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The Problem With Abundance
GRW writes "Peter de Jager, "a speaker/writer/consultant on the issues relating to the Rational Assimilation of the Future", asks, 'What do traffic jams, obesity and spam have in common?' He answers that 'they are all problems caused by abundance in a world more attuned to scarcity. By achieving the goal of abundance, technology renders the natural checks and balances of scarcity obsolete.' His article is a thought provoking discussion of the unintended consequences of technological change."
Newsflash: society must adapt to changes in its environment. This includes technological changes that render previous assumptions obsolete. At the bottom of the article, the columnist mentions how digital paper might kill the newspaper business, or how easily copied CDs affected the music business. He didn't mention how that motorized carrage invention killed the buggy whip business. If your line of work is being made obsolete by changes in the environment, then perhaps it is time to change your line of work. It is futile to try to change the world, although that doesn't stop people from trying, at best all you can do is slow down the rate of change. I know it will be painful for the people who don't adapt, but that is the way of the world.
I read the internet for the articles.
Since the article makes only trivial observations and provides no insights, I guess it's up to us readers. So here's my long rambling attempt:
The article's advice that people should think about the consequences of new technology is sort of worthless, for the same reason mentioned that you can't replace abundance with scarcity because people wouldn't stand for it. If it were normal for people to think ahead about consequences, they wouldn't mind a healthy dose of scarcity that promised them better health, lower stress and greater security.
In the real world, people who stand to profit from something rarely let the impact on others get in their way. At most, they consider their legal liability. When the damage starts to become obvious, all responsibility is placed on the customers who "demanded" the product. Demand, whether real or advertising-generated, is blamed for all the long-term consequences. The fast food industry doesn't accept the blame for creating a nation of lard-asses with heart disease. They just fulfilled the demand and raked up the profits. Those lazy customers did the damage to themselves. And of course, people should eat sensibly.
On the other hand, if you leave a big pile of concrete rubble in your front yard, and some curious kids climb on it and get hurt, you're going to be held liable for their injuries. An unfenced hazard like that is what's called an "attractive nuisance." You don't have to spend billions on advertising to get those kids to wander over and check it out. Merely making it easy to get to is enough to make you responsible for it.
So why aren't people who operate on a much larger scale equally responsible for "attractive nuisances" -- especially when they're handing out billions of toys in Happy Meals? I'm not talking about frivolous lawsuits for spilled hot coffee, I'm talking about people who learn to love products as kids, use them as directed for years and then drop dead at age 50 from the health effects. Apparently the loophole is the fact that almost anything is okay in moderation, and companies don't actually suggest in their advertising that anybody should consume TOO MUCH of their products. But then, the person with the pile of rubble likewise isn't asking anybody to climb on it. The pile is perfectly safe if you merely look at it and imagine the fun you could have climbing on it. So where's the consistency in the law?
I think we're between a rock and a hard place. Liability for future consequences could cripple innovation, or limit it to large companies with litigation war chests. Which is the same thing. Making people responsible for whatever happens to them requires that they have an unrealistic level of expertise and caution. We want a safe world. We want a changing, progressive world. What a can of worms.