today, agriculture and related industries make up only 10.4 percent of U.S. employment. In a centrally planned and protectionist economy, bureaucrats and elected officials would see the consistent decline in agricultural occupations as a problem. They would perhaps attempt to combat this trend with government tools such as price floors on agricultural products, trade barriers, and restrictions on new technology. After all, those millions of Americans who may lose their farm jobs are voters, and politicians might face their own personal unemployment crisis if they fail to respond to their constituents’ demands.
Such policies, however well intentioned, would stifle innovation. Artificially higher food prices, intended to keep a small number of people employed, would harm consumers. They would also divert labor and capital away from other, naturally productive sectors, slowing overall economic growth. In this example, thankfully, the free market was largely, albeit not entirely, preserved. Agricultural innovation was allowed to develop. This resulted in today’s economy, in which more food is produced per hour of labor than ever before.
To find similar examples, one does not have to look to professions as timeless as agriculture. Typing pools, common in the middle of the 20th century, have been effectively phased out of the modern American economy. Skilled professions that people spent their entire lives mastering, such as individual shoemaking, have almost entirely disappeared. Yet, unemployment has historically remained low, and the living standards of the average American have skyrocketed. Workers have adapted, moving to new sectors and learning skills that further benefit the economy. As we face new technological revolutions, American policymakers would be well advised to remember this lesson and allow free market innovation to flourish.
To understand the importance of allowing innovation, a basic grasp of the principles of free market adjustment is essential. Generally speaking, entrepreneurs are rewarded for providing a product or service better than other enterprises do. This can mean producing a product at a cheaper cost, adding features that consumers are willing to pay more for, simply having better customer service, or a myriad of other changes. When businesses outperform their competitors, consumers will choose their product over others, bringing wealth and success to the innovative company. This process benefits consumers, who are offered a superior or less expensive product, as well as the successful entrepreneur. Economic actors make a profit by giving the consumer exactly what the consumer wants as cheaply as possible.
Technological disruption is one of the most dramatic and large-scale methods that entrepreneurs can use to gain an advantage over their competitors. As the fall of Kodak cameras proved, failure to embrace technological revolutions can upend industry giants. Central planning, on the other hand, results in products and services that are not tailored to the consumer. Rather, under a centrally planned system, economic production is directed by government actors who have little personal incentive to provide the best possible result to consumers. The term “central planning,” for most Americans, is a synonym for the type of socialism implemented by the USSR or North Korea. In reality, there are examples of central planning within the United States. Many U.S. cities have rent-controlled apartments, which restrict the housing supply by disincentivizing new construction. According to an MSNBC article, New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for government-run grocery stories (the definition of central planning) “isn’t even radical by American standards.”
It is not an exaggeration to say that top-level U.S. policymakers are already considering innovation-restricting regulations on artificial intelligence. Democratic Representative Ro Khanna has called for workers to have a greater say in how companies use artificial intelligence, a proposal that, if implemented, would likely lead to job preservation measures. On the other side of the aisle, Republican Senator Josh Hawley warned that the U.S. is facing “a huge loss of jobs for working people.” While he did not make specific policy recommendations, the sentiment in favor of regulation is clear.
Markets will naturally adapt to technological and social shifts, as they have since America’s founding. If we rashly move to stop progress with the goal of protecting jobs that would otherwise be replaced by technological progress, we will hurt consumers as well as the country’s overall economic health.
America could be primed to benefit disproportionately from artificial intelligence’s tremendous potential. For starters, as past technological advancements have done, it can increase the living standards of the average American. More efficient production of goods and services leads to lower prices. In an environment where inflation is one of the leading concerns on voters’ minds, technology has the potential to be a deflationary force. Additionally, the United States already has the strongest tech sector in the world. This puts our country in a position to enjoy the productivity enhancements of artificial intelligence automation before most of the world gains widespread access to these tools. If the U.S. government slows the private sector’s AI adoption, we risk losing our global technological leadership. Furthermore, one of China’s major competitive advantages over the United States is cheap labor, which attracts international trade and has made the nation a manufacturing hub. If automation can decrease global reliance on human labor, the American economy may stand to benefit. In order for these advantages to be realized, the government must not regulate the free market with the shortsighted goal of protecting economically obsolete jobs.
This isn’t to say that we have nothing to worry about. Just as candlemakers were devastated by the development and standardization of electrical lighting, millions of Americans will lose their jobs as a result of the latest wave of technological progress. As a current college student, I will be joining the workforce at a time when many entry-level jobs can be largely completed by AI. This technological transition will not be painless. No similar transition ever has been. Given the potentially extreme scale of the incoming automation wave, this could be one of the most dramatic and difficult shifts yet. That said, the shift is inevitable. If we restrict progress and refuse to take advantage of the impending economy-wide opportunities, other countries will. Instead, we should embrace progress and enable workers to develop new skills and professions.
Whenever anyone argues that displaced workers should adapt, they run the risk of echoing President Joe Biden’s misguided call for coal miners to “learn to code.” It is not, in reality, often realistic for late-career employees to learn an entirely new profession. For many workers, there’s no getting around the damage that industry collapse might do. Entire towns, as was the case with coal-belt Appalachian regions over the past decades, could be devastated. That said, the honest argument for embracing innovation is not that every displaced worker will instantly become a software engineer. It’s that a free market will, over time, create a wide variety of new opportunities. Many of these jobs will not require mastering a new profession from scratch. In the case of coal miners, many found new careers in advanced manufacturing and construction. Some were able to find jobs in the growing renewable-energy sector. Artificially propping up declining industries may preserve certain jobs in the short term, but ultimately, such measures undermine economic vitality.
Artificial intelligence is already increasing worker productivity in some sectors. According to the Bipartisan Policy Institute, computer programmers that use AI in their jobs are already more efficient at certain tasks. Call center workers are more efficient at resolving customer problems when given access to AI tools. Researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management found that “generative AI can improve a highly skilled worker’s performance by nearly 40% compared to workers who don’t use it.” Two in three physicians now use AI in some professional capacity.
As we stand at the beginning of this new technological era, it is important to remember that free markets are not just about preserving jobs. They’re about preserving opportunity. While the transition will be difficult, the costs of resisting progress are too high.
Historically, America has benefited from encouraging modernization. From agricultural technology to mass manufacturing, each wave of innovation has displaced jobs and been met with calls for the government to restrain the market. Each time, our country has emerged more prosperous and economically capable than before. The advent of artificial intelligence will be no different, unless we choose to embrace government control and limit the growth that new technologies could help us achieve. Our bright future depends on a commitment to economic freedom. If we trust the market to adapt, as it always has, we will unlock a higher standard of living and create new opportunities for generations to come.
On September 24, at 3 p.m. EDT, we invite our supporters and subscribers to attend a virtual forum featuring the author of this essay and Buckley Fellow Guy Denton, followed by a Q&A. For more information, send an email to Events@nrinstitute.org.