From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Nov 15 2002 - 09:04:47 MST
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> ...
> But what the heck is "work" when increasingly large groups of people
> have no skills that are not subsumed by or made irrelevant by
> accelerating technology? There is no need in advanced countries
> for everyone to be in full-time work of any conventional kind. I
> don't see where make-work to satisfy outdated prejudices improves
> anything or is particularly extropic. Personally, I believe a great
> deal of good could come from a society with such real material
> abundance that no one "works" except on that which they are truly
> interested in. Go into most major corporations and it already looks
> as if there is a lot of pointless make-work going on.
There are two principle kinds of work. Kind one is work to satisfy
personal needs, and kind two is work as an act of submission to the
king, or his representatives (e.g., the lords of the land). Technical
profiency can result in kind one becoming irrelevant. It can't even
address kind two.
N.B.: When full automtion becomes practical, then work of kind one will
be irrelevant. This doesn't mean that the population can expand. Until
direct synthesis is achieved, that is problematic, and even then the
population is already excessive for the livable space. Of course, part
of the dense packing of people is to allow access to jobs, but even
without that there are just too many people.
> An abundant society offers a heritage of a lot more than merely food
> and shelter. But I don't believe this should come from government
> fiat either.
Any centralization of control is dangerous. That said, I don't see a
centralization at the government being inherrently any more dangerous
than a centralization in private hands. Techniques for getting from
here to a stable society with a decentralized power structure, however,
aren't obvious.
> ...I would have a serious problem with those who would let people die
> of hunger in the middle of abundance just because they did not satisfy
> some group of people's scarcity based prejudices.
>
> - samantha
That's a silly way to do things alright. If for no other reason, then
because it increases the levels of violence and crime in societies that
adopt it. (OTOH, if you are a supporter of private armies, it's a dandy
way to justify their existence.) But that's not the basic problem.
The basic problem is that it's again a method invoking centralized
controls. If you consider that people who loose their jobs may rightly
be treated inhumanely, then what happens when YOUR profession is
automated away? Don't think it won't be. Every single job category on
the planet is under pressure. Once a couple of decades ago I wrote a
thesis titled "be a garbageman". My forecast was that garbageman would
be the last job category automated out of existence. Now I suspect that
the last job will really be landlord, because the lords of the land
derive their powers from delegation of the king's authority. This job
class has become highly specialized into many diverse sub-classes, but
all property titles are based on adverse possession, and all "tennancy"
is based on the government supporting someone's claim to land that he
can't actually hold on his own. But how else could cities exist? Or
suburbs? Even isolated places in the country are only possible because
the government breaks up other large maruding bands of armed people.
So in today's headlines, the president is planning to privatize federal
jobs. This basically means that he wants to get rid of the civil
service. Hasn't your post office improved tremendously since it was
privatized? These days I expect to get three or four mis-delivered
letters a week. But the pay rates of the workers have been cut, so YOUR
prices must have dropped, right?
If I thought that he meant to decentralize the controls, then I'd be in
favor of the action regardless. I don't. The bids will be so
structured that only his friends have a chance. This is merely a
manuver to place certain job functions permanently in the hands of a
wealthy clique. It is a transfer of power to an even less accountable
group. We may soon be talking favorable of the days before Chester A.
Arthur, when the "spoils system" reigned. (Well, we won't, because
people don't study history. But there are very good reasons for the
civil service.)
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