More Thoughts on Scarcity
[The following is an expanded version of an e-mail I sent to Stephen in response to some reflections he had on our most recent FastForward Radio -- that show with guest Joseph Jackson discussing the possibility of a post-scarcity world. I think Stephen was going to post some additional thoughts, too -- to which I would have added comments -- but time's up!]
My primary issue with Joseph's arguments isn't ideological. In some cases, at least, technology trumps (or drives) political ideology and economic models. We've talked before on the blog and the podcast about how societies suddenly grew a conscience concerning slavery as soon as they had machines that could do the work anyway, or developed a deep reverence for the earth after they had satisfied enough material needs to put it on the priority list. A universal safety net of subsistence living for everyone could arguably work the same way. A generation from now, we might not even see that as "socialism" any more than we view public highways or public education as socialism.
My issue is more practical. By what means could we possibly get to the kind of society he's describing? The assumption seems to be that it would be the federal government (or the Earth government or -- my fav -- the Committee of Robot Overlords) doing the distributing. But we don't have a working model of how a government can guarantee the material welfare of its population without ripping its economy to shreds and putting individual rights on the back burner. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but Joseph doesn't have a model of how we would get there, or at least he didn't articulate one Wednesday night.
Photo by ninjapoodles
Which is maybe why he's starting a journal.
In the US today, we ensure subsistence via a combination of government programs and a lot of ad-hoc, open-source private efforts. It's not a perfect system, but very few people starve to death, anyone who wants it can get shelter for the night, and hospitals don't refuse patients who come in to the emergency room. I support a local church-sponsored food bank. They do very good work, and the only government involvement I know of is its tax-free status. It's an open-source welfare program. One of the models I've noodled with for a future government would be one that has some oversight of the overall production environment, which would be widely distributed automation not necessarily "owned" by the government -- like the committee that sets standards for open-source software.
Of relevance here is a quote from a different e-mail, this one from Michael Darling -- I guess today is officially Blog Stuff from Michael's Emails Day -- which lays out the problem in this way:
The vocabulary we use to talk about economics and scarcity has to change. Economists and those who take their classes and read their books are not equipped to discuss abundance. It just makes no sense.
Even less equipped to do so would be politicians. Our whole political discourse has the zero-sum game as itsraison d'etre. The Left will tell you that the market is not sufficient, and that money should be taken from the "rich" and redistributed fairly amongst those who need it (either directly or via services). The Right will tell you that confiscatory taxation and government handouts can only destroy the economy. Scarcity is the underlying assumption behind both arguments.
I don't see any straightforward way to convert our current very powerful, entrenched, and bureaucratic government into something open and abundance-friendly. Certainly, they will be slow to adopt those kinds of models on their own. But if some of what goes on in Joseph's new journal is about how to move to that kind of model -- and we start to see some steps in that direction -- then it's a good thing.
However, we had to wait until laptops were not only invented but commoditized before we could have One Child One Laptop. So I think we need some additional technological growth and increase in productivity before we can get to a true robo-Marxist Worker's Paradise.
Comments
I have a typically over-long commentary on this here.
Executive summary; it's hard to talk specifics without examples to measure and test, and Mr. Jackson is in impressive company as to a lack of suggestion(s) regarding implimentation strategies.
Posted by: Will Brown | February 8, 2009 02:42 AM
I've been mulling something over... what I would propose as a transition would be to take what is spent on average for every citizen in the US through programs, give that money directly to each citizen, then take those programs and expel them from the government as non-profits. Then, permit every company to reduce their employee's pay by that same amount. Where ever possible divide remain programs apart along state lines and make them autonomous. Largely, I think this would be more palatable to both the right and the left than other alternatives because it would partially reduce the impact of free riders on everyone without pulling out the safety net... of course I've only been mulling this over for an hour- and as I type this I can't help but think it'd result in massive short falls.
Posted by: MissedCall | February 8, 2009 06:12 AM
The hard problem, as you have correctly put your finger on it, is the "getting there from here". I don't think anyone can possibly articulate that at this point--it is something that is going to have to evolve organically, and technology will be the primary driver--not new or re-configured government programs, or a central organizing "authority".
We also have to realize that with an underlying paradigm like scarcity, it affects almost every aspect of how we organize our lives and society, in ways we are not even consciously aware of. We tend to visualize a change in one dimension taking place against a backdrop with everything else being held relatively constant, which makes the path look impossible. (I think this is a problem with much future forecasting in general--we have trouble seeing how all the components are going to interact, though it can be obvious in hindsight.) Moving to a paradigm of abundance will have to come incrementally as people see the changes happen and feel more secure about what they need to own or compete for.
The entire field of economics has to do with allocating scarce resources, so we probably need a completely new field to address abundance ("abundomics" anyone?). I think that Joseph's work will be important to help identify frameworks, trends and concepts, to make us more conscious of how the scarcity paradigm affects our thinking on a wide range of issues, and to give us something to aim for as we make incremental decisions along the way. I wish him luck and look forward to hearing more from him in the future!
Posted by: Leslie Kirschner | February 8, 2009 01:51 PM
We might need to synthesize a new word. But Economics is still the correct term - even though the driving force in Econ is scarcity- not enough of what we want, and too much of what we don't want.
The other dilemma is social. Economists and others social scientists have demonstrated that for many individuals the bigger motivator is not gain or possession- but differential gain or differential possession. Yes I want food and shelter and a flying car. But more importantly, I want more food, more shelter and a faster flying car than you.
Posted by: MDarling | February 8, 2009 07:06 PM
Leslie Kirschner said: "The entire field of economics has to do with allocating scarce resources, so we probably need a completely new field to address abundance ("abundomics" anyone?)."
I disagree; much as the field of physics is in the process of adapting to the recent theoretical alterations demended by the work of Mills, et al at Blacklight Power, the field of economics will have to re-emphasise certain aspects of theory over currently more prevalent concepts, but not be replaced outright. There will always be local examples of scarcity to contend with and remediate, hopefully they will be fewer and of decreased duration in future but they'll still need to be contended with.
Posted by: Will Brown | February 8, 2009 07:52 PM
I agree with Will.
If you need to allocate something, then there is scarcity somewhere.
Economics will change the models they use, but it will just be what gets optimized on.
Healthcare will probably be one of these situations, because it will keep improving for a long time. As now, in the future the development of new developments will be funded by the cost of current ones. ( So we will optimize on time-for-good-developments).
Posted by: dantealiegri | February 9, 2009 07:41 AM
The example I meant to cwas Parkinson's Law. See recent article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126901.300-explaining-the-curse-of-work.html
The "work" expands to fill the available time. Just as it was almost unfathomable for most to consider that the entire financial sector was a naked emperor, it is very difficult for people to realize that what 99% of humanity does for "work" contributes nothing to the physical life support systems we all enjoy. There is, and never has been an incentive or motivation problem. You don't incentivize human creativity, you merely enable it. Try ordering someone to produce a scientific breakthrough or an artistic masterpiece. Try raising pay and be amazed as an equivalent rise in output does not follow. All that is needed is the basic prosperity and freedom to pursue what is intrinsically worth doing. The process and the outcome is its own award--recognition is nice, but an after-affect of a job well done. People often think that paying teacher's higher salaries will help education--you could never compensate them enough for having to work in our broken school system. The solution is not paying teachers more or reforming schools, but demolishing the institution of "school" in favor of life-long peer learning webs. F/OSS has just emerged as a baby example of a new mode of production vs the system we've been stuck with for a couple hundred years. There may be ultimate limits on creativity/time/attention/cognitive bandwidth. With brain-computer interfaces and other forms of intelligence amplification, perhaps we can roll these back. If the F/OSS model can coordinate Linux, with 30 million lines of code, it can certainly spread to the application layer and be generalized for many sorts of products. In fact, this is happening with an explosion of user-driven innovation communities pioneering open manufacturing practices. There is no reason these products must be of low quality--in many ways it is a return to the past of cottage industries before Fordism became ascendant. We don't use 90% of the planet's human capabilities because 2/3rds of the population lives in poverty. Creativity and ability is abundant and widely distributed on this planet. We suffer from a US-centric, Harvard mentality, as if there could be a monopoly on talent. The sooner this myth is exposed and we empower the untold masses of problem solvers waiting in the wings by building a technological architecture of participation--the sooner you can quit your day job.
The goal of abundance studies is to figure out 1) How to technologically obsolesce scarcity where physically possible. 2) How to solve allocation problems where they persist. Solving allocation problems does not require a govt coordinating mechanism--on the contrary; super cheap technologies will allow owner/users to "prosume," contract, and coordinate together to an unprecedented degree to solve problems via mutual aid--just how a supposedly free market should work. In this sense, its not a total rejection of classical economics, but an implementation of a really free free market for the first time in history (see Carson, free market/anti-capitalism).
Posted by: joseph | February 10, 2009 07:18 PM
Create pure drinking water with our Atmospheric Water Generators
http://tinyurl.com/al4hox
Posted by: HafHoBinfob | February 18, 2009 10:19 PM