The problem with this is that it steals money from producers that would otherwise go toward R&D or increasing capital investment (reducing the costs of the finished goods--remember robots are capital). In effect, and government redistribution of funds amounts to eating seed corn, delaying the transition to the new economy of plenty.
Note that money is not wealth. Goods are wealth. What is happening to the goods produced by the robots? What would happen to those goods if they had not been produced (which is the same as the producer hoarding them)?
Money is merely a claim on goods.
From that perspective, nothing but good can come from more goods coming onto the market, as more goods and a constant amount of money (claims on goods) means prices come down for everyone. Push this to the extreme limit, and you get an economy that is fuctionally identical to that of the Internet, where the vast majority of users pay nothing for the goods they consume, where some few pay for the infrastructure through donation or the purchase of premium goods (which are priced much, much lower than they were prior to the advent of said economy).
People have developed an unhealthy focus on jobs, and have totally lost focus on what is important--wealth. This is probably why we have been getting poorer and poorer despite working more and more.
How about we quit trying to fight progress and just roll with it?
Recognize the parallels between the internet economy and a theoretical economy defined by the widespread use of robotic labor. In both cases, the cost of goods falls rapidly towards zero, so much so that new methods of profit generation must come into use where the price of internet services is so low that collecting them from users just doesn't pay (ie most services on the internet are free, with the few rarely used pay services paying all the bills for everyone). In an automatic economy, the prices of most basic goods and services would follow the same trend as internet services, falling to near zero. There is no need to provide a "living wage" by "taxing robots" (which are already taxed by their owners at 100%), as the living wage is now ZERO. If people want to work to pay for premium goods and services (such as handmade goods, or services requiring human input), they will pay the "premium price", which many will be surprised to find is much, MUCH less than the costs of such things today, because you only have to support the basic lifestyle of the creator of those premium goods and services, rather than the entire supply chain as it exists today.
Involving government and the associated bureaucracy in regulating such things is the quickest possible way to ensure that they simply don't happen. If this was not the case, then the Soviets would have beaten us to that final goal long ago.
Yes, for the vast majority of human history, humanity was completely and totally wrong on each of those subjects.
Now, we can be certain that we are mostly right on them. The thing is, climate is COMPLEX, and the more complex a field of study, the harder it is to be certain about ANYTHING. It is also HARD TO TEST, and anything that is hard to test is, can, and must be up for debate. Climate is more complex than string theory in a lot of ways, but we want to say that the book is shut on any criticism? You just plain can't do that and call yourself a scientist.
Because it is the only method that would actually work? Whether cause, or effect, reducing CO2 consumption without corresponding increase in nuclear tech would either cause or be the result of genocide. You can't just make a decision to emit less CO2 without seriously inconveniencing yourself, so it won't happen for 99% of the population.
You are laboring under the mistaken assumption that "rights" are things that are not enforced. As in by violence.
Rights exist whether you recognize them or not, same as the train coming down the tracks exists, even if it is artificial. Ignore it, and you will be destroyed by the violence that follows.
Why do you think that rights are not associated with violence? Denial of natural rights ALWAYS results in violence. This is why your sniper can't just take someone's land with or without a state. He would be murdered.
The Indians died off primarily due to the diseases the white men carried with them which they had no immunity to. The survivors abandoned the land their forefathers had worked, and those claims were picked up by the whites. The survivors of that tragedy were made savage by circumstance, and no longer recognized natural rights, either among themselves, or among the settlers, who they stole from, kidnapped, and murdered. The response to such actions was violence. The Indians were almost completely destroyed because they no longer had any infrastructure left with which to mount a war effort.
Contrast this with the experiences of the Nauhatl people (colloquially known as Aztecs), who recognized and protected SOME natural rights (namely property rights) to a much greater degree. Of course, Tenochtitlan was hated by all around her because of her wholesale slaughter of the children of surrounding areas for religious purposes. This is why a few sailors with a canon were able to conquer an army of 100,000 seasoned warriors. Though their leaders fell, their people survived. Other places which had stronger protections of rights were able to survive to even greater degrees. Those who fully adopted such philosophies (ie Japan) catapulted themselves into modernity and were able to match and often exceed Western military power.
By that definition, society is also an artificial construct. Use of terms such as "artificial construct" imply that those constructs aren't real and can be ignored. They can't. No more than you can ignore an artificial semi tractor trailer coming down the highway at 70 miles and hour as you attempt to cross the road. Ignoring the rights of the people will lead to a similar outcome for any government who takes such action. Even if they clad themselves with tanks, attack helicopters, and assassination drones, the mass of semi tractor trailers won't stop impacting them, and they will eventually be destroyed.
People behave according to certain rules. These simple rules are applied to a complex world to give us a nearly unlimited variety of outcomes, but that set is also governed by those basic rules. No more can a man float in the air by sheer force of will than can he take something that belongs to someone else without being seen negatively by others. Of course, a man can float in the air using clever apparatus, and so also can he steal things from others and be seen as a "necessary evil" or even as a "hero" by others. But such artifices have their limits.
Robots are improvements, and are implicitly mixing ones labor (construction of said robot) with the land via the robot's operation (assuming they are improving the land, rather than simply walking around looking at things or just sitting there). If the robots are broken down, and no attempt is made to repair or retrieve them, only THEN do they become abandoned property.
You can send out all the swarms you want, but their simple presence doesn't grant you any rights. They have to work the land somehow. If you produce that much good, then you can own that much land. Work harder, get more. This is the principle that turned America from an agricultural backwater into an industrial superpower. Abandonment of this principle has since turned us from an industrial superpower into floundering consumer kleptocracy.
What, did we allow the people over there to start owning guns?
Guns were banned under Sadaam, and they remain banned. So clearly the legality of owning weapons is not the only factor in violence or even gun violence. Indeed, those people might well be better off if each family had an AK-47 in the house. It would make troops on all sides hesitate to kick in their doors and drag them off to be raped/murdered/tortured.
I would suggest you bone up on pre-colonization history. North American Indians were sedentary farmers prior to the arrival of the white men and their horses. They owned land, and were powerful. The only problem was that they had no immunity to the white man's sicknesses, which caused their numbers to decline in advance of the advance of the settlers. Indeed, the settlers described a land that seemed made for human habitation, though mostly empty. Sort of like aliens arriving a few months after a zombie apocalypse and thinking that the great cities they found and repurposed were somehow part of nature here. Then, of course, scoffing at the lawless brigands roaming the roads on souped up motorcycles as savages.
Those men were made into savages by their circumstances, and they forgot about property and natural rights, and as such, were destroyed by those who firmly believed in them. It's one of the saddest chapters in human history.
Why dumbass? I specifically said that was the case. The government has all the big guns, so they get to violate our rights, to a point. This has all happened before (many, many times), and it will all happen again, until and unless people learn to recognize natural rights as real.
You are an idiot. Homesteading has existed for all of history. One guy with a sniper rifle can't take away someone else's land because everyone recognizes the rights of the homesteader, while very few recognize the rights of the thief. The thief/murderer will be killed for his crimes, whether by police in a state, or by aggrieved relatives in an anarchic state.
You shouldn't talk about things you have no background in. Rights are no more artificial than society. They both exist, even if pigheaded fools like yourself claim they don't.
Governments tend to prefer to pretend that natural rights don't exist, imagining that the rights of the people come from THEM. But the truth is that they do exist. Homesteading is one such right. By mixing one's labor with the land, whether it is rolling plain, or an asteroid, one gains ownership of that land.
Governments have the guns though. But then, the space miners would have the asteroids, so I would guess that they would leave them be after the first asteroid made a near miss of the planet.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with this is that it steals money from producers that would otherwise go toward R&D or increasing capital investment (reducing the costs of the finished goods--remember robots are capital). In effect, and government redistribution of funds amounts to eating seed corn, delaying the transition to the new economy of plenty.
Never say never. Biomechanical machines can be perfectly simulated AND replicated.
Note that money is not wealth. Goods are wealth. What is happening to the goods produced by the robots? What would happen to those goods if they had not been produced (which is the same as the producer hoarding them)?
Money is merely a claim on goods.
From that perspective, nothing but good can come from more goods coming onto the market, as more goods and a constant amount of money (claims on goods) means prices come down for everyone. Push this to the extreme limit, and you get an economy that is fuctionally identical to that of the Internet, where the vast majority of users pay nothing for the goods they consume, where some few pay for the infrastructure through donation or the purchase of premium goods (which are priced much, much lower than they were prior to the advent of said economy).
People have developed an unhealthy focus on jobs, and have totally lost focus on what is important--wealth. This is probably why we have been getting poorer and poorer despite working more and more.
Ah, the false choice. First refuge of the mad statist.
How about we quit trying to fight progress and just roll with it?
Recognize the parallels between the internet economy and a theoretical economy defined by the widespread use of robotic labor. In both cases, the cost of goods falls rapidly towards zero, so much so that new methods of profit generation must come into use where the price of internet services is so low that collecting them from users just doesn't pay (ie most services on the internet are free, with the few rarely used pay services paying all the bills for everyone). In an automatic economy, the prices of most basic goods and services would follow the same trend as internet services, falling to near zero. There is no need to provide a "living wage" by "taxing robots" (which are already taxed by their owners at 100%), as the living wage is now ZERO. If people want to work to pay for premium goods and services (such as handmade goods, or services requiring human input), they will pay the "premium price", which many will be surprised to find is much, MUCH less than the costs of such things today, because you only have to support the basic lifestyle of the creator of those premium goods and services, rather than the entire supply chain as it exists today.
Involving government and the associated bureaucracy in regulating such things is the quickest possible way to ensure that they simply don't happen. If this was not the case, then the Soviets would have beaten us to that final goal long ago.
Ok, you go play pretend with the rest of the AGW people. I will be sticking with reality.
Who the fuck cares about ST.CREED? You are ignoring the argument in favor of personality. It's some strange form of ad hominem in reverse.
Really? What PREDICTIONS did PHLOGISTON theory make?
Read this article on fake causality and apply it to your every day life: http://lesswrong.com/lw/is/fake_causality/
Yes, for the vast majority of human history, humanity was completely and totally wrong on each of those subjects.
Now, we can be certain that we are mostly right on them. The thing is, climate is COMPLEX, and the more complex a field of study, the harder it is to be certain about ANYTHING. It is also HARD TO TEST, and anything that is hard to test is, can, and must be up for debate. Climate is more complex than string theory in a lot of ways, but we want to say that the book is shut on any criticism? You just plain can't do that and call yourself a scientist.
My delusion is better than your delusion.
~Any religious zealot ever
Because it is the only method that would actually work? Whether cause, or effect, reducing CO2 consumption without corresponding increase in nuclear tech would either cause or be the result of genocide. You can't just make a decision to emit less CO2 without seriously inconveniencing yourself, so it won't happen for 99% of the population.
You are laboring under the mistaken assumption that "rights" are things that are not enforced. As in by violence.
Rights exist whether you recognize them or not, same as the train coming down the tracks exists, even if it is artificial. Ignore it, and you will be destroyed by the violence that follows.
How so? I hadn't realized Guns, Germs, and Steel was written by a libertarian.
Why do you think that rights are not associated with violence? Denial of natural rights ALWAYS results in violence. This is why your sniper can't just take someone's land with or without a state. He would be murdered.
The Indians died off primarily due to the diseases the white men carried with them which they had no immunity to. The survivors abandoned the land their forefathers had worked, and those claims were picked up by the whites. The survivors of that tragedy were made savage by circumstance, and no longer recognized natural rights, either among themselves, or among the settlers, who they stole from, kidnapped, and murdered. The response to such actions was violence. The Indians were almost completely destroyed because they no longer had any infrastructure left with which to mount a war effort.
Contrast this with the experiences of the Nauhatl people (colloquially known as Aztecs), who recognized and protected SOME natural rights (namely property rights) to a much greater degree. Of course, Tenochtitlan was hated by all around her because of her wholesale slaughter of the children of surrounding areas for religious purposes. This is why a few sailors with a canon were able to conquer an army of 100,000 seasoned warriors. Though their leaders fell, their people survived. Other places which had stronger protections of rights were able to survive to even greater degrees. Those who fully adopted such philosophies (ie Japan) catapulted themselves into modernity and were able to match and often exceed Western military power.
By that definition, society is also an artificial construct. Use of terms such as "artificial construct" imply that those constructs aren't real and can be ignored. They can't. No more than you can ignore an artificial semi tractor trailer coming down the highway at 70 miles and hour as you attempt to cross the road. Ignoring the rights of the people will lead to a similar outcome for any government who takes such action. Even if they clad themselves with tanks, attack helicopters, and assassination drones, the mass of semi tractor trailers won't stop impacting them, and they will eventually be destroyed.
I wasn't aware that one of those groups of people consisted of a single individual.
Sorry, where did I say that force doesn't exist?
People behave according to certain rules. These simple rules are applied to a complex world to give us a nearly unlimited variety of outcomes, but that set is also governed by those basic rules. No more can a man float in the air by sheer force of will than can he take something that belongs to someone else without being seen negatively by others. Of course, a man can float in the air using clever apparatus, and so also can he steal things from others and be seen as a "necessary evil" or even as a "hero" by others. But such artifices have their limits.
Eh? So I can go take over a GM plant?
Robots are improvements, and are implicitly mixing ones labor (construction of said robot) with the land via the robot's operation (assuming they are improving the land, rather than simply walking around looking at things or just sitting there). If the robots are broken down, and no attempt is made to repair or retrieve them, only THEN do they become abandoned property.
You can send out all the swarms you want, but their simple presence doesn't grant you any rights. They have to work the land somehow. If you produce that much good, then you can own that much land. Work harder, get more. This is the principle that turned America from an agricultural backwater into an industrial superpower. Abandonment of this principle has since turned us from an industrial superpower into floundering consumer kleptocracy.
What, did we allow the people over there to start owning guns?
Guns were banned under Sadaam, and they remain banned. So clearly the legality of owning weapons is not the only factor in violence or even gun violence. Indeed, those people might well be better off if each family had an AK-47 in the house. It would make troops on all sides hesitate to kick in their doors and drag them off to be raped/murdered/tortured.
I would suggest you bone up on pre-colonization history. North American Indians were sedentary farmers prior to the arrival of the white men and their horses. They owned land, and were powerful. The only problem was that they had no immunity to the white man's sicknesses, which caused their numbers to decline in advance of the advance of the settlers. Indeed, the settlers described a land that seemed made for human habitation, though mostly empty. Sort of like aliens arriving a few months after a zombie apocalypse and thinking that the great cities they found and repurposed were somehow part of nature here. Then, of course, scoffing at the lawless brigands roaming the roads on souped up motorcycles as savages.
Those men were made into savages by their circumstances, and they forgot about property and natural rights, and as such, were destroyed by those who firmly believed in them. It's one of the saddest chapters in human history.
Why dumbass? I specifically said that was the case. The government has all the big guns, so they get to violate our rights, to a point. This has all happened before (many, many times), and it will all happen again, until and unless people learn to recognize natural rights as real.
Looking at something is not the same as mixing your labor with it.
You are an idiot. Homesteading has existed for all of history. One guy with a sniper rifle can't take away someone else's land because everyone recognizes the rights of the homesteader, while very few recognize the rights of the thief. The thief/murderer will be killed for his crimes, whether by police in a state, or by aggrieved relatives in an anarchic state.
You shouldn't talk about things you have no background in. Rights are no more artificial than society. They both exist, even if pigheaded fools like yourself claim they don't.
Governments tend to prefer to pretend that natural rights don't exist, imagining that the rights of the people come from THEM. But the truth is that they do exist. Homesteading is one such right. By mixing one's labor with the land, whether it is rolling plain, or an asteroid, one gains ownership of that land.
Governments have the guns though. But then, the space miners would have the asteroids, so I would guess that they would leave them be after the first asteroid made a near miss of the planet.
Guns are banned in Mexico, and many other violence plagued countries, yet...