On 17 Dec 2014, at 11:11, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 1:07 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 12/16/2014 10:15 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Hi Liz,
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 7:51 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
What is funny - as well as sad and frightening - is the number of
people here who apparently don't believe in democracy, even in
principle. Democracy is the idea that we can elect people to do
things for everyone else (the NHS, conservation, social security,
infrastructure, regulations, police, army science etc etc).
All of the things you mention are run by unelected bureaucrats with
long careers, who see politicians come and go.
I highly recommend the British show "Yes, Prime Minister!" to learn
about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXzGI0XP7M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeF_o1Ss1NQ
Yet all I can see here is people saying that it doesn't work. I
think the truth is that it can be hijacked and THEN it doesn't
work. The NHS (despite everything) was one of the greatest
achievements of the 20th century, after all. And it was introduced
by a government because of its beliefs and principles.
The NHS is the sort of thing that should worry an Ecologist,
because it's based on infinite growth. Both the European system
(based on infinite demographic growth) and the Anglo (based on
infinite economic growth). I also feel that it serves mostly to fix
a problem created by the government itself in a previous regulatory
wave. The barriers to competition in the practice of healthcare are
so high that it becomes unaffordable without insurance or subsidy.
Health care isn't well regulated by competition because the consumer
is ill equipped to judge the necessity or the quality of service and
the most expensive service tends to a one-time event for the consumer.
There are all sorts of mechanisms that are already employed by the
private sector to deal with this, namely brand reputation and third-
party certification services. Private certification brands would
depend so much on their own reputation that they would probably be
less vulnerable to bribes than government inspectors.
It's one of the several resource confiscation traps that have been
emerging under crony capitalism.
What does that mean?
It means that an essential service felt into the hands of an
oligarchy, that made it illegal for anyone to provide the service
without playing by their rules. There is zero competition on price,
but the drive for maximising profits that the left criticises so
much is still present. The rational agents create horizontal and
vertical cartels (with the insurance companies) and fix prices.
Services that could cost $20 now cost $5000. Then in the US, you tie
health insurance to employment and now you have servitude again.
I know, I know. You're going to say that lots of deaths have been
prevented by these regulations. This is true. But how many deaths
have been caused by poor or inexistent access to healthcare?
In the U.S. it's been estimated as at least 40,000/yr.
How many have been caused by the glaciar pace of innovation imposed
by such regulations?
What innovation has been delayed by regulation? thalidomide?
abortion pills?
MDMA therapy for soldiers that suffer from PTSD, for example.
Ketamine for severe depression. DMT for drug addictions. Nutritional
research that is not controlled by food lobbies.
If governments were genuinely worried about thalidomide scenarios,
they would rush to make cannabis legal everywhere. The market is
being flooded with "legal highs" and one of them could very well be
the next thalidomide. Cannabis is sufficiently tested, so legalising
it would be the rational action if public health was the real concern.
By patents? People refuse to recognise that this trade-off exists.
I dream of flat guaranteed income based on a real currency (not the
current pyramid schemes that we call Dollars or Euros). Possibly a
cryptocurrency with a smart algorithm that hopefully cannot fall
under the control of the bandits.
Isn't there already an effective guaranteed "income" in terms of
food, shelter, health care. I doubt people are allowed to starve or
freeze or go without medical treatment. Of course I would agree
that there should also be a guarantee of as much education as a
person wishes to absorb.
I couldn't agree more on the last point. This is actually something
important we might be able to agree on: an educated population is a
more effective tool for progress than any ideology.
It is true that the western world made great progress in terms of
providing a safety net at the very bottom. The system will probably
not let you starve to death or die of exposure.
What I'm proposing is different, though. Technological progress
should lead to less need for labour. With the leverage of
technology, less people have to work to feed and shelter everyone.
But with our current economic system, the main mechanism of wealth
distribution are jobs. Job creation is one of the main concerns of
the politicians. This is insane. Why condemn everyone to a life of
pointless servitude?
My dream with the minimum income is that, if you don't like your
job, you can just stop working without worries. Maybe learn
something else. Maybe just be an artist or watch tv all day, who
cares? The more ambitious would always step in to provide this
service with the leverage of technological innovation.
My point is this: the financial and political systems are now the
limiting factors when it comes to approaching the Star Trek state of
affairs. Technology and science are far ahead, and amazing things
could be possible. Imagine what could be achieved under a system
where everyone desperately desired job destruction? And now we're
back to the original topic of this thread :)
I agree on this. We should call "unemployed person" a "free person",
and celebrate them, instead of humiliating them. But for this we need
serious universal allocation, serious leisure industry, serious
education program, serious spiritual reseraches, and all this is, imo,
only possible in a democracy, which works sufficiently well.
Note that this will lead to societies with rich human, and machine
slaves. Then "real AI" will appear when machines will fight for their
right and try to get themselves free of jobs too ... That will still
take some time.
Bruno
Telmo.
Brent
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