Jed--
Your last comment: "I do not think so. I do not know of any
inherently safe products that regulated solely for the good of society. "
Making beer and wine is limited and distilling ethanol is prohibited without a
license. (Ethanol, however, is considered safe and can be purchased by any
adult.) Such action is taken for the good of the society.
I would argue that putting people out of work could be judged harmful to the
society. Many people like to work and support their family. Without
adequate support a family in this day and age will suffer. Such suffering is
not good for the society IMHO. Increasing jobs is a significant political
objective just because the opposite action is considered harmful.
Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: Jed Rothwell
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 5:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:OT: what if everybody got free cash?
Bob Cook <[email protected]> wrote:
I would note that those kind of people have not gotten around the Atomic
Energy Act in this country very well.
That is because radioactive material is difficult and expensive to produce
and easy to detect, and it is produced in only a few facilities. Robots and
computers will be mass produced by thousands of corporations worldwide, and
they will be impossible to detect.
I would disagree with you that we have no right to keep numbers of items
(robots) down. Such control It is a collective right established by law that
limits the availability of items.
In free nations governments have no right to limit the production or
ownership of items that cause no intrinsic harm in normal use. Today's
computers can be used for harmful purposes such as hacking and defrauding
people. Automobiles can be used as getaway cars by bank robbers. It would be an
outrageous violation of rights for any government to limit ownership of
computers or automobiles for those reasons.
I am sure there would be tremendous opposition to a move to limit robots, and
I would be fully supportive of it. The fact that they put people out of work
must not be counted against them. Any labor saving device puts people out of
work. Any time I buy a Japanese car instead of an American car, I put Americans
out of work. That is my right.
The definitions surely need to be established which distinguishes a
computer from a robot. These would be legal definitions in laws and
regulations and may not reflect the hazy lines between this and that which you
suggest are a problem.
The lines are actually hazy. They are nonexistent. There will be dumb
peripheral robots such as roving cameras or garden tools with robot interfaces
on one side, and on the other, a computer printer might already be considered
robots. Asking lawmakers to draw arbitrary lines and to make artificial
distinctions is asking for trouble.
My basic assumption is that technology can be regulated by a government for
the good of the society, consistent with the will of the majority. This is
democracy.
Can you think of an example of this? I do not think that would be
Constitutional in the U.S.
- Jed
