It's a lot better than trying to reform capitalism. Also, you can have robots
running the government and allocating resources, so there would be no
bureaucracy.
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2012 16:18:39 -0500
Subject: Re: [Vo]:A new economic system will be needed in the next 20 to 100
years
From: jabow...@gmail.com
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Socialism has always failed because it merely replaces private sector
rent-seeking with public sector rent-seeking.
You have to disintermediate the public sector bureaucracy with a citizen's
dividend.
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Jarold McWilliams <oldja...@hotmail.com> wrote:
This economic system has already been developed. It is called socialism, or
what some people would call communism. When there is no more need for human
labor, it is obvious that governments are going to have to allocate resources.
Capitalism obviously won't work.
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 17:36:21 -0400
From: jedrothw...@gmail.com
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:A new economic system will be needed in the next 20 to 100 years
OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson <svj.orionwo...@gmail.com> wrote:
It's my suspicion that with ensuing advancements of technology,
automation and robotics, traditional capitalism as it is currently
practiced will have to evolve...
Capitalism, communism, Feudalism, mercantalism and every other economic system
ever invented can be defined as:
A system to allocate human labor, goods and services.
Some of these systems have been efficient; others were inefficient. Some were
just; others were unjust, and still others tyrannical.
No economic system could exist until people achieved some level of agriculture
and the ability to gather in villages and later towns and cities.
Human labor is now losing value. Robots and intelligent computers are replacing
human workers in many fields, including ones that people previously thought
could never be done by machines. Within 20 to 100 years, human labor will be
worthless.
In the distant future, machines will supply all of the food we want. They will
capable of supplying 10 times the food we want, or a thousand times. They will
be capable of manufacturing a car for every driver, or 100,000 cars for every
driver, or enough cars to cover the whole surface of Mars with automobiles in
piles 100 cars high. Material scarcity and human labor allocation will become
distant memories, the way waterborne infectious disease has in first world
countries. The concept of "economic justice" will become meaningless. The
distinction between capitalism and communism will be meaningless, like the
difference between Protestants and Catholics is to an atheist.
As this transition occurs, all economic systems will gradually collapse. This
is already happening. When labor is worth nothing, you cannot predicate your
economic system on it. With the Internet we have seen the cost of transferring
information drop so close to zero it no longer matters. No one bothers to
account for it. As that happened, people who made a living selling information
that was difficult to access went out of business. It become like selling water
by the river, as the Zen proverb has it.
Some new economic system must emerge. It will not be capitalism or communism.
No human institution lasts forever; when we have no need for these things, they
will vanish as surely as Feudalism did, or slavery did in the first world.
I am confident that something new will emerge. If we can devise these wonderful
machines capable of fulfilling all of our material needs and desires, surely we
can also devise some practical means to allocate the output of the machines so
that everyone can have whatever they need, if not everything they desire. As
Romney put it, even today, people feel they are "entitled to health care, to
food, to housing." Naturally, they feel that way! Since we can have these
things in abundance in the first world, people have every right to feel that
way.
In the future, everyone living in every part of the solar system will take it
for granted that they have a birthright to healthcare, food, housing,
education, energy, internet access and much else. These things will cost
nothing. Virtually nothing; the per capita cost to supply food, health care and
so on will be roughly what it costs us today to supply a house with clean,
potable water in a first-world household. That's $335 per year average in the
U.S. Keeping track of such trivial expenses would be a waste of time.
Collecting taxes to pay for them would be a waste of time. In any case, you
can't collect taxes when most people do not bother to work, or have not need to
work.
Cold fusion will play a large roll in making this transition possible.
- Jed
