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James Albus wrote a book in 1976 called Peoples' Capitalism. He proposed that the government create a mutual fund that invests in automated industries and pays dividends to every US citizen.

Eventually the fund's dividends would be enough to live on, so nobody would be required to work, and everyone would get a minimal share of the proceeds of automating everything.

Imagine that we had started doing this in, say, 1980.

The solution is grant capital stakes to more of the population. James Albus, an engineer who worked on automation and foresaw this in the 70s, described a system to achieve this that he called People's Capitalism. The basic idea is that the government should invest in cutting edge research and then socialize a portion of the efficiency gains, giving a dividend check to all citizens that would grow over time. Instead of laying the groundwork for massive improvements in machine vision, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, etc. and handing the keys over to private industry to privatize the gains, the government should get a better return. Self-driving cars and biodiesel are two prime examples of DARPA seeding money to get development going, then essentially handing over the research to private companies to refine and commercialize. His book, People's Capitalism is available for free download here. It's worthy of greater attention.

Check out People's Capitalism. Written in 1976 by a NASA engineer who foresaw that automation would wipe out many jobs. For some reason, the links on the page are no longer working but the PDF link in the bottom left corner of the page is still active. The tl;dr version is that he proposed rather than use the Federal Reserve to print money for the banks, we should invest money in research, license the fruits of that research to private industry, and use the proceeds as dividends for the citizenry. Well worth the read. It's an idea whose time has come. See also Buckminster Fuller's idea for a basic solar income or read the wikipedia article on Economic Democracy. Oh, and spread the word. This needs to happen. It's crazy that we have have a class of workers who are overworked alongside a class of people who can't find work. http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

Get educated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

The answer: a National Dividend This is the most capitalistic approach to C.H Douglas' theory of social credit. Read up now and help make this future happen . . .

You are thinking of this story.

A similar way out of the automation trap was proposed by James Albus back in 1976. Albus died in April of 2011, but you can read about his proposal at www.peoplescapitalism.org.

The main problem with this idea (other than the fact that it is a paradoxically self-defeating idea) is that they are comparing modern popular culture with past intellectual culture.

Do they not remember a not so distant time when "nerd" and "geek" were insults in mainstream culture? Computer geeks only get any respect today because they make the wheels turn for everyone else. It's the same sort of respect a airplane pilot or train conductor gets.

My grandfather had to defy his father in order to graduate from high school because his father felt that much education was useless...the past is full of such stories that just get forgotten with the passage of time.

In any case, what this writer is observing is a sort of Jevons Paradox for information. As the efficiency of exchanging information electronically has increased, it has become more and more heavily used...and in particular it is being used for more and more things that would have not been worthwhile when efficiency was lower (and therefore the cost higher). As one might expect, most of the things that would not be worthwhile at a high cost are not particularly worthwhile. Usually it's because the information has little to no practical or intellectual value ("I'm eating a delicious sandwich"), but it can also be because the idea is unpolished and unready.

This second case really changes our perception of the emergence of world-changing ideas even in intellectual circles. In the olden days, a new idea would seemingly emerge fully formed from out of the blue. One day you open the paper and there's an article on this newfangled "airplane" thing that just made its first flight yesterday in North Carolina. Perhaps instead you walk into a bookstore and at the recommendation of one of your friends you pick up copy of this Nietzsche guy's book. For most consumers of ideas in this era, there's a clear dividing line between the world before the idea and the world after. However, for the originator of the idea there's not such a clear line. Big ideas have long private and semi-public histories before they reached their final public form. In the electronic age, we are more likely to be privy to this long history. When the big breakthrough happens we're much less likely to realize its importance, because its really just an incremental but important step up from what we knew before. In this way, even highly intelligent people can miss big changes as they occur. Instead, we usually notice years later...when we wake up one morning and HOLY SHIT THERE'S A ROBOT CLEANING MY FLOOR.

It'll be interesting to look back and see which big ideas stand the test of time. There's a good chance it will be the ideas of intellectuals that few people know about or take seriously today, like this guy: http://marshallbrain.com/ or this guy http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/

Those are some pretty big ideas if you ask me...

Free markets may have a place, but either it is a small place or there needs to be mechanisms that deal with the concentrating of wealth that is the end product of free markets and the effect they have on small communities.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I suggest you do some research into the economic theories of Hernando de Soto and "(poor) people's capitalism".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_(eco nomist)

http://members.forbes.com/global/2002/1223/070.htm l

http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/PeoplesCapitalism paper_new.htm

Capitalism empowers the poor, and the fundamental reason for poverty is that there's not enough capitalism. The poor of the world have an estimated 9.3 billion in assets that they can do *nothing* with because of a lack of legal infrastructure. Ensuring that people can transfer, sell, lease, and borrow against their property is the fundamental problem of world poverty.

The funny thing in this is that you and I want the same thing - more individual liberty.

Yes, but you consider the works of artists to be "commons", and I do not. One a person writes a novel it is inherently a private creation. They don't have to share it. You believe that if they publicize it at all they must immediately, completely and forever abdicate *all* rights despite the fact that they are the ones who spend untold hours creating this work. The morality of this position seems patently flawed. You believe that artists and creators deserve no rights no whatsoever despite their hard work - their own creations must be secret or no longer belong to them.

I'm confident that not only is this not morally defensible, but that you will never convince the majority of artists that they can have *no* power over their own creations.