From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Sep 03 1998 - 05:45:39 MDT
At 08:37 PM 9/2/98 +1000, James (- jamillar@socs.uts.edu.au) wrote:
> Bringing third world countries up to frist
>world standards provides many wealth generating advantages to
>both countries and coporations.
It suddenly strikes me that a useful challenge to the smart people on this
list might be:
Solve the problem of bringing the structurally-unemployed people of the
*first* world up to the standards of their wealthier, currently-employed
fellows.
It used to be thought that egalitarian provision of education would ensure
that everyone of decent intelligence and character could find work. That
is clearly not true any longer.
If anything, we can surely expect a larger and larger proportion of the
citizenry to remain outside the job market for life - unless they are
prepared to work for a pittance in some sort of servile `down-stairs' role
- and even those kinds of personal services will be taken over increasingly
by smart, cheap machines. The only reason to keep a staff of cooks and
servants will be to prove one's superiority, and their inferiority - not a
recipe for a pleasant society in a world where everyone can watch
television and aspire to better things.
The solution I floated in THE SPIKE is one discussed in the 1960s - a
guaranteed minimum income tax, or negative income tax. That idea has been
assailed by some people here as impractical. It probably requires central
collection and distribution, which some here will dislike. And, by itself,
it doesn't solve the socio-psychological malaise of those who ride the
`purple wage' (as Phil Farmer called it) while having no meaningful role in
society.
In the longer term, with the advent of molecular nanofacture and AI, we
will *all* be in this position, to some extent. But those technologies
will perhaps change the landscape so drastically that we will have to start
again from scratch in thinking these issues through.
For now, there are many people out there in the First World who are angry,
baffled, hurt, deracinated - and their numbers can only increase. If
extropians can find solutions to this deep problem, that will certainly
prove the worth of the philosophy. `Answers' such as *get rid of the
state* lack the specificity most people without work are looking for...
Damien Broderick
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