>From Blaze:
> Our entire economic system is based on this thing called money. > It's how we value opportunities. I'm not a materialist, but > I do appreciate having this objective measurement. As to I, to a certain extent. > Is it perfect? Obviously not. But it'll have to do until something > better comes along. I agree. FYI, there have been some interesting Vort threads that have discussed the ramifications of our current economic engine (including Jed Rothwell) and how it is likely to be drastically affected as computerization, automation, and artificial intelligence continue their relentless drive to take over traditional jobs. The Vort Collective has debated on numerous occasions how in the near future we might go about distributing the wealth, aka "currency", throughout the population in what is hopefully a fair and equitable way. What many futurists have been asking is: how will we go about earning our daily bread when most of the traditional jobs are being performed more efficiently and cheaply by robots and other forms of automation? The automation issue is, of course, an old issue, one that has been with us since the first machines were developed and introduced to replace mass labor well over a hundred years ago. Fortunately, what has always happened in the past is that new kinds of jobs... new kinds of services and product development were created that ended up replacing most of the traditional jobs that had been taken over by the scourge of automation. However, the transformation often seems to have been a bumpy process, one fraught with pesky political overtones. On this matter, I suspect we haven't seen nuth'n yet! Stay tuned. On a more positive note, many assume (as do I) that new kinds of jobs will continue to manifest through the mysterious laws known as emergent behavior. I believe all sorts of new kinds of jobs are likely come into being in order to fill new needs that don't yet exist. But are such assumptions right? I hope so, but I really don't know. Many futurists worry about this issue. A major concern many have voiced is the obvious fact that these days the pace of automation is increasing exponentially. Will our society and the mysterious and unpredictable behavioral laws of emergent behavior be capable of handling the changes and develop enough new jobs to absorb all who have been displaced? In the end some Vort members have speculated that the world's economic engine may end up having to simply give everyone an "allowance" of spendable currency to ensure that wealth can be evenly distributed throughout the population. Of course, how does one determine how much allowance everyone should get is likely to be a raunchy debate. For example, should there be a cap on how much any individual's "allowance" can be? And what about a minimum amount for the disadvantaged who are not capable of doing anything useful. In the meantime, I suspect there is a bright future for gambling. I suspect your chosen profession will not in danger of becoming obsolete. ;-) For more info read "Lights in the Tunnel", as Mr. Rothwell has often suggested here. http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/ Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson svjart.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/newvortex/
