I've noticed occasional komments of the snarky kind (besides my own or Jed's). Such as:
>From Harry Veeder: > play video games. And > I don't care what people want beyond what they need and > deserve to get. >From Nick Palmer: > factory ships to Hoover up all the fish and drive them > to the brink of extinction. <FRIDAY AFTERNOON SERMON> As I see it Harry's original komment, "play video games" may not entirely be all that far off the mark. Let me try to explain my reasoning in a little more turgid detail... Economically speaking, it seems to me that if our planet is going to survive beyond the 21st century we have to devise ways in which to make sure global economic wealth gets evenly redistributed in a fair and reasonable manner. But when you really think about it, what constitutes "economic wealth" turns out to be a very esoteric concept. One individual's paradigm of what constitutes "wealth" is another person's "vice", or even downfall. Take for example what constitutes happiness as exemplified by the following couple of rapidly aging senior citizens as recently revealed on CNN.COM: "Lotto winners donate all $11 million" http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/living/2010/11/04/can.lotto.winner.donates.all.cbc http://tinyurl.com/37tgmau As I understand it, in the past economic wealth (aka: happiness) managed to become more-or-less distributed when vast portions of the population were gainfully employed within industrialized sectors. Wealth (and happiness) was generated when factories manufactured "stuff", as the late George Carlin was fond of describing industrial by-"product". Our global economy seemed to lurch along in fits and starts as the planet employed vast portions of the population to generate an assortment of widgets and smidgets. These widgets and smidgets, in turn, were extracted from raw materials. The economy seemed to behave like a reasonably well-oiled engine when everyone continued to purchase widgets and smidgets on a regular basis, which in turn sustained a trickle-down economic effect allowing additional niche markets to flourish as well. But things seem to be a'changin in ways that are now terrifying many. We seem to be faced with two sobering paradigm shifts that we must accept and pass through as gracefully as we can, or die trying. We will either learn to accept these shifts and subsequently thrive, or reject then and die. Paradigm shift 1: We have a growing source of obedient slaves that have been invading the traditionally cantankerous high-maintenance manufacturing labor market. These invaders come in the form of robotics and automation. It is inevitable that the new slaves will absorb much of manual labor that had kept vast portions of the population employed, and as such reasonably content. As a result many elected decision makers are now increasingly fretting over what to do with an increasing supply of "surplus population", aka disgruntled voters that used to be gainfully employed manufacturing widgets and smidgets. Paradigm shift 2: We are simultaneously coming to grips with the inevitable fact that raw materials are a finite planetary bound resource. We must either (option 1) find ways to conserve what dwindling supplies remain, (option 2) find alternative supplies, or (option 3) discover new ways to recycle what we have already managed to extract from Mother Earth. Since at present it would seem that mining the asteroid belt via Buck Rodger's style (option 2) does not likely seem very realistic, at least within the foreseeable future of the next hundred years or so, we are forced to wrestle with conserving and recycling what finite supplies we have been able to extract from the Mother Earth. Of course, paradigm shift 2 also deals with the "extraction" of and generation of energy. Granted, I realize most on this list sincerely hope plentiful cheap new sources of this "product" will eventually come on-line. (I'm certainly in favor of the notion as well!) But for now I must remain pragmatic with what we currently have to work with. So, in the interim, what do we do? It may not seem entirely respectful of me to describe vast portions of the labor market in the manner that I'm about to here, but an expanded and highly developed "welfare" system may be the ultimate solution. To clarify what I'm getting at, as robotics and automation continue to absorb traditional jobs it seems to me that it's inevitable that we will end up with a growing population base that out of necessity will be forced to exploit a number of welfare systems. Of course, the dirty humiliating word I'm using here is welfare. But is "welfare" really all that dirty and/or humiliating of a word? What constitutes a helping hand, whether one has failed to be an adequate earner/provider often comes down to a matter of perception. Keep in mind the fact that welfare has already encroached into all sorts of economic systems in the form of legislated subsidies, tax breaks, food banks, etc... We support many of these institutions because, ironically, automation generated excesses that out of economic necessity need to be disposed of in some practical manner, such as surplus farm crops and dairy products. It seems to me that "welfare" will continue to evolve to meet the requirements of the 21st century and beyond. What would the new evolving welfare system give us in return? It depends on what such welfare recipients must do in return for being a recipient of such economic benefits. It is my hope that as automation continues its inevitable encroachment on the traditional labor market the subsequently freed up population base will be allowed to economically initiate new ways in which to occupy their freed-up labor with. It's entirely possible that such a system, if properly implemented, could help bring about incredibly insightful, paradigm shifting, visionary societal improvements as a byproduct of freed up labor. However, for that to happen, a sophisticated, dynamic, and creatively implemented welfare system has to be developed. Of course, we won't call it something humiliating, like "welfare". We will more likely call these other systems by other names such as "grants", such as for the development of research into science, math, art, music, dance, literature. We might call them "programs" or "job core" - definitions that imply useful byproducts is to be generated that will benefit the rest of society. The key point here is the fact that, if carefully managed, healthy "byproduct" doesn't necessarily have to consume a significant amount of raw materials in order to sustain a healthy economy. This has already been proven by the definition of what a "service oriented economy" means. As Harry Veeder has already implied, playing video games reveals an example of new forms of "labor" that have grown into a huge economic juggernaut fueling significant new portions of the global economy. We all can easily comprehend the fact that the design, development, and manufacturing of video games has ended up employing a lot of people. That is a good thing. On a more subtle point, however, is the prediction I'll make here that PLAYING video games AS A PROFESSION IN ITSELF may also turn out to be another means of employing many in the surplus labor market, and that is also a good thing. Actually, I'm no psychic. It has already happened. Many of these new forms of labor don't necessarily have to consume an excessive amount of "raw material" other than what was originally needed to create the hardware for the game box and all the software within... and the electricity to continuously power the boxes. However, for this brave new world to happen, for new forms of labor to successfully gestate in the 21st century and beyond there has to be a substantial taxing structure in place, what I'd prefer to call a monetary redistribution system. Hopefully such a redistribution system could be implemented in mostly hidden ways primarily so as to not alarm the majority of taxpayers into speculating that they are being cheated out of what they assume must be their due. Truth of the matter is: what most of us think is "our due" is subjective and open to interpretation. Also, the truth of the matter is we are being taxed that way now. Most employees who work for an employer have a significant portion of their total gross earnings (what the employer knows is the TRUE monetary cost associated with each employee) deducted before it even shows up as "gross earnings" on their W2 earnings statement. These hidden costs help pay for retirement and insurance benefits. It might surprise many employees (employees who ought to know better) to realize the fact that their true "gross" allocated earnings can often be double or more what they actually see printed on their W2 form. As they say: Ignorance is bliss. The key point being: We have to feel reasonably content with our take-home pay after having been, unbeknownst to us, raped by our employer and the tax man. Of course such clever tactics of deception wouldn't work for many self-employed would have a far more accurate picture of how much they are actually being taxed at... which, of course, is why so many who are self-employed tend to be sympathetic to the current republican agenda. I dare say the current Republican mantra would probably find much of such a redistribution plan horrifying - yet another socialist agenda that would drive America to oblivion! In conclusion, let me once again return to those two 11 million dollar lotto winners, those two broken down aging senior citizens who ended up having something interesting to say in regards to what really made them happy as human beings. As many of us are now beginning to realize, this insane and totally unsustainable addiction that continues to be crammed down our throats in the form of Madison Avenue advertisements, where we are indoctrinated with mantras to accumulate more "stuff" in order to be happy... many of us are beginning to realize the fact that ongoing efforts to accumulate more "stuff" does not in itself make us all that much happier. In many cases, it can even provoke the exact opposite. We can begin to fear losing the very "stuff" we have worked so hard to accumulate, the very "stuff" Madison Avenue indoctrinated us into believing we earned the right to posses. This begs the question, a question which of course borders on the metaphysical: If accumulating more "stuff", accumulating more widgets and smidgets is ultimately unsatisfying, what then DOES make us happy? As Bill Gates attempts to make more of our planet's citizens healthier & subsequently happier to go about doing what they want to do with the rest of their healthy lives, we had better make sure that we as a society allow novel new ways of generating new labor to flourish, labor that doesn't necessarily need to consume a lot of raw material. In the end, I suspect if we simply do our best NOT to get in the way of progress, if we have the courage to step aside and simply allow the paradigms of emergent behavior on a global scale to play out, hopefully we may all end up benefiting. We could be the midwife to the growth of brand new ecologically sustainable labor markets that will possess titles and job descriptions for unique services that in many cases we can't even conceive of yet. </FRIDAY AFTERNOON SERMON> Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
