Theme: Productivity

http://www.careeroverdrive.com/blog/the-accelerating-assault-to-digitize-automate-mechanize-robotize-you-out-of-a-job-podcast-textHOPE FOR THE POST-LABOR ERA

Thoughts.

1) We use the word ‘abstractions’ and ‘calculations’ but a better term is ‘ model ‘. (A subject I’m currently working on). Most people learn by imitation (observation and repetition). And some by imagining actions. Some by abstractions of actions. Some by models of universes. Some by inventing models of universes. And the problem is that the ability to construct models of any type requires a right shift in intelligence distribution of a standard deviation.

2) I think I have a ‘socio-economic’ solution to this problem, because while it is true that fewer people will engage in the production of market goods and services, the same nearly universal set of people will still be required to engage in the production of the market itself: the voluntary organization of production and consumption. And furthermore, that we can increasingly pay people to produce commons. And it is commons that will bring about the star trek cities and landscape we imagine in the future – not consumption.

3) I could imagine requiring all physical structures for example, be built from hand-materials – that require labor. I could equally imagine regulating machines out of human-possible jobs.

4) I could imagine MMT and heavy redistribution, where ‘working’ was a preference for above-standard-redistribution amounts, and therefore status, and luxury goods. Work was a vehicle for status rather than existence. And furthermore that child-bearing decreased your redistributed income.

5) One thing I often think about is how an oligarchy of producers (like the greeks were) and a vast non-producing proletariat might follow their existing incentives. Meaning, why wouldn’t society return to feudalism of the productive, rather than a feudalism of the people who construct property rights necessary for production (warrior land-holders)? Because those are the incentives that I see.

These are the models that I work with. So there is a bit of hope here that a socio-political solution will not only be possible but a beneficial adaptation. The fundamental problem is in preserving the incentives to conduct a voluntary organization of production (capitalism). However, under capitalism we falsely assume that the work necessary to create a voluntary organization of production (property rights) by every individual in society is not in itself an act of production that exposes individuals to high costs (it is).

So individuals engage in production of the commons we call the market, even if they do not engage in production of particulars (goods and services). If you do not advocate for an involuntary structure of production (socialism), and you engage in production of the commons (property rights and therefore the market) and you pay for your shareholdership by doings so, then it is hard to see that it is not a violation of your rights to compensate you for your production of the commons (the market) by producing, respecting and policing property rights.

This further preserves liberty because it allows for the institutional illegalization of socialism (the involuntary organization of production, in which individuals do not act to produce the commons of the voluntary organization of production.)