# Political protections can slow automation even when technology is ready

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/political-protections-can-slow-automation-even-when/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Zack Kass](https://realalpha.app/people/zack-kass/) · Co-founder & President, Korza · Built OpenAI's sales, partnerships and solutions teams through ChatGPT's launch; now advises Fortune 1000 boards.
- Host: [Chris Williamson](https://realalpha.app/people/chris-williamson/) · Host, Modern Wisdom
- Show: Modern Wisdom
- Episode: [AI DEBATE: “Most People Have No Idea What’s Coming”](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/), Aug 17, 2026
- Moment: 8:32 to 14:27 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/political-protections-can-slow-automation-even-when/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=512

## Quote

> “One of the other reasons is we still forget how much **political protection moves the technological needle**.”
> — [Zack Kass](https://realalpha.app/people/zack-kass/) at [9:55](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=595) · Modern Wisdom

## Takeaways

1. Many jobs are protected by law, including gas-station and toll roles.
2. Dockworkers secured four years before port automation could proceed.
3. AI can change work without immediately displacing current employees.

## About this segment

Zack Kass argues labor rules and local politics can hold back automation even when systems are capable. Adoption may change more slowly than capability benchmarks suggest.

From “AI DEBATE: “Most People Have No Idea What’s Coming””, Aug 17, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[8:37](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=517) that the societal threshold, what we are willing to let AI do is far less than... The fears around AI, I think, don't actually account for the degree to which government is probably going to step in very soon and say, here are all the things that you cannot automate. Here are all the things that we cannot use robotics for you think that's realistic very exceptionally realistic i don't think it's going to be smart policy just so we're clear but i think it will be aggressive as in like you can't automate away um but they will they be giving like specific jobs that cannot be automated away absolutely we already i mean we already have political protection for 1.5 million jobs in the united states europe has political protection for like 6 million jobs you cannot Gas station workers in New Jersey, toll booth workers in most states, jobs that must exist, right, by law.

[9:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=566) Tons of interesting that those two automotive associated jobs are protected, but the people driving the cars aren't. Right. Well, they will be, is my guess. Is there any one? The cab drivers will be protected? No, I think truck drivers will be. Just because of the strength of the union? When people talk about job automation, there are lots of reasons I think job automation is really problematic. One is that the technologists know nothing about labor economists. Labor economists know nothing about technology. Eric Brynjolfsson is sort of one of the exceptions.

[10:00](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=600) One of the other reasons is we still forget how much political protection moves the technological needle. And we don't have high-speed rail in the United States. We could have high-speed rail. We don't have high-speed rail. And the reason we don't have high-speed rail is a policy failure. It's not a technology failure. It exists. We choose not to build it. We could- That word choose is doing a lot of legwork there because no individual is choosing not to do it.

[10:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=626) It's just this like dead weight of bureaucracy and like dead end loops of rules and so on. It's almost like bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own. It's an enormous amount of policy that was written in the 30s, 40s and 50s, passed largely in effort by the automotive lobbyists to make public transit much harder to build than it should be, which is why we don't build amazing public transit anymore.

[10:51](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=651) but that is very deliberate policy efforts that we have never unwound which is why it's so hard to do my point is we are kidding ourselves if we don't think that that's going to happen over and over again i mean the amount of populist support there is already for jobs dock workers went on strike october 1st 2024 they got a four they the harold daggett they had a longshoreman union said you cannot automate our jobs they held a gun to the heads of the american economy and they got four years. Four years that the dock workers cannot, you cannot automate the ports.

[11:23](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=683) Is this not just going to get eroded enough of a time though? Yes, but we should assume that we continue to find ways to backstop it. I'm not actually proposing that it happens at infinitum, but I think it's the piece that's missing in all this, which is that we should just expect an enormous amount of political protection. Can I ask if we pass a law today that says you cannot fire people, period it's illegal across the economy what do you think happens to economic growth over the next 15 years i think you see france i i think like i'm not so sure it wouldn't still be unrecognizably fast i think right now in the software industry what you see is not software engineers getting laid off you see each of them using more and more powerful ai tools that get upgraded every few months and doing more and the way that you're you know seeing displacement show

[12:17](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=737) it's just that people aren't hiring new workers. And I think you could see that across a lot of professions. You could have every radiologist in the country keep their job until they want to do an early retirement. And they're going to be, you know, more and more economically valuable because the law says you have to. Have some human box checking. But meanwhile, the models are still getting better. And so the people that are fundamentally making the decisions are less and less the actual humans and more and more these systems that are becoming smarter and more competent. So I'm not that sure that's the right metric to be tracking. The sort of power represented by these systems can sneak into these professions without people getting displaced.

[12:53](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=773) I also would make the case that I think the world is going to change in profound ways. But when we assume that it's going to change just because the technology can do it, I reference as much technology that there is a lot that we can do that we simply do not do today or that we are not allowed to do today. And there's an enormous amount of automation that would improve the underlying systems that we cannot instill.

[13:18](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=798) By the way, I'm also... The risk in telling a company they cannot fire people, just so we're clear, is that they would actually end up stop hiring. That would just drive automation at a ridiculous pace. And they'd say, well, never hire someone again, because if they suck, we're married to them, which is what exists. We're already seeing that with entry-level workers. It's, again, very unclear what the actual impact of AI has had on it. You can speak to one economist who says it's already having huge effects. Others say it's not. But the one thing they all agree upon is that young people who don't have that much experience are struggling to get jobs.

[13:52](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=832) That's fascinating. Companies are future-proofing themselves from not having to displace people or get rid of them because that would be a horrible headline by just not hiring them in the first place. They're future-proofing themselves for automation that isn't yet available. Is that fair? I think that's right. I don't know if they're thinking that far ahead or if they're just responding to local incentives. But right now, a junior software engineer is a liability before they're an asset. You have to train them up. They have to get all this context on the job.

[14:17](https://realalpha.app/v/mSjaMyP5QjY/?t=857) That's exactly the kind of thing that an AI can do right now for pennies on the dollar. Plus, they never take breaks. Given the trajectory that we're on with AI at the moment,