As John Taylor Gatto put it: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm """ As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system. """
On "child-raising by strangers", by NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto:
"State Controlled Consciousness" http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html """ Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your kid up in his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated and more often implied that the state through its agents knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, your local traditions do. And that your kid will be better off so adopted.
But by the time the child returns to the family, or has the option of doing that, very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger too and why not? In the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.
Now let's look at the strangers of which you (interviewer) was one and I was one. Regardless of our good feeling toward children. Regardless of our individual talents or intelligence, we have so little time each day with each of these kids, we can't possibly know enough vital information about that particular kid to tailor a set of exercises for that kid. Oh, you know, some of us will try more than others, but there simply isn't any time to do it to a significant degree....
If you gave children and families options, it probably would take half a decade before many people tried the options, but I think inside of a decade, the institutional schools would vanish because they don't teach the way children learn, nor CAN they teach the way children learn. That's not what they're set up to do. They're set up to produce a predictable homogenous safe product. They're set up to sort people into occupational categories roughly consonant with what the current economy demands... """
I like this part of the speech (will they be open source?): "The MacArthur Foundation and industry leaders like Sony are launching a nationwide challenge to design compelling, freely available, science-related video games."
But, sadly, they are still promoting "competitions" even in that "challenge", plus another part: "Time Warner Cable is joining with the Coalition for Science After School and FIRST Robotics -- the program created by inventor Dean Kamen, which gave us the "Cougar Cannon" -- to connect one million students with fun after-school activities, like robotics competitions."
See: http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm """ "We need competition in order to survive." "Life is boring without competition." "It is competition that gives us meaning in life." These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource. """
From the article: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-education-innovate-campaign """ Now, the students from Oakton High School are going to be demonstrating the "Cougar Cannon," designed to scoop up and toss moon rocks. I am eager to see what they do -- for two reasons. As President, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots, in case they try anything. (Laughter.) """
Interesting, coming from someone who gave an order within three days of taking office to use killer robots in a way that allegedly killed three children.
From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5575883.ece "Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed. Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven "foreigners" - a term that usually means al-Qaeda - but locals also said that three children lost their lives.'
From the first, Dr. David Goodstein: """
We must find a radically different social structure to organize research and education in science after The Big Crunch. That is not meant to be an exhortation. It is meant simply to be a statement of a fact known to be true with mathematical certainty, if science is to survive at all. The new structure will come about by evolution rather than design, because, for one thing, neither I nor anyone else has the faintest idea of what it will turn out to be, and for another, even if we did know where we are going to end up, we scientists have never been very good at guiding our own destiny. Only this much is sure: the era of exponential expansion will be replaced by an era of constraint. Because it will be unplanned, the transition is likely to be messy and painful for the participants. In fact, as we have seen, it already is. Ignoring the pain for the moment, however, I would like to look ahead and speculate on some conditions that must be met if science is to have a future as well as a past.
It seems to me that there are two essential and clearly linked conditions to consider. One is that there must be a broad political consensus that pure research in basic science is a common good that must be supported from the public purse. The second is that the mining and sorting operation I've described must be discarded and replaced by genuine education in science, not just for the scientific elite, but for all the citizens who must form that broad political consensus. """
While depression has many causes, vitamin D deficiency may help explain why there is more depression in the winter months: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml "However, it is not to early to heed the following advice: If you suffer from depression, get your 25(OH)D level checked and, if it is lower than 35 ng/mL (87 nM/L), you are vitamin D deficient and should begin treatment. If you are not depressed, get your 25(OH)D level checked anyway. If it is lower than 35 ng/mL (87 nM/L), you are vitamin D deficient and should begin treatment."
More treatment details here: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml "If you refuse to see a physician, or can't find a knowledgeable one, purchase the 1000 IU/day vitamin D3 cholecalciferol pills that are available over-the-counter in North America or a 5,000 IU capsule. Take an average of 5,000 IU a day, year-round, if you have some sun exposure. If you have little, or no, sun exposure you will need to take at least 5,000 IU per day. How much more depends on your latitude of residence, skin pigmentation, and body weight. Generally speaking, the further you live away from the equator, the darker your skin, and/or the more you weigh, the more you will have to take to maintain healthy blood levels."
Sometimes you just have to make a choice between helping the larger society prosper versus turning inward and perhaps, by inaction, helping bring about the very catastrophe you are worried about.
Ideally, one can do both -- build strong local communities that are more self-reliant while at the same time developing ideas that help everyone. One issue with the Alpha Rubicon people is that they choose to keep most of what they learn to themselves, presumably to give themselves and edge in a catastrophe? Maybe there is a different reason? Ultimately, a competitive mindset may be what dooms us unless we can move beyond it:
"No contest: the case against competition" http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq. "Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East" http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html
So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?
Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".
As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car: "Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user" http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.
More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this: http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm "So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g
The last time they tried this in 2002, I sent this satire to the Senate Judiciary via their request for comments: http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html """ This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999 It was in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" about the MPAA wanting copyright protection built into all computer hardware. I sent a copy to Richard Stallman back then and he said it made him laugh.:-) My comments to the Department of Justice request for comments were in the form of this satire:
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.... """
And it goes on from there...
I sent it to Richard Stallman too, and he said it made him laugh.:-)
As one possibility, you can contribute to the growing open manufacturing and maker communities that are creating a free commons of knowledge of how to make things. For example, you could help with RepRap somehow. Or you could improve Blender or other 3D modeling software. Or you could build better communications tools about manufacturing knowledge (maybe based on Google Wave?) Eventually, all that will lead to a new paradigm for manufacturing, allowing us to build better systems, including better spacecraft and habitats. Just make sure you get enough supplemental Vitamin D3 if you stay indoors a lot doing that.:-) http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
As another reply, by "Alex Belits" points out, aspects of what you outline, like hoarding, would be considered dysfunctional in other paradigms. A study of other cultures, like some Native American tribes, shows that a "Tribal Chief" was selected and replaced at will by the people. They were picked from their lifelong behavior in the tribe, often to serve as more a spiritual leader than a dictator. Example from recent Iroquois history: http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/tributetoshenandoah.htm "This article was written by Kanatiiosh as a tribute to Chief Leon Shenandoah who held the Onondaga title of Tadodaho and was truly a good man who lived his life according to the original instructions given by the Creator." A book of his wisdom that I have enjoyed reading: http://www.amazon.com/Become-Human-Being-Tadodaho-Shenandoah/dp/1571743413
What you write towards the end reminds me of this:
"No contest: the case against competition" http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm """ We need competition in order to survive."
"Life is boring without competition." "It is competition that gives us meaning in life." These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource. """
Part of this issue is what we mean by "health", whether for an individual, a family, a community, a society, a biosphere, or a noosphere.
Again, from Alfie Kohn's work:
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition" By Alfie Kohn http://books.google.com/books?id=bLudHIk3gsMC """ If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid, unconditional sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to compete. The implication, we might say, is that the real alternative to being number one is not being number two but being psychologically free enough to dispense with rankings altogether. Interestingly, two sports psychologists have found a number of excellent athletes with "immense character strengths who don't make it in sports. They seem to be so well put together emotionally that there is no neurotic tie to sport." Since recreation almost always involves competition in our culture, those who are healthy enough not to need to compete may simply end up turning down those activities.... Each culture provides its own mechanisms for dealing with self-doubt.... Low self-esteem, then, i
For a society where different rules apply, see:
"The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm """ Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an in. situation. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger in. creases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied.
The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo. """
Economics does not say everything is scarce. It says it is a discipline about decision making about scarcity. And it is woefully incomplete because it does not really concern itself with creating abundance. Most economics textbooks probably don't even mention abundance. Or fun. Or community. It's a woefully inadequate way to look at the world if what you want to do is build abundant fun communities.
How do you get from "if there is a cost" to "the resource is scarce". Things can be really cheap.
Also, consider what Marshall Brain says here: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm """ "It works like this. Let's say that you own a large piece of land. Say something the size of your state of California. This land contains natural resources. There is the sand on the beaches, from which you can make glass and silicon chips. There are iron, gold and aluminum ores in the soil, which you can mine, refine and form into any shape. There are oil and coal deposits under the ground. There is carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen in the air and in the water. If you were to own California, all of these resources are 'free.' That is, since you own them, you don't have to pay anyone for them and they are there for the taking."
"If you have a source of energy and if you also own smart robots, the robots can turn these resources into anything you want for free. Robots can grow free food for you in the soil. Robots can manufacture things like steel, glass, fiberglass insulation and so on to create free buildings. Robots can weave fabric from cotton or synthetics and make free clothing. In the case of this catalog you are holding, nanoscale robots chain together glucose molecules to form laminar carbohydrates. As long as you have smart robots, along with energy and free resources, everything is free." """
Again, if you look at how people lived for tens of thousands of years in pre-scarcity times (before agriculture was needed), then you will see people can live without elites of the nature we have now. Daniel Quinn talks about this too.
You're right, it is a good idea to separate those things, digital from physical right now.
I'd go a step further and suggest a big problem these days is that people lump under "capital" both imaginary fiat dollars (ration units) and physical things like cement plants. As suggested by another poster, if we want a new cement plant, it takes time to build one. But an endless supply of fiat dollars can be created by the stroke of a pen in Congress. Digitally, there is so much capacity now relative to basic needs like surfing the web that, compared to when one hand to spend a lot of money to buy a few IBM mainframe computing cycles, most computer and network access costs now are too cheap to matter much.
But, still, for a post-scarcity future, consider the resources you mentioned.
* Water. We have oceans full of it. With enough energy (like from wind and solar), it is easy to desalinate it. There are desalinization breakthroughs mentioned on slashdot quite frequently.
* Food. The USA alone can produce enough food to feed something like three billion people. Unfortunately, much of it goes to animal feed: "The Truth About Land Use in the United States" http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm We've plenty of food for a mostly vegetarian diet for a much bigger population than we have now. And that's even without effectively farming the oceans or people moving off-planet to space habitats.
* Land. See the above link on how much land there is in the USA. We can also build seasteads. And eventually we'll be building space habitats. We can build thousands, even millions, of Earths worth of surface area for materials in the solar system, like Princeton Physicist Gerard K. O'Neill showed how to do.
* Megan Fox. Sure, human relationships will always have a scarcity aspect. Still, digitally there is a vast quantity of Megan Fox around: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Megan+Fox&btnG=Search+images We'll no doubt see virtual actors soon -- there are already all sorts of interactive games with virtual people. And look where this sort of robotic technology is going: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=2188 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/dec/14/aiko-fembot-robot Also, no doubt there are millions of women who look a lot like Megan Fox, or act like her. So, I question just how scarce Megan Fox as a concept is. But yes, sure, if you want to point to specific people or rocks in the world, yes, there is a scarcity there of that one person or thing. But, then think how scarce and precious everyone on the planet is. Maybe they all deserve a basic income as a human right, to have some claim on the fruits of an abundant industrial commons? Even Megan Fox? Maybe if she had had a guaranteed basic income every year to meet her living expenses for life, she might have had a happier life? And maybe all the people around her would not have been so eager to exploit her, and she could have had a more authentic life? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
The USA has centuries worth of coal. Nazi Germany almost took over the world using coal to make liquid synthetic fuels using 1940s technology. The US population is 300 million about. There are tens of millions of people unemployed and underemployed. We could switch entirely to coal in a year or two if we really wanted too. That would be terrible for the environment, and public health (mercury pollution etc.) but we surely could do this.
As for the long term, we could probably even evacuate the entire planet in a couple decades or so if as as species we were willing to accept about 10% of the population dying from rocket explosions and stuff. Some rough ideas on how to do that, basically by launching seeds for self-replicating habitats and then using rocket with fuel produced by coal: http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004029.html http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004037.html """ So, seven billion people soon, minus a few doomsters, times US$100K per person, is US$700 trillion. The world GDP is about US$60 trillion, so, in round numbers, this is about ten years of world economic output to put everyone into space....
Now, would I suggest we do this? No. Would there be obstacles and so on? Yes. Would most of humanity go along with this? Probably not, as many people have an attachment to the land of their birth. Would lots of people die of heart attacks on the way up? Probably. Would plenty of stuff go wrong and hundreds of millions of people die (10%? 20%? 90%? 99%?) if this sort of thing got rushed, like entire habitats and space ships blowing up for stupid reasons, or there being unforeseen cancer hazards, or there being malicious computer viruses destroying life support systems, and so on? Almost certainly.
Would the money be better spent fixing up the Earth first, just from an ethical perspective? Surely -- maybe the last thing we want is a solar system filled up with the same kind of people who could not make a good thing work out on Earth when they had it easily within their technical grasp. As I say, the best reason to go into space is because we are happy down on Earth and think it might be fun to have cities in space too. And as above, I am guessing we could support more than ten times our current population in urbanized seasteads.
My point is not that we *should* do any of this evacuation into space, but that we *could*. It is to suggest that, with a little imagination based on existing research studies done by NASA (and then buried), the numbers actually work out (with some handwaving.:-) So, a total evacuation of the Earth for space could be plausibly done within the lifetime of probably anybody on this list (even though you might have to go on a starvation diet for many months, and you'd need to leave everything behind except your underwear to cut launch costs.:-)
So, the implication, if such a thing is within our plausible grasp, is that there is cause for hope. It is to suggest that everything people are going on about in current politics, how we need to spend all that money for our "protection", or how we are running out of oil or iron or whatever (anything except helium that nobody talks about), it's all just all scaremongering from a technical perspective (even if the social issues of inequity or change are real, and I'm all for addressing them).
So, with that as a background possibility, that within thirty years almost every middle-aged or younger human being alive today could be living in space in relative luxury, I just don't see the point for the gloom and doom about running out of oil, global climate change, etc..
I'm sure a lot of economists would agree with you. And, like you try to do, one may paint some extreme picture (like running out of hydrogen in the universe). But, compared to that happening to a universe-spanning species in some far distant future, the human race has no real resource limits of any significance. Hovewer, there are many *artificial* scarcities that have been created, from a shortage of doctors (carefully controlled med school cartels), to a shortage of copyrights (law), to a shortage of renewable energy (subsidies to nuclear energy and fossil fuels instead), to a shortage of creative people (compulsory schools dumbing people down, like John Taylor Gatto says).
But healthy human beings have limited demands for things, because the best things in life are free or cheap. If you accept that premise, economics begins to fall apart. What you describe, with humans forever chasing unlimited resources, and essentially willing to sacrifice happiness for unlimited material wants, will someday be seen as mental illness, even if it is celebrated in current US culture as "rationality".
Julian Simon shows how prices go down over time for most things, especially in a well functioning market. Aluminum used to cost more than platinum hundreds of years ago; now we throw it away. If you accept that premise, along with the idea that realistic demand grows more slowly than exponential technological capacity, then economics also begins to fall apart.
The FSF site has writings by Alfie Kohn that "reward is no motivator". Even if you assume a need to ration, the economic idea of linking rationing to individual productivity also falls apart.
On a practical basis, once we have a lot of abundance, the need to ration any of the basics people now argue over (food, shelter, health care, information, energy) on a personal basis goes away. It would be like charging for sunlight on a sunny day. That does happen in a sense in city apartments. But there are other dynamics that affect that as well. Like, if people had a basic income, they could afford to live in the country and have more say over their lives. Or if laws were different about land ownership, cities might be build differently, perhaps more lowrise like Philadelphia and older cities in Europe.
Now, you raise a good point on selling back to people clean air and clean water after others have polluted it. But, that is an issue of managing anti-social behavior IMHO.
Besides, what do we really know about the nature of the universe and what is possible in a million years? What we do know is that we live in a solar system with enough material to make the surface area of millions of Earths. And that is just one solar system of millions in our galaxy.
So, energy is getting less scarce. Go show me how energy is getting scarce, if you want an example to talk about. The Earth receives thousands of times more solar energy that our civilization uses, to begin with. The Sun itself puts out millions of times more than that. Readily available oil may be getting scarce, but, as a consequence, prices rise and people adapt and create new energy sources.
Sure, in theory, in thousands of years, and exponentially expanding civilization might encounter resource limits, but we are nowhere near that. In fact, within all industrialized countries, birthrates of established families are falli
There is no doubt some truth to what you say, but why make this personal? Can you talk about ideas without attacking a person and making lots of assumptions about them (which may well be wrong)? We might see a lot more progress if people could talk about ideas more.
Please plot the current exponential growth of renewable energy for wind and solar and you will see that, just following current exponential trends, in twenty to thirty years, almost all our energy will come from renewables like wind and solar. Peak Oil, in that sense, is a non-issue. It may be true we are going through a peak for ground-extracted oil, but we did that for whale-extracted oil, too. The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.
The biggest problem we face is post-scarcity technologies of abundance wielded by scarcity-obsessed people, because things like biotech, robotech, infotech, nanotech, nucleartech, and so on make terrible, if ironic, weapons. It is ironic to use military robots to fight over economic issues the robots make obsolete. It is ironic to use nuclear missiles built with advanced materials to fight over oil supplies that nuclear power or solar energy make unimportant. It even takes more electricity to produce a gallon of gasoline than an electric car takes to go the same distance, if you really want some deep irony -- we'd use less electricity if we switched to electric cars. So, as an example of post-scarcity thinking, considering that and safety issues, our society would save money and have lower taxes if everyone got a free-to-the user safe luxury electric car. http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
The PU economics department, of course, should be abolished as part of this transition.:-)
OK, that will never happen, so it should be at least "strongly admonished" for past misbehavior.:-(
What misbehavior? Essentially, the PU Economics department has taken part in a global effort to build an economic "psychofrakulator". How does a psychofrakulator work? Consider a paraphrase of something Doc Heller says in the movie Mystery Men: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132347/quotes
Dr. Heller: It's a psychofrakulator. They used to say it couldn't be built. The equations were so complex that most of the scientists that worked on it wound up in the insane asylum [in Chicago].... It creates a cloud of [dollar denomiated] radically-fluctuating free-deviant chaotrons which penetrate the synaptic relays [via television]. It's concatenated with a synchronous transport switch [of values from long term seven generation life-affirming love of caring to short-term immediate profit and immediate gratification suicidal death-affirming love of money] that creates a virtual tributary [back to large corporations]. It's focused onto a biobolic reflector [of the elite controlled mass media] and what happens is that [economic] hallucinations become reality and the [global] brain [and global ecosystem] is literally fried from within.
Conservative economic policy is dead. It committed suicide. Its allegiance to market solutions, tax cuts and spending cuts, supply-side nonsense, manipulative and corrosive ties to industry and the rich, have left it wholly unable to cope with the challenges we face. Its terribly limited toolbox simply cannot address the economic insecurities and opportunities generated by today's global, interconnected, polluted, insecure, dyna
More to protectionism than that... Limited demand
on
The Big Questions
·
· Score: 1
That argument assumes there is unlimited demand for everything, and than more jobs will be created and there will be not welfare costs from lost jobs. But, the best things in life are free or cheap. It probably assumes some other things too.
Do you have any facts to back up your guesses here?
And do you have any idea how much land has already been devoted to things like roads and related right-of-ways (hint, enough in the USA to produce all the power we need).
From here: http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg "Surface area required to power the world with zero carbon emissons and with solar panels alone.... The large square is the Saharan Desert (1/4 of the overall 2030 required area) would power all of Europe and North Africa. Though very large, it is still 18 times less than the total area of that desert."
It looks about right to me.:-) And that's probably with solar panels of 10% efficiency (the kind in production). With 40% efficient solar panels, the land use would shrink by a factor of four (or two times in each direction).
I'd be curious to see such a map of land currently devoted to fossil fuel extraction and consumption in power plants. I'd expect it would be roughly the same in overall area, maybe larger. The same for land use devoted to road use. Or land use devoted to cities.
Note that as they say on that picture; "The 19 contiguous areas show what would be a reasonable responsibility for various parts of the world. They would be further divide many times..."
So, that picture is to give you a sense of scale, but people might put panels on rooftops or over parking lots in order to have more local energy security or lower energy transmission costs. So, we might never have big sites like those, but if we did, those look like good places to put them.
I found interesting the note on the front page of that Land Art Generator site: "Art has the ability to create movements and stimulate creative dialogue. The artist community has long taken a critical approach to the problems of energy use and production, which has helped to open the public eye to the severity of the problems facing us. The time is now for artists to go further and take an active role in solving the problem through their own work."
From: "[ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power" http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2008-November/046620.html """ I spent a long time around 2003 and 2004 on the SSI email list (now on yahoo groups if you want to look at the archives) explaining why space-based solar power will not in any likely time frame be of any value on Earth.:-) http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/ And I want to make it clear I was a SSI Senior Associate (five year pledge of money) back in the 1980s, and even took a (intro Physics) course from Gerry O'Neill. So this in not just a casual disagreement. I am very sad that the Space Studies Institute even now pushes an outdated agenda (well, now they are moving to scaring people with asteroids, to the extent they are still operating). I feel if Gerry O'Neill was around now he might agree with this analysis of the current prospects for space-based power in the next few decades, since he always was an adaptable and innovative guy, even if, unfortunately, ultimately an unsuccessful businessperson with GeoStar and LAWN with which he hoped to fund space habitation. I think by coupling the two -- a desire to build space habitations coupled with economic arguments for space solar power (or even other space activities) -- that one may miss out on sooner realizing the dream of space habitation done for its own sake (as a hobby).
The core points of the argument I advanced there:
* About a third to one half the cost of residential electric service is maintaining transmission lines. So, at best, space solar even if *free* at the ground station will be at best one-third the cost of utility power is now at the home meter. As the costs of home power generation fall from advanced manufacturing, the cost of home solar power (or wind, or cogeneration) will drop below that cost at some point for self-contained homes producing all or most of their own power, making space solar power obsolete for home use. Since space solar power will initially be expensive, it is non-viable right now. And since the cost of solar panels (like Nanosolar's) is dropping way faster than the cost of space operations, and since solar space satellites have a twenty to thirty year time horizon for significant production, they are a non-starter and too risky investment comparatively. Things might have been different in the 1970s, but it is thirty years later. Also, one can make an argument for limited solar power for large commercial facilities producing aluminum or liquid fuels or doing laser launching, but that is only likely to be worth doing once we already have a space presence since then only the incremental costs will need to be paid, rather than expect solar power to pay to develop a space infrastructure as O'Neill and others proposed (and people still propose). I'm sure one can look hard at situations where transmission costs are minimized, but this cost of transmission argument is a very deep one and I've never seen it rigorously discussed. We know how to do solar on the ground, there are ways to store the energy at night (molten salts, ever improving batteries, pumping water up hill, compressed air, production of synthetic liquid fuels, production of hydrogen, a superconducting world wide grid backbone, etc.), and there are complementary technologies like wind power and cogeneration by burning biomass that together with solar produce fairly reliable power (as well as a lot of local hands-on jobs in the short term). And there are organizations promoting R&D to make this all even better: http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/
On what dumpster diving meant to Bill Gates: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952 """ Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong. """
Slashdot Mirror
As John Taylor Gatto put it:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
"""
Due to the end of the exponential growth of academia in the 1970s:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
On "child-raising by strangers", by NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto: ... ...
"State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"""
Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your kid up in his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated and more often implied that the state through its agents knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, your local traditions do. And that your kid will be better off so adopted.
But by the time the child returns to the family, or has the option of doing that, very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger too and why not? In the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.
Now let's look at the strangers of which you (interviewer) was one and I was one. Regardless of our good feeling toward children. Regardless of our individual talents or intelligence, we have so little time each day with each of these kids, we can't possibly know enough vital information about that particular kid to tailor a set of exercises for that kid. Oh, you know, some of us will try more than others, but there simply isn't any time to do it to a significant degree.
If you gave children and families options, it probably would take half a decade before many people tried the options, but I think inside of a decade, the institutional schools would vanish because they don't teach the way children learn, nor CAN they teach the way children learn. That's not what they're set up to do. They're set up to produce a predictable homogenous safe product. They're set up to sort people into occupational categories roughly consonant with what the current economy demands
"""
I like this part of the speech (will they be open source?):
"The MacArthur Foundation and industry leaders like Sony are launching a nationwide challenge to design compelling, freely available, science-related video games."
But, sadly, they are still promoting "competitions" even in that "challenge", plus another part: "Time Warner Cable is joining with the Coalition for Science After School and FIRST Robotics -- the program created by inventor Dean Kamen, which gave us the "Cougar Cannon" -- to connect one million students with fun after-school activities, like robotics competitions."
See:
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
"""
"We need competition in order to survive."
"Life is boring without competition."
"It is competition that gives us meaning in life."
These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource.
"""
From the article:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-education-innovate-campaign
"""
Now, the students from Oakton High School are going to be demonstrating the "Cougar Cannon," designed to scoop up and toss moon rocks. I am eager to see what they do -- for two reasons. As President, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots, in case they try anything. (Laughter.)
"""
Interesting, coming from someone who gave an order within three days of taking office to use killer robots in a way that allegedly killed three children.
From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5575883.ece
"Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed. Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven "foreigners" - a term that usually means al-Qaeda - but locals also said that three children lost their lives.'
Three people who talk about education:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/
From the first, Dr. David Goodstein:
"""
We must find a radically different social structure to organize research and education in science after The Big Crunch. That is not meant to be an exhortation. It is meant simply to be a statement of a fact known to be true with mathematical certainty, if science is to survive at all. The new structure will come about by evolution rather than design, because, for one thing, neither I nor anyone else has the faintest idea of what it will turn out to be, and for another, even if we did know where we are going to end up, we scientists have never been very good at guiding our own destiny. Only this much is sure: the era of exponential expansion will be replaced by an era of constraint. Because it will be unplanned, the transition is likely to be messy and painful for the participants. In fact, as we have seen, it already is. Ignoring the pain for the moment, however, I would like to look ahead and speculate on some conditions that must be met if science is to have a future as well as a past.
It seems to me that there are two essential and clearly linked conditions to consider. One is that there must be a broad political consensus that pure research in basic science is a common good that must be supported from the public purse. The second is that the mining and sorting operation I've described must be discarded and replaced by genuine education in science, not just for the scientific elite, but for all the citizens who must form that broad political consensus.
"""
While depression has many causes, vitamin D deficiency may help explain why there is more depression in the winter months:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
"However, it is not to early to heed the following advice: If you suffer from depression, get your 25(OH)D level checked and, if it is lower than 35 ng/mL (87 nM/L), you are vitamin D deficient and should begin treatment. If you are not depressed, get your 25(OH)D level checked anyway. If it is lower than 35 ng/mL (87 nM/L), you are vitamin D deficient and should begin treatment."
More treatment details here:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"If you refuse to see a physician, or can't find a knowledgeable one, purchase the 1000 IU/day vitamin D3 cholecalciferol pills that are available over-the-counter in North America or a 5,000 IU capsule. Take an average of 5,000 IU a day, year-round, if you have some sun exposure. If you have little, or no, sun exposure you will need to take at least 5,000 IU per day. How much more depends on your latitude of residence, skin pigmentation, and body weight. Generally speaking, the further you live away from the equator, the darker your skin, and/or the more you weigh, the more you will have to take to maintain healthy blood levels."
Sometimes you just have to make a choice between helping the larger society prosper versus turning inward and perhaps, by inaction, helping bring about the very catastrophe you are worried about.
But, from a "preparedness" perspective, working from pessimism, interesting reading:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110706_mcr_evolution.shtml
http://www.alpharubicon.com/prepinfo/themainmessage.htm
Ideally, one can do both -- build strong local communities that are more self-reliant while at the same time developing ideas that help everyone. One issue with the Alpha Rubicon people is that they choose to keep most of what they learn to themselves, presumably to give themselves and edge in a catastrophe? Maybe there is a different reason? Ultimately, a competitive mindset may be what dooms us unless we can move beyond it:
"No contest: the case against competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
Another ironic example is the post by chance directly before this one, entitled: "Perfectly Logical"
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1443966&cid=30098058
This is all very ironic, as I mention here:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005991.html
So, the US military, once again, in a tremendous burst of irony, is developing ways to create artificial scarcity on the network of abundance. And they are justifying this to have new ways to further harm the people upset about being harmed by the illegal and immoral US invasion of Iraq.
"Illegal, Immoral Invasion of Iraq to Carve up the Middle East"
http://www.mediamonitors.net/abdullahvawda16.html
So, one illegal and immoral act begets another. One artificial scarcity begets another. One arms race, fueled by war profits, begets another.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
How do we resolve this seemingly intractable problem?
Mutual security?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
Intrinsic security?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
Humor? :-)
http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1
Jacque Fresco comments on some of this, as far as the problems of way being profitable, as I note here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/3b7889054e4b4317
So, after the US military gets all these shiny new cyberweapons, who are they going to use them against next? Who will be the next people labeled "insurgents"? Or goaded into it by suffering from other military-enforced artificial scarcities?
Anyway, people ask me why I don't just post to a blog, and prefer to use email, and that's part of it. All web archives and other websites may be taken out once that "arms race" really gets going and military doctrinal TINA rules: "There is no alternative (but to destroy everything)".
Generally, a core theme of what I write is the irony of post-scarcity technology like computers and robots or nuclear power in the hands of people still thinking in terms of scarcity, like fighting over products or oil instead of producing products with robots and producing energy with nuclear power or solar power made using advanced materials. Example:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005929.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005498.html
As I mention in that last one, for an example of post-scarcity thinking, I think our taxes would go *down* if as I proposed here, everyone in the USA who wanted one was given a "free" safer luxury electric car:
"Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
Basically, defense costs, pollution mediation costs, and medical costs would all go down enormously, thus lowering taxes.
More ironically, it turns out, it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas than for an electric car to go the same distance, according to this:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that g
The last time they tried this in 2002, I sent this satire to the Senate Judiciary via their request for comments: :-) My comments to the Department of Justice request for comments were in the form of this satire: ...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
"""
This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999
It was in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!"
about the MPAA wanting copyright protection built into all computer hardware. I sent a copy to Richard Stallman back then and he said it made him laugh.
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
"""
And it goes on from there...
I sent it to Richard Stallman too, and he said it made him laugh. :-)
As one possibility, you can contribute to the growing open manufacturing and maker communities that are creating a free commons of knowledge of how to make things. For example, you could help with RepRap somehow. Or you could improve Blender or other 3D modeling software. Or you could build better communications tools about manufacturing knowledge (maybe based on Google Wave?) Eventually, all that will lead to a new paradigm for manufacturing, allowing us to build better systems, including better spacecraft and habitats. Just make sure you get enough supplemental Vitamin D3 if you stay indoors a lot doing that. :-)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
As another reply, by "Alex Belits" points out, aspects of what you outline, like hoarding, would be considered dysfunctional in other paradigms. A study of other cultures, like some Native American tribes, shows that a "Tribal Chief" was selected and replaced at will by the people. They were picked from their lifelong behavior in the tribe, often to serve as more a spiritual leader than a dictator. Example from recent Iroquois history:
http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/tributetoshenandoah.htm
"This article was written by Kanatiiosh as a tribute to Chief Leon Shenandoah who held the Onondaga title of Tadodaho and was truly a good man who lived his life according to the original instructions given by the Creator."
A book of his wisdom that I have enjoyed reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Become-Human-Being-Tadodaho-Shenandoah/dp/1571743413
What you write towards the end reminds me of this:
"No contest: the case against competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
"""
We need competition in order to survive."
"Life is boring without competition."
"It is competition that gives us meaning in life."
These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource.
"""
Part of this issue is what we mean by "health", whether for an individual, a family, a community, a society, a biosphere, or a noosphere.
Again, from Alfie Kohn's work: ... Each culture provides its own mechanisms for dealing with self-doubt. ... Low self-esteem, then, i
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition" By Alfie Kohn
http://books.google.com/books?id=bLudHIk3gsMC
"""
If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid, unconditional sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to compete. The implication, we might say, is that the real alternative to being number one is not being number two but being psychologically free enough to dispense with rankings altogether. Interestingly, two sports psychologists have found a number of excellent athletes with "immense character strengths who don't make it in sports. They seem to be so well put together emotionally that there is no neurotic tie to sport." Since recreation almost always involves competition in our culture, those who are healthy enough not to need to compete may simply end up turning down those activities.
For a society where different rules apply, see:
"The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"""
Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an in. situation. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger in. creases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied.
The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo.
"""
Economics does not say everything is scarce. It says it is a discipline about decision making about scarcity. And it is woefully incomplete because it does not really concern itself with creating abundance. Most economics textbooks probably don't even mention abundance. Or fun. Or community. It's a woefully inadequate way to look at the world if what you want to do is build abundant fun communities.
How do you get from "if there is a cost" to "the resource is scarce". Things can be really cheap.
Also, consider what Marshall Brain says here:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
"""
"It works like this. Let's say that you own a large piece of land. Say something the size of your state of California. This land contains natural resources. There is the sand on the beaches, from which you can make glass and silicon chips. There are iron, gold and aluminum ores in the soil, which you can mine, refine and form into any shape. There are oil and coal deposits under the ground. There is carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen in the air and in the water. If you were to own California, all of these resources are 'free.' That is, since you own them, you don't have to pay anyone for them and they are there for the taking."
"If you have a source of energy and if you also own smart robots, the robots can turn these resources into anything you want for free. Robots can grow free food for you in the soil. Robots can manufacture things like steel, glass, fiberglass insulation and so on to create free buildings. Robots can weave fabric from cotton or synthetics and make free clothing. In the case of this catalog you are holding, nanoscale robots chain together glucose molecules to form laminar carbohydrates. As long as you have smart robots, along with energy and free resources, everything is free."
"""
Again, if you look at how people lived for tens of thousands of years in pre-scarcity times (before agriculture was needed), then you will see people can live without elites of the nature we have now. Daniel Quinn talks about this too.
You're right, it is a good idea to separate those things, digital from physical right now.
I'd go a step further and suggest a big problem these days is that people lump under "capital" both imaginary fiat dollars (ration units) and physical things like cement plants. As suggested by another poster, if we want a new cement plant, it takes time to build one. But an endless supply of fiat dollars can be created by the stroke of a pen in Congress. Digitally, there is so much capacity now relative to basic needs like surfing the web that, compared to when one hand to spend a lot of money to buy a few IBM mainframe computing cycles, most computer and network access costs now are too cheap to matter much.
But, still, for a post-scarcity future, consider the resources you mentioned.
* Water. We have oceans full of it. With enough energy (like from wind and solar), it is easy to desalinate it. There are desalinization breakthroughs mentioned on slashdot quite frequently.
* Food. The USA alone can produce enough food to feed something like three billion people. Unfortunately, much of it goes to animal feed:
"The Truth About Land Use in the United States"
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
We've plenty of food for a mostly vegetarian diet for a much bigger population than we have now. And that's even without effectively farming the oceans or people moving off-planet to space habitats.
* Land. See the above link on how much land there is in the USA. We can also build seasteads. And eventually we'll be building space habitats. We can build thousands, even millions, of Earths worth of surface area for materials in the solar system, like Princeton Physicist Gerard K. O'Neill showed how to do.
* Megan Fox. Sure, human relationships will always have a scarcity aspect. Still, digitally there is a vast quantity of Megan Fox around:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Megan+Fox&btnG=Search+images
We'll no doubt see virtual actors soon -- there are already all sorts of interactive games with virtual people. And look where this sort of robotic technology is going:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=2188
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/dec/14/aiko-fembot-robot
Also, no doubt there are millions of women who look a lot like Megan Fox, or act like her. So, I question just how scarce Megan Fox as a concept is. But yes, sure, if you want to point to specific people or rocks in the world, yes, there is a scarcity there of that one person or thing. But, then think how scarce and precious everyone on the planet is. Maybe they all deserve a basic income as a human right, to have some claim on the fruits of an abundant industrial commons? Even Megan Fox? Maybe if she had had a guaranteed basic income every year to meet her living expenses for life, she might have had a happier life? And maybe all the people around her would not have been so eager to exploit her, and she could have had a more authentic life?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
Even millionaires like (likely) Megan Fox may be better off with a universal basic income:
"[p2p-research] Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/003949.html
Consider:
"Megan Fox Opens Up About Weight Loss, Depression: "Transformers"
The USA has centuries worth of coal. Nazi Germany almost took over the world using coal to make liquid synthetic fuels using 1940s technology. The US population is 300 million about. There are tens of millions of people unemployed and underemployed. We could switch entirely to coal in a year or two if we really wanted too. That would be terrible for the environment, and public health (mercury pollution etc.) but we surely could do this.
As for the long term, we could probably even evacuate the entire planet in a couple decades or so if as as species we were willing to accept about 10% of the population dying from rocket explosions and stuff. Some rough ideas on how to do that, basically by launching seeds for self-replicating habitats and then using rocket with fuel produced by coal: ... :-) So, a total evacuation of the Earth for space could be plausibly done within the lifetime of probably anybody on this list (even though you might have to go on a starvation diet for many months, and you'd need to leave everything behind except your underwear to cut launch costs. :-)
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004029.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004037.html
"""
So, seven billion people soon, minus a few doomsters, times US$100K per person, is US$700 trillion. The world GDP is about US$60 trillion, so, in round numbers, this is about ten years of world economic output to put everyone into space.
Now, would I suggest we do this? No. Would there be obstacles and so on? Yes. Would most of humanity go along with this? Probably not, as many people have an attachment to the land of their birth. Would lots of people die of heart attacks on the way up? Probably. Would plenty of stuff go wrong and hundreds of millions of people die (10%? 20%? 90%? 99%?) if this sort of thing got rushed, like entire habitats and space ships blowing up for stupid reasons, or there being unforeseen cancer hazards, or there being malicious computer viruses destroying life support systems, and so on? Almost certainly.
Would the money be better spent fixing up the Earth first, just from an ethical perspective? Surely -- maybe the last thing we want is a solar system filled up with the same kind of people who could not make a good thing work out on Earth when they had it easily within their technical grasp. As I say, the best reason to go into space is because we are happy down on Earth and think it might be fun to have cities in space too. And as above, I am guessing we could support more than ten times our current population in urbanized seasteads.
My point is not that we *should* do any of this evacuation into space, but that we *could*. It is to suggest that, with a little imagination based on existing research studies done by NASA (and then buried), the numbers
actually work out (with some handwaving.
So, the implication, if such a thing is within our plausible grasp, is that there is cause for hope. It is to suggest that everything people are going on about in current politics, how we need to spend all that money for our "protection", or how we are running out of oil or iron or whatever (anything except helium that nobody talks about), it's all just all scaremongering from a technical perspective (even if the social issues of inequity or change are real, and I'm all for addressing them).
So, with that as a background possibility, that within thirty years almost every middle-aged or younger human being alive today could be living in space in relative luxury, I just don't see the point for the gloom and doom about running out of oil, global climate change, etc..
I'm sure a lot of economists would agree with you. And, like you try to do, one may paint some extreme picture (like running out of hydrogen in the universe). But, compared to that happening to a universe-spanning species in some far distant future, the human race has no real resource limits of any significance. Hovewer, there are many *artificial* scarcities that have been created, from a shortage of doctors (carefully controlled med school cartels), to a shortage of copyrights (law), to a shortage of renewable energy (subsidies to nuclear energy and fossil fuels instead), to a shortage of creative people (compulsory schools dumbing people down, like John Taylor Gatto says).
But healthy human beings have limited demands for things, because the best things in life are free or cheap. If you accept that premise, economics begins to fall apart. What you describe, with humans forever chasing unlimited resources, and essentially willing to sacrifice happiness for unlimited material wants, will someday be seen as mental illness, even if it is celebrated in current US culture as "rationality".
Julian Simon shows how prices go down over time for most things, especially in a well functioning market. Aluminum used to cost more than platinum hundreds of years ago; now we throw it away. If you accept that premise, along with the idea that realistic demand grows more slowly than exponential technological capacity, then economics also begins to fall apart.
The FSF site has writings by Alfie Kohn that "reward is no motivator". Even if you assume a need to ration, the economic idea of linking rationing to individual productivity also falls apart.
This shows a robot with high speed hand-eye coordination. This means most human labor will soon be worth very little:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
If you accept what that video is telling you, economics begins to fall apart.
On a practical basis, once we have a lot of abundance, the need to ration any of the basics people now argue over (food, shelter, health care, information, energy) on a personal basis goes away. It would be like charging for sunlight on a sunny day. That does happen in a sense in city apartments. But there are other dynamics that affect that as well. Like, if people had a basic income, they could afford to live in the country and have more say over their lives. Or if laws were different about land ownership, cities might be build differently, perhaps more lowrise like Philadelphia and older cities in Europe.
Now, you raise a good point on selling back to people clean air and clean water after others have polluted it. But, that is an issue of managing anti-social behavior IMHO.
Besides, what do we really know about the nature of the universe and what is possible in a million years? What we do know is that we live in a solar system with enough material to make the surface area of millions of Earths. And that is just one solar system of millions in our galaxy.
So, energy is getting less scarce. Go show me how energy is getting scarce, if you want an example to talk about. The Earth receives thousands of times more solar energy that our civilization uses, to begin with. The Sun itself puts out millions of times more than that. Readily available oil may be getting scarce, but, as a consequence, prices rise and people adapt and create new energy sources.
But, that bet has already been done. The economist taking the side you suggest you want to be on lost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager
Sure, in theory, in thousands of years, and exponentially expanding civilization might encounter resource limits, but we are nowhere near that. In fact, within all industrialized countries, birthrates of established families are falli
There is no doubt some truth to what you say, but why make this personal? Can you talk about ideas without attacking a person and making lots of assumptions about them (which may well be wrong)? We might see a lot more progress if people could talk about ideas more.
Please plot the current exponential growth of renewable energy for wind and solar and you will see that, just following current exponential trends, in twenty to thirty years, almost all our energy will come from renewables like wind and solar. Peak Oil, in that sense, is a non-issue. It may be true we are going through a peak for ground-extracted oil, but we did that for whale-extracted oil, too. The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.
The biggest problem we face is post-scarcity technologies of abundance wielded by scarcity-obsessed people, because things like biotech, robotech, infotech, nanotech, nucleartech, and so on make terrible, if ironic, weapons. It is ironic to use military robots to fight over economic issues the robots make obsolete. It is ironic to use nuclear missiles built with advanced materials to fight over oil supplies that nuclear power or solar energy make unimportant. It even takes more electricity to produce a gallon of gasoline than an electric car takes to go the same distance, if you really want some deep irony -- we'd use less electricity if we switched to electric cars. So, as an example of post-scarcity thinking, considering that and safety issues, our society would save money and have lower taxes if everyone got a free-to-the user safe luxury electric car.
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en
From Post-scarcity Princeton:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
"""
* Some comments on the PU Economics department and related research directions from a post-scarcity perspective
The PU economics department, of course, should be abolished as part of this transition. :-)
OK, that will never happen, so it should be at least "strongly admonished" for past misbehavior. :-(
What misbehavior? Essentially, the PU Economics department has taken part in a global effort to build an economic "psychofrakulator". How does a psychofrakulator work? Consider a paraphrase of something Doc Heller says in the movie Mystery Men:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132347/quotes
Dr. Heller: It's a psychofrakulator. They used to say it couldn't be built. The equations were so complex that most of the scientists that worked on it wound up in the insane asylum [in Chicago]. ... It creates a cloud of [dollar denomiated] radically-fluctuating free-deviant chaotrons which penetrate the synaptic relays [via television]. It's concatenated with a synchronous transport switch [of values from long term seven generation life-affirming love of caring to short-term immediate profit and immediate gratification suicidal death-affirming love of money] that creates a virtual tributary [back to large corporations]. It's focused onto a biobolic reflector [of the elite controlled mass media] and what happens is that [economic] hallucinations become reality and the [global] brain [and global ecosystem] is literally fried from within.
Or in other words:
"Screwed: What 30 Years of Conservative Economics Feels Like"
http://granby01033.blogspot.com/2008/04/screwed-what-30-years-of-conservative.html
Or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics
And:
"Obituary: Conservative Economic Policy"
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/10/19/obituary_conservative_economic/
Conservative economic policy is dead. It committed suicide. Its allegiance to market solutions, tax cuts and spending cuts, supply-side nonsense, manipulative and corrosive ties to industry and the rich, have left it wholly unable to cope with the challenges we face. Its terribly limited toolbox simply cannot address the economic insecurities and opportunities generated by today's global, interconnected, polluted, insecure, dyna
That argument assumes there is unlimited demand for everything, and than more jobs will be created and there will be not welfare costs from lost jobs. But, the best things in life are free or cheap. It probably assumes some other things too.
See:
"Why limited demand means joblessness (and what to do about it)"
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/2009/10/03/why-limited-demand-means-joblessness/
Do you have any facts to back up your guesses here?
And do you have any idea how much land has already been devoted to things like roads and related right-of-ways (hint, enough in the USA to produce all the power we need).
From here: ... The large square is the Saharan Desert (1/4 of the overall 2030 required area) would power all of Europe and North Africa. Though very large, it is still 18 times less than the total area of that desert."
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg
"Surface area required to power the world with zero carbon emissons and with solar panels alone.
It looks about right to me. :-) And that's probably with solar panels of 10% efficiency (the kind in production). With 40% efficient solar panels, the land use would shrink by a factor of four (or two times in each direction).
I'd be curious to see such a map of land currently devoted to fossil fuel extraction and consumption in power plants. I'd expect it would be roughly the same in overall area, maybe larger. The same for land use devoted to road use. Or land use devoted to cities.
Note that as they say on that picture; "The 19 contiguous areas show what would be a reasonable responsibility for various parts of the world. They would be further divide many times..."
So, that picture is to give you a sense of scale, but people might put panels on rooftops or over parking lots in order to have more local energy security or lower energy transmission costs. So, we might never have big sites like those, but if we did, those look like good places to put them.
I found interesting the note on the front page of that Land Art Generator site: "Art has the ability to create movements and stimulate creative dialogue. The artist community has long taken a critical approach to the problems of energy use and production, which has helped to open the public eye to the severity of the problems facing us. The time is now for artists to go further and take an active role in solving the problem through their own work."
So, all part of "Blessed Unrest" that peer production takes part in:
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
Anyway, I don't know why people keep trotting out that "density" issue.
By the way, if you like nuclear power, take a look at this:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
You wrote: "Solar (and wind) is simply too low density."
What is that supposed to mean? Seriously?
Especially as you seem all happy to mine vast amounts of uranium ore and concentrate it...
Renewables are growing exponentially. In twenty to thirty years at current exponential growth rates they will meet all our energy needs.
I'm not saying fusion energy in some form (who knows? Mr. Fusion? Cold fusion? etc.) might not be nice. But we don't *need* it to have a great society
Fasting can help some people too, by resetting the taste buds to prefer vegetables instead of salty, sugary, and other extreme foods.
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
Comments:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
From: "[ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power" :-)
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2008-November/046620.html
"""
I spent a long time around 2003 and 2004 on the SSI email list (now on yahoo
groups if you want to look at the archives) explaining why space-based solar
power will not in any likely time frame be of any value on Earth.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/
And I want to make it clear I was a SSI Senior Associate (five year pledge
of money) back in the 1980s, and even took a (intro Physics) course from
Gerry O'Neill. So this in not just a casual disagreement. I am very sad that
the Space Studies Institute even now pushes an outdated agenda (well, now
they are moving to scaring people with asteroids, to the extent they are
still operating). I feel if Gerry O'Neill was around now he might agree with
this analysis of the current prospects for space-based power in the next few
decades, since he always was an adaptable and innovative guy, even if,
unfortunately, ultimately an unsuccessful businessperson with GeoStar and
LAWN with which he hoped to fund space habitation. I think by coupling the
two -- a desire to build space habitations coupled with economic arguments
for space solar power (or even other space activities) -- that one may miss
out on sooner realizing the dream of space habitation done for its own sake
(as a hobby).
The core points of the argument I advanced there:
* About a third to one half the cost of residential electric service is
maintaining transmission lines. So, at best, space solar even if *free* at
the ground station will be at best one-third the cost of utility power is
now at the home meter. As the costs of home power generation fall from
advanced manufacturing, the cost of home solar power (or wind, or
cogeneration) will drop below that cost at some point for self-contained
homes producing all or most of their own power, making space solar power
obsolete for home use. Since space solar power will initially be expensive,
it is non-viable right now. And since the cost of solar panels (like
Nanosolar's) is dropping way faster than the cost of space operations, and
since solar space satellites have a twenty to thirty year time horizon for
significant production, they are a non-starter and too risky investment
comparatively. Things might have been different in the 1970s, but it is
thirty years later. Also, one can make an argument for limited solar power
for large commercial facilities producing aluminum or liquid fuels or doing
laser launching, but that is only likely to be worth doing once we already
have a space presence since then only the incremental costs will need to be
paid, rather than expect solar power to pay to develop a space
infrastructure as O'Neill and others proposed (and people still propose).
I'm sure one can look hard at situations where transmission costs are
minimized, but this cost of transmission argument is a very deep one and
I've never seen it rigorously discussed. We know how to do solar on the
ground, there are ways to store the energy at night (molten salts, ever
improving batteries, pumping water up hill, compressed air, production of
synthetic liquid fuels, production of hydrogen, a superconducting world wide
grid backbone, etc.), and there are complementary technologies like wind
power and cogeneration by burning biomass that together with solar produce
fairly reliable power (as well as a lot of local hands-on jobs in the short
term). And there are organizations promoting R&D to make this all even better:
http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/
* A rebuttal to this is
On what dumpster diving meant to Bill Gates:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952
"""
Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.
"""
Previously posted here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316287&cid=28837517
following up on:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316287&cid=28837221