[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
Getting rid of everyone displaced by automation would create a process which would lead to human extinction in the end. Of course we do have to get our birth control up to an adequate level, but I see no reason to kill people. It would be better to have people work towards discovering all the spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and other knowledge which would make it possible to advance all humans to the most advanced state of consciousness possible. Of course, one of the science fiction dreams is to move people into huge orbital colonies in space, which would solve the population problem. There are enough metals in the asteroids, a very large number of cubic kilometers if iron, aluminum, etc. so that would not be a problem. However, it is so expensive at present to lift mass into orbit that we couldn't afford to send the first factories into space, and large numbers of humans. One current cost for sending a human into orbit I recently read was 100 million dollars. If it were to cost 100 million dollars per person, it would be a bit difficult to transport most of humanity to orbital colonies in space. But if we could get the cost of lifting mass to orbit way down, we could do it. I can't predict. It depends on what new technology we discover in the future. Jim --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu noozguru@ wrote: Since I have heard a number of interviews with people advocating stipends due to the decreasing jobs market I went on a search for some of them. Here's one proposal and the author has done his homework on the subject: http://marshallbrain.com/25000.htm More detailed information on the impact of technology on the workforce: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm snip, Maybe, with the population reduction proponents working on it, there wont be any problem after all. N.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
No people shouldn't be killed to reduce the population even though there are those who seem to advocate it. Education and birth control are the key. Probably limiting tax deductions for children to two in the US would help. In the US we seem to have a lot born agains who feel it is their duty to have large families even if they don't have the wealth to support one. Similarly we have people in impoverished nations who believe they have to have lots of children so some will survive to take care of them in old age. Education and some retirement programs would solve the problem there. Laissez-faire capitalism has proven to be a big failure. When you have dense populations as the earth now has you need structure not a bunch of free-wheeling goons plundering the resources. We are probably observing the death throws of capitalism. A wise choice would be to eliminate big business (by breaking them up) and making the worlds government be mostly socialist as a safety net and allow small business. This method appeases those who are individualists and want to be their own boss by allowing them to have restricted size businesses. I notice the failure of some many of the socialist experiments was the governments trying to run everything including small businesses. That is inefficient. I've been thinking about this stuff ever since I was involved in TM back in the 70's and got interested in Bucky Fuller's ideas in his books. He'was nailing this problem years ago. He was one who saw we could get to a state where there wouldn't be enough jobs for everyone and the solution would be to pay those who didn't work. As domesticated animals we've been trained to believe that work is somehow sacred which is BS. Work is just a means to an end. If it is not necessary then it is not necessary. Creative people will be creative whether they get paid for it or not. Marshall Brain's article uses the example of Linux as such a phenomenon. Scott McNeely, the head of Sun Systems, sees the open source model being extended to other things. Old systems of economics weren't made for a world which has been shrunk to the size of a pinhead because of the Internet (which the elite would love to destroy as it challenges their power). James F. Newell wrote: Getting rid of everyone displaced by automation would create a process which would lead to human extinction in the end. Of course we do have to get our birth control up to an adequate level, but I see no reason to kill people. It would be better to have people work towards discovering all the spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and other knowledge which would make it possible to advance all humans to the most advanced state of consciousness possible. Of course, one of the science fiction dreams is to move people into huge orbital colonies in space, which would solve the population problem. There are enough metals in the asteroids, a very large number of cubic kilometers if iron, aluminum, etc. so that would not be a problem. However, it is so expensive at present to lift mass into orbit that we couldn't afford to send the first factories into space, and large numbers of humans. One current cost for sending a human into orbit I recently read was 100 million dollars. If it were to cost 100 million dollars per person, it would be a bit difficult to transport most of humanity to orbital colonies in space. But if we could get the cost of lifting mass to orbit way down, we could do it. I can't predict. It depends on what new technology we discover in the future. Jim --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu noozguru@ wrote: Since I have heard a number of interviews with people advocating stipends due to the decreasing jobs market I went on a search for some of them. Here's one proposal and the author has done his homework on the subject: http://marshallbrain.com/25000.htm More detailed information on the impact of technology on the workforce: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm snip, Maybe, with the population reduction proponents working on it, there wont be any problem after all. N.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No people shouldn't be killed to reduce the population even though there are those who seem to advocate it. Education and birth control are the key. Probably limiting tax deductions for children to two in the US would help. In the US we seem to have a lot born agains who feel it is their duty to have large families even if they don't have the wealth to support one. Similarly we have people in impoverished nations who believe they have to have lots of children so some will survive to take care of them in old age. Education and some retirement programs would solve the problem there. On the other hand: Go home early and multiply, Japanese told -Japan's workers are being urged to switch off their laptops, go home early and use what little energy they have left on procreation, in an attempt to avert demographic disaster. The drive to persuade employers that their staff would be better off at home than staying late at the office comes amid warnings from health experts that many couples are simply too tired to have sex. A survey of married couples under 50 found that more than a third had not had sex in the previous month. Many couples said they didn't have the energy. A study by Durex found that the average couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times. It's a question of work-life balance, Kunio Kitamura, head of the Japan Family Planning Association, told Reuters. The people who run companies need to do something about it. Japan's birth rate of 1.34 is among the lowest in the world and falls well short of the 2.07 children needed to keep the population stable. If it persists, demographers say the population will drop to 95 million by 2050 from its 2006 peak of 127.7 million. This month Keidanren, Japan's biggest business organisation, implored its 1,600 member companies to allow married employees to spend more time at home. Several firms have organised family weeks during which employees must get permission to work past 7pm, but most continue to squeeze every last drop of productivity from their staff. In response, the labour ministry plans to submit a bill exempting employees with children under three from overtime and limiting them to six-hour days. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/japan-sexual-health
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No people shouldn't be killed to reduce the population even though there are those who seem to advocate it. Education and birth control are the key. Probably limiting tax deductions for children to two in the US would help. In the US we seem to have a lot born agains who feel it is their duty to have large families even if they don't have the wealth to support one. Similarly we have people in impoverished nations who believe they have to have lots of children so some will survive to take care of them in old age. Education and some retirement programs would solve the problem there. I agree that people should be responsible for their actions including their reproductive and sexual habits. If a person can afford to raise children in accordance with their religious beliefs, we should let them. Laissez-faire capitalism has proven to be a big failure. When you have dense populations as the earth now has you need structure not a bunch of free-wheeling goons plundering the resources. We are probably observing the death throws of capitalism. A wise choice would be to eliminate big business (by breaking them up) and making the worlds government be mostly socialist as a safety net and allow small business. This method appeases those who are individualists and want to be their own boss by allowing them to have restricted size businesses. I notice the failure of some many of the socialist experiments was the governments trying to run everything including small businesses. That is inefficient. True capitalism died many years ago. In particular, the US is using a mixed system to run its economy. We just witnessed this process in the bail out of banks and financial institutions. The US auto industry might be included in this scenario as well. I've been thinking about this stuff ever since I was involved in TM back in the 70's and got interested in Bucky Fuller's ideas in his books. He'was nailing this problem years ago. He was one who saw we could get to a state where there wouldn't be enough jobs for everyone and the solution would be to pay those who didn't work. As domesticated animals we've been trained to believe that work is somehow sacred which is BS. Work is just a means to an end. If it is not necessary then it is not necessary. Creative people will be creative whether they get paid for it or not. Marshall Brain's article uses the example of Linux as such a phenomenon. Scott McNeely, the head of Sun Systems, sees the open source model being extended to other things. Work is necessary for people to exist. Human beings should not have to do work in areas that can be done by a robot or automation. Human beings can do work that requires creativity and service for others. I believe this is and has been the trend of post-industrial society. This is the reason why the economy in the US will be more devoted to the service sector in the future. Old systems of economics weren't made for a world which has been shrunk to the size of a pinhead because of the Internet (which the elite would love to destroy as it challenges their power). The new economy will be based on innovation and creativity. There's no need to keep the status quo or lament about the past.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
do.rflex wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No people shouldn't be killed to reduce the population even though there are those who seem to advocate it. Education and birth control are the key. Probably limiting tax deductions for children to two in the US would help. In the US we seem to have a lot born agains who feel it is their duty to have large families even if they don't have the wealth to support one. Similarly we have people in impoverished nations who believe they have to have lots of children so some will survive to take care of them in old age. Education and some retirement programs would solve the problem there. On the other hand: Go home early and multiply, Japanese told -Japan's workers are being urged to switch off their laptops, go home early and use what little energy they have left on procreation, in an attempt to avert demographic disaster. The drive to persuade employers that their staff would be better off at home than staying late at the office comes amid warnings from health experts that many couples are simply too tired to have sex. A survey of married couples under 50 found that more than a third had not had sex in the previous month. Many couples said they didn't have the energy. A study by Durex found that the average couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times. It's a question of work-life balance, Kunio Kitamura, head of the Japan Family Planning Association, told Reuters. The people who run companies need to do something about it. Japan's birth rate of 1.34 is among the lowest in the world and falls well short of the 2.07 children needed to keep the population stable. If it persists, demographers say the population will drop to 95 million by 2050 from its 2006 peak of 127.7 million. This month Keidanren, Japan's biggest business organisation, implored its 1,600 member companies to allow married employees to spend more time at home. Several firms have organised family weeks during which employees must get permission to work past 7pm, but most continue to squeeze every last drop of productivity from their staff. In response, the labour ministry plans to submit a bill exempting employees with children under three from overtime and limiting them to six-hour days. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/japan-sexual-health Japan is crowded! The drop in population would actually be good for them. Redo the way the economy works to accommodate the reduction in population. China is facing the same thing but it is a boon not a tragedy. Fewer people means more for each individual, more people means less for each individual.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu wrote: Similarly we have people in impoverished nations who believe they have to have lots of children so some will survive to take care of them in old age. Education and some retirement programs would solve the problem there. I recently heard the oceanographer Robert Ballard say that the way to manage overpopulation would be to empower women worldwide. He said the average age at which a female becomes a mother, worldwide, is 14. Let me say that again. Take the age at which all the mothers in the world first became mothers, and calculate the average age at which they bear their first child. Turns out that age is 14 years old. Ballard observed that if you could raise that age to 20-something, you could flatten the population curve pretty quickly.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nelson wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu noozguru@ wrote: Since I have heard a number of interviews with people advocating stipends due to the decreasing jobs market I went on a search for some of them. Here's one proposal and the author has done his homework on the subject: http://marshallbrain.com/25000.htm More detailed information on the impact of technology on the workforce: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm snip, Maybe, with the population reduction proponents working on it, there wont be any problem after all. N. Depends upon what you mean by population reduction. ;-) + This would mean drastically reducing the population(which is in progress) so in the end there will be more jobs than people although that is not their main purpose. N.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, James F. Newell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Although automation is fundamentally of value, it is distorting the free market by changing the value of labor. That also constitutes a threat to the free enterprise system. We therefore need to create a solution. To see the problem clearly, let us do a thought experiment by projecting automation forward until automated equipment could produce all the goods and services needed, but 99 of the population would be unneeded and unemployed. The economy would actually collapse well before this end point, which is why this is a thought experiment. The point is that along the way, the general type of problem at the end point partially occur, and that will become greater as automation increases. I don't think I necessarily have the answer but will present one possible solution. Hopefully, other people will have other ideas. Then, all those ideas could be gathered together and refined, and finally, the best could be selected. So my own contribution, hopefully waiting for different contributions from others, is: Being careful to balance this internationally so that no nation would become more competitive than others One would consider the automated equipment to be robot-equivalents. Then, since the robot-equivalents would be producing goods and services, they would be paid a modest wage. However, they wouldn't actually need that wage for food, housing, entertainment, etc. so the wage would be taxed 100% by the government. Government funds would then be used to support the people for whom there were no jobs in the private sector. This would restore a free market that companies could sell into, and people would have the money to buy products and services distributed by the companies. People could then start companies, build them up, buy and sell stock, etc. just as they do now. The governments of he world could use various methods to support people. snip, I would venture that the people should be responsible to support themselves for the most part and the government should only be supporting an environment to this end. N.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
Nelson wrote: I would venture that the people should be responsible to support themselves for the most part and the government should only be supporting an environment to this end. N. The government should be the glue that keeps things running that are in the commons. We don't need privatized roads or water supplies. The ventures into privatized fire departments turned into nightmares.We also need to use government to make sure the food you're eating won't kill you as business people will sell you poison if they can make a profit. Large corporations should not exist either as they are too big and slow to flow with the economy and are dinosaurs in the modern networked age. However the reasoning behind paying stipends was we've arrived at a point that there are not enough jobs for everyone. You wind up paying anyway if people fall through the cracks. The old sink or swim economic model just isn't humane anymore. And free markets and free trade have turned out to be disastrous. Like some melamine with that juice?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
That is quite a good value for economies of 100 years ago, and is not unreasonable, for many people, now. Even now, it is true though that some people do valuable things that the market will not pay for. Certainly, no corporation would have wanted Einstein as an employee, because his Theory of Relativity did not lead immediately to the design of a profitable product. Pure research is generally poorly supported by the private sector, even though without it, we would still be back at Roman level technology. Also, poets, composers, and others are often not supported by the free market, even though what they create will be of value for many hundreds of years. A number of painters,like van Gogh, were paid nothing or very little for their work, but in future decades, collectors have traded their paintings on the market for millions of dollars each. So just having people support themselves doesn't work for people doing certain kinds of valuable work. But I am talking about the effects of increasing automation into the future. When almost all the work producing goods and services is done by machines, there is nothing the 99% unemployed could possibly do that they could sell to support themselves. People simply cannot compete with robot-equivalents in routine kinds of work. And of course. if 99% of the population were unemployed, there would be almost nobody to buy what the automated businesses could produce. But of course, in reality, most people would starve to death before we reached that 99% level of unemployment. But the same problems, to a somewhat lesser extent, will be occurring on the way to that end point. When 50% of the working age population is unemployed, and can't compete with the robot-equivalents, the market for goods and services produced by the corporations will be only 50% of what it would be if everyone had an income. At 30% unemployed, the market for goods and services produced by corporations will be down 30%. So whatever the ideals might be, people supporting themselves will rapidly become impossible in practice for more and more people, and trying to base the economy on that will simply lead to disaster. But that doesn't mean we want to get rid of the businesses. It is good for people to open and own businesses, though I don't think I will take up space discussing why that is good. So we need some way to organize the cash flows for the economy so that everything works the way we want it to. I won't repeat my original suggestion here. However, perhaps you might look for some alternative possibilities which would fit in better with your values. You might come up with something quite good. Jim --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would venture that the people should be responsible to support themselves for the most part and the government should only be supporting an environment to this end. N.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
Since I have heard a number of interviews with people advocating stipends due to the decreasing jobs market I went on a search for some of them. Here's one proposal and the author has done his homework on the subject: http://marshallbrain.com/25000.htm More detailed information on the impact of technology on the workforce: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm James F. Newell wrote: That is quite a good value for economies of 100 years ago, and is not unreasonable, for many people, now. Even now, it is true though that some people do valuable things that the market will not pay for. Certainly, no corporation would have wanted Einstein as an employee, because his Theory of Relativity did not lead immediately to the design of a profitable product. Pure research is generally poorly supported by the private sector, even though without it, we would still be back at Roman level technology. Also, poets, composers, and others are often not supported by the free market, even though what they create will be of value for many hundreds of years. A number of painters,like van Gogh, were paid nothing or very little for their work, but in future decades, collectors have traded their paintings on the market for millions of dollars each. So just having people support themselves doesn't work for people doing certain kinds of valuable work. But I am talking about the effects of increasing automation into the future. When almost all the work producing goods and services is done by machines, there is nothing the 99% unemployed could possibly do that they could sell to support themselves. People simply cannot compete with robot-equivalents in routine kinds of work. And of course. if 99% of the population were unemployed, there would be almost nobody to buy what the automated businesses could produce. But of course, in reality, most people would starve to death before we reached that 99% level of unemployment. But the same problems, to a somewhat lesser extent, will be occurring on the way to that end point. When 50% of the working age population is unemployed, and can't compete with the robot-equivalents, the market for goods and services produced by the corporations will be only 50% of what it would be if everyone had an income. At 30% unemployed, the market for goods and services produced by corporations will be down 30%. So whatever the ideals might be, people supporting themselves will rapidly become impossible in practice for more and more people, and trying to base the economy on that will simply lead to disaster. But that doesn't mean we want to get rid of the businesses. It is good for people to open and own businesses, though I don't think I will take up space discussing why that is good. So we need some way to organize the cash flows for the economy so that everything works the way we want it to. I won't repeat my original suggestion here. However, perhaps you might look for some alternative possibilities which would fit in better with your values. You might come up with something quite good. Jim --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would venture that the people should be responsible to support themselves for the most part and the government should only be supporting an environment to this end. N.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since I have heard a number of interviews with people advocating stipends due to the decreasing jobs market I went on a search for some of them. Here's one proposal and the author has done his homework on the subject: http://marshallbrain.com/25000.htm More detailed information on the impact of technology on the workforce: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm snip, Maybe, with the population reduction proponents working on it, there wont be any problem after all. N.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Saving Free Enterprise
Nelson wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since I have heard a number of interviews with people advocating stipends due to the decreasing jobs market I went on a search for some of them. Here's one proposal and the author has done his homework on the subject: http://marshallbrain.com/25000.htm More detailed information on the impact of technology on the workforce: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm snip, Maybe, with the population reduction proponents working on it, there wont be any problem after all. N. Depends upon what you mean by population reduction. ;-)
