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The RICH Economy

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QQQQQ from Canada Since: Jul, 2011
#1: Mar 1st 2011 at 4:11:19 PM

(From this site, and the Illuminati papers by RAW)

Unemployment is not a disease; so it has no "cure."

If there is one proposition which currently wins the assent of nearly everybody, it is that we need more jobs. "A cure for unemployment" is promised, or earnestly sought, by every Heavy Thinker from Jimmy Carter to the Communist Party USA, from Ronald Reagan to the head of the economics department at the local university, from the Birchers to the New Left.

I don't think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. I propose that unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society.

The inevitable direction of any technology, and of any rational species such as Homo sap., is toward what Buckminster Fuller calls ephemeralization, or doing-more-with-less. For instance, a modern computer does more (handles more bits of information) with less hardware than the proto-computers of the late '40's and '50's. One worker with a modern teletype machine does more in an hour than a thousand medieval monks painstakingly copying scrolls for a century. Atomic fission does more with a cubic centimeter of matter than all the engineers of the 19th Century could do with a million tons, and fusion does even more.

This tendency toward ephemeralization or doing more-with-less is based on two principal factors:

  • The increment-of-association, a term coined by engineer C.H. Douglas, a meaning simply that when we combine our efforts we can do more than the sum of what each of us could do seperately. Five people acting synergetically together can lift a small modern car, but if each of the five tries separately, the car will not budge. As society evolved from tiny bands, to larger tribes, to federations of tribes, to city-states, to nations, to multinational alliances, the increment-of-association increased exponentially. A stone-age hunting band could not build the Parthenon; a Renaissance city-state could not put Neil Armstrong on the Moon. When the increment-of-association increases, through larger social units, doing-more-with-less becomes increasingly possible.
  • Knowledge itself is inherently self-augmenting. Every discovery "suggests" further discoveries; every innovation provokes further innovations. This can be seen concretely, in the records of the U.S. Patent Office, where you will find more patents granted every year than were granted the year before, in a rising curve that seems to be headed toward infinity. If Inventor A can make a Whatsit out of 20 moving parts, Inventor B will come along and build a Whatsit out of 10 moving parts. If the technology of 1900 can get 100 ergs out of a Whatchamacallum, the technology of 1950 can get 1,000 ergs. Again, the tendency is always toward doing-more-with-less.

Unemployment is directly caused by this technological capacity to do more-with-less. Thousands of monks were technologically unemployed by Gutenberg. Thousands of blacksmiths were technologically unemployed by Ford's Model T. Each device that does-more-with-less makes human labor that much less necessary.

Aristotle said that slavery could only be abolished when machines were built that could operate themselves. Working for wages, the modern equivalent of slavery — very accurately called "wage slavery" by social critics — is in the process of being abolished by just such self-programming machines. In fact, Norbert Wiener, one of the creators of cybernetics, foresaw this as early as 1947 and warned that we would have massive unemployment once the computer revolution really got moving.

It is arguable, and I for one would argue, that the only reason Wiener's prediction has not totally been realized yet — although we do have ever-increasing unemployment — is that big unions, the corporations, and government have all tacitly agreed to slow down the pace of cybernation, to drag their feet and run the economy with the brakes on. This is because they all, still, regard unemployment as a "disease" and cannot imagine a "cure" for the nearly total unemployment that full cybernation will create.

Suppose, for a moment, we challenge this Calvinistic mind-set. Let us regard wage-work — as most people do, in fact, regard it — as a curse, a drag, a nuisance, a barrier that stands between us and what we really want to do. In that case, your job is the disease, and unemployment is the cure.

"But without working for wages we'll all starve to death!?! Won't we?"

No. Many farseeing social thinkers have suggested intelligent and plausible plans for adapting to a society of rising unemployment. Here are some examples:

  • The National Dividend. This was invented by engineer C. H. Douglas and has been revived with some modifications by poet Ezra Pound and designer Buckminster Fuller. The basic idea (although Douglas, Pound, and Fuller differ on the details) is that every citizen should be declared a shareholder in the nation, and should receive dividends on the Gross National Product for the year. Estimates differ as to how much this would be for each citizen, but at the current level of the GNP it is conservative to say that a share would be worth several times as much, per year, as a welfare recipient receives — at least five times more. Critics complain that this would be inflationary. Supporters of the National Dividend reply that it would only be inflationary if the dividends distributed were more than the GNP; and they are proposing only to issue dividends equal to the GNP.
  • The Guaranteed Annual Income. This has been urged by economist Robert Theobald and others. The government would simply establish an income level above the poverty line and guarantee that no citizen would receive less; if your wages fall below that level, or you have no wages, the government makes up the difference. This plan would definitely cost the government less than the present welfare system, with all its bureaucratic red tape and redundancy: a point worth considering for those conservatives who are always complaining about the high cost of welfare. It would also spare the recipients the humiliation, degradation and dehumanization built into the present welfare system: a point for liberals to consider. A system that is less expensive than welfare and also less debasing to the poor, it seems to me, should not be objectionable to anybody but hardcore sadists.
  • The Negative Income Tax. This was first devised by Nobel economist Milton Friedman and is a less radical variation on the above ideas. The Negative Income Tax would establish a minimum income for every citizen; anyone whose income fell below that level would receive the amount necessary to bring them up to that standard. Friedman, who is sometimes called a conservative but prefers to title himself a libertarian, points out that this would cost "the government" (i.e. the taxpayers) less than the present welfare system, like Theobald's Guaranteed Annual Income. It would also dispense with the last tinge of humiliation associated with government "charity," since when you cashed a check from IRS nobody (not even your banker) would know if it was supplementary income due to poverty or a refund due to overpayment of last year's taxes.
  • The RICH Economy. This was devised by inventor L. Wayne Benner (co-author with Timothy Leary of Terra II) in collaboration with the present author. It's a four-stage program to retool society for the cybernetic and space-age future we are rapidly entering. RICH means Rising Income through Cybernetic Homeostasis.

Stage I: Recognize that cybernation and massive unemployment are inevitable and to encourage them. This can be done by offering a $100,000 reward to any worker who can design a machine that will replace him or her, and all others doing the same work. In other words, instead of being dragged into the cybernetic age kicking and screaming, we should charge ahead bravely, regarding the Toilless Society as the Utopian goal humanity has always sought.

Stage II: Establish either the Negative Income Tax or the Guaranteed Annual Income, so that the massive unemployment caused by Stage I will not throw hordes of people into the degradation of the present welfare system.

Stage III: Gradually, experimentally, raise the Guaranteed Annual Income to the level of the National Dividend suggested by Douglas, Bucky Fuller, and Ezra Pound, which would give every citizen the approximate living standard of the comfortable middle class. The reason for doing this gradually is to pacify those conservative economists who claim that the National Dividend is "inflationary" or would be practically wrecking the banking business by lowering the interest rate to near-zero. It is our claim that this would not happen as long as the total dividends distributed to the populace equaled the Gross National Product. but since this is a revolutionary and controversial idea, it would be prudent, we allow, to approach it in slow steps, raising the minimum income perhaps 5 per cent per year for the first ten years. And, after the massive cybernation caused by Stage I has produced a glut of consumer goods, experimentally raise it further and faster toward the level of a true National Dividend.

Stage IV: a massive investment in adult education, for two reasons.

Because people can spend only so much time smoking dope and watching TV; after a while they get bored. This is the main psychological objection to the workless society, and the answer to it is to educate people for functions more cerebral than smoking dope, watching TV, listening to Lady Gaga or the idiot jobs most are currently toiling at.

There are vast challenges and opportunities confronting us in the next three or four decades, of which the most notable are those highlighted in Tim Leary's SMI 2 LE slogan — Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension. Humanity is about to enter an entirely new evolutionary relationship to space, time, and consciousness. We will no longer be limited to one planet, to a brief, less-than-a-century lifespan, and to the stereotyped and robotic mental processes by which most people currently govern their lives. Everybody deserves the chance, if they want it, to participate in the evolutionary leap to what Leary calls "more space, more time, and more intelligence to enjoy space and time."

What I am proposing, in brief, is that the Work Ethic (find a Master to employ you for wages, or live in squalid poverty) is obsolete. A Work Esthetic will have to arise to replace this old Stone Age syndrome of the slave, the peasant, the serf, the prole, the wage-worker — the human labor-machine who is not fully a person but, as Marx said, " a tool, an automaton." Delivered from the role of things and robots, people will learn to become fully developed persons, in the sense of the Human Potential movement. They will not seek work out of economic necessity, but out of psychological necessity — as an outlet for their creative potential.

("Creative potential" is not a panchreston. It refers to the inborn drive to play, to tinker, to explore, and to experiment, shown by every child before his or her mental processes are stunted by authoritarian education and operant-conditioned wage-robotry.)

As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, "What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?" The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.

breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#2: Mar 1st 2011 at 4:34:45 PM

Is this in the right forum? Sounds like you want to have a serious discussion on future economic models.

QQQQQ from Canada Since: Jul, 2011
#3: Mar 1st 2011 at 4:52:53 PM

I have some doubt others will take this radical model seriously. So I thought this could have some use in envisioning a near-future, post-cyberpunkish society.

Tzetze DUMB from a converted church in Venice, Italy Since: Jan, 2001
DUMB
#4: Mar 1st 2011 at 4:57:11 PM

You know the phrase «post-scarcity economy», right?

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.
QQQQQ from Canada Since: Jul, 2011
#5: Mar 1st 2011 at 5:00:21 PM

Oh yes. But there might still be some scarce elements even after this hypothetical economy has taken effect. But it's mostly opportunity costs, and knowledge caps gaps which can be rapidly filled in.

edited 1st Mar '11 5:01:22 PM by QQQQQ

MattII Since: Sep, 2009
#6: Mar 1st 2011 at 8:34:08 PM

Outsourcing of production is a bigger threat to national employment than increasing technology. In fact, you'd have a job arguing that increasing technology was ever a threat to national production, given that, for example, the population of the UK has risen by over 20 million since 1900, yet the unemployment rate is not 33%, which is what you'd expect from such an increase. The reason for this is that technology opens up avenues for employment as well as closing them, and in some cases those avenues are in existing fields, like health for example. Also, even if machines can do work for us, those machines need tending, overseeing, maintaining (and occasionally repairing/overhauling), and that in itself creates jobs.

What machines really do is increase the availability of whatever they produce. Taking your example of books, before the printing press, books were so rare that most people couldn't afford to own even one, but afterwards most people probably could afford one or two, while the richer folk could afford to own a library. Also, imagine how many mistakes you could make if you had to hand-write 100 books, now compare that to the printing press, where you can print a test-page before you actually start printing for real. And with the increasing number of books you can really make a start on a public education system, which can't be a bad thing.

breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#7: Mar 1st 2011 at 10:42:29 PM

And to further Matt's point, technologically advanced societies have been shown to work way more hours than more primitive societies. However, our productivity per hour far surpasses that of a primitive tribal society, unfortunately we also have to work 40+ hours per week to maintain. It's rather paradoxical in that we get way more fruit per hour of labour but we also have to work many more hours to gain such fruit.

I'm not sure that those models really understand unemployment. Structural unemployment is perfectly fine because you need to also look at median length of unemployment. If your unemployment rate is say 6% but the median unemployment length is about 3-5 weeks, then your economy has no problem whatsoever. That just means people perhaps got laid off, or perhaps decided to seek new work. There's always going to be a number of people in flux at any given moment. The concern for any government is long-term unemployment.

That is a situation that is not resolved by any of the proposed methods because it doesn't tackle anything related to it.

What you are tackling is poverty in general but it is based on false premises that lead me to believe that any conclusion drawn from it is likely to be erroneous, and if correct, only by luck. Technology has not increased unemployment ever, it has only ever shifted populations to work in something else. I mean, take for instance agricultural technology. Around twenty percent of Canada's population lives in rural areas and I don't think all of those people are farmers. Taken from the perspective of say a colonial person of the late 1700s, they would say "Well gee, then everyone would be sitting around thumb up his ass". But they don't because all you did was open up far more jobs that could not previously have been worked upon.

If you set a minimum income through any of the proposed methods, I would imagine the primary consequence is a move to smaller businesses, which are more prone to collapsing and restarting, and a serious erosion of major mega-corporations.

As for the topic of outsourcing, as much as I despise such a practice, if you operated in a global economy with less tariffs and less protectionism, I'm of the opinion it'd be less of an issue. If a man can be paid less and does better work than you, then why do you deserve your job and pay? With better globalism and cooperation on reducing income disparity, anybody who is outsourcing to crappier workers for the money they pay will fail to corporations who pay for the proper quality workers. Protectionism on the other hand allows companies to artificially float while cost-cutting CE Os can produce total garbage that people buy because there's nothing else on the market.

MattII Since: Sep, 2009
#8: Mar 2nd 2011 at 12:09:32 AM

If a man can be paid less and does better work than you, then why do you deserve your job and pay? With better globalism and cooperation on reducing income disparity, anybody who is outsourcing to crappier workers for the money they pay will fail to corporations who pay for the proper quality workers. Protectionism on the other hand allows companies to artificially float while cost-cutting CE Os can produce total garbage that people buy because there's nothing else on the market.
This'd be a nicer idea if any of the big corporations actually tried it, but they don't, all corporations chase cheap labour, and as such, durability suffers regardless. How long can T Vs last these days, 5 years, 10? Back in the 70s my parents bought a TV, and it worked for something like 25 years; I wouldn't bet you a buck that anything off a shop shelf these days would be anything like that reliable. The same went for:
* Our old CD-32 games machine, bought in 94, sold in 2010, and never skipped a beat but for a finiky spinner (C Ds with a slightly-too-small hole wouldn't sit right).
* Most of our stereo system, all bought back in the 70s, and but for the tape-deck all still as good as new (the tape deck got peed on by our cat).
* Our old computer, bought back in 92, and apart from some lost data (dad upsized the hard-drive, and we must have lost a floppy-disc somewhere) it was all still working 10 years later when we donated it to our local scout group jumble sale.
* Our old fridge-freezer, bought back in the 70s, and lasted for, again, something like 25 years before we'd finally had enough of it (the fridge's thermostat had gone 5 years before, but the rest still worked).

edited 2nd Mar '11 12:15:45 AM by MattII

FrodoGoofballCoTV from Colorado, USA Since: Jan, 2001
#9: Mar 2nd 2011 at 6:03:14 AM

[up]All companies on some level cater to the demands of the consumer, and those in it purely for profit (i.e., being run by an execuive who is told to satisfy the financial demands of shareholders and not a visionary with an alterior motive) tend to cater to the portion of the consumer base that provides the highest profit.

If consumers are willing to pay not only a premium, but a huge profit margin, for equipment that lasts 25 years, someone will find a way to do it. But as long as electronics evolve as fast as they do now, a wealthy person would rather spend $3000 every 2 years for a new gigantic TV than $15,000 for a gigantic TV that wll last 25 years.

[up][up][up]I heard there was a computer company where the upper - level managers were told:

  • "If you see a future technology that will put us out of business, don't hide it, instead make sure WE are the ones to introduce it."
  • By outsourcing to countries where working conditions are very poor, we envigorate the local economy and build a potential new customer base.

idea Maybe in the RICH economy, as more people's jobs are replaced, humans gravitate toward jobs that are increasingly harder to replace with machines.

In The Millenial Project, Marshall T. Savage imagines an advanced society inhabiting a Dyson Sphere of which 5% are scientists or R&D engineers and another 5% are writers and artists. He calculates that such a society would easily devote more brainpower / processor cycles to a single intellectual concern than currently exists in the world.

edited 2nd Mar '11 6:05:38 AM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#10: Mar 2nd 2011 at 8:51:13 AM

This'd be a nicer idea if any of the big corporations actually tried it, but they don't, all corporations chase cheap labour, and as such, durability suffers regardless. How long can T Vs last these days, 5 years, 10? Back in the 70s my parents bought a TV, and it worked for something like 25 years; I wouldn't bet you a buck that anything off a shop shelf these days would be anything like that reliable. The same went for:

I wouldn't disagree to that.

We've short sighted shareholders in control of CE Os that don't really care about the company and anybody that does care is usually just ousted by the greedy shareholders. They just seem totally incapable of long-term vision.

To me it is key to analyse which corporations (I almost wrote countries) are doing well and have long-term vision and which ones do not. You look at Intel, it has had a total of 5 CE Os, each serving for decades. IBM is similar. Google, Microsoft, Amazon... basically the new tech industry of America is the only economic sector that manages to think beyond 5 years and succeed. Everything else collapses in bouts of total stupidity and production of crap.

I would add though that simply because something is built domestically doesn't make it good. I've seen the vast majority of products "proudly built in America" fail miserably against many things that are cheaply built in China. The point isn't that they outsource, the point is whether they outsource without care about a drop of quality.

MattII Since: Sep, 2009
#11: Mar 2nd 2011 at 12:41:06 PM

If consumers are willing to pay not only a premium, but a huge profit margin, for equipment that lasts 25 years, someone will find a way to do it. But as long as electronics evolve as fast as they do now, a wealthy person would rather spend $3000 every 2 years for a new gigantic TV than $15, 000 for a gigantic TV that wll last 25 years.
That argument only goes for equipment which will evolve dramatically in 25 years, cookers, fridge-freezers, washing machines and the like won't I shouldn't think.

Also, this whole artifice of thought comes crashing down when you realise that A) Adolescents won't fit in nice an easily the way grown people will, and B) people in this new society will be more different from us today than we are from dogs.

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