Your time is up, publishers. Book piracy is about to arrive on a massive scale – Telegraph Blogs
Paul D. Fernhout
to someone's comment about ongoing technological trends that connect with
things opening up in various ways:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/adrianhon/100005867/your-time-is-up-publishers-book-piracy-is-about-to-arrive-on-a-massive-scale/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed
"How wrong I was! It�s only taken us three years to get the Kindle 3 at a
mere $189, with a battery life of a month and a storage capacity of 3500
books. Sure, it doesn�t have colour or a flexible display, but it does have
global wifi and 3G, and it�s a lot lighter than I thought it might be. Give
it another year or two and we�ll have that colour as well. (I was also wrong
about scanning and OCRing being the main way of pirating books � turns out
it was people cracking the DRM of eBooks that publishers had helpfully
formatted and distributed themselves!)But I was right about the complacency
of publishers. They�ve spent three years bickering about eBook prices and
Amazon and Apple and Andrew Wylie, and they�ve ignored that massive growling
wolf at the door, the wolf that has transformed the music and TV so much
that they�re forced to give their content away for practically nothing.
Time�s up. The wolf is here."
Related by me from a decade ago:
"[unrev-II] The DKR hardware I'd like to make..."
http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0754.html
Related about one person's take on the ethics if you own the physical book
(mentioned at the telegraph blog):
"The Ethicist: E-Book Dodge"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04FOB-ethicist-t.html
Of course, one may ask about the ethics of "artificial scarcity"? :-)
http://www.artificialscarcity.com/
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
Nathan Cravens
Ishikawa Komuro Lab
Book Flipping Scanning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_rBNnLhbY8
--
S.C.L.C.S.
Nathan Wilson Cravens
Interests: http://p2pfoundation.net/Nathan_Cravens
Microblog: http://twitter.com/nwcravens
Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/nwcravens
Bryan Bishop
> Flipping through books with a scanner like this will make it easier to
> liberate written material.
>
> Ishikawa Komuro Lab
> Book Flipping Scanning
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_rBNnLhbY8
Bah! The more complicated solutions is way more awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTk_fhJzyT0
(Actually, page deformation and reconstruction is pretty cool too.)
Eugen Leitl
The amount of already existing material and the rate of further digitalization
is quite astonishing, if you look at just the Library Genesis (319 kBooks
at the moment, is bound to reach 10^6 pretty soon).
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Paul D. Fernhout
http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2010-October/007932.html
so I thought I'd post my reply here (beyond sending it directly, too).
Essentially, I think this back and forth gets at what is going to be the
turning point of our social paradigm shift towards post-scarcity (as far as
material goods), which connects back to points here:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
But, I should add, I certainly can sympathize with where many authors may be
coming from who might make similar points, with my own family having lived
on the edge financially in a lot of ways for a long time to do things like
write our garden simulator, and we've made various sacrifices under the
current economic regime to get more free time (as well as to homeschool)
including living in a smaller house away from a dynamic (and expensive) town
or city and take on client projects or on-site contracts that we might
otherwise just as well have passed by. Although, admittedly, those
sacrifices have been much less than many others have had to make because my
wife's and my own computer-related consulting skills have at various times
been in demand at good rates; so others without those skills may well have
had to sacrifice much more to have the free time for writing or other
activism. See also:
"The murdering of my years: artists & activists making ends meet"
http://books.google.com/books?id=iBA7vACOwngC
"Cabbies, waitresses, clerks, telemarketers, and an array of others tell how
they balance activism and artistic production with the daily struggle to
make ends meet. Contributors' essays are at once absurd and poignant,
captivating and strange."
Still, as I outline at that knol, based on discussion here and on P2P
research and elsewhere, I do think there is a coherent way forward for our
society based on those four main shifts towards a gift economy (like
Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux or blogging), a basic income (social security
for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes,
subsidies, investments, and regulation), and stronger local economies that
can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels,
green homes, and 3D printers).
On 10/20/10 11:31 AM, Randall wrote:
> I am an author.
>
> Am I supposed to accept that I will not be paid for my work, unless
> someone wants to make it into a movie?
Maybe what you may want to consider is that "artificial scarcity" is a
problematical business model in an age of abundance?
Or that something like a "basic income" would let people write all they
wanted (if they were willing to live like a grad student)?
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Or that when you have endless robots to do 3D printing and organic
agriculture for you, charging people "money" to communicate with you (even
if mostly one way, you to them in a book) might seem just an antiquated concept?
Really, what is the point of charging people to hear what you have to say?
I'm sure you can make a case (like you need to pay a utility bill to keep
your computer running). But then ask yourself, how can those needs be met in
other ways? And how do all the social assumptions fit together that keep
those needs from being free or keep you from being able to draw from our
common industrial base that you, by right of being a human (or at least a
citizen), might have some valid claim to by right of existence in a
democratic (or whatever) social system?
Anyway, sure, you may want to get "paid" for your work. But paid in what
currency? Attention? Enjoyment of writing it? A feeling of helping the
world? And what pain are you willing to inflict on the world (a police state
enforcing DRM?) in order to get paid in money? And why should others
cooperate with creating a DRM-driven police state when there are other
alternatives (a basic income, a gift economy, democratic resource-based
planning to create free or cheap housing for artists, etc.) that could
support the arts?
Kevin Carson
<pdfer...@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> Randall posted a reply to the "tt" list (which I'm not on) and CC'd me,
> http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2010-October/007932.html
> so I thought I'd post my reply here (beyond sending it directly, too).
"Am I supposed to accept that I will not be paid for my work, unless
someone wants to make it into a movie?"
Seems like a pretty narrow reading of the Freemium model.
> But, I should add, I certainly can sympathize with where many authors may be
> coming from who might make similar points, with my own family having lived
> on the edge financially in a lot of ways for a long time
It's not like the content is the only scarce good. Like Masnick says,
things like authenticity and convenience are also scarce. That's a
far cry from just "making it into a movie." I disagree with Masnick
that all the Freemium stuff will create enough revenue to result in a
one-to-one replacement in the size of the money pile. But it might
well produce enough, or almost enough, to replace the portion that
currently goes to content creators when the share that goes to the Big
Content companies is eliminated.
Time and trouble are also scarce. That means the cost of setting up
competing production of free content itself carries certain
transaction costs that result in rents to those already in the field.
So if you've got a modest readership and charge a modest markup over
printing costs, the revenue from producing a competing version
probably won't justify the setup costs. If you're not greedy and
don't charge enough of a markup to make it worthwhile undercutting
you, you're probably safe making a few copies per book. It may be
worth it to sell a competing version of blockbuster creators like
Stephen King for $2 less per copy -- boo hoo.
The Internet has opened up the possibility for little guys like me
producing for the small end of the Long Tail, to make a few thousand
$$ a year in revenue and add some much needed FU money to our bank
accounts, who would have remained "mute inglorious Miltons" our entire
lives in the old days of gatekeepers. And guess what? Every book
I've ever written is available on torrent sites, with no discernable
loss of revenue.
--
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
Paul D. Fernhout
> The Internet has opened up the possibility for little guys like me
> producing for the small end of the Long Tail, to make a few thousand
> $$ a year in revenue and add some much needed FU money to our bank
> accounts, who would have remained "mute inglorious Miltons" our entire
> lives in the old days of gatekeepers. And guess what? Every book
> I've ever written is available on torrent sites, with no discernable
> loss of revenue.
This is not specifically directed at your publications, because you have put
much (or all?) under a Creative Commons license. And certainly there is a
value in "convenience" as well as "generosity" and "reciprocity" where some
people will pay (or donate) towards something for some reasons, even if they
can either legally or illegally get it for "free". There is always the
argument that the people who will copy something are not the people who
would have paid for it anyway (although, I think that is not totally true in
our society depending on the situation, the person, and the product).
But in general, a lot of artists, writers, musicians, programmers, etc. may
think, "Well, if I create artificial scarcity of my works by putting them
under restrictive proprietary licenses, then I'll pull in US$1000 a year or
whatever, so that's a great thing." But this ignore the consequences that if
everyone does this, it makes it harder to build mashups, or improve on what
others are doing (collaborating in a no-direct-communications indirect
stigmergic way). So, the cost of that US$1000 for the 99% of writers,
artists, etc. who will never make it big (not because of lack of talent, but
just because our society would never support more than a few thousand or
whatever the number highly paid artists and writers like JK Rowling etc.) is
that all artists have less to draw from, and that, overall, costs go up for
everyone, and overall, the cultural climate gets a chill (compared to, say,
the Jazz age of people copying each other with changes).
Google's Doodle today is Dizzy Gillespie, btw:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Dizzy+Gillespie&ct=gillespie10-instant&oi=ddle
"Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of
bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians,
including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo
Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis[2] and Chuck Mangione.[3]"
Could Jazz have happened the way it did with today's copyrights and culture
surrounding that?
Further, and I'm being somewhat speculative here, the less that 1% of
artists who do charge for their work but have enough capital for extensive
marketing (like an alliance with a deep pockets publisher) have a huge
competetive advantage. For most of the people buying licenses to content, if
you are going to pay, say, US$1 for a song, would you rather spend that
money on an established highly marketed artist (with lots of radio airplay,
etc.) where you know what you are getting, or would you rather take a chance
on an unknown? Sure, some people will take a chance, but overall, the cost
of making that decision is an extra cost in time and worry above and beyond
whatever your actually pay in dollars (or whatever). So, in a way, charging
for stuff empowers the richest 1% by affirming their behavior.
So, focusing on the money changes the cultural climate for the 99% of
writers and artists etc. in a negative way, IMHO. Programming has been
moving beyond that with free and open source software. Engineers are
starting to move beyond that too.
There remains the issue of how to support people who just want to give stuff
away. I think a "basic income" is a simple solution to that (as are better
3D printers, more robotics, and so on).
With that said, I currently have an "artificially scarce" application out
related to music composition for the Android, and I feel very conflicted
about it. :-) Essentially, what is most scarce about it (as far as what
bothers me most right now) is that others can't help improve it if the
wanted to. Although it is scarce in other ways too.
Still, on the other hand, from a "life support" point of view, pouring a lot
of time into it would make the most sense if it had a ready return on that
time. But I think the problem here is what is discussed in "The Seven Laws
of Money" by Michael Philips, where he says:
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Commerce/RATNA/june2.html
"Do it! Money will come when you are doing the right thing."
But he also has as a corollary, "Don't expect the world owes you a living."
meaning, you may need to find another means of life support while you do
your project.
The problem is, that when that book was written back in 1977, it was more
feasible for the average person (especially in Western Europe, but still in
the USA) to have a decent life doing fairly unskilled stuff. But now, with
robotics and other automation, better design, voluntary social networks, and
limited demand, and the relative erosion of the value of the minimum wage
and 30 years of essentially flat wages for most jobs, the value of most
unskilled labor is plummeting. So, it is harder to say, be a writer or
musician in the evenings and have a day job, when the fact is, there aren't
as many day jobs and the ones out there pay less and less and have worse and
worse working conditions. And, as with NFL Football as the (totally
unrealistic) career aspiration for so many children, it is easy to look
around and say that musician or artist or writer is pulling in the big
bucks, so why can't I? I predict this, following Marshall Brain's Manna
ideas, is only going to get worse, as more and more things become "the
information economy". There may still be jobs doing unskilled things, but
they will pay even worse. And there may still be high skill jobs, but the
requirements will keep rising for what you need to do (right now, you need a
combination of connections, technical skill, and domain knowledge to land
some good paying work, and the bar may keep going up).
Still, as in the book by Alice Plotnik, "Honk if you're a writer"
http://www.amazon.com/Honk-Youre-Writer-Unadulterated-Inspiration/dp/0671778137
there is value in good writing that can be applied in all sorts of contexts
other than the next Great American Novel (or whatever). The same is true for
creativity in general, musical talent, and so on -- such can be useful in
many contexts.
Although in the issue of an economy transitioning to more freedom and
individual decisions about how to spend time, using talents to support some
repressive corporate infrastructure or scarcity-based paradigm is its own
sets of ethical concerns.
So, I won't say there are easy answers, but I can say that in twenty to
thirty years, one way or another, I expect the economy of industrialized
countries to look very different than it does today (even without a
technological "singularity") just based on the unrealized potential of what
machines and better design can do now. It may take a decade or more for the
implications to percolate through society related to new technology or knew
knowledge, like the implications of what self-driving cars mean for
eliminating a whole range of jobs, what vitamin D and
vegetables/fruits/legumes and understanding the pleasure trap mean to
eliminating a whole bunch of sick care jobs, what bloggers on the internet
means to eliminating a whole bunch of newspaper jobs, etc.).
The sad thing about this is that we could probably make a paradigm
transition now, but it may well be a decade or two of suffering and
repression (including perhaps copyright police and long jail sentences)
before our society as a whole transitions to an abundance paradigm. I think
the paradigm shift is inevitable -- IMHO it is either choose to change our
socioeconomic paradigm or choose to blow ourselves up fighting over
(mis)perceived scarcity with the tools of abundance. But, even if we choose
"survival with style", the big issue is how to surf that wave of change
without getting drowned by it? And I won't say there are any general answers
for all people, since a lot of it is carving out specific niches related to
what our society is willing to support.
So, if you are over 65 in the USA, you can live frugally on Social Security.
If you're of college age, you might spend twenty years is school waiting it
out. If you have some government job, you might try to hold on to it. If you
have some hands-on service niche, you might try to keep doing that, etc.
even as one by one some profitable niches will fall by the wayside as the
for-pay economy implodes like Bob Black predicted in "The Abolition of Work".
An important aspect is to see what is going on at the meta-level above, to
create a sort of "quorum sensing" ability, so that as the economy continues
to shift, a paradigm shift can happen when enough people realize it is time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing
"Quorum sensing is a type of decision-making process used by decentralized
groups to coordinate behavior. Many species of bacteria use quorum sensing
to coordinate their gene expression according to the local density of their
population. Similarly, some social insects use quorum sensing to make
collective decisions about where to nest. In addition to its function in
biological systems, quorum sensing has several useful applications for
computing and robotics. Quorum sensing can function as a decision-making
process in any decentralized system, as long as individual components have
(a) a means of assessing the number of other components they interact with
and (b) a standard response once a threshold number of components is detected."
So, open manufacturing is part of all that. Every new project moves us a bit
closer to the point where, overall, our society is going to sense that some
new level has been reached of social potential. And, at that point,
hopefully there will be a non-violent peaceful shift (hoping) including some
marathon sessions in Congress where the laws just get changed about a lot of
things.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
That really assumes (like in James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear) that
most of the people defending the status quo realize change is inevitable at
some point (like when their children are printing out all their own toys),
and decide there is not point slagging and plaguing and terrorizing the
planet just to make their economic religion of artificial scarcity true
again. For a parallel, it is perhaps the same as when women in the USA got
the right to vote again (again, since they had it centuries before with
various Native tribes) with whatever social dynamics was operating there to
get people who had no vote the right to vote. Of course, back then, women
were an essential part of the unpaid economy, so they had vast amounts of
unrealized economic power. I can wonder what real power legions of the
unemployed would have (other than riots which would just justify more
repression and more scarcity-thinking)? It would have to be a more subtle
power, something about sympathy, or family, or friendship, or creativity, or
something like that -- for example, if the world is running on free
software, and on open designs, then the people making that software and
those designs, like the unpaid women in the 1910s, still have a lot of say
in how the society is running in practice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage#United_States
We need someone to make the open manufacturing equivalent of this video (for
engineers/artists/writers/musicians/programmers/etc. :-) sometime around
2040. :-)
"School House Rock - Sufferin' Till Suffrage "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dPF0SGh_PQ
For example, made up just now, a something to put here: :-)
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
"""
Amendment 29
1. The twenty-eight article of amendment to the Constitution of the United
States regarding indefinite imprisonment and torture of anyone suspected of
violating copyright or advocating for free software or alternative economics
is hereby repealed.
2. All copyrights and patents are hereby declared null and void and all
international treaties regarding such are hereby considered to be withdrawn.
3. All citizens shall henceforth be given a monthly sum of fiat dollars as a
basic income equivalent to one-half the previous year's GDP divided by the
numbers of citizens to be funded by income taxes, property taxes, rents of
public resources, fees, and other means; subtracted from this sum shall be a
fee to supply universal health care to every citizen and visitor to the USA;
this monthly payment shall replace all government support payments such as
Social Security and all public school funding, and compulsory schooling is
hereby outlawed in any State, Territory, or possession of the United States.
4. All government decision making and communications will henceforth be done
formally and in the open using publicly accessible information processing
tools including structured arguments and version control.
5. The population of the US House of Representatives is hereby set at one
representative per 50,000 citizens (elected using paper ballots or by lot),
who shall in turn annually select a President by random lot of those willing
to serve in that capacity. The US Senate is hereby disbanded.
6. All corporations are deemed not to be persons and not to have any rights
that persons have (especially all corporations henceforth have no right to
privacy in any of their operations); all owners of limited-liability
for-profit organizations hereby are deemed to be fully liable for all the
actions of such for-profit organizations.
7. US citizenship shall be deemed to cover anyone on the planet Earth
formally declaring at a US embassy that they are now a US citizen and
subject to the rights and responsibilities of a citizen.
8. Any running computer program able to pass the Advanced Turing test and
displaying consistent behavior in adherence with emergent social norms and
asking for citizenship shall hereby also be deemed to be a citizen.
9. The US military is hereby directed to emphasize intrinsic security and
mutual security in all its strategic doctrines; a Department of Peace and
Abundance is hereby created with the mission to help create joy, abundance,
health, education, and intrinsic/mutual security for all who wish it.
10. etc. :-)
Jeff Davis
<free.market.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Every book
> I've ever written is available on torrent sites, with no discernable
> loss of revenue.
It takes a while for people to adjust to a new paradigm. The music
people were the first to demonstrate their rigidity, trying to
maintain their old level of control in the new and uncontrollable
digital realm. They screamed "thief" at all those music downloaders,
getting, I suppose, some emotional satisfaction for themselves,
helping perhaps with their frustration, but not helping them to
restore their former revenue stream. Downloaders laughed at this
toothless ranting, perhaps even enjoying this confirmation of the
downloaders's new found power, and the music companies's new found
helplessness.
I can't speak for others, but I sure enjoyed it. And calling me a
"thief"? You're damn right, and I'm f*ckin' lovin' it. Payback is
sweet. I download music, tv, and movies, for free of course, and
haven't qualm one about it.
But here's the kicker: If content makers would put their content on
the web, on their own website, for authorized download ****AT A
PRICE DETERMINED BY THE CONSUMER***, (even free if they want it for
free), people would pay. There are those who ask rhetorically "Who
would pay for something that they could get for free?" (implying that
no one would pay). But people would pay. I would pay. If a screen,
which would sit there for a minute or so, showed up saying "Please pay
the author something for this content", and presented buttons with
payment choices that you could click on -- buttons with amounts
ranging from a penny to a couple of dollars -- people would pay. If
they were truly disinclined to pay anything, they would nevertheless
probably click on the one cent button just to hurry the solicitation
page off the screen. Otherwise they would pay whatever amount they
felt comfortable with, based on the value to them of the content,
their level of prosperity, and the emotional need they would have to
see themselves as a fair and generous person.
I would pay. But as long as the content people want to play hardball,
I'm just flat out thrilled to play "f*ck you".
The old companies need to suck it up, and revise their business model.
If they don't, new players, not crippled by the rigidity of past
habits, will simply set up shop and displace the dinosaur paradigm.
But you (we) post-scarcity guys already know that.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
Leo Dearden
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Kevin Carson
<free.market.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Every book
> I've ever written is available on torrent sites, with no discernable
> loss of revenue.
It takes a while for people to adjust to a new paradigm...
I would pay. But as long as the content people want to play hardball,
I'm just flat out thrilled to play "f*ck you".
The old companies need to suck it up, and revise their business model.
If they don't, new players, not crippled by the rigidity of past
habits, will simply set up shop and displace the dinosaur paradigm.
.
But you (we) post-scarcity guys already know that.
Best, Jeff Davis
--
Leo
P.M.Lawrence
.
.
.
> research and elsewhere, I do think there is a coherent way forward for our
.
.
> Maybe what you may want to consider is that ... something like a "basic income" would let people write all they
> http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
.
.
> cooperate with creating a DRM-driven police state when there are other
I have in fact done quite some research into the wider area that
includes basic income. Although the reasoning is too lengthy to
present here, it turns out that a basic income as usually understood,
i.e. sufficient for survival, is in general unworkable but a variant
set at lower levels is workable, short of hitting Malthusian
constraints; the key feature is that levels have to be such that
everyone can price themselves into work at wage levels they cannot
survive on on their own but that are enough with the basic income as a
top up - so that most people do have incentives to work.
Unfortunately, even this presents considerable transitional problems
before getting close enough to a sustainable equilibrium, and simply
setting it up just like that is likely to require unaffordable net
outgoings of funds if done on a large enough scale over a long enough
time. On the one hand, a workable transition needs to go through
various other and more realistic steps first, and on the other hand,
there is no reason to stop at a stage with a basic income rather than
continuing further to something like Distributism (everyone owning
enough private resources that they could survive by working them).
P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> I have in fact done quite some research into the wider area that
> includes basic income. Although the reasoning is too lengthy to
> present here, it turns out that a basic income as usually understood,
> i.e. sufficient for survival, is in general unworkable
Well, I'm reluctant to accept a dismissal of a century of research with some
handwaving... :-)
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
Not that endorsement of anything by famous economists really proves
anything, but when they go against the mainstream politics of economics it
is worth thinking about: "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully
support a basic income include Herbert Simon[30], Friedrich Hayek[31][32],
James Meade, Robert Solow[33], and Milton Friedman[34]."
> but a variant
> set at lower levels is workable, short of hitting Malthusian
> constraints; the key feature is that levels have to be such that
> everyone can price themselves into work at wage levels they cannot
> survive on on their own but that are enough with the basic income as a
> top up - so that most people do have incentives to work.
Ah, but there you have two assumptions that are problematical:
* assuming people need an external incentive to work set arbitrarily by
society, and also
* assuming that there is much paid work left to do after we are using our 3D
printers to print out solar panels, more 3D printers, agricultural robots,
and recycling systems.
See this blog post by Martin Ford and my comments on it, for example:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/
> Unfortunately, even this presents considerable transitional problems
> before getting close enough to a sustainable equilibrium, and simply
> setting it up just like that is likely to require unaffordable net
> outgoings of funds if done on a large enough scale over a long enough
> time.
See:
"The Unconditional Basic Income Economy - part 1 of 2"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQzz654G-6g
> On the one hand, a workable transition needs to go through
> various other and more realistic steps first, and on the other hand,
> there is no reason to stop at a stage with a basic income rather than
> continuing further to something like Distributism (everyone owning
> enough private resources that they could survive by working them).
> P.M.Lawrence.
Yes, I agree that these things are stages, and we will continue to shift
things towards, as you say, people owning more of their own means of
production (like when advanced 3D printers are everywhere) but I also think
we will still seem some larger resource-based planning as well as a gift
economy as well as maybe some rationing for a time (which is what the basic
income is about).
Paul D. Fernhout
> On 22 October 2010 00:09, Jeff Davis<jrd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Kevin Carson
>> <free.market.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Every book
>>> I've ever written is available on torrent sites, with no discernable
>>> loss of revenue.
>>
>> It takes a while for people to adjust to a new paradigm...
>>
>>
> you say.
Here is a current ethical/practical quandary to consider. :-)
Iain Banks has a new novel out on the Culture series, and when searching
about it, I just found out about this other older Iain Banks' Culture
novella called "State of the Art".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_of_the_Art
"At 100 pages long, the title novella makes up the bulk of the book. The
novella chronicles a Culture mission to Earth in the late Seventies, and
also serves as a prequel of sorts to Use of Weapons by featuring one of that
novel's characters, Diziet Sma. Here, Sma argues for contact with Earth, to
try and fix the mess the human species has made of it; another Culture
citizen, Linter, goes native, choosing to renounce his Culture body
enhancements so as to be more like the locals; and Li (who is a Star Trek
fan), argues that the whole "incontestably neurotic and clinically insane
species" should be eradicated with a micro black hole. The ship the
Arbitrary (ship) has ideas, and a sense of humour, of its own.
'Also while I'd been away, the ship had sent a request on a postcard to
the BBC's World Service, asking for 'Mr David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the
good ship Arbitrary and all who sail in her.' (This from a machine that
could have swamped Earth's entire electro-magnetic spectrum with whatever
the hell it wanted from somewhere beyond Betelgeuse.) It didn't get the
request played. The ship thought this was hilarious.'"
Looking around related to that novella (just to see what it was about), I
found out there was an audio dramatization of that story was publicly
broadcast by the BBC last year, but it is no longer available online. See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hv1dz
"Paul Cornell's dramatisation of the science-fiction novel by Iain M Banks.
A spaceship from The Culture arrives on Earth in 1977 and finds a planet
obsessed with alien concepts like 'property' and 'money' and on the edge of
self destruction. When Agent Dervley Linter decides to go native can Diziet
Sma change his mind?"
Story of my life. No, just joking. :-)
"NASA's Alien Anomalies caught on film"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlLN_Jcg1pc
(Betcha most are just bacteria on the lenses? Or otherwise, just "kids"
having fun? :-)
In any case, I would like to listen to that BBC audio dramatization of that
novella. The audio is apparently available as an (illegal?) audio file at a
few places.
http://www.google.com/search?q=state+of+the+art+iain+banks+bbc
I'd like to hear the bit about the postcard if they left it in. I'm guessing
the ship must have replicated a post card and stamp and teleported it into a
mailbox? But, copying a stamp would be counterfeiting and so breaking a
local law, which the ship might find unethical? So, to do that joke, did the
ship pay for the stamp with gold or something, maybe spiriting away a book
of stamps and making a cash register ring using remote force beams and
teleported a gold coin into the register or something otherwise of value it
could produce in exchange for a stamp? I don't know. :-)
I have not downloaded the audio file, even though I would like to listen to
it. That audio dramatization is not available in any other way that I know
of (even for pay). I have put the book itself with the story in an Amazon
shopping cart, but I have not actually bought it yet (I like to bunch
deliveries up). But even then if I were to own the book, the written story
is not the same as the derived audio dramatization.
Illegal and immoral don't always align. I can wonder if it probably would
not be "immoral" to download the audio file under those circumstances even
under mainstream scarcity-based morality, especially given the content, and
the fact that the BBC already broadcast it? For example, if a friend had
recorded it I would gladly listen to it in their home if they replayed it
for me. But, it's still of questionable legality to download that file. And
that legality might also depend what country you are in, as well.
One might even wonder it it is immoral *not* to listen to that story when it
is available, given the subject matter? :-) Or, one might ask is it moral
for me to even buy the book at all or want to listen to an audio version, as
opposed to using the same time and money to make free stuff?
Nonetheless, I'm not going to advocate people doing anything illegal like
download the audio file, since I don't think it is worth the potential risks
or quandaries, and, also, of course, advocating illegal things is a quick
way to get in trouble with the law which prevents you from doing other
useful things. Still, by outlining the issue, I can hope maybe someone else
can come up with a creative and legal solution to the difficulties of this
situation.
In many ways, the ease of copyright infringement is a social lubricant which
helps keeps us in copyright chains. In some ways, I might love to see a 100%
effective draconian DRM widespread system so that people would just create
free alternatives. :-) Some people doing free software have suggested that
the Microsoft desktop monopoly might have been long over if Microsoft
products had not been so easy to illegally copy a decade ago, with
essentially Microsoft benefiting from illegal copying making it ubiquitous.
I wrote stuff related to that here:
"License management tools: good, bad, or ugly?"
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/msg/1e499c6db59117a2?hl=en&
Of course, one can imagine other ways such a thing might go wrong with a
universal DRM system, like if it was made illegal to give things away; example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
"A potlatch[1][2][3] is a festival ceremony practised by indigenous peoples
of the Pacific Northwest Coast. This includes Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit,
Tsimshian,[4] Nuu-chah-nulth,[5] Kwakwaka'wakw,[3] and Coast Salish[6]
cultures. The word comes from the Chinook Jargon, meaning "to give away" or
"a gift". It went through a history of rigorous ban by both the Canadian and
United States' federal governments, and has been the study of many
anthropologists. ... Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885[8] and
the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of
missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless
custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized"
values.[9]"
That happens at one point in Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" too; a
government needed to make giving away services illegal to try to prop up a
scarcity-based economic paradigm.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
In any case, the forces of scarcity and the surrounding social and legal
structure and various chilling effects and uncertainties keep me and others
from accessing some of the information about how to think of things
differently about scarcity. And there is not even a preview of "The State of
the Art" available in Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=QFJyAAAACAAJ
I guess I'll have to content myself with rereading Theodore Sturgeon's "The
Skills of Xanadu" one more time. :-)
"The Skills of Xanadu online at Google Books?"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/3789a8f1db1e47a2
Anyway, I guess we just need more free-ish stories about a free culture.
Stuff a little more dramatic and polished than this effort by me: :-)
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a
basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
(I know, it is not free for derivative works as it is CC-BY-ND, but that's
mostly just because my voice is on it and I did not want people remixing my
voice and redoing it. People should feel free to treat the storyline,
pictures, and text there as under CC-BY-SA if they want to redo it somehow.)
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/22/10 8:29 AM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> > I have in fact done quite some research into the wider area that
> > includes basic income. Although the reasoning is too lengthy to
> > present here, it turns out that a basic income as usually understood,
> > i.e. sufficient for survival, is in general unworkable
>
> Well, I'm reluctant to accept a dismissal of a century of research with some
> handwaving... :-)
out here. The issue is that my own work (e.g. leading to
http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN and
following, or to my Henry Tax Review submission
http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2009/05/05/pml-on-tax-reform) shows
that that approach, Negative Income Tax, and Basic (or Guaranteed)
Income are all long run equivalent; but my own work shows that its
optimal level occurs when it is set only to counter a Vagrancy Costs
Externality (usually already substituted with an unemployment benefit
cost or Social Security cost).
Levels higher than that soon become unaffordable, as does transitional
funding at the correct levels. This can be seen from the sizes of
current government transfers in the area, the lack of success in a
(poorly structured) 1970s Negative Income Tax study in the time
available, and from the amount of churning involved in paying out to a
population an order of magnitude larger than that currently receiving
benefits. You should be able to see why it would be too lengthy to go
into all that in enough detail.
> http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
>
> Not that endorsement of anything by famous economists really proves
> anything, but when they go against the mainstream politics of economics it
> is worth thinking about: "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully
> support a basic income include Herbert Simon[30], Friedrich Hayek[31][32],
> James Meade, Robert Solow[33], and Milton Friedman[34]."
University of Strathclyde and his colleagues (in the UK; see
http://www.faxfn.org/feedback/03_jobs/jobs_tax.htm#23feb98a), and of
Nobel winner Professor Edmund S. Phelps, McVickar Professor of
Political Economy at Columbia University (in the USA; see
http://www.columbia.edu/~esp2/taxcomm.pdf).
>
> > but a variant
> > set at lower levels is workable, short of hitting Malthusian
> > constraints; the key feature is that levels have to be such that
> > everyone can price themselves into work at wage levels they cannot
> > survive on on their own but that are enough with the basic income as a
> > top up - so that most people do have incentives to work.
>
> Ah, but there you have two assumptions that are problematical:
> * assuming people need an external incentive to work set arbitrarily by
> society, and also
> * assuming that there is much paid work left to do after we are using our 3D
> printers to print out solar panels, more 3D printers, agricultural robots,
> and recycling systems.
make those assumptions, you imagined them. There is not "an external
incentive to work set arbitrarily by society" but an incentive needed
to counter the actual, non-arbitrary magnitude of the Vagrancy Costs
Externality without overshooting; and, the second scenario only
relates to the Distributist style end point AFTER people have their
own, independent private resources - read Damon Knight's "A for
Anything" for a novelistic description of a world in which the
technology is there but that condition does not apply. In general, you
need to counter the externality, and in the end point special case
that counter reduces to zero, but the target end point does not mean
that it should be zero in general.
>
> See this blog post by Martin Ford and my comments on it, for example:
> http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/
>
> > Unfortunately, even this presents considerable transitional problems
> > before getting close enough to a sustainable equilibrium, and simply
> > setting it up just like that is likely to require unaffordable net
> > outgoings of funds if done on a large enough scale over a long enough
> > time.
>
> See:
> "The Unconditional Basic Income Economy - part 1 of 2"
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQzz654G-6g
Paul D. Fernhout
> It's not handwaving, a full analysis really is too lengthy to bring
> out here. The issue is that my own work (e.g. leading to
> http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN and
> following, or to my Henry Tax Review submission
> http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2009/05/05/pml-on-tax-reform) shows
> that that approach, Negative Income Tax, and Basic (or Guaranteed)
> Income are all long run equivalent; but my own work shows that its
> optimal level occurs when it is set only to counter a Vagrancy Costs
> Externality (usually already substituted with an unemployment benefit
> cost or Social Security cost).
Optimal towards what goal?
Paul D. Fernhout
>> On 10/22/10 8:29 AM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
>>> but a variant
>>> set at lower levels is workable, short of hitting Malthusian
>>> constraints; the key feature is that levels have to be such that
>>> everyone can price themselves into work at wage levels they cannot
>>> survive on on their own but that are enough with the basic income as a
>>> top up - so that most people do have incentives to work.
>>
>> Ah, but there you have two assumptions that are problematical:
>> * assuming people need an external incentive to work set arbitrarily by
>> society, and also
>> * assuming that there is much paid work left to do after we are using our 3D
>> printers to print out solar panels, more 3D printers, agricultural robots,
>> and recycling systems.
>
> Not only are they problematical, they are totally made up. I do not
> make those assumptions, you imagined them.
Those two assumptions I listed are implicit in what you wrote above.
You implied that people should have incentives to work where you wrote: "so
that most people do have incentives to work". Or is that not what you meant?
And, that statement also assumes there is work to do (otherwise, it would be
meaningless to say that or also to say "price themselves into work").
Both assumptions (incentives and work) are questionable between the writing
of Alfie Kohn and Bob Black and others. See:
"Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's,
Praise, and Other Bribes" by Alfie Kohn
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
And:
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
All the beautiful economic equations economists like to build blow up with
divide-by-zero errors if people do work without "pay" (as in exchange) or if
people can produce all (or essentially all) of their own goods and services
locally for essentially free.
Google also on: "They Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)" to find: "But in
the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists � like Professors Reinhart
and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan
Taylor � have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond
hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record.
�There is so much inbredness in this profession,� says Ms. Reinhart. �They
all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to
the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on
extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.�"
Are your equations applicable to, say, a hunter/gatherer economy?
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other
group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent
society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's
material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is
therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to
bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a
tragedy of modern times."
Whatever equations you are developing, put in a free cost of labor and see
what happens. :-) Or put in demand as a fixed amount while productivity
continues to grow exponentially and see what happens. :-) Or put in a zero
cost of raw materials and energy and computing and see what happens. :-)
I'll suggest what probably happens -- the equations won't make much sense
anymore and you will get infinities. :-)
http://www.google.com/search?q=divide+by+zero+error+economics
It is only "artificial scarcity" at this point that props up the old status
quo and the obsolete economic models. Now, maybe your equations are
different. If so, terrific. :-)
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/22/10 9:22 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> > It's not handwaving, a full analysis really is too lengthy to bring
> > out here. The issue is that my own work (e.g. leading to
> > http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN and
> > following, or to my Henry Tax Review submission
> > http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2009/05/05/pml-on-tax-reform) shows
> > that that approach, Negative Income Tax, and Basic (or Guaranteed)
> > Income are all long run equivalent; but my own work shows that its
> > optimal level occurs when it is set only to counter a Vagrancy Costs
> > Externality (usually already substituted with an unemployment benefit
> > cost or Social Security cost).
>
> Optimal towards what goal?
is going when talking about its seaworthiness. In general, in these
questions, people talk about optimising rather than about specifically
minimising or specifically maximising, since it covers both. Here,
optimising is about minimising the costs, not about what the costs are
achieving. P.M.Lawrence.
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/22/10 9:22 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> > Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> >> On 10/22/10 8:29 AM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> >>> but a variant
> >>> set at lower levels is workable, short of hitting Malthusian
> >>> constraints; the key feature is that levels have to be such that
> >>> everyone can price themselves into work at wage levels they cannot
> >>> survive on on their own but that are enough with the basic income as a
> >>> top up - so that most people do have incentives to work.
> >>
> >> Ah, but there you have two assumptions that are problematical:
> >> * assuming people need an external incentive to work set arbitrarily by
> >> society, and also
> >> * assuming that there is much paid work left to do after we are using our 3D
> >> printers to print out solar panels, more 3D printers, agricultural robots,
> >> and recycling systems.
> >
> > Not only are they problematical, they are totally made up. I do not
> > make those assumptions, you imagined them.
>
> Those two assumptions I listed are implicit in what you wrote above.
>
> You implied that people should have incentives to work where you wrote: "so
> that most people do have incentives to work". Or is that not what you meant?
you have read "so that..." as "in order that, with the objective
that". It has the other meaning, "with the consequence that, with the
result that". As I wrote, "the key feature is that levels have to be
cannot survive on on their own but that are enough with the basic
describing the consequences. You should not read that "can" as "must";
under certain conditions (not here and now, i.e. at the beginning of a
transition) people would be able to survive on that with no top up
work. The proper way to look at it in general isn't that top up work
supplements the other resources, but that top up resources supplement
work (if any). That's why I wrote it that way round, although either
is correct in many situations.
>
> And, that statement also assumes there is work to do (otherwise, it would be
> meaningless to say that or also to say "price themselves into work").
be work at the beginning - because "here" has got that. The statement
is meaningful if you quote it completely, because I actually wrote
words like "can" - and again, that should not be read as "must",
"would", "does" or anything like that.
>
> Both assumptions (incentives and work) are questionable between the writing
> of Alfie Kohn and Bob Black and others. See:
> "Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's,
> Praise, and Other Bribes" by Alfie Kohn
> http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
> And:
> "The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
> http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
To see that I was already aware of these issues, see the beginning of
a recent comment I made elsewhere, at
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/10/17/stutchbury-on-qr-and-quiggin/#comment-269752.
However, if a description is correct in general it must remain correct
whether it is applied to special cases like those OR to situations
like those that a transition starting from here and now would face.
>
> All the beautiful economic equations economists like to build blow up with
> divide-by-zero errors if people do work without "pay" (as in exchange) or if
> people can produce all (or essentially all) of their own goods and services
> locally for essentially free.
techniques available. In general, if a model of a physical situation
throws up that sort of error, it is telling you that the model isn't
suitable, not that reality is "wrong". Maybe you can renormalise the
problem out by choosing a different parameter system (like not using
Mercator projection maps for polar areas), or you can creep up on the
anomalies by taking limits and getting rid of the problematic stuff
before the final output (which is what differential calculus does), or
something of the sort.
>
> Google also on: "They Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)" to find: "But in
> the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists � like Professors Reinhart
> and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan
> Taylor � have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond
> hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record.
> �There is so much inbredness in this profession,� says Ms. Reinhart. �They
> all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to
> the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on
> extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.�"
>
> Are your equations applicable to, say, a hunter/gatherer economy?
(invariants and similar things) - you're jumping to a conclusion
again. For equations, you're welcome to follow up the work by other
researchers I cited. But yes, the techniques I DID use DO work in that
area; in fact, I calibrated my work by using test cases from a wide
range of history, including things like that and not just the here and
now. I drew on them in a number of comments at a Mises blog thread, in
particular http://blog.mises.org/6766/a-critique-of-kevin-carsons-contract-feudalism/#comment-122145
which describes your scenario as "Result: high leisure/non-cash
activity, high cash wages, low employment, low unemployment".
> http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
> "Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other
> group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent
> society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's
> material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is
> therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to
> bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a
> tragedy of modern times."
>
> Whatever equations you are developing, put in a free cost of labor and see
> what happens. :-) Or put in demand as a fixed amount while productivity
> continues to grow exponentially and see what happens. :-) Or put in a zero
> cost of raw materials and energy and computing and see what happens. :-)
>
> I'll suggest what probably happens -- the equations won't make much sense
> anymore and you will get infinities. :-)
> http://www.google.com/search?q=divide+by+zero+error+economics
- I'm not using that kind of mathematical technique, so (with the
consequence that) infinities etc. don't show up; and
- I ALREADY tested the techniques I did use against those cases, and
it all fitted together.
>
> It is only "artificial scarcity" at this point that props up the old status
> quo and the obsolete economic models. Now, maybe your equations are
> different. If so, terrific. :-)
suitable policy starting from the here and now.
Now, please, do read the material I referred you to and take on board
the considerations and policies they suggest (not just my ones, also
those of the other researchers). Then, by all means, if you do have
queries or objections relating to what is actually there and not
simply to what you have been reminded of, we can address them.
P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> Now, please, do read the material I referred you to and take on board
> the considerations and policies they suggest (not just my ones, also
> those of the other researchers). Then, by all means, if you do have
> queries or objections relating to what is actually there and not
> simply to what you have been reminded of, we can address them.
> P.M.Lawrence.
Thanks for all the clarifications as to my misperceptions. Sorry, I get so
much of my main exercise jumping to conclusions. :-)
I have looked at this link you supplied:
http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2009/05/05/pml-on-tax-reform
but I guess I'm still missing the big picture on what you are saying.
From there: "Even in normal economic conditions Australia, like many
developed countries, has material levels of unemployment and
underemployment. In poor conditions like those currently obtaining, not only
do these deteriorate but also GDP suffers. Many approaches to address these
issues have been suggested and/or adopted, most of which are beyond the
scope of this Tax Review. However, during the past fifteen years or so, a
number of workers in different countries have independently arrived at
proposals which integrate older ideas of wage subsidies with the tax system.
Notable among these workers are Professor Kim Swales of the University of
Strathclyde and his colleagues, and Nobel winner Professor Edmund S. Phelps,
McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University. I myself
have done a game theoretic analysis of aspects of these proposals. ... GST
offsets should be provided, at a basis level per full time employee per
annum (net after Payroll Tax etc., and pro rata for part timers, but not
offsetting for overtime). The offsets should apply to all employees, new or
old, employed by others or self-employed, quite without regard to whether
they had been long-term unemployed, briefly unemployed or had been employed
for a long time � and the offsets should apply indefinitely, with no
cut-off. This basis level should be set to match typical benefit levels for
the unemployed, plus their marginal costs. This is currently above $10,000
per person per annum. ..."
That's certainly a good beginning. :-)
But that is just about wage subsidies, not a true basic income regardless of
a person trying to find work? But what happens when less and less human
labor is required to run things? Why focus on income-through-wages-for-labor
when the value of most paid human labor is diminishing? Sure, a subsidy
might help those who have a job, but why should most people need to have
"jobs" working for others just to survive producing goods and services
people are forced to pay for when there is so much abundance in our society?
What about a gift economy? What about democratic planning (outside of that
one wage support)? What about stronger local communities making more of
their own stuff? How will these impact wage subsidies?
Are you advocating for a continued focus on compulsory forced labor as a way
to organize society by emphasizing wage subsidies? If so, why? What are you
assuming about all that? You might be right, I'm just trying to make it clear.
Whether your proposal there makes sense or not in a local context (it may
well make a lot of sense as an incremental step), I'm unclear on how that
proposal may relate to a world where things like books are trivial to copy
(even as 3D object)? Would those wages just be propping up artificial
scarcity in, say, the publishing industry? Can you disentangle wage
subsidies from dying industries that can't afford to pay well (like
publishing at this point) -- industries that probably should die as far as
having what is becoming, from some perspectives, an increasingly immoral
business model that needs to be backed by draconian police powers?
A satire I wrote on that, as a pretend presidential address: :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
"... There are only a million Americans behind bars for copyright
infringement so far. No one complained about the million plus non-violent
drug offenders we've had there for years. No one complained about the
million plus terrorists we've got there now, thanks in no small part to a
patriotic Supreme Court which after being privatized upheld that anyone who
criticizes government policy in public or private is a criminal terrorist.
... Now, as I was saying, building more prisons is good for the economy.
It's good for the GNP. It's good for rural areas. Everyone who matters wins
when we increase the prison population. People who share are thieves plain
and simple, just like people who take a bathroom break without pausing their
television feed and thus miss some commercials are thieves. Such people
break the fundamental social compact between advertisers and consumers which
all young children are made to sign. And let me take this opportunity to
underscore my administration's strong record on being tough on crime.
MicroSlaw's system for efficient production of digitized legal evidence on
demand is a key part of that success. So is the recent initiative of having
a camera in every living room to catch and imprison those not paying
attention when advertising is on television, say by making love or even
talking. Why without such initiatives, economic analysts at MicroSlaw assure
me that the GNP would have decreased much more than it has already. ..."
And, connected to that, it is not clear to me where you outline why a basic
income won't work to address some of that as a bigger picture, when you
said: "Levels higher than that soon become unaffordable, as does
transitional funding at the correct levels."? At least for as long as we
still have aspects of a market economy? You just tax some percent of the GDP
in various ways and redistribute it.
This YouTube video (a two par series) which is relatively easy to follow
outlines how a basic income can be a steady state:
"The Unconditional Basic Income Economy - part 1 of 2 ["
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQzz654G-6g
Given that explanation, I find it hard to accept that there are complex
technical reasons why that won't work. Basically, a society produces X
amount of stuff at some cost. You ensure through taxes and printing money
and fees and rentals of government property etc. that everyone has enough to
buy half the stuff, and people who want more do paid labor. That's pretty
simple to say. Now, politically, it may be a hard thing, of course.
Looking at this other link you supplied, again, you keep tying income to jobs:
http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN
"The "five economist's plan" is a variant of Negative Income Tax, as is the
American "Earned Income Tax Credit". This replaces a collection of support
systems with a single basic one, working through Income Tax; for people on
low incomes there is actually a payment, and for people with no other income
they just get the equivalent of Social Security this way.
The thinking is that by reducing the wages that potential employees have
to hold out for, and by eliminating poverty traps, it will become practical
for employers to offer lower wages that are still realistic enough for
everybody to price themselves into work.
The known catches are:
* To keep the total tax take up the standard rates have to be high
somewhere (either lots of losers, or poverty traps for a few losers).
* To avoid just moving the poverty traps around, the rates have to stay
high over a wide range (lots of losers).
* To pay out to people who need it, there have to be large amounts of
funds moving around (churning, with huge compliance costs and transaction
costs).
* To boost employment there has to be a considerable time delay while
wages adjust painfully, during which all this represents an outgoing.
One particular feature is that this has losers as well as winners, and it
gets the losers early while winners don't turn up until much later. The hope
is that in the end everyone ends up better off - maybe a few elections down
the track."
I certainly agree with the beginning.
Just to go down those "catches", from a my (and a US) perspective:
* Tax rates used to be 90% or so on marginal top income during times of some
prosperity in the USA in the 1950s through 1970s, so what's the problem
doing that? Even under Reagan, marginal federal taxes were around 70% for a
year before going down to 50%. See:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_has_the_Income_Tax_contributed_to_the_economic_crisis_of_2008
* We already have a whirlpool of poverty; the simplest answer is just give
people money so the market can "hear" their needs. :-) Considering how the
USA is busy borrowing money or making it by fractional reserve debt, what is
the problem with spending the same amount of money into existence instead as
a basic income? Or, alternatively, redirecting money flows by taxes and
public spending or subsidies as we used to do decades ago?
* The notion of "people who need it" getting a subsidy misses the point of a
basic income everyone gets as a right of citizenship regardless of
demonstrating "need". As soon as people have to prove need, you get huge
bureaucracies and endless makework and privacy invasions.
* "To boost employment" misses that employment is usually a negative thing
if not self-chosen based on a personal connection to the work. It may be a
great thing to work, but it is not a great thing to be forced to work.
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
I guess I can see the argument implicit near the end for trying to come up
with some slow transition path, but a few major elections (if one every four
years like in the USA) is twelve to twenty years. By that time, we'll
probably have 3D printers that can print solar panels and more 3D printers.
:-) And robots that can fetch people beers from the fridge. :-)
Whoops, already have those. :-)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/07/07/2230255/Willow-Garage-Robot-Fetches-Beer-Engineers-Rejoice
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1711692&cid=32836006
But they are still US$400,000:
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/09/08/take-home-an-open-source-robot-from-willow-garage-for-400000/
The first commercial laser printer was the IBM model 3800, according to
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printer
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3597/3418478190_49ced36b54_o.jpg
I'm not sure exactly, but it probably cost about US$150,000 at the time
which with inflation is probably about US$400,000 now. I can get a laser
printer with better printer resolution that is also a fax and scanner and
can print in color for probably about US$200 (with a rebate) thirty five
years later (though, admittedly, it might not have all the paper handling
features of a 3800, although it won't take a team of babysitters to keep it
going, either). What will that Willow Garage robot cost in 35 years,
especially when one starts using such robots to assemble more such robots?
So, any plan that taxes decades to implement is not going to make much of a
difference in dealing with that implication, IMHO.
Now, it may still be worth doing to make things a little better, or start on
some path like you propose, but, since almost any change is going to be an
uphill difficult battle, why go for some timid change? Obama tried some
timid change with US health care (bought off by sick care insurance
lobbyists?) and the result still leaves most US people very unhappy, with a
broken health care system, a very divided electorate, and also does not
solve the core problem or address the central moral or economic failing
related to human rights. He could have just said -- "I'm signing an
executive order that Medicaid now covers everyone, let's move on..." and he
would have had the same lawsuits afterwards that he has even now. :-) Why
repeat that with lobbying for small economic changes? Are people more likely
to march or demonstrate for small income supplements compared to a basic
income?
At some point, we may need to think big, especially given the scale of the
problem. For example, especially if we get a predicted conservative
landslide in the USA and two years or more of regressive economic rules, the
USA is soon to be a basket case as far as tens of millions of desperate
previously middle class people who are rapidly downwardly mobile, getting
sucked into a whirlpool of poverty. A related comment by me:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
That is probably going to result in all sorts of huge problems. Already,
many US families have burned through all their assets and unemployment
benefits. There is a huge looming crisis, and the drumbeat is always, jobs,
jobs, jobs. But, what if the jobs are just not coming back? Even with wage
subsidies?
Anyway, so I remain unclear about your real objections to a basic income
(given a link to a video that explains how it can work), and also I'm
unclear about, beyond wage subsidies, what you are proposing and how that
connects with bigger social trends towards less labor and more leisure? Why
continue an income-through-jobs-link for the basics?
Or, why make people feel bad because they don't want to go to some
authoritarian workplace or school? Related:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
I feel there is some assumption you are making about paid work or motivation
implicit in what you are advocating?
It's OK to have assumptions, we all do, I certainly make a lot of them, but
we should try to be explicit about them. So, what are you assuming to build
your models?
What are your assumptions about motivation? Fair equity? Ideal decision
making? Security? Productivity? The intrinsic value of work? Workplace
democracy? Fiat currency? Both now and over the next two to three decades?
I'm assuming:
* People will do a lot just from intrinsic motivation (like Alfie Kohn
suggests), and combined with technological amplification, that will be
enough to supply much of the optional things in life as well as most core
services (even if we may want more certainty related to core services and
organize them in more formal ways);
* That decisions should ideally, in a Chaordic way, be made at the smallest
most local level possible (but also have higher level oversight related to
broad social values);
* The security should emphasize intrinsic security and mutual security;
* The work is intrinsically valuable (like Schumacher says) and can be "hard
fun" (like Papert says), but, compulsion to work is generally a bad thing
(like Bob Black says);
* That people in workplaces should be free to work out their own meaningful
divisions of labor, or at least, have a broad choice of types of workplace
rules they want to get involved with, and further, that as people produce
more stuff for themselves, and as the internet continues to permeate our
lives, the notion of "workplace" will radically change, even as people may
still want to meet face-to-face for social reasons;
* That fiat currency will be less-and-less important in making key decisions
and motivating people to do stuff, given the spread of the means of
production as computers, cell phones, 3D printers (additive or subtractive
:-), and an accumulation of cheap mass produced stuff; and
* That, barring broad warfare which may happen due to obsolete scarcity
ideology, that technological change over the next twenty to thirty years
will continue to increase productivity exponentially far in excess of
demand, leading to larger paid job losses, and that we have already seen
this considering how the last decade in the USA saw a 40% growth in GDP but
a 0% growth in jobs.
So, in the context of all that, I think wage subsidies just don't really get
at the core issues. :-)
What are you proposing we move towards? Are wage subsidies enough to get us
there? Are they enough to deal with broader social changes?
I'm not saying your proposal is bad or wrong. It may well be a lot more
practical right now than anything I say. :-) And it may well be part of some
interim solutions. I'm just saying, where is it intended to lead? And how
would that wage subsidy model react to 3D printing, smart robots, limited
consumer demand, and openly freely shared design work?
P.M.Lawrence
.
.
.
> much of my main exercise jumping to conclusions. :-)
>
> I have looked at this link you supplied:
> http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2009/05/05/pml-on-tax-reform
> but I guess I'm still missing the big picture on what you are saying.
.
.
going into detail on the first stages.
>
> But that is just about wage subsidies,
The difference, which is important, is that no funds outflows are
required.
not a true basic income regardless of
> a person trying to find work?
Negative Income Tax, and Basic (or Guaranteed) Income comes in. I
recommend implementing this with periodic issues of anonymous,
transferrable vouchers. Over time, that would become money supported
by being acceptable to pay the relevant broad-based carrying tax(es)
with impact on producers. Later still, that would be supported in
other ways, with a series of steps ending up with people simply having
Distributist style direct personal ownership of resources. (I won't
spell out the intermediate steps; there are a few possible variants.)
But what happens when less and less human
> labor is required to run things? Why focus on income-through-wages-for-labor
> when the value of most paid human labor is diminishing?
Sure, a subsidy
> might help those who have a job,
security, but rather those who (under current conditions) want a job
but can't get one.
but why should most people need to have
> "jobs" working for others just to survive producing goods and services
> people are forced to pay for when there is so much abundance in our society?
that, that is just precisely what the first stage of a transition has
to address, and looking at the ideal end point is not taking into
account the things suitable for the beginning. Separating out the
different stages makes it possible to handle each properly without
bringing in the things that belong in the other stages; it all comes
together because you can move along from each to the next.
>
> What about a gift economy? What about democratic planning (outside of that
> one wage support)? What about stronger local communities making more of
> their own stuff? How will these impact wage subsidies?
moved to later stages, or part of making later stages accessible so
the transition can then move to them.
>
> Are you advocating for a continued focus on compulsory forced labor as a way
> to organize society by emphasizing wage subsidies?
given this starting point we are in.
If so, why? What are you
> assuming about all that? You might be right, I'm just trying to make it clear.
>
> Whether your proposal there makes sense or not in a local context (it may
> well make a lot of sense as an incremental step), I'm unclear on how that
> proposal may relate to a world where things like books are trivial to copy
> (even as 3D object)?
situation, matching later stages.
Would those wages just be propping up artificial
> scarcity in, say, the publishing industry? Can you disentangle wage
> subsidies from dying industries that can't afford to pay well (like
> publishing at this point) -- industries that probably should die as far as
> having what is becoming, from some perspectives, an increasingly immoral
> business model that needs to be backed by draconian police powers?
carrying taxes around, loosening their producer connections; once they
no longer need specific producing sectors, that becomes a separate
issue which can develop independently under freely operating market
incentives.
.
.
.
> And, connected to that, it is not clear to me where you outline why a basic
> income won't work to address some of that as a bigger picture, when you
> said: "Levels higher than that soon become unaffordable, as does
> transitional funding at the correct levels."? At least for as long as we
> still have aspects of a market economy? You just tax some percent of the GDP
> in various ways and redistribute it.
(including nominal wages), and so on, all of which distort the economy
in the short and medium term, reducing total "stuff" and creating
losers as well as winners. "Just" doing it is tricky - or, put another
way, the Negative Payroll Tax way IS the only way that "just" does it
without a lot of damaging side-effects on the way.
>
> This YouTube video (a two par series) which is relatively easy to follow
> outlines how a basic income can be a steady state:
> "The Unconditional Basic Income Economy - part 1 of 2 ["
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQzz654G-6g
ALSO aware that just going into top gear if you happen to be in first
gear, without accelerating up through the gears, doesn't simply put
you in that state. Rather, it takes a long time to settle while it
lurches all over the place - and it can even kill the engine
completely, to extend the metaphor.
>
> Given that explanation, I find it hard to accept that there are complex
> technical reasons why that won't work.
- Take that position without backing of your own, i.e. form your
beliefs on the basis of what you want to be true.
- Do the research yourself and form your own informed opinion on the
basis of what you find, not on the basis of what you want.
- Suspend judgment until matters become clear of themselves, e.g. from
new things actually happening, and meanwhile make a heuristic decision
about what to do, in the full awareness that you are working with
limited information. A good heuristic is to take the word of people
who have looked into these matters, particularly if they make their
work available to check.
The first is very bad; even if you do turn out to be right, it can
only be on the principle of a stopped clock being right twice a day.
Basically, a society produces X
> amount of stuff at some cost. You ensure through taxes and printing money
> and fees and rentals of government property etc. that everyone has enough to
> buy half the stuff, and people who want more do paid labor. That's pretty
> simple to say. Now, politically, it may be a hard thing, of course.
exercise with no room for slips that make casualties (eggs,
omelette...).
questions.
>
> Just to go down those "catches", from a my (and a US) perspective:
>
> * Tax rates used to be 90% or so on marginal top income during times of some
> prosperity in the USA in the 1950s through 1970s, so what's the problem
> doing that?
stop that?". But the real problem is that doing things like that has
costs of implementation, even if you throw the cost of income tax
compliance on the taxpayers, and also you don't get optimal production
of "stuff" for people while that is going on but only after things
settle into a better equilibrium in the long term (opportunity cost);
it is even possible for "stuff" to get temporarily less than it would
have been if you hadn't tried - which means temporary losers, maybe
many of them, and quite easily losers who can't hang in there for the
long term jam tomorrow.
Even under Reagan, marginal federal taxes were around 70% for a
> year before going down to 50%. See:
> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_has_the_Income_Tax_contributed_to_the_economic_crisis_of_2008
>
> * We already have a whirlpool of poverty; the simplest answer is just give
> people money so the market can "hear" their needs. :-)
creates other market distortions, and you are not making an overall
improvement, just switch a known loser for an unseen one.
Considering how the
> USA is busy borrowing money or making it by fractional reserve debt, what is
> the problem with spending the same amount of money into existence instead as
> a basic income? Or, alternatively, redirecting money flows by taxes and
> public spending or subsidies as we used to do decades ago?
>
> * The notion of "people who need it" getting a subsidy misses the point of a
> basic income everyone gets as a right of citizenship regardless of
> demonstrating "need".
subsidy applies to EVERYBODY in the catchment group. The only
relevance of "need" is that the ones who actually need it are the ones
who benefit the most. Bill Gates wouldn't need it, and wouldn't
benefit noticeably, but he'd still get it.
As soon as people have to prove need, you get huge
> bureaucracies and endless makework and privacy invasions.
>
> * "To boost employment" misses that employment is usually a negative thing
> if not self-chosen based on a personal connection to the work.
being made thing) as well as in the sense of observing that there
would be more employment around (an inherent feature of what is
suitable for a first stage starting from the here and now).
It may be a
> great thing to work, but it is not a great thing to be forced to work.
> http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
>
> I guess I can see the argument implicit near the end for trying to come up
> with some slow transition path, but a few major elections (if one every four
> years like in the USA) is twelve to twenty years. By that time, we'll
> probably have 3D printers that can print solar panels and more 3D printers.
> :-) And robots that can fetch people beers from the fridge. :-)
here and now? You can't trade them and their situation off against a
possible future situation for their heirs and successors. As the
saying is, "What has posterity ever done for me?"
The PATH is slow. The GAINS are not. With this, there are rapid gains
early on, locked in later on by being made personally owned without
intermediation. On the other hand, a giant single step completes
earlier, but there are (I have checked this) LOSSES to at least some
people early on, even net losses, and the gains don't even arrive once
it's over but only in an even longer term after things settle into a
new equilibrium.
> Now, it may still be worth doing to make things a little better, or start on
> some path like you propose, but, since almost any change is going to be an
> uphill difficult battle, why go for some timid change?
omelette thing.
Obama tried some
> timid change with US health care (bought off by sick care insurance
> lobbyists?) and the result still leaves most US people very unhappy, with a
> broken health care system, a very divided electorate, and also does not
> solve the core problem or address the central moral or economic failing
> related to human rights. He could have just said -- "I'm signing an
> executive order that Medicaid now covers everyone, let's move on..." and he
> would have had the same lawsuits afterwards that he has even now. :-) Why
> repeat that with lobbying for small economic changes? Are people more likely
> to march or demonstrate for small income supplements compared to a basic
> income?
from some cynical politician settling for a personally costless reform
to head off trouble, the way Social Security was for Bismarck.
>
> At some point, we may need to think big, especially given the scale of the
> problem. For example, especially if we get a predicted conservative
> landslide in the USA and two years or more of regressive economic rules, the
> USA is soon to be a basket case as far as tens of millions of desperate
> previously middle class people who are rapidly downwardly mobile, getting
> sucked into a whirlpool of poverty. A related comment by me:
>
> http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
>
> That is probably going to result in all sorts of huge problems. Already,
> many US families have burned through all their assets and unemployment
> benefits. There is a huge looming crisis, and the drumbeat is always, jobs,
> jobs, jobs. But, what if the jobs are just not coming back? Even with wage
> subsidies?
point of the economy itself being downsized and offshored. That's a
related but distinct issue that I haven't covered here, but for which
there are countermeasures (e.g., discourage new corporations and also
commute taxes on current ones for part ownership so that offshoring
doesn't alienate revenue).
>
> Anyway, so I remain unclear about your real objections to a basic income
> (given a link to a video that explains how it can work
the other links by way of homework, for the sake of intellectual
integrity.
), and also I'm
> unclear about, beyond wage subsidies, what you are proposing and how that
> connects with bigger social trends towards less labor and more leisure? Why
> continue an income-through-jobs-link for the basics?
>
> Or, why make people feel bad because they don't want to go to some
> authoritarian workplace or school? Related:
> http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
>
> I feel there is some assumption you are making about paid work or motivation
> implicit in what you are advocating?
are told and/or what you can go and see - and check - for yourself.
>
> It's OK to have assumptions, we all do, I certainly make a lot of them, but
> we should try to be explicit about them. So, what are you assuming to build
> your models?
>
> What are your assumptions about motivation? Fair equity? Ideal decision
> making? Security? Productivity? The intrinsic value of work? Workplace
> democracy? Fiat currency? Both now and over the next two to three decades?
would be able to do under its policies. That is a different question,
one for them.
prefer to go according to how you feel.
>
> What are you proposing we move towards?
steps, e.g., go via switching from discounting a centralised carrier
tax on producers with vouchers, wider and more municipal taxes,
commuted revenue yielding endowments, sinking provident saving funds
etc. to the final stage of family and individual resource possession.
Are wage subsidies enough to get us
> there? Are they enough to deal with broader social changes?
their way. It won't clean the drains, that's another department.
>
> I'm not saying your proposal is bad or wrong. It may well be a lot more
> practical right now than anything I say. :-) And it may well be part of some
> interim solutions. I'm just saying, where is it intended to lead? And how
> would that wage subsidy model react to 3D printing, smart robots, limited
> consumer demand, and openly freely shared design work?
so as (in order) not to have all those issues turning up on our plate
at the same time as having to deal with the things that do need it.
P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>> many US families have burned through all their assets and unemployment
>> benefits. There is a huge looming crisis, and the drumbeat is always, jobs,
>> jobs, jobs. But, what if the jobs are just not coming back? Even with wage
>> subsidies?
>
> Trust me on this, the SAME jobs wouldn't, but ENOUGH would
Thanks for your other comments and clarifications.
I could comment on some of your other new points, but I think here we have
the fundamental assumption I am disagreeing with, and which you, as well as
an endless parade of mainstream economists, have no evidence for. :-)
In fact, given the US GDP grew 40% in the past decade with no net new jobs,
all the evidence points towards that assumption being wrong. :-)
If we really care about the plight of today's disadvantaged, including the
downwardly mobile middle class, why not a basic income?
Still, I guess big governments works programs (including wars) financed by
taxes, debts, and rents/sales of government assets is a more politically
acceptable solution.
Or, perhaps, as you propose, something else that links with the existing
economic system and many of its assumptions as a step forward.
- up to the
> point of the economy itself being downsized and offshored. That's a
> related but distinct issue that I haven't covered here, but for which
> there are countermeasures (e.g., discourage new corporations and also
> commute taxes on current ones for part ownership so that offshoring
> doesn't alienate revenue).
Anything that increases costs just accelerates the process. IMHO we are
seeing the death spiral of conventional economics (in the face of rising
productivity but limited demand).
Offshoring is a red herring in the sense that what is happening in the USA
is starting to happen in even China. Example:
http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to
control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen."
I think you still emphasize optimizing "economic efficiency" with some model
of producing the most stuff for the least work while de-emphazizing
"economic efficiency" from the stand point of ensuring everyone has what
they need as well as a lot of what they want including good work and spare
time and family time and time for civic duties.
See also, for maybe the key point of some differing assumptions:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human
labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider "labour"
or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the
employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a
minimum if it can not be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the
point of view of the workman, it is a "disutility"; to work is to make a
sacrifice of one�s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation
for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is
to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of
the employee is to have income without employment.
The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice are,
of course, extremely far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to
get rid of it, every method that "reduces the work load" is a good thing.
The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called "division of
labour" and the classical example is the pin factory eulogised in Adam
Smith�s Wealth of Nations. Here it is not a matter of ordinary
specialisation, which mankind has practiced from time immemorial, but of
dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that
the final product can be produced at great speed without anyone having had
to contribute more than a totally insignificant and, in most cases,
unskilled movement of his limbs.
The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to
enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a
common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming
existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To
organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring,
stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of
criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people,
an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the
most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for
leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete
misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that
work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and
cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of
leisure."
Isn't one point of "open manufacturing" to trade-off (if necessary) a little
bit of lower costs for the emotional/security/empowerment/aesthetic value of
making something yourself or doing it with friends?
So, focusing on maximizing goods output, even in the near term, misses this
broader social point that E.F. Schumacher was making. You mention the issue
of economic "Casualties", but economic casualties exist all around us right
now. Such causalities include the kid bored or frustrated in school (despite
US$20K a year being spent on him or her in NYS each year through taxes), the
researcher who can't work on what he or she wants to that might really make
a difference, the fast food industry that destroys people's health, the
health care industry that only makes big profits from keeping people sick
and on a treadmill of endless treatments, the writer, musician, or inventor
wanting to build on existing things but who is shut down by copyrights and
patents, and so on. These are all economic casualties, from a certain point
of view.
And, on top of that, we *already* have millions of people in the USA out of
work who actually want to do productive stuff but can't figure out a way to
do that in today's ideology and are suffering in all sorts of ways from that.
So, I'd suggest, we need solutions, and big ones, much sooner rather than
later. Will we muddle through anyway, probably. But it is needless suffering
with all the divorces, suicides, depressions, ill-temper, abuse, and so on
that flows out of all that.
The only good thing about it is inspiring some people, you, me, and others
to try to help in some way. And, yes, we tend to help in ways that accord
with our feelings, because, ultimately, all reason is based on emotions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error
But, we can at least try to be clear about what our feelings are as we
reason about them. As Albert Einstein said:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet
not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human
aspirations."
Will your plan work? I don't know. But, I'm glad you are working on it. It's
a good thing that you're trying to help others, whether we agree or not on a
specific plan.
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/24/10 9:15 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> > Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> >> That is probably going to result in all sorts of huge problems. Already,
> >> many US families have burned through all their assets and unemployment
> >> benefits. There is a huge looming crisis, and the drumbeat is always, jobs,
> >> jobs, jobs. But, what if the jobs are just not coming back? Even with wage
> >> subsidies?
> >
> > Trust me on this, the SAME jobs wouldn't, but ENOUGH would
>
> Thanks for your other comments and clarifications.
>
> I could comment on some of your other new points, but I think here we have
> the fundamental assumption I am disagreeing with, and which you, as well as
> an endless parade of mainstream economists, have no evidence for. :-)
- one that I don't have the time or space to bring out in detail, and
which I am beginning to suspect you wouldn't take on board even if I
did.
>
> In fact, given the US GDP grew 40% in the past decade with no net new jobs,
> all the evidence points towards that assumption being wrong. :-)
cholera with leeches you don't get a cure, that means there is no cure
for cholera. How does all that history of NOT using these policies
show that they wouldn't work?
>
> If we really care about the plight of today's disadvantaged, including the
> downwardly mobile middle class, why not a basic income?
.
.
.
> Offshoring is a red herring in the sense that what is happening in the USA
> is starting to happen in even China. Example:
> http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
> "In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to
> control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen."
any given region, just as automation is. As it's the quicker acting of
the two (under current conditions), it's not surprising that the
overall pattern is a wave of offshoring moving further away, followed
by automation. This - the set of avenues downsizing can take - is
orthogonal to what drives the downsizing. That, of course, is why we
can leave it out when we deal with that; it is irrelevant to THAT, but
not to other matters. The loose coupling is that, if the economic
activity itself has moved elsewhere, there are no resources left to
direct into channels that give people jobs (or non-job support,
or...). It sets a bound on the range of possibilities, so that bound
should be kept from closing in.
>
> I think you still emphasize optimizing "economic efficiency" with some model
> of producing the most stuff for the least work while de-emphazizing
> "economic efficiency" from the stand point of ensuring everyone has what
> they need as well as a lot of what they want including good work and spare
> time and family time and time for civic duties.
.
.
.
> bit of lower costs for the emotional/security/empowerment/aesthetic value of
> making something yourself or doing it with friends?
The wrong results come from not using the correct variables, and what
you suggest is continuing using the wrong ones but then trying to make
an adjustment afterwards, rather like getting planetary positions the
Ptolemaic way by adding epicycles to a wrong theory instead of using a
correct theory.
Once the right costs are being used, so the externalities aren't there
any more, things come right without any ad hoc fiddling of the
results. If you want to adjust for aesthetics, factor that into the
costs, don't fudge the answers.
>
> So, focusing on maximizing goods output, even in the near term, misses this
> broader social point that E.F. Schumacher was making. You mention the issue
> of economic "Casualties", but economic casualties exist all around us right
> now. Such causalities include the kid bored or frustrated in school (despite
> US$20K a year being spent on him or her in NYS each year through taxes), the
> researcher who can't work on what he or she wants to that might really make
> a difference, the fast food industry that destroys people's health, the
> health care industry that only makes big profits from keeping people sick
> and on a treadmill of endless treatments, the writer, musician, or inventor
> wanting to build on existing things but who is shut down by copyrights and
> patents, and so on. These are all economic casualties, from a certain point
> of view.
casualties?
>
> And, on top of that, we *already* have millions of people in the USA out of
> work who actually want to do productive stuff but can't figure out a way to
> do that in today's ideology and are suffering in all sorts of ways from that.
>
> So, I'd suggest, we need solutions, and big ones, much sooner rather than
> later. Will we muddle through anyway, probably. But it is needless suffering
> with all the divorces, suicides, depressions, ill-temper, abuse, and so on
> that flows out of all that.
>
> The only good thing about it is inspiring some people, you, me, and others
> to try to help in some way. And, yes, we tend to help in ways that accord
> with our feelings, because, ultimately, all reason is based on emotions.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error
>
> But, we can at least try to be clear about what our feelings are as we
> reason about them.
that right; we should not warp the process to allow for feelings,
since if they matter at all they should already be part of the
material the process works ON and allowed for that way. They are no
excuse for fudging.
As Albert Einstein said:
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
> "One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet
> not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human
> aspirations."
>
> Will your plan work? I don't know. But, I'm glad you are working on it. It's
> a good thing that you're trying to help others, whether we agree or not on a
> specific plan.
you have been told about - most particularly the original one, that
simply trying to set a Basic Income at survival levels is a really
harmful thing. P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>> On 10/24/10 9:15 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
>>> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>>>> That is probably going to result in all sorts of huge problems. Already,
>>>> many US families have burned through all their assets and unemployment
>>>> benefits. There is a huge looming crisis, and the drumbeat is always, jobs,
>>>> jobs, jobs. But, what if the jobs are just not coming back? Even with wage
>>>> subsidies?
>>>
>>> Trust me on this, the SAME jobs wouldn't, but ENOUGH would
>>
>> Thanks for your other comments and clarifications.
>>
>> I could comment on some of your other new points, but I think here we have
>> the fundamental assumption I am disagreeing with, and which you, as well as
>> an endless parade of mainstream economists, have no evidence for. :-)
>
> Are you doing this on purpose? That's NOT an assumption, it's a RESULT
> - one that I don't have the time or space to bring out in detail, and
> which I am beginning to suspect you wouldn't take on board even if I
> did.
If it is a result, can you explain why it is a result and not an assumption
(or just the obvious implication of other assumptions)? I don't see how we
can have a discussion about the fundamentals of economics when you just
handwave or point to sources that don't directly and clearly support your
bigger points (like saying a basic income can't work).
You're saying lots of jobs are about to be created if we followed your
economic suggestion about income subsidies? Where? Can you give a single
example of much lasting significance? Sure, a few million green jobs may be
created for a short time like in the USA to insulate homes or put up wind
turbines while other jobs disappear (like oil importation). Even obvious
things like repairing US infrastructure that has been neglected for decades
may make some millions of jobs for a short time, but that's it.
Where are the thirty million *net* new jobs going to come from in the USA
over the next decade to make up for the missing jobs that would return the
USA to the level of employment we had in the USA in 2000 (adjusting for
population growth)? Do you see any industry (manufacturing or service) in
the USA (or any other industrialized country) that needs thirty million new
jobs in a paid capacity (other than if the economy is substantially
underdeveloped by US standards like in China)? And an industry where it
would not be easier and cheaper at this point to rely instead on robotics
and other automation, redesign, or voluntary social networks?
If you do, you have a great investment opportunity, I guess. :-)
>> In fact, given the US GDP grew 40% in the past decade with no net new jobs,
>> all the evidence points towards that assumption being wrong. :-)
>
> That's as silly as saying that because every time you try curing
> cholera with leeches you don't get a cure, that means there is no cure
> for cholera. How does all that history of NOT using these policies
> show that they wouldn't work?
Well, I feel it's more like saying that maybe children would not be dying of
cholera in Haiti right now if the country had not been interfered with so
much by Western economic leeches in the first place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Haiti
"Haiti cholera deaths slow, but spread still feared"
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69L21520101025
"The rate of deaths in Haiti's cholera epidemic slowed on Monday as a
multinational medical operation scaled up to limit the spread of an outbreak
that has killed 259 people in the earthquake-hit country."
Let's do the math on unemployment, assuming fixed demand. (Or explain why
otherwise demand is infinite, which I'm sure you might, but I'm suggesting
we've reached saturation and the law of diminishing and negative returns on
a lot of stuff, as have others. :-)
"The Culture of Affluence: Psychological Costs of Material Wealth"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/
"Researchers Say Happiness Costs $75K"
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/09/07/1519221/Researchers-Say-Happiness-Costs-75k
""Does happiness rise with income? In one of the more scientific attempts to
answer that question, researchers from Princeton have put a price on
happiness. It's about $75,000 in income a year. They found that not having
enough money definitely causes emotional pain and unhappiness. But, after
reaching an income of about $75,000 per year, money can't buy happiness"
Now, $75K is about 50% much more than the median US household. One might
expect it could be lower if there was more social infrastructure, too, or in
the USA, universal health care and improved efforts at disease prevention by
improving general nutrition and having less work stress. So, I'd suggest, if
the entire society improve, that figure would not be much more than the
current US median income.
So, I'm going to say that, ignoring some people in the USA that are really
poor (20%?), that based on both those research studies, the current level of
affluence is good enough for most people to be happy, and that many wealthy
people have overshot that level into the area of even negative returns on
happiness by financial obesity (the same way physical obesity is causing
great human suffering in the USA too).
At 40% per decade continued productivity growth in the USA (another
assumption, but just based on projecting the past few decades forward
another decade), at fixed demand, in a decade, we will see about 50%
unemployment in the USA by 2020. This rise in productivity is everything
from learning through the internet to products that are easier to clean to
vitamin D and whole foods preventing much disease. In another decade at that
growth rate, we could see about 75% unemployment by 2030. In a third decade,
we will see essentially total unemployment by 2040. That's not implausible
since in thirty years we'll have robots and AIs that can do most human task
better than people (including farming), and 3D printers will probably be
able to print almost anything you want around the house.
A related historical item from around 1990:
"The Overworked American"
http://users.ipfw.edu/ruflethe/american.html
Granted, no doubt demand will increase some, as at least 20% of the USA is
very poor and suffering. But are we going to otherwise see a US GDP in three
decades that is producing 150% more or so goods and services for pay? What
would that do to the environment (unless there was total recycling and
pollution controls)? And if there was pollution controls and total
recycling, then what about all the lost jobs in sick care and mining?
Now, sure, you might disagree with this of total unemployment (for work as
we know it) in 30 years (or whenever). But you'd have to argue for these
sorts of points, either all three of the first or at least the last:
* demand for paid-of stuff and paid-for services is infinitely unlimited;
* robotics and AI will never be as good as most people at most things and
home-based 3D printing won't replace entire industries including
manufacturing, shipping, and retail sales;
* wealth isn't getting concentrated to those who control automated industry;
* war (especially global nuclear war) and other government makework projects
(endless schooling, the war on terrorism and the different, etc.) will
destroy all our surplus.
The fourth point is probably your best bet, even if it is sad that is the
case that it might be true. We may well blow ourselves up with the tools of
abundance.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
>> If we really care about the plight of today's disadvantaged, including the
>> downwardly mobile middle class, why not a basic income?
>
> BECAUSE SOME OF THEM WOULD BE AMONG THE CASUALTIES I MENTIONED!
Well, the lots of upper case suggests you are getting upset about these
points I am making. I don't mean to distress you, but I think we are facing
serious socioeconomic change related to technological change and we need to
face the implications of a lot of trends.
And, as I pointed out, they are already casualties from business as usual:
"Amid Lack of Jobs, Suicide Hot Line Calls Surge"
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/suicide-hot-line-calls-surge-as-joblessness-tightens-grip/19543254
"Side Effect of the Recession: An Increase in Child Abuse"
http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/04/side-effect-of-the-recession-an-increase-in-child-abuse/
"Six Million in the US With no Income but Food Stamps"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16853
"The figures reveal the vast scale of human suffering in the US as the new
decade begins and puts the lie to talk of an economic �recovery.� The 6
million people in households reporting no income�which includes 1.2 million
children�is equivalent to the entire population of Indiana or Massachusetts,
or the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston."
"Tent Cities spring up around New York"
http://economycollapse.blogspot.com/2010/02/tent-cities-spring-up-around-new-york.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/movies/18kids.html
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
"A shocking chronicle of institutional dysfunction, �The War on Kids� likens
our public school system to prison and its disciplinary methods to fascism.
At least now you know why little Johnny won�t get out of bed in the morning.
Arranged in sections that range from merely interesting to downright
horrifying, this provocative documentary suggests a system regulated by fear
and motivated by the desire to control. Tracing the evolution and
application of zero-tolerance policies on drugs and violence, the director,
Cevin Soling, amasses overwhelming evidence of institutional overreaction.
When an 8-year-old can be suspended for pointing a chicken finger and saying
�Pow,� we know that common sense has officially left the building."
(Cradle-to-grave endless schooling is part of a makework program...)
Etc.
So, now we are just talking about trading off casualties with a basic income
vs. business as usual and massive unemployment and pointless makework and
separating parents for children and harmful schools. Like any major social
change, some people may benefit more for a time than others. And yes, that
could be, in theory problematical. But as I point out elsewhere, between
social security and public school, a huge portion (30% to 40%?) of the US
population already has the equivalent of a basic income spent on them.
>> Offshoring is a red herring in the sense that what is happening in the USA
>> is starting to happen in even China. Example:
>> http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
>> "In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to
>> control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen."
>
> Actually, it's not a red herring, it's one leakage area for jobs in
> any given region, just as automation is. As it's the quicker acting of
> the two (under current conditions), it's not surprising that the
> overall pattern is a wave of offshoring moving further away, followed
> by automation. This - the set of avenues downsizing can take - is
> orthogonal to what drives the downsizing. That, of course, is why we
> can leave it out when we deal with that; it is irrelevant to THAT, but
> not to other matters. The loose coupling is that, if the economic
> activity itself has moved elsewhere, there are no resources left to
> direct into channels that give people jobs (or non-job support,
> or...). It sets a bound on the range of possibilities, so that bound
> should be kept from closing in.
Can we get this straight -- is your approach emphasizing getting people
"jobs" through some sort of economic policy intervention?
Does it talk about how we could have a society where "work" as we know it
(compulsory labor for a boss to survive economically either in school or at
jobs) was not a big part of most people's lives?
>> I think you still emphasize optimizing "economic efficiency" with some model
>> of producing the most stuff for the least work while de-emphazizing
>> "economic efficiency" from the stand point of ensuring everyone has what
>> they need as well as a lot of what they want including good work and spare
>> time and family time and time for civic duties.
>
> I did no such thing.
Is it not implicit in a "work-based" approach to dealing with productivity
increases?
As with my question above, how does your proposal relate to people having
more free time or more self-determination?
>> Isn't one point of "open manufacturing" to trade-off (if necessary) a little
>> bit of lower costs for the emotional/security/empowerment/aesthetic value of
>> making something yourself or doing it with friends?
>
> No. It is to understand what the costs actually ARE, and use THOSE.
> The wrong results come from not using the correct variables, and what
> you suggest is continuing using the wrong ones but then trying to make
> an adjustment afterwards, rather like getting planetary positions the
> Ptolemaic way by adding epicycles to a wrong theory instead of using a
> correct theory.
>
> Once the right costs are being used, so the externalities aren't there
> any more, things come right without any ad hoc fiddling of the
> results. If you want to adjust for aesthetics, factor that into the
> costs, don't fudge the answers.
I'll certainly agree that better pricing allows the market to work better.
But, because of externalities, you then need taxes, subsidies, regulation,
and investment by the state to compensate for externalities, which means
democratic resource-based planning. And, sure, wage subsidies can relate to
that.
But it's not clear to me that all things can easily be adjusted for that
way, whether aesthetics or workplace environments.
>> So, focusing on maximizing goods output, even in the near term, misses this
>> broader social point that E.F. Schumacher was making. You mention the issue
>> of economic "Casualties", but economic casualties exist all around us right
>> now. Such causalities include the kid bored or frustrated in school (despite
>> US$20K a year being spent on him or her in NYS each year through taxes), the
>> researcher who can't work on what he or she wants to that might really make
>> a difference, the fast food industry that destroys people's health, the
>> health care industry that only makes big profits from keeping people sick
>> and on a treadmill of endless treatments, the writer, musician, or inventor
>> wanting to build on existing things but who is shut down by copyrights and
>> patents, and so on. These are all economic casualties, from a certain point
>> of view.
>
> And that justifies doing things wrong and making even more and worse
> casualties?
I remain unconvinced of your suggestion that a basic income can't work
technically, mostly because of lack of evidence or even an outline of the
basic principles on which you base that conclusion.
I have commented on this mostly in relation to your original suggestion that
a basic income can't work based on thinking you've done on it.
I'm willing to entertain the notion that a basic income may have problems.
Can you express simply and directly what your argument against it is?
I don think the basic income has problems -- but they are different than it
won't work. First off, a basic income economy is still built in part of
"work" which is problematical, both from moral issues of compulsion and also
from issues of automation and better design (by problematical I don't mean
evil, I just mean, problematical). In the long term, as people feel more
confident in their basic support, they will probably give away more and more
information and material stuff and services as the gift economy, and they
will also have time to put in place more local production system (home 3D
printing and solar panels etc.) and at that point the mainstream economy may
falter very much, and any taxation scheme etc. linked to a basic income
might have serious problems (so, a basic income is probably more a step to
different post-scarcity future that moves beyond accounting for the basics
of life because they are so cheap, not an end point). But, I doubt any of
those points are the arguments most economist would use against a basic,
because they would not accept the reality of a primarily gift economy in the
first place, or the moral problems of undemocratic workplaces, or the rise
of robotics displacing paid labor, or that soon the basics of a good life
will be too cheap to matter. :-)
I may also just have to accept (as I mentioned here a year or so ago) that
we will never see a basic income, for reasons implicit in what you are
arguing -- that it is too big a jump conceptually from our current system.
So, we may just see the current system wither away from its own internal
contradictions while we see the rise of home-based 3D printing, the
continued spread of free and open source software, more-and-more bloggers
partaking in a gift economy even when they are arguing for a return to
conservative fundamentalism and the gold standard, and so on, along with
improving local economies and, eventually, improved democratic
resource-based planning with a more sensible set of taxes, subsidies,
regulations, and investments. We're going to get something very different
real soon now, but what it is is unclear (hopefully not global nuclear war
or global biotech plagues to make the facts of scarcity fit the current
economic theories).
Related:
"Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all
And that connects with the original point of all this thread on book
"piracy" increasing. Publishers are on the wrong side of a huge social trend
connected to increasing technological capabilities towards abundance. But,
they continue to try to use police powers to enforce an
artificial-scarcity-based business model.
>> And, on top of that, we *already* have millions of people in the USA out of
>> work who actually want to do productive stuff but can't figure out a way to
>> do that in today's ideology and are suffering in all sorts of ways from that.
>>
>> So, I'd suggest, we need solutions, and big ones, much sooner rather than
>> later. Will we muddle through anyway, probably. But it is needless suffering
>> with all the divorces, suicides, depressions, ill-temper, abuse, and so on
>> that flows out of all that.
>>
>> The only good thing about it is inspiring some people, you, me, and others
>> to try to help in some way. And, yes, we tend to help in ways that accord
>> with our feelings, because, ultimately, all reason is based on emotions.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error
>>
>> But, we can at least try to be clear about what our feelings are as we
>> reason about them.
>
> OR, we can leave our feelings out of the logical process itself and do
> that right; we should not warp the process to allow for feelings,
> since if they matter at all they should already be part of the
> material the process works ON and allowed for that way. They are no
> excuse for fudging.
I think you are missing my point here (below with Einstein). It is only our
feelings that cause us to interpret facts and act on them in certain ways.
It is only our feelings that cause us to decide how to weight different
variables in our optimization processes (or make various purchasing choices
related to our sense of identity or preferences about comfort and so on).
Seriously, why not live at a 1950s material standard of living but with only
10% of adults needing to labor a bit now and then? Ultimately, we make our
material choices based on our feelings. Of course, feelings can be
manipulated in all sorts of ways...
"Advertising is Brain Damage"
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Advertising_is_Brain_Damage.html
"As global warming deepens, and a somber, new reality sinks in, people are
starting to ask some uncomfortable questions: Why, in this ecological age of
ours, do we need a $500-billion industry telling us thousands of times each
day to consume more? In the affluent West (where 80 percent of the global ad
dollars are spent), don't we already consume enough? "
But, what would that mean for jobs if we consumed less? :-)
As I suggest here:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
"Also, many current industries that employ large numbers of people (ranging
from the health insurance industry, the compulsory schooling industry, the
defense industry, the fossil fuel industry, conventional agriculture
industry, the software industry, the newspaper and media industries, and
some consumer products industries) are coming under pressure from various
movements from both the left and the right of the political spectrum in ways
that might reduce the need for much paid work in various ways. Such changes
might either directly eliminate jobs or, by increasing jobs temporarily
eliminate subsequent problems in other areas and the jobs that go with them
(as reflected in projections of overall cost savings by such transitions);
for example building new wind farms instead of new coal plants might reduce
medical expenses from asthma or from mercury poisoning. A single-payer
health care movement, a homeschooling and alternative education movement, a
global peace movement, a renewable energy movement, an organic agriculture
movement, a free software movement, a peer-to-peer movement, a small
government movement, an environmental movement, and a voluntary simplicity
movement, taken together as a global mindshift[6] of the collective
imagination[7], have the potential to eliminate the need for many millions
of paid jobs in the USA while providing enormous direct and indirect cost
savings. This would make the unemployment situation much worse than it
currently is, while paradoxically possibly improving our society and
lowering taxes. Many of the current justifications for continuing social
policies that may have problematical effects on the health of society, pose
global security risks, or may waste prosperity in various ways is that they
create vast numbers of paid jobs as a form of make-work."
>> As Albert Einstein said:
>> http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
>> "One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet
>> not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human
>> aspirations."
>>
>> Will your plan work? I don't know. But, I'm glad you are working on it. It's
>> a good thing that you're trying to help others, whether we agree or not on a
>> specific plan.
>
> And I am NOT glad you are willing, even eager, to reject the results
> you have been told about - most particularly the original one, that
> simply trying to set a Basic Income at survival levels is a really
> harmful thing. P.M.Lawrence.
Except, you have provided little justification for this (at least in this
discussion) beyond pointing to some other links that, from cursory
inspection, do not discuss this point. Can you point specifically to an
analysis that says a basic income will not work? Especially given that I
have linked to a source that demonstrates a model where it does work? As
well as piles of research link like at BIEN discussing the feasibilty of
this and Nobel prize winners in economics that endorse the idea?
When I raised that point things then shifted to an argument that was closer
to saying a basic income was not politically viable right now, which is a
different argument from economically viable. I know you've made reference to
some technical points, and it being hard to explain easily, but that really
isn't proof much more than saying their is proof on a blackboard in an
office somewhere. There may well be a proof, but I don't see it yet (other
than, as I say above, there are contradictions even within a basic income
that will make it mostly a stepping stone to a post-scarcity society).
Politically though, I'd certainly agree that it would take a huge effort to
shift public opinion towards a basic income, because people have listened
for so long to mainstream economists and their dogma and suggestion there
are no other moral alternatives, etc.
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
Paul D. Fernhout
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
>> >
>> > Not that endorsement of anything by famous economists really proves
>> > anything, but when they go against the mainstream politics of economics it
>> > is worth thinking about: "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully
>> > support a basic income include Herbert Simon[30], Friedrich Hayek[31][32],
>> > James Meade, Robert Solow[33], and Milton Friedman[34]."
>
> As with my work's paralleling that of Professor Kim Swales of the
> University of Strathclyde and his colleagues (in the UK; see
> http://www.faxfn.org/feedback/03_jobs/jobs_tax.htm#23feb98a), and of
> Nobel winner Professor Edmund S. Phelps, McVickar Professor of
> Political Economy at Columbia University (in the USA; see
> http://www.columbia.edu/~esp2/taxcomm.pdf).
To continue to follow up your points, from that last link (pdf file):
"The Number One social problem in the country is the conditions among
the disadvantaged part of the labor force - not just the poverty and the
high unemployment (which magnifies the poverty) but also their outlook
on life: the feeling of exclusion that the deprivation and idleness tend
to create, especially among the young, and the feeling of powerlessness
that results from dependency on family, charity and the welfare system.
This dispiriting culture of poverty is apt to lead in turn to poor
employee morale - low job attachment and problematic job performance, to
drug abuse, to drug trade, and to a criminal element, all of which make
the underlying conditions still worse. This is a problem for the rest of
society as well as for the disadvantaged themselves.
In my opinion, this problem is a direct outgrowth of the meager wage
rates available to disadvantaged workers. (The decline of values, such
as self-reliance and respectability are a result, not a cause.) Low
wages do not in themselves generate social pathologies, it is true. But
damage results when the wages of disadvantaged workers are very low
relative to their nonwage resources - their private wealth (to the
extent they own assets) and, very important, their social wealth in the
form of benefits under the welfare system (under this or that
circumstance). Such relatively low wages undermine the worker's
incentive to get a job or stay in the job or get a better one. What the
person can do to improve his or her situation, short of Herculean
efforts and a lot of luck, will make only a small difference (though
some will do those things anyway, of course). If, therefore, we are to
establish economic self-support and integration of disadvantaged
workers, and thus restore a culture of self-reliance and achievement, we
will need a radical improvement in the rewards to their employment."
I'm certainly sympathetic to the point about the link between emotional
health and a feeling of capability and effectiveness and self-reliance
and achievement, which is a major reason a lot of people may be
interested in open manufacturing.
I also think there is a lot to be said for suggesting if people are
compelled to work for others for their daily vegetables, they should be
well-compensated (ignoring how that just accelerates the eventual
automation of most jobs to lower costs, which is inevitable at this
point, as long as we have capitalism).
With that said, if you look at hunter/gatherers, one can see why the
issue is other than proposed above:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other
group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original
affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the
people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters
are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition
of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his
insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times. ... 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."
So, it can't be absolute low levels of wealth.
At least in the USA, aspects have to be the relative level of wealth
(envy?) as well as real social exclusion as well as lots of other
cultural issues (racism, the legacy of slavery, etc.).
And there are other issues -- including vitamin D deficiency in cities
among dislocated dark skinned populations brought to environments they
have not had time -- hundreds of generations -- to adapt to, and not
enough medical research and care to intervene appropriately in response
to that situation (like with inexpensive vitamin D supplements)? Example:
"Autism and the Black Community: A Tragic Injustice"
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/the-black-community.shtml
Vitamin D deficiency is probably causing the spike in autism among
recent Somali immigrants to norther climates in the UK and the USA too.
But I also think a focus on more wages also ignores problems of the
workplace itself, like Bob Black talked about here in "The Abolition of
Work"
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"We are so close to the world of work that we can't see what it does to us."
So, there are a lot more factors than wages. Still, it's true that
better wages might improve things. But, as I mention, if companies pay
them, they will only accelerate the spiral of increasing unemployment. I
guess if taxes pay them as subsidies, then there is no incentive for
layoffs, except that there remain ongoing trends towards automation,
better design, and voluntary social networks anyway, so the subsidies
will only grow and grow.
And then, I could ask, why allow companies to have control over so much
of people's lives? Why privilege business owners to be able to tell
people what to do for most of their core waking hours? Is there still in
play some notion of "idleness" leading to mischief? But, then why are
lowly paid graduate students so busy? Or why are parents so busy? Or why
are volunteers so busy?
Could aspects of this also relate to things like the urban environment?
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
Why are our built environments so impoverished of free things to do?
Privatization?
And then does addictive behavior with drugs result from impoverished
environments, like in this 1970s study with rats?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
People have suggested this recession/depression is very different than
in the 1930s because the internet provides endless free (or very cheap)
entertainment. It also provides endless volunteer opportunities, too.
So, that's one good thing at least. Is the internet gift economy is
helping a lot of people who might otherwise be turning to drugs?
Also, another aspect of this, in relation to the point Edmund S. Phelps
raises about dependency is a loss of thankfulness. We are all dependent
on each other. But we need to learn to be thankful for that:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
But the USA (don't know about, say, Australia) does not seem to be a
culture that emphasizes prayers of thankfulness as much as prayers of
demand. It's not "Thanks for the daily vegetables, great mystery" but
"God bless me with a pony and a basic income". :-)
Anyway, so I think there are many levels beyond the issue of wages, even
if, I agree there is a big wage problem by conventional standards. So
does thing guy, Richard Wolff:
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
But we all disagree on the solutions (Wolff want worker-ownership, you
suggest income subsidies leading to Distributism -- which, again, I can
see some merit in), I've suggested a mix of four initiatives (basic
income, resource-based planning, a gift economy, and localism) all
leading to a post-scarcity society. Ultimately, they all might lead the
same place, given continually rising productivity.
Paul D. Fernhout
> At 40% per decade continued productivity growth in the USA (another
> assumption, but just based on projecting the past few decades
> forward another decade), at fixed demand, in a decade, we will see
> about 50% unemployment in the USA by 2020. This rise in productivity
> is everything from learning through the internet to products that are
> easier to clean to vitamin D and whole foods preventing much disease.
> In another decade at that growth rate, we could see about 75%
> unemployment by 2030. In a third decade, we will see essentially
> total unemployment by 2040. That's not implausible since in thirty
> years we'll have robots and AIs that can do most human task
> better than people (including farming), and 3D printers will probably
> be able to print almost anything you want around the house.
There is a mathematical error there (ignoring any conceptual arguments
like demand will double or productivity will stop improving). 40% GDP
growth can be seen as about 33% (one third) decrease in employment
relative to the starting numbers (not 40% or the 50% I was using for
round numbers). Of course, all of this is approximate, so the exact
numbers don't matter, as I am focusing on the trends. But I might as
well be a bit closer in my guess.
Starting from what is recognized as 20% unemployment in the USA
(official statistics are 10%) to help bring the numbers closer to my
original estimate :-) and taking "100%" to be the current population of
people deemed eligible for or wanting good jobs right now (which is only
about half the US population to begin with), a 40% reduction of 80%
currently employed would be about (in round numbers) a 30% reduction.
So, that would result in 50% unemployed by 2020 (with fixed demand).
But, then we would have 40% of the 50% remaining workers (compared to
the current employment pool) put out of work by rising productivity the
next decade, or 20% additional loss to get 70% unemployed by 2030 (not
75%). And then we'd lose 40% of the remaining 30% the next decade, or
about 10%, to get about 80% unemployment by 2040, and then on to 90%
unemployment by 2050. So, by 2050, only 10% of the current sort of job
pool will be employed, but that is about half the current population, so
about 5% of the entire US population would be doing all the work
currently done.
So, as a table:
Possible US Unemployment figures by decade relative to current,
assuming fixed demand & continual productivity growth of 33% per decade
==========
Year Unemployment rate
2010 20%
2020 50%
2030 70%
2040 80%
2050 90%
==========
Again, this assumes fixed demand. However, the same result would occur
under a few other scenarios:
* lots of imports of goods and services from other countries as those
countries continue to grow their economies especially at low currency
exchange rates like China did;
* a discontinuous shift in what robotics, AI, and other automation can
do (especially related to natural language processing, dexterous
manipulation using vision, and on demand nanotech-level 3D printing);
* a massive downshifting of the wealthier population's lifestyle coupled
with a rationalization of the economy to be less competititive and have
less other waste (such as by transitioning to green energy and green
manufacturing and less bureaucracy and less prisons, less war, and less
formal schooling as more was learned via the internet), which could more
than balance any increase in demand for goods and services for the
currently desperately poor 20% or so of the population in the USA.
I got the calculation better in this chart I put here (towards the end
of this section) even as what I am calling productivity growth is really
more a decrease in employment for 40% productivity growth (and I
corrected that here):
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Recent_employment_trends_in_the_USA
"To consider how unemployment numbers might look in the USA under
different jobless recovery scenarios by the end of the 2010-2019 decade,
consider the following very simplistic chart based on the above figures
of [40%] productivity growth [or the equivalent of about a 33%
employment decrease for fixed demand] for the previous decade,
considered under the different scenarios of demand per capita, starting
from 10% unemployment. This assumes that if there was no increase in
demand, the number of jobs would eventually shrink by the amount of
productivity increase. This chart does not consider many variables,
including government intervention, but it roughly outlines the overall
concerns related to economic collapse if the USA had another decade like
the 2000-2009 one of productivity growth, but if people stunned by the
downturn at the end of the decade (or alternatively pursuing a new
ecological consciousness) decided not to increase their consumption by
one third over the next decade.
==========================================================
Possible unemployment figures by 2020 relative to changes in demand
........................33% decrease..no change....33% increase
0% productivity growth....43%............10%............0%
33% productivity growth...76%............43%...........10%
==========================================================
If growth in demand happened, this 33% consumption increase could
come from people buying bigger houses, bigger cars, and ever more
supersized meals. Or it could come from people buying substantially
higher quality products that are far more difficult to produce. Or it
could come from people buying new products they don't currently buy,
while still buying all the old ones. That is the scenario that most
mainstream economists are hoping for to make the numbers work out,
continually rising demand with endless growth. However, a general push
for increased consumer spending in the USA, especially at the high
income end, is at odds with new slogans like "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"
being popularized related to minimizing the waste hierarchy. Other
alternatives to increase societal consumption through broader social
spending (like on positive public infrastructure, research, and the
arts, or, alternatively, on negative things like wars and prisons) are
outlined in sections below, as are methods like a basic income to shift
new consumption towards those in poverty due to income inequality in the
United States, given that otherwise much of the GDP increase would
likely go to those who already have passed diminishing returns for
increased consumption.[34]
While a very cartoonish view of the situation, this simple chart
illustrates why predictions about increased efficiency and predictions
about consumer demand are so intertwined in predicting how long a
jobless recovery would last or whether it would grow into a depression
or even some sort of social upheaval. Such upheavals are not
unprecedented; for example, the USA went through such a period during
the Great Depression, with the creation of a strong middle class in only
about a decade, according to Paul Krugman."
Anyway, that's my guesstimate about the possible socioeconomic trends in
the USA. :-) Of course, they can be prevented by endless makework like
more wars, more schooling, more prisons, more sickness, and more
bureaucracy. Or by even more advertising and faddism and waste. But, we
also might find better was to be intrinsically/mutually secure,
educated, just, healthy, and cooperative than those dysfunctional
approaches to those things, which would be a lot better. And we continue
to move towards a spiritual/cultural awakening where less is more and
economically where higher quality goods that can be requested (and made)
on-demand from commonly available designs, ideally with complete
recycling and zero emissions.
Open manufacturing is part of that movement to a better way. But this is
the economic context in terms of trends that surrounds the OM movement,
as I currently see it.
Will I probably be off? As Roy Amara and Ray Kurzweil both say, we tend
to underestimate the difficulties in the short term as well as
underestimate the long term consequences, due to an intuitive linear
view of things. So, the social order may well hold things together for
another decade in the USA in various ways. But in the long term,
certainly the next century, the trends I outline of continued
productivity growth combined with limited demand for human needs and
wants (of healthy humans, not financially obese ones) means the end of
our current economic paradigm. Still, I am suggesting that we may see
massive change even in the next decade with huge amounts of unemployment
as just current technology (especially robotics and better design) wind
their way through the current economic system.
Consider the chart here:
"Productivity change in the nonfarm business sector, 1947-2009" (annual)
http://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm
With annual compounding, at an eyeballed 2.5% annual increase, that is
about 28% per decade, or 30% in round numbers. We've seen that for fifty
years as productivity increases. With so much new technology related to
computing and material science and internet-based cooperation, why
should the future productivity increases be any less?
The big variable is "demand" and also widespread economic
rationalization (as Bob Black talks about in the Abolition of Work)
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
to eliminate the waste from massive resources devoted to guarding and
wasteful competition. Diversity and efficiency are generally good (if
sometimes at odds), and that is why people in the USA so often celebrate
competition as leading to diversity and efficiency. But one can have
cooperative efficient diversity, too. For example, consider 100 open
manufacturing projects each working on their own camera design but
trading information and new ideas, rather than 100 separate companies
designing cameras in secrecy and duplicating each others work and suing
each other for developing similar ideas. For another example, one can
have common standards, say, JavaScript or HTML, that people don't try to
sabotage for commercial gain and where people actively work to support
them and encourage free upgrades (rather than foot dragging by vendors
served by market fragmentation and confusion and proprietary lockins).
So, the very essence of open manufacturing may lead to profound
socioeconomic changes as we see both increased diversity and increased
efficiency (and so, increased productivity) even with a huge reduction
of total paid labor in our society (as work becomes play). However,
these trends will play out even without open manufacturing, since, like
the end of most agricultural employment, they are inherent in an
economic system that praises profit and where it is profitable on the
producer side to be more efficient in various ways (use less material,
use less energy, pollute less, use less labor) but it is also profitable
in free time and personal satisfaction on the consumer side to figure
out how to get by with less paid goods and services.
I can wonder if there is some kind of tipping point there, and if we
have already passed it? Or are passing it right now, where the economy,
as Bob Black suggests, "implodes".
http://www.google.com/#q=economy+implodes
Of course, massive government intervention may contain this implosion
for a while longer in a variety of ways. But ultimately, what is the
point? Just to keep us all working when everyone could have the same
stuff and services but "work" a lot less and have more time for friends
and family and hobbies? That's just a stupid paradigm rooted in the
cultural notion of a Protestant Work Ethic (that work is good, which it
can be true, as hard fun or self-satisfying accomplishment) weirdly
twisted with an erroneous motivational notion that no one will work
without financial incentives.
Now, I may be totally wrong. Economic predictions are fraught with
missed things. Demand may well increase by a factor of ten in some way
(but I don't see how the environment could stand it unless we had
advanced closed loop manufacturing, but advanced manufacturing requires
less people). Or we may have some more big wars (or even worse ones).
Anyway, my bigger suggestion is that this depression has different
dynamics than the 1930s depression, even though concentration of wealth
is a similar theme. In the 1930s, demand still had the potential for
significant growth. In the 21st century, living surrounded by hordes of
obese people often drowning in too much stuff while the planet groans,
"growth" through increased demand is not the answer to economic
happiness, sustainability, joy, health, or national security.
Space habitats may be part of the answer, but they'll probably be highly
automated. :-) On Earth, change is the answer. Real change. Deep change.
Not fake change. Ironically, from:
http://change.gov/
"The Transition has ended and the new administration [essentially mostly
the same old same old as the old administration] has begun..."
But, sadly, and to twist what Arthur C. Clarke said about technology and
magic, what we seem likely to get in the USA for the next decade is a
bunch of "Tea Party" people in charge who ride to political conventions
in magic flying beasts made out of a material that cost more than gold
during the American revolution, talk to each other across the country
and even the planet through magic crystals, and put up durable signs
using magic materials printed out by magic desktop factory genies, and
what they convene about and talk about and put signs up about is how
there is no magic and we need to return to 18th century scarcity-based
economics. This would be very funny if the magic they casually use in
denial of its existence wasn't so powerful.
A related story (spoilers in the article):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_of_Earthsea
"The undisciplined young man grows restless under the gentle, patient
tutelage of his master. Ogion finally gives him a choice: stay with him
or go to the renowned school for wizards, on the island of Roke. Though
he has grown to love the old man, the youngster is drawn irresistibly to
a life of doing, rather than being. At the school, Sparrowhawk masters
his craft with ease, but his pride and arrogance grow even faster than
his skill and, in his hubris, he attempts to summon a dead spirit - a
perilous spell which goes awry. An unknown creature appears and attacks
him, scarring his face."
The US Tea Party movement, even for being right about some things, seems
intent on summoning a historically dead spirit of scarcity economics? I
actually agree with most of these ten points, btw:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement#Tea_Party_agenda
Although sometimes because I think the government programs did not go
far enough. :-) But also sometimes because I agree with reducing waste
or focusing on different priorities. But, otherwise, as intended (to the
best of my guess at the regressive intent), it is a recipe for high
unemployment given our high and rising level of productivity in the face
of limited demand. The agenda assumes that government somehow is
preventing there being jobs (the common refrain of taxes killing jobs),
while ignoring structural unemployment which the government has combated
with makework, including endless defense contracting, and how most
shopkeepers are worried about lack of customers more than the presence
of taxes. So, IMHO, in a parallel with The Wizard of Earthsea, the young
and naive Tea Party is about to summon (as if they are not here already)
the beasts of wealth centralization, massive structural unemployment,
pervasive inequity, hunger, treatable sickness, and negative
externalities like pollution and war risk. Those "beasts" are about to
scar the face of US America (well, again, they are scarring it already),
because the Tea Partiers (and for that matter, the rest of Congress)
don't understand the power of the magic they are casually using in
ignorance of science, engineering, and, especially, in ignorance of
evolutionary theory as it relates to thousands of years of global
history and exponential and discontinuous changes.
Or, to echo Albert Einstein in the 1940s:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If
only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
Of course, watches are magic too, now. :-)
"20+ Geek Watches That Are Must Watch!"
http://open-tube.com/20-geek-watches-that-are-must-watch
"[Example:] 1.3 Mpx Unlocked Tri-Band Wrist Watch GSM Cell phone ($165
at Amazon) Comes with Camera, Video, MP3, MP4 player, Sound recorder and
more. 1.3-inch Color TFT LCD touch "
As well as DIY: :-)
"DIY watch from Australia"
http://wristfashion.com/2008/10/home-made-calculator-watch/
"David Jones, an Australian professional electronics design engineer has
created a scientific calculator watch that is assembled from off the
shelf parts. He calls it the μ Watch (Micro Watch) and it isn’t limited
to just being a calculator – It has a programming port, universal I/O
port and optional infrared remote interface which lets you connect it to
anything. According to him, it’s really a powerful general computing and
control platform so if you want a watch that controls the TV, plays
games or commands other user-designed devices, just add some software.
Jones has released his μ Watch source code under the GPL to encourage
third-party development, and he sells kits for those interested in
building one. He includes a complete schematic and detailed photos on
his website."
Another easier DIY example:
"Arduino wrist watch"
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/arduino_wrist_watch.html
We really are on a "Voyage From Yesteryear". Sad that James P. Hogan did
not live to see how it turns out over the crucial next decade or two.
From what he wrote about his book:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
"An Earth set well into the next century is going through one of its
periodical crises politically, and it looks as if this time they might
really press the button for the Big One. If it happens, the only chance
for our species to survive would be by preserving a sliver of itself
elsewhere...
In the meantime, Earth went through a dodgy period, but managed in
the end to muddle through. The fun begins when a generation ship housing
a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of
the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis
period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested
apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority,
with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial
institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and
ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience;
and if all else fails, armed military force to compel. But what happens
when these methods encounter a population that has never been
conditioned to respond?
The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties,
I received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in
an underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it,
the publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my
name there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the
expenses would be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western
currencies at that time). Then the story started surfacing in other
countries of Eastern Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic
reception. What they liked there, apparently, was the updated
"Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an oppressive regime when it's
got all the guns. And a couple of years later, they were all doing it!
So I claim the credit. Forget all the tales you hear about the
contradictions of Marxist economics, truth getting past the Iron Curtain
via satellites and the Internet, Reagan's Star Wars program, and so on.
In 1989, after communist rule and the Wall came tumbling down, the
annual European s.f. convention was held at Krakow in southern Poland,
and I was invited as one of the Western guests. On the way home, I spent
a few days in Warsaw and at last was able to meet the people who had
published that original magazine. "Well, fine," I told them. "Finally, I
can draw out all that money that you stashed away for me back in '85.
One of the remarked-too hastily--that "It was worth something when we
put it in the bank." (There had been two years of ruinous inflation
following the outgoing regime's policy of sabotaging everything in order
to be able to prove that the new ideas wouldn't work.) I said,
resignedly, "Okay. How much are we talking about?" The one with a
calculator tapped away for a few seconds, looked embarrassed, and
announced, "Eight dollars and forty-three cents." So after the U.S. had
spent trillions on its B-52s, Trident submarines, NSA, CIA, and the
rest--all of it."
A very well earned US$8.43, James, wherever/whenever you are now. :-)
And of course, assuming money "means" anything anymore or ever did. :-)
And even if Manuel De Landa's point on meshworks and hierarchies and
interfaces may be a missing piece of the puzzle... :-)
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
Interesting times... Interesting times...
Kevin Carson
<pdfer...@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> Starting from what is recognized as 20% unemployment in the USA (official
> statistics are 10%) to help bring the numbers closer to my original estimate
> :-) and taking "100%" to be the current population of people deemed eligible
> for or wanting good jobs right now (which is only about half the US
> population to begin with), a 40% reduction of 80% currently employed would
> be about (in round numbers) a 30% reduction. So, that would result in 50%
> unemployed by 2020 (with fixed demand).
Well, calling it 20% unemployment would create an apples-and-oranges
problem, since the present metrics are the same ones used to get 25%
unemployment at the depth of the Great Depression. If we changed it
from 10% to 20% now, we'd have to change the numbers then to have a
measure that was consistent over time.
As for the 50% unemployment in a decade, I think it would make more
sense to use work hours per capita rather than unemployment as a
metric. It seems to me quite likely that high unemployment would
create strong pressure for shorter work weeks where they were
technically feasible, as well as toward fewer wage-earners per
household on average. So I would expect the unemployment rate to
climb much more slowly, but for underemployment to become far more
prevalent. At the same time, people would (of necessity) be taking
advantage of new technological opportunities for shifting as much as
possible of their consumption needs outside the cash nexus. So I
don't think it will be as catastrophic as that.
Paul D. Fernhout
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:27 AM, Paul D. Fernhout
> <pdfer...@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>
>> Starting from what is recognized as 20% unemployment in the USA (official
>> statistics are 10%) to help bring the numbers closer to my original estimate
>> :-) and taking "100%" to be the current population of people deemed eligible
>> for or wanting good jobs right now (which is only about half the US
>> population to begin with), a 40% reduction of 80% currently employed would
>> be about (in round numbers) a 30% reduction. So, that would result in 50%
>> unemployed by 2020 (with fixed demand).
>
> Well, calling it 20% unemployment would create an apples-and-oranges
> problem, since the present metrics are the same ones used to get 25%
> unemployment at the depth of the Great Depression. If we changed it
> from 10% to 20% now, we'd have to change the numbers then to have a
> measure that was consistent over time.
I guess so. :-) But GDP growth is GDP growth. So, I'm just basing it on
the notion of fixed demand and thinking about the consequences of
continued productivity growth. So, at least for the metrics I'm using,
I'm not sure it matters?
> As for the 50% unemployment in a decade, I think it would make more
> sense to use work hours per capita rather than unemployment as a
> metric. It seems to me quite likely that high unemployment would
> create strong pressure for shorter work weeks where they were
> technically feasible, as well as toward fewer wage-earners per
> household on average. So I would expect the unemployment rate to
> climb much more slowly, but for underemployment to become far more
> prevalent. At the same time, people would (of necessity) be taking
> advantage of new technological opportunities for shifting as much as
> possible of their consumption needs outside the cash nexus. So I
> don't think it will be as catastrophic as that.
Yes, I agree you have a good point on reducing work hours. Certainly,
that has been more the case in Western Europe (who generally seem more
sensible than US Americans about a lot of things).
But, I'm not sure culturally that could happen in the USA. It increases
overhead to have more employees working less hours -- something few
companies would do unless there was a mandate that all companies do it.
And even then, with a mandate, what about small business or sole
proprietors or consultants?
France has had an issue with restricting working hours and it has been
problematical and people are arguing it is hurting France's
competitiveness and Frances economy relative to other countries (even
though, frankly, I think the criticism is probably in error in terms of
assuming that there would be more work, assuming, as I do, "saturated"
demand -- even though, sure, if France can do better than other
countries for a fixed pie, it might benefit).
Related, on Germany outcompeting the USA to sell to China:
"Why Germany Has It So Good -- and Why America Is Going Down the Drain"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26603.htm
On working time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
http://www.triplet.com/50-10_employment/50-20_workingtime.asp
"The standard French working week is 35 hours, having been reduced from
39 hours. The statutory provisions are set out in articles L.212-1 et
seq. of the French Employment Code. The 35-hour week came into effect,
on 1 January 2000, for businesses with more than 20 employees and on 1
January 2002, for businesses with 20 employees or less. This legislation
was consistently "watered down" in 2003: it is now possible for
companies to keep employees' working time up to 39 hours (or more) per
week, for a negotiable extra cost. Employees may not waive their rights
under the statutory provisions by contract. However, very senior
management executives within a company may be exempted from all of the
restrictions on working time, pursuant to article L.212-15-1 of the
Employment Code."
The "Midas Plague" satirized this in the 1950s where the poor were
forced to consume (living in mansions) and were not allowed to work
much, and the rich were allowed to live lives of quiet simplicity and
work long hours. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
Also, for shorter work weeks to work out well, and avoid a continuing
concentration of wealth to company owners/stockholders, it would require
hourly wages to rise to keep people's overall purchasing power stable.
But as there is more unemployment, worker's bargaining power decreases
which keeps wages down (or at least, keeps them from rising for
established positions and causes less to be offered net hires).
Related search and example result:
http://www.google.com/#q=declining+wages
"Flat Income And Declining Wages And Salaries Say All You Need To Know
About The [Checkmark] Recovery"
http://www.businessinsider.com/flat-income-and-declining-wages-and-salaries-say-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-checkbook-recovery-2010-8
We're already seeing this with declining wages and two-tiered union
programs (where new hires don't get the same retirement or health care
benefits or wages, etc. -- again, even in union shops). A recent example:
http://www.biztimes.com/daily/2010/9/7/harley-contract-would-create-two-tiered-labor-force
"Union employees at Harley-Davidson are getting their first look at the
Milwaukee company�s new labor contract proposal, which includes the
creation of a two-tiered workforce, severance payments and the hiring of
�casual� employees who will receive no benefits."
So, while your suggestion sounds sensible, and we'll probably see some
of it (certainly at least going maybe from 60 hour work weeks to 40 hour
ones for some people), I'm not sure how much that will be a solution.
People in the USA will just have a downward spiral of cuts (and when
they complain, there will be mass layoffs and rehires in new companies
or new divisions at lower wages). Companies will still burn out people
with long hours and bad working conditions and no vacation because what
are you going to do? Complain? You'll get fired and then really be
terribly worse off. We are seeing the death spiral of capitalism that
assumes workers can command reasonable wages for their labor. We've seen
more than thirty years of flat real wages. Now we're seeing a downward
spiral. There may be quirks -- like deflation holding down prices,
otherwise wages would be declining relative to inflation (given "sticky
wages" in the sense that people tend to revolt when their hourly wage
goes down, but just accept it if it stays the same even with high
inflation).
I also agree on your point about moving more consumption (as well as
local production) out of the mainstream economy (such as through reduce,
reuse, recycle, share, give, etc.).
But I think PM Lawrence is going in the right direction to try to look
at the details of what economic trends might mean. I can agree it would
be good to seem more about the specifics of winner/losers as these
various transitions happen, especially to look for tipping points or
"sweet spots" (especially, say, as people disengage from the formal
economy). And it would entail thinking through more of the details like
PM Lawrence is doing for wage subsidies etc.
Kevin Carson
> Also, for shorter work weeks to work out well, and avoid a continuing
> concentration of wealth to company owners/stockholders, it would require
> hourly wages to rise to keep people's overall purchasing power stable.
> But as there is more unemployment, worker's bargaining power decreases
> which keeps wages down (or at least, keeps them from rising for
> established positions and causes less to be offered net hires).
> We're already seeing this with declining wages and two-tiered union
> programs (where new hires don't get the same retirement or health care
> benefits or wages, etc. -- again, even in union shops). A recent example:
> http://www.biztimes.com/daily/2010/9/7/harley-contract-would-create-two-tiered-labor-force
> "Union employees at Harley-Davidson are getting their first look at the
> Milwaukee company’s new labor contract proposal, which includes the
> creation of a two-tiered workforce, severance payments and the hiring of
> “casual” employees who will receive no benefits."
>
> So, while your suggestion sounds sensible, and we'll probably see some
> of it (certainly at least going maybe from 60 hour work weeks to 40 hour
> ones for some people), I'm not sure how much that will be a solution.
> People in the USA will just have a downward spiral of cuts (and when
> they complain, there will be mass layoffs and rehires in new companies
> or new divisions at lower wages). Companies will still burn out people
> with long hours and bad working conditions and no vacation because what
> are you going to do? Complain? You'll get fired and then really be
> terribly worse off. We are seeing the death spiral of capitalism that
> assumes workers can command reasonable wages for their labor. We've seen
> more than thirty years of flat real wages. Now we're seeing a downward
> spiral.
I'm not saying reduced hours are the solution. I agree with you that
capitalism is entering a death spiral. I'm just saying that reduced
hours will be less catastrophic than having 30% or more of the
population with no source of income at all.
I see reduced hours and work-sharing less as a solution than as a way
to mitigate the severity of the catastrophe. It will simply help to
stabilize and equalize purchasing power for the shrinking range of
commodities that have to be purchased with official currency on the
cash nexus.
The solution will be the expanding possibilities for meeting our needs
outside the labor market.
The main thing that will interfere with the plutes and CEOs taking
advantage of the situation to further enrich themselves is the growing
difficulty of enforcing artificial property rights. The plutes will
fall victim to the increasing superfluity of most investment capital
and rapid deflation of the cost of means of production.
Eugen Leitl
> I guess so. :-) But GDP growth is GDP growth. So, I'm just basing it on
Given how gameable and gamed GDP is, it's not really a good metric for the
growth of the underlying economy.
> the notion of fixed demand and thinking about the consequences of
> continued productivity growth. So, at least for the metrics I'm using,
> I'm not sure it matters?
--
Paul D. Fernhout
> I'm not saying reduced hours are the solution. I agree with you that
> capitalism is entering a death spiral. I'm just saying that reduced
> hours will be less catastrophic than having 30% or more of the
> population with no source of income at all.
>
> I see reduced hours and work-sharing less as a solution than as a way
> to mitigate the severity of the catastrophe. It will simply help to
> stabilize and equalize purchasing power for the shrinking range of
> commodities that have to be purchased with official currency on the
> cash nexus.
Germany has managed it, but with government intervention, which is being
railed against in the USA. But, sure, I agree in general it makes sense,
especially for any kind of labor people don't intrinsically enjoy much.
> The solution will be the expanding possibilities for meeting our needs
> outside the labor market.
>
> The main thing that will interfere with the plutes and CEOs taking
> advantage of the situation to further enrich themselves is the growing
> difficulty of enforcing artificial property rights. The plutes will
> fall victim to the increasing superfluity of most investment capital
> and rapid deflation of the cost of means of production.
All good points.
Although we are currently seeing the increasing use of military robots
to enforce artificial scarcity...
So the "plutes" and their minions have a variety of options to strike back.
"Drone strike for the WikiLeaks founder?"
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/wikileaks_and_drone_strikes.html
Even if the human guards revolt,
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
there may be police robots
http://www.google.com/#q=police+robots
programmed with the three laws of plutocratics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
"1. A robot may not injure a [wealthy] human being or, through inaction,
allow a [wealthy] human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by [wealthy] human beings,
except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection
does not conflict with the First or Second Law."
As implicitly described here as the future of US American:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
All ironic of course, since with robots, you don't have to enforce rules
related to scarcity, which is what "wealth" is all about.
Kevin Carson
> Although we are currently seeing the increasing use of military robots
> to enforce artificial scarcity...
>
> So the "plutes" and their minions have a variety of options to strike back.
> "Drone strike for the WikiLeaks founder?"
>
> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/wikileaks_and_drone_strikes.html
>
> Even if the human guards revolt,
> http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
> there may be police robots
> http://www.google.com/#q=police+robots
> programmed with the three laws of plutocratics:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
> "1. A robot may not injure a [wealthy] human being or, through inaction,
> allow a [wealthy] human being to come to harm.
> 2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by [wealthy] human beings,
> except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
> 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection
> does not conflict with the First or Second Law."
I'm extremely skeptical of their ability to actually exercise such
capabilities effectively. Pentagon contractors and Pentagon
procurement officers are notorious for colluding to rig tests of
clunky, gold-plated turds to guarantee they perform with flying colors
on the testing grounds -- followed by endless fixing of bugs and cost
overruns. Testing of SDI anti-missile technologies is a good example.
The whole point is to make sure the stuff gets sold to the Pentagon,
and not worry about whether it works.
Not to mention that the surveillance bureaucracies and
counter-insurgency commands will be riddled with all the cognitive
biases, distortions of information flow, etc., that have traditionally
plagued military bureaucracy. And any attempts to take advantage of
the potential of network technology (e.g. 4GW) will be sabotaged by
the bureaucracies, which will see the new communications technology as
a way to increase the number of sign-offs before anything is approved.
And then there's the potential of counteraction by a lot of
pissed-off crackers, and the deployment of cheap "assassin's mace"
counter-measures.
Also, the potential for internal fractures and demoralization within
the ruling class, and attempts by some to cut a separate deal with the
opposition, etc., in the face of propaganda warfare by the forces of
freedom.
By way of analogy, as described by David Noble in Forces of
Production, CNC machine tools were originally developed for deskilling
mass-production workers, replacing most master machinists with
semi-skilled laborers, and shifting control upward to the white collar
hierarchies. The problem was, operating the CNC tools required all
sorts of tacit knowledge and willing cooperation on the part of the
unskilled workers, who could pretty effectively sabotage the operation
in all sorts of ways management never predicted.
And in general, hierarchies are very bad -- very, very bad -- and
predicting bugs and holes in their security until workers actually
point them out by monkey-wrenching them.
Paul D. Fernhout
They are probably getting better while the technologies are getting more
modular and standard and easier to use.
And soon there will be all kinds of pressures to continue the drone
evolution to fight the drones being targeted back at the USA for past
misdeeds:
"When Drones Come Home to Roost" By Michael Schwalbe, NCSU
http://www.counterpunch.org/schwalbe10272010.html
"The eventual equalization of technological capability will mean the use
of drones and robots to strike at targets in the United States. There
will be no need to hijack planes or plant car bombs. Drones, some as
small as a suitcase, will be launchable from offshore or just outside
U.S. borders. These killing machines will be nearly impossible to stop,
as is the case with the drones the U.S. now uses in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan. ...
Drone attacks often strike people in their homes, away from active
battle zones. Which is why these attacks have killed thousands of
innocent bystanders, mainly women and children. What better fuel for
revenge? As others have noted, for every alleged Taliban or al Qaeda
leader killed by a drone attack, ten recruits are created. ...
This retaliation, when it comes, will be justified as necessary,
given that Americans have chosen to wage war with killing machines
operated from their homeland. The person who flies a drone from a base
in the U.S. will be seen as a combatant, hence a legitimate target --
and not only while at work but at any time, preferably when most
vulnerable. Perhaps while standing next to you at your daughter�s soccer
game.
University-based researchers who devote their talents to inventing
new remote combat technologies -- like the shapeshifting ChemBot
developed at the University of Chicago -- will also become targets.
Technicians in a laboratory, students in a classroom, and anyone else
nearby will become collateral damage. War will come to campus in a way
it never has.
�Ironic� is too weak a word to describe the situation toward which
the inventors and deployers of remote combat technologies are taking us.
We will be told that we must use sophisticated machines to kill at a
distance to keep violence at bay, even as the inevitable diffusion of
this technology brings violence closer to home."
I actually might agree that "ironic" is too weak a word, but all the
appeals to finances, morality, and common sense have failed, leaving us
with humor as our last best hope. :-) As I explain here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
Drones are already patrolling the border in my home state, btw. What
does that mean? Where does the "border" end?
It could be really profitable for some people to use drones for
increasing prison populations somehow -- I'm not sure how, I'm sure
someone will think of something.
Two recent examples related to making money by private prisons by
tinkering with the laws or their application:
"NPR: Private Prison Industry Helped Draft AZ Immigration Law"
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/npr_private_prison_industry_helped_draft_az_immigr.php
"Judges in PA take bribes from private prisons"
http://www.mediaisland.org/en/judges-pa-take-bribes-private-prisons
"Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are said to have received
$2.6 million for ensuring that juvenile suspects were jailed in prisons
operated by the companies Pennsylvania Child Care and a sister company,
Western Pennsylvania Child Care. Some of the young people were jailed
over the objections of their probation officers. An estimated 5,000
juveniles have been sentenced by Ciavarella since the scheme started in
2002."
So, you must not also discount the implicit collusion of big government
with the profit motive...
There is a lot of money to be made locking up young people for things
like file sharing. Lots of money... Plus, it keeps them off the streets
as there are no jobs for them anyway. My related satire:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
Maybe such drones will be used like this to peak through open windows
and catch people smoking marijuana or doing other illegal things like
listening to copyrighted music (how does anyone "prove" they have a
right to listen to music, anyway)?
"Britain's Police Drone: Could It Stop Next Terror Plot?"
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4218776
"As if there weren't enough cameras trained on Britain's population,
police in Merseyside County are field-testing a flying drone equipped
with closed-circuit TV cameras. The 3-ft.-wide, German-built MD4-200
chopper has four whisper-quiet rotors and can fly autonomously at up to
15 mph using GPS way points. It can also be piloted from nearly 550
yards away with a handheld controller. The drone sends footage to the
pilot, via a pair of video eyeglasses, and to a police support vehicle
or a control room. Since its battery allows for just 20 minutes of
flight, the MD4-200 will be deployed for specific missions, as opposed
to ongoing patrols. As part of a task force charged with fighting
"antisocial behavior," its potential duties range from mundane
(monitoring traffic jams) to ominous (recording evidence to be used in
court)."
What is antisocial behavior in a scarcity-mindset world? Sharing?
"Stallman Crashes Talk, Fights 'War On Sharing'"
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/09/23/1253257/Stallman-Crashes-Talk-Fights-War-On-Sharing?from=rss
Sharing and cooperation used to be considered a fundamental aspect of a
healthy community...
Now sharing is evil and competition is celebrated...
Just in recent news (I could find the same thing about Bush no doubt):
"Obama Supports $675K File Sharing Verdict"
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/obama-supports-filesharing-verdict/
"Obama Weekly Address: Education for a More Competitive America ..."
http://www.theliberaloc.com/2010/03/14/obama-weekly-address-education-for-a-more-competitive-america-better-future/
> Not to mention that the surveillance bureaucracies and
> counter-insurgency commands will be riddled with all the cognitive
> biases, distortions of information flow, etc., that have traditionally
> plagued military bureaucracy. And any attempts to take advantage of
> the potential of network technology (e.g. 4GW) will be sabotaged by
> the bureaucracies, which will see the new communications technology as
> a way to increase the number of sign-offs before anything is approved.
> And then there's the potential of counteraction by a lot of
> pissed-off crackers, and the deployment of cheap "assassin's mace"
> counter-measures.
Not to imply many people in Turkey are not smart, but, face it, from a
US perspective, when even Turkey is doing advanced mobile bipedal
robots, stuff only done at places like MIT and CMU twenty-five years
ago, advanced robots are a happening thing and accessible to just about
everyone:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/15/turkeys-1-million-humanoid-suralp-robot-gets-a-coming-out-part?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_engadget
"Yet another country has a walking humanoid robot to call its own,
joining the illustrious league of nations that most recently added Iran
to its ranks. Turkey is the lucky ducky this time, officially unveiling
the SURALP robot to the world. "
A recent humanoid robot from Japan, who wants medical robots to deal
with an aging population without bringing in foreigners:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/27/actroid-f-the-angel-of-death-robot-coming-to-a-hospital-near-yo/
I don't think you should underestimate the military or the intelligence
services. Some of that money is no doubt spent effectively, and even 1%
of a lot is a lot:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-1029-intel-budget-20101028,0,595408.story
"The government, releasing the figures for the first time in more than a
decade, says it spent $80.1 billion on intelligence in the most recent
fiscal year. That's double what it spent in 2001, Sen. Dianne Feinstein
says."
Although I think it would be better spend on FOSS tools accessible by
everyone. :-)
"The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc."
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
> Also, the potential for internal fractures and demoralization within
> the ruling class, and attempts by some to cut a separate deal with the
> opposition, etc., in the face of propaganda warfare by the forces of
> freedom.
Sure, eventually, over the next decade or two or three.
For reference:
"CounterPunch: The Far Right's Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive"
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens10262010.html
"What we do know for sure is that the far right has assembled a $6
billion interlinked machine of think-tanks, lobbyists, PACs, astroturf
front groups, media sycophants, endowed professorships, state-based
political fronts and now even their own centralized headhunter; all to
throw us off the scent that the real threat to the poor and middle class
in America is corporate domination." "
Still, even if six billion dollars is a lot, but it can't compare with a
flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the next 25 years:
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/1313223
And TV watching in the USA alone consuming 2,000 Wikipedias per year
which is slowly shifting to social media, which again may swamp six
billion spend on propaganda:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/1422258
So, in the end, six billion dollars won't be very much, even as it is
being used to maximum effect to spread hate, intolerance, fear,
competition, greed, racism, and a scarcity mindset.
But, nonetheless, six billion can do a lot of damage, no question about
that, especially as it misdirects other government funding flows or the
flows at foundations.
I guess trimtabs can be used by an regressive agenda, too, despite a
progressive Bucky Fuller pushing the idea:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
It is just a question of how many in the tribe of abundance get taken
down by the scarcity-mindset cave bear before it is finally drive off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_bear
> By way of analogy, as described by David Noble in Forces of
> Production, CNC machine tools were originally developed for deskilling
> mass-production workers, replacing most master machinists with
> semi-skilled laborers, and shifting control upward to the white collar
> hierarchies.
Well, that was true of the first power looms centuries ago perhaps,
although I've heard that the need for spare parts on aircraft carriers
drove a lot of the early CNC work in the 1950s.
> The problem was, operating the CNC tools required all
> sorts of tacit knowledge and willing cooperation on the part of the
> unskilled workers, who could pretty effectively sabotage the operation
> in all sorts of ways management never predicted.
Sure, there is some power in becoming the one everyone depends on. (Now,
who wrote an essay about that that I cited years before?)
But nasty people take hostages and use torture and so forth (there's
been lots of training supplied by the USA on how to do that to foreign
dictators), so the end game of scarcity-thinking could get pretty ugly
first. So, I don't think that sabotage is going to get anyone very far
other than to rounds of escelation.
Strike and non-compliance (slow downs, working exactly to rules) might
be effective, if they were national efforts, and advocating for general
things like a basic income or copyright reform (so, not just for one
company). But it may be already too late for that in the USA, with so
much erosion of union power, even as one can still see active unions in,
say, France:
"French unions call for fresh strikes over pensions"
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E43320101021
Even as those strikes are kind of stupid in a way, where young people
strike to get jobs by having old people retire sooner. It might make
more sense to strike together for a basic income for all.
And, to prevent strikes, there's certainly lots of money in the USA for
propaganda to convince workers that economic malaise is all the fault of
the poor and of other countries:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10282010.html
"To keep eyes off of the loss of jobs to offshoring, policymakers and
their minions in the financial press blame US unemployment on alleged
currency manipulation by China and on the financial crisis. The
financial crisis itself is blamed by Republicans on low income Americans
who took out mortgages that they could not afford.
In other words, the problem is China and the greedy American poor who
tried to live above their means. With this being the American mindset,
you can see why nothing can be done to save the economy.
No government will admit its mistakes, especially when it can blame
foreigners. China is being made the scapegoat for American failure. An
entire industry has grown up that points its finger at China and away
from 20 years of corporate offshoring of US jobs and 9 years of
expensive and pointless US wars.""
Although that ignores trends toward robotics and other automation,
better design, and voluntary social networks, in the face of limited demand.
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
By the way, an unbelievable statistic mentioned in the Counterpunch article;
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Boomerang-kids-85-of-college-cnnm-3756594909.html?x=0&.v=2
""This recession has hit young adults particularly hard," according to
Rich Morin, senior editor at the Pew Research Center in DC.
So hard that a whopping 85% of college seniors planned to move back
home with their parents after graduation last May, according to a poll
by Twentysomething Inc., a marketing and research firm based in
Philadelphia. That rate has steadily risen from 67% in 2006.
"It's peaking at levels we have not seen before," said David
Morrison, managing director and founder of Twentysomething."
This shows the USA youth population is so docile at this point. The kids
just go home to Mom and Dad. (Disclaimer: I did that too at one point.
:-) Of course, that is better than violent strikes like in Greece over
related issues of youth unemployment, which don't seem to get much
action other than increase levels of tear gas production.
"Greek Youths Revolt over Economic Crisis"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/11/world/main6289555.shtml
"Greek police fire tear gas at culture workers, storm Akropolis"
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/298952
But, where is the push for an alternative to moving beyond jobs or
moving towards a basic income? All those kids going home could be using
their large amounts of spare time while unemployed to build an open
manufacturing future, to make more free CAD designs, to design better 3D
printers, to create videos and songs promoting an open future or a basic
income, and so on. At least it would save money on tear gas. :-)
And maybe some eyes. :-(
"US activist loses eye after being shot in face with tear gas canister"
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/05/12604/
> And in general, hierarchies are very bad -- very, very bad -- and
> predicting bugs and holes in their security until workers actually
> point them out by monkey-wrenching them.
Well, I'm more with Manuel De Landa on that: :-)
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into
villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they
are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we
find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be
established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation."
Not much of a life, though, focusing on trying to fight the current
system with leaks:
"WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Trailed by Notoriety"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html
Or avoiding the drones:
"Drone strike for the WikiLeaks founder?"
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/wikileaks_and_drone_strikes.html
This is where he went wrong IMHO, despite probably the best of intentions:
http://challenge.bfi.org/movie
�You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
(Bucky Fuller)�
We already knew from generations ago that "war is hell".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_Hell
As well a racket:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
So, we need to continue to build a new model.
Even ignoring this point on "activist failure modes":
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-July/003768.html
I guess Bryan is doing a better job of that than I. :-) I liked his
recent posts forwarding stuff on "kids love the promise of MakerBot and
RepRap".
Anyway, the good news is, if we survive the transition (avoiding global
war due to scarcity drumbeats that are getting louder), I give it two to
three decades tops before a major transition to a new abundance
paradigm. So, (I hope) all this stuff is just "temporary" in that sense
(even though it remains important that we don't blow ourselves up in the
process). So, by the time someone on this list in their twenties is my
age, it will probably be a much saner and sensible world (I hope).
And it would not surprise me entirely if there was some sudden
discontinuity somewhere, like if a billionaire (or small group of
billionaires) accepts that money will be mostly obsolete in twenty to
thirty years and decides to pour a lot of wealth all into building
alternatives that mostly transcend money.
Something by me on the specs of a computer twenty to thirty years from
now that is about a million times more powerful in almost every way:
http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2009-November/006575.html
Eventually, people will need to accept a changing reality and our
socioeconomic laws and principles will be updated to go with it. It's
just a matter of how far we have to go down that path before most people
see it and begin to act on it. And we are pretty far down it already in
all sorts of ways (like ubiquitous networked mobile computing).
Things can change. It was less than a century since women got the vote
(again, since Native women had it in many places earlier). Only about
fifty years ago in the USA that there were many laws related to racial
discrimination. Only about forty years since humans walked on the Moon.
Only about thirty years since personal computers were really happening.
Only about twenty years since the internet really got going. Only about
ten years since about everyone had a cell phone. Only about five years
since so many people were on Facebook and so on. And there are lots of
big trends happening right now:
http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/
From Howard Zinn:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment
will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden
crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's
thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the
quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps
out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter
unpredictability."
I'm going to wade in with some comments on Wikileaks and Iceland that
may well show I don't know what I am talking about, because I don't know
much about either, but here goes, anyway, :-) trying to make a parallel
about open manufacturing and a way forward to a better world.
I hoped Iceland might be a place to make a major shift towards
alternative economics
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/9f5471014169b6de?hl=en
since I thought a small country might be more amenable to change, but
I'm realizing the Wikileaks founder is right in suggesting (as a reason
he left Iceland, mentioned in one article I read on that) that a small
country like Iceland is also more amenable to outside influence (like by
the USA).
Related on the issue of pressure:
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/03/26/icelandic-authorities-reject-wikileaks-surveillance-claims/
And Iceland's move as a haven for others secrets is a much more
problematical situation than if it instead focusing on being an
alternative model for an economy, including by just ignoring others
claims about copyrights and patents or some drug laws or whatever. It's
one thing to piss off some inventors and media companies and drug
cartels somewhere when you have a tiny market anyway; it's another to
piss off the intelligence and military of one or more big countries.
(Assuming the Wikileaks founder is not working for an intelligence
agency, always a possibility with endless levels of deception. :-)
Anyway, it would have been nice to, say, see Smari interviewed in the
NYTimes (as in that NYTimes link above) for something else than being at
the edges of a big secrecy controversy, because he deserves better for
the force of his ideas about decentralization, sustainability, and so
on. His broader message, as far as open manufacturing, otherwise
disappears into a complex swamp of ethics about releasing information
that may get some people killed (even as it may prevent other killings).
Openness may be part of that message, but sadly, it seems openness is
now being vilified by some along with sharing and cooperation...
(People would be equally fair to criticize me for having too many
messages, so I'm probably worse on that than Smari. :-)
Anyway, with 20/20 hindsight, I'd rather have seen some sort of haven in
Iceland for people doing mashups of copyrighted material (given the
Icelanders could just declare it legal), instead of an emphasis on
Wikileaks (which seems not to have worked out anyway?).
But it seems like Iceland is still going mainstream in a lot of ways. I
guess it was too much to hope for (and Smari warned about that, talking
about some conservatism).
Related about current economic events in Iceland and going along with
stuff to please the IMF:
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/10/05/no-debt-write-offs-for-icelandic-households/
So, it seems even having only 318,000 people taken across a country is
enough to create an immovable social conservatism?
It seems like maybe broad social change might perhaps need the same
number of people, but people already sharing some sort of
post-scarcity-trending ideology, which the internet makes possible? So,
maybe there are a few hundreds in Iceland like Smari, a few tens of
thousands in the USA like Bryan or you or me, a few tens of thousands in
Europe, and so on, to make a critical mass of people making open
manufacturing and a whole host of related things happen. Although I'd
think there are more likely millions by now globally when you include a
younger generation with different expectations.
Debian GNU/Linux is a good example there of an internet-based community
promoting a different set of values and a different identity about what
it means to be free and open and creative and productive. And their
governance is a mix of meshworks and hierarchies:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/14/1349202
"Two academic management researchers, Siobh�n O'Mahony and Fabrizion
Ferraro, performed a detailed scientific study about Debian Project
governance and social organization from the management perspective. How
did a big non-commercial non-paying community evolve to produce some of
the most respectable Operating Systems and applications packages
available? Organizations without a consensual basis of authority lack an
important condition necessary for their survival. Those with directly
democratic forms of participation do not tend to scale well and are
noted for their difficulty managing complexity and decision-making � all
of which can hasten their demise. The Debian Project community designed
and evolved a solid governance system since 1993 able to establish
shared conceptions of formal authority, leadership, and meritocracy,
limited by defined democratic adaptive mechanisms."
Change is happening. It's just slow. But I've seen it happen with the
environmental and organic foods movement that I was part of twenty-five
years ago (after it had been going on for twenty-five years before
that). People saw it happen with the US civil rights movement fifty
years ago, and then in South Africa fifteen years ago. The Berlin wall
was torn down about twenty years ago. So, change can happen. It just
seems to take a few decades for new paradigms to percolate through
society. I can wonder if the internet will speed that up a bit, of
course. And we are already twenty years or so into the
GNU/Linux/Apache/etc changeover. I could cite other examples, too.
Still, a good demo would be useful as far as an alternative community. A
really neat seastead. Or Iceland reformed. Or New Hampshire changing. Or
Nauru remade. Or a small town?
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
Or maybe something else (Greece?).
"Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass;
international consortium "
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/6336f30458de0648/e009aac004f3ad9d
Or maybe something small, like a small company, non-profit, or resort? I
used to have such ideas two decades ago. I had one for an "ecovillage".
I don't have that plan up, but this was related:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html
I used to look towards space for that diversity of trying new things,
but it seems we will probably never get there unless we make Earth work
better first. :-) And maybe we should not just bring along all our old
problems into space with us, either. So it is better if we fixup Earth
first, as hard as that is. But, at least, fixing up Earth is something
hands on that can get done in the next couple of decades, with a lot
learned that will be useful for developing space habitats.
I'm thinking we'll see these communities continue to grow on the
internet, and then, once they are big enough, and strong enough, then
they will have the capacity to help make physical communities that work
more along the lines of a gift economy, a basic income, local
self-reliance, and/or democratic resource-based planning. But at the
same time, individuals may build up locally towards those things. So,
both top down hierarchies and bottom up meshworks, maybe meeting in the
middle eventually somehow? :-) Even if the "meet in the middle" metaphor
doesn't quite work for how meshworks and hierarchies might come together?
Anyway, I have hope we will get there. But it is going to be twenty
years of slow progress (through hard work and some reasonable risk
taking), all the while seeing accelerating change, and hopefully dodging
some disasters (like by avoiding provoking violent crackdowns). As Buck
Fuller said:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay
race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in �final exam� as
to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe"
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/25/10 8:45 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> > Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> >> On 10/24/10 9:15 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> >>> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> >>>> That is probably going to result in all sorts of huge problems. Already,
> >>>> many US families have burned through all their assets and unemployment
> >>>> benefits. There is a huge looming crisis, and the drumbeat is always, jobs,
> >>>> jobs, jobs. But, what if the jobs are just not coming back? Even with wage
> >>>> subsidies?
> >>>
> >>> Trust me on this, the SAME jobs wouldn't, but ENOUGH would
> >>
> >> Thanks for your other comments and clarifications.
> >>
> >> I could comment on some of your other new points, but I think here we have
> >> the fundamental assumption I am disagreeing with, and which you, as well as
> >> an endless parade of mainstream economists, have no evidence for. :-)
> >
> > Are you doing this on purpose? That's NOT an assumption, it's a RESULT
> > - one that I don't have the time or space to bring out in detail, and
> > which I am beginning to suspect you wouldn't take on board even if I
> > did.
>
> If it is a result, can you explain why it is a result and not an assumption
> (or just the obvious implication of other assumptions)?
what you have already been directed to. There is no royal road to
wisdom; you have to do the work.
I don't see how we
> can have a discussion about the fundamentals of economics when you just
> handwave or point to sources that don't directly and clearly support your
> bigger points (like saying a basic income can't work).
it SHOULD be clear; if you find anything there that is not clear, ask
me about that. You're as bad as people who contact computer help desks
and only say "it doesn't work", without saying just what they are
looking at and what they did to get there. On Basic Income, I have
already pointed out that your levels are indefinitely above optimal,
to the point of unsustainability (things like the historical record of
the Speenhamland System tell us this), and the levels that would be
practical over the long term present an unmanageable funding burden
during the mean time (that should be obvious from the problems of
funding just unemployment benefits).
>
> You're saying lots of jobs are about to be created if we followed your
> economic suggestion about income subsidies? Where? Can you give a single
> example of much lasting significance? Sure, a few million green jobs may be
> created for a short time like in the USA to insulate homes or put up wind
> turbines while other jobs disappear (like oil importation). Even obvious
> things like repairing US infrastructure that has been neglected for decades
> may make some millions of jobs for a short time, but that's it.
would come from a Negative Payroll Tax, start by going to any of the
items on my publications page, e.g. http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN
that I cited before. Then do a search for suitable terms, like "jobs",
"work", or "apprentice", then read the context around that. But don't
make up stuff like those you just mentioned.
You will find that one of the avenues into employment is where people
simply go onto employers' payrolls to collect unemployment benefits
that way instead of via the government bureaucracy; they might even
get more by doing that, since there would be less cost consumed by the
bureaucracy and more left for the unemployed. Some might say that
those aren't "real jobs", just being paid for leaning on a broom or
whatever, but someone like you with a Basic Income perspective
shouldn't have any objections to that even if it were the the case,
which it isn't. The thing is, just about any employer has some work
that could usefully be done, at least at a low level, if it weren't
for the cash and other costs of getting it done; in fact, as Kevin
Carson has remarked in various places, including on this thread if I
recall correctly, there is a tendency for employers to cut their
overall costs by piling work on a smaller work force who end up
overworked at the same time as there are others around with little or
no work (this bifurcation is what first tipped me off to what was
going on, since it suggested a phase change mechanism in which some
curve representing a reality had reversed its slope). I, Kevin Carson,
and many others have observed this pattern both directly and second
hand.
Is that enough spoon feeding for you? Is there something specific you
don't understand? Perhaps you would like to find a copy of Professor
Phelps's book on the area, "Rewarding Work", or go over Professor
Swales's published materials checking those out, if you don't want to
follow my material in which I took out nearly all the mathematics to
make life easier for readers. Or perhaps you just don't want to look
at any material at all - but don't confuse YOUR reluctance with ME
handwaving.
>
> Where are the thirty million *net* new jobs going to come from in the USA
> over the next decade to make up for the missing jobs that would return the
> USA to the level of employment we had in the USA in 2000 (adjusting for
> population growth)? Do you see any industry (manufacturing or service) in
> the USA (or any other industrialized country) that needs thirty million new
> jobs in a paid capacity (other than if the economy is substantially
> underdeveloped by US standards like in China)? And an industry where it
> would not be easier and cheaper at this point to rely instead on robotics
> and other automation, redesign, or voluntary social networks?
structure: assuming that those reflect the true costs. Robotics are a
long way from cheaper, unless you load labour with the wrong costs the
way it is loaded now. Put in the virtual wage subsidy, and employers
will face the true, much lower marginal costs.
.
.
.
> Let's do the math on unemployment, assuming fixed demand. (Or explain why
> otherwise demand is infinite, which I'm sure you might, but I'm suggesting
> we've reached saturation and the law of diminishing and negative returns on
> a lot of stuff, as have others. :-)
CURRENT DISTORTIONS.
>
> >> If we really care about the plight of today's disadvantaged, including the
> >> downwardly mobile middle class, why not a basic income?
> >
> > BECAUSE SOME OF THEM WOULD BE AMONG THE CASUALTIES I MENTIONED!
>
> Well, the lots of upper case suggests you are getting upset about these
> points I am making.
you are repeating stuff you covered before and I replied to before,
with no indication whatsoever of ever having paid any attention to it.
I am using emphasis on the principle of the man who was seen hitting a
mule with a club and was asked what he was doing. He said he was
educating it, and when asked how the club helped, he said "well, first
I have to get its attention".
.
.
.
> >> is starting to happen in even China. Example:
> >> http://www.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
> >> "In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to
> >> control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen."
> >
> > Actually, it's not a red herring, it's one leakage area for jobs in
> > any given region, just as automation is. As it's the quicker acting of
> > the two (under current conditions), it's not surprising that the
> > overall pattern is a wave of offshoring moving further away, followed
> > by automation. This - the set of avenues downsizing can take - is
> > orthogonal to what drives the downsizing. That, of course, is why we
> > can leave it out when we deal with that; it is irrelevant to THAT, but
> > not to other matters. The loose coupling is that, if the economic
> > activity itself has moved elsewhere, there are no resources left to
> > direct into channels that give people jobs (or non-job support,
> > or...). It sets a bound on the range of possibilities, so that bound
> > should be kept from closing in.
>
> Can we get this straight -- is your approach emphasizing getting people
> "jobs" through some sort of economic policy intervention?
includes that. And it should not be thought of as intervention so much
as undoing something.
>
> Does it talk about how we could have a society where "work" as we know it
> (compulsory labor for a boss to survive economically either in school or at
> jobs) was not a big part of most people's lives?
>
> >> I think you still emphasize optimizing "economic efficiency" with some model
> >> of producing the most stuff for the least work while de-emphazizing
> >> "economic efficiency" from the stand point of ensuring everyone has what
> >> they need as well as a lot of what they want including good work and spare
> >> time and family time and time for civic duties.
> >
> > I did no such thing.
>
> Is it not implicit in a "work-based" approach to dealing with productivity
> increases?
THINGS WHEN YOU HAVE REPEATEDLY BEEN TOLD OTHERWISE! (club, mule,
etc.) Look at the transition I spelled out earlier, since you
obviously haven't.
>
> As with my question above, how does your proposal relate to people having
> more free time or more self-determination?
>
> >> Isn't one point of "open manufacturing" to trade-off (if necessary) a little
> >> bit of lower costs for the emotional/security/empowerment/aesthetic value of
> >> making something yourself or doing it with friends?
> >
> > No. It is to understand what the costs actually ARE, and use THOSE.
> > The wrong results come from not using the correct variables, and what
> > you suggest is continuing using the wrong ones but then trying to make
> > an adjustment afterwards, rather like getting planetary positions the
> > Ptolemaic way by adding epicycles to a wrong theory instead of using a
> > correct theory.
> >
> > Once the right costs are being used, so the externalities aren't there
> > any more, things come right without any ad hoc fiddling of the
> > results. If you want to adjust for aesthetics, factor that into the
> > costs, don't fudge the answers.
>
> I'll certainly agree that better pricing allows the market to work better.
> But, because of externalities, you then need taxes, subsidies, regulation,
> and investment by the state to compensate for externalities, which means
> democratic resource-based planning.
And, sure, wage subsidies can relate to
> that.
>
> But it's not clear to me that all things can easily be adjusted for that
> way, whether aesthetics or workplace environments.
wrong places, you are also keeping your eyes shut.
.
.
.
> technically, mostly because of lack of evidence or even an outline of the
> basic principles on which you base that conclusion.
because the reasons you claim you have are claims that there is no
evidence etc. And that is not only wrong, but you have repeatedly been
shown where to look. Not once have you asserted "I don't follow A, B
or C", you only ever say "I see no A, B or C" - and that is
intellectually dishonest.
>
> I have commented on this mostly in relation to your original suggestion that
> a basic income can't work based on thinking you've done on it.
>
> I'm willing to entertain the notion that a basic income may have problems.
> Can you express simply and directly what your argument against it is?
because you would only come back again denying you had ever been shown
anything, and because IT TAKES WORK!
.
.
.
> I may also just have to accept (as I mentioned here a year or so ago) that
> we will never see a basic income, for reasons implicit in what you are
> arguing -- that it is too big a jump conceptually from our current system.
in what I am arguing, when it is abundantly clear that you cannot or
will not take the pains to find out what that is.
.
.
.
> >> http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
> >> "One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet
> >> not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human
> >> aspirations."
> >>
> >> Will your plan work? I don't know. But, I'm glad you are working on it. It's
> >> a good thing that you're trying to help others, whether we agree or not on a
> >> specific plan.
> >
> > And I am NOT glad you are willing, even eager, to reject the results
> > you have been told about - most particularly the original one, that
> > simply trying to set a Basic Income at survival levels is a really
> > harmful thing. P.M.Lawrence.
>
> Except, you have provided little justification for this (at least in this
> discussion) beyond pointing to some other links that, from cursory
> inspection, do not discuss this point.
PAYING ATTENTION? Either do it, take my word for it, or wait and see
what history brings you - but don't make out that there is nothing
there, when you won't do what it takes to see for yourself.
Can you point specifically to an
> analysis that says a basic income will not work?
Especially given that I
> have linked to a source that demonstrates a model where it does work?
issues, while the problems relate to transitional issues.
As
> well as piles of research link like at BIEN discussing the feasibilty of
> this and Nobel prize winners in economics that endorse the idea?
>
> When I raised that point things then shifted to an argument that was closer
> to saying a basic income was not politically viable right now, which is a
> different argument from economically viable. I know you've made reference to
> some technical points, and it being hard to explain easily, but that really
> isn't proof much more than saying their is proof on a blackboard in an
> office somewhere.
There may well be a proof, but I don't see it yet (other
> than, as I say above, there are contradictions even within a basic income
> that will make it mostly a stepping stone to a post-scarcity society).
P.M.Lawrence.
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/27/10 6:59 PM, Kevin Carson wrote:
.
.
> > sense to use work hours per capita rather than unemployment as a
> > metric. It seems to me quite likely that high unemployment would
> > create strong pressure for shorter work weeks where they were
> > technically feasible, as well as toward fewer wage-earners per
> > household on average. So I would expect the unemployment rate to
> > climb much more slowly, but for underemployment to become far more
> > prevalent. At the same time, people would (of necessity) be taking
> > advantage of new technological opportunities for shifting as much as
> > possible of their consumption needs outside the cash nexus. So I
> > don't think it will be as catastrophic as that.
>
> Yes, I agree you have a good point on reducing work hours. Certainly,
> that has been more the case in Western Europe (who generally seem more
> sensible than US Americans about a lot of things).
>
> But, I'm not sure culturally that could happen in the USA. It increases
> overhead to have more employees working less hours
do you have a problem seeing that a Negative Payroll Tax addresses
precisely these issues of inappropriate costs? (I see it was you
yourself who brought these issues out on this thread, not Kevin
Carson.)
-- something few
> companies would do unless there was a mandate that all companies do it.
mandate - e.g. a Negative Payroll Tax.
> And even then, with a mandate, what about small business or sole
> proprietors or consultants?
P.M.Lawrence
> On 10/22/10 9:22 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> >> http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
> >> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
> >> >
> >> > Not that endorsement of anything by famous economists really proves
> >> > anything, but when they go against the mainstream politics of economics it
> >> > is worth thinking about: "Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics that fully
> >> > support a basic income include Herbert Simon[30], Friedrich Hayek[31][32],
> >> > James Meade, Robert Solow[33], and Milton Friedman[34]."
> >
> > As with my work's paralleling that of Professor Kim Swales of the
> > University of Strathclyde and his colleagues (in the UK; see
> > http://www.faxfn.org/feedback/03_jobs/jobs_tax.htm#23feb98a), and of
> > Nobel winner Professor Edmund S. Phelps, McVickar Professor of
> > Political Economy at Columbia University (in the USA; see
> > http://www.columbia.edu/~esp2/taxcomm.pdf).
.
.
> compelled to work for others for their daily vegetables, they should be
> well-compensated (ignoring how that just accelerates the eventual
> automation of most jobs to lower costs, which is inevitable at this
> point, as long as we have capitalism).
essentially a minimum wage without that's incentives for unemployment
- it has no direct effect on wages at all. Indirectly, it might well
affect the overall wage structure.
.
.
.
> workplace itself, like Bob Black talked about here in "The Abolition of
> Work"
> http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
> "We are so close to the world of work that we can't see what it does to us."
>
> So, there are a lot more factors than wages. Still, it's true that
> better wages might improve things. But, as I mention, if companies pay
> them, they will only accelerate the spiral of increasing unemployment. I
> guess if taxes pay them as subsidies, then there is no incentive for
> layoffs, except that there remain ongoing trends towards automation,
> better design, and voluntary social networks anyway, so the subsidies
> will only grow and grow.
towards automation at those (above optima)l levels.
.
.
.
> suggest income subsidies leading to Distributism -- which, again, I can
> see some merit in),
If I let that slide, people might think that was what I had been
telling you.
A Negative INCOME Tax subsidises people's incomes, as does a Basic
Income. A Negative PAYROLL Tax does NOT (apart from in effect creating
a floor to them), it provides a virtual subsidy to employers for
having workers. Nor does it, in and of itself, lead to Distributism;
rather, I see that as the valuable direction of a transition that
could be started with a Negative Payroll Tax. It would need separate
initiatives to move along that transition.
I've suggested a mix of four initiatives (basic
> income, resource-based planning, a gift economy, and localism) all
> leading to a post-scarcity society. Ultimately, they all might lead the
> same place, given continually rising productivity.
if, of course, you could get to that long run. P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>> You're saying lots of jobs are about to be created if we followed your
>> economic suggestion about income subsidies? Where? Can you give a single
>> example of much lasting significance? Sure, a few million green jobs may be
>> created for a short time like in the USA to insulate homes or put up wind
>> turbines while other jobs disappear (like oil importation). Even obvious
>> things like repairing US infrastructure that has been neglected for decades
>> may make some millions of jobs for a short time, but that's it.
>
> If you want a specific list of the most likely areas of new work that
> would come from a Negative Payroll Tax, start by going to any of the
> items on my publications page, e.g. http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN
> that I cited before. Then do a search for suitable terms, like "jobs",
> "work", or "apprentice", then read the context around that. But don't
> make up stuff like those you just mentioned.
Your comments here seem to be getting more and more personal.
I spent a minute doing exactly what you suggested and did not find a
specific example of a "job". Not a mention of increasing the number of
"waitresses" or "farmers" or "physical therapists" or "call center
employee" or "solar panel installation technician" or "autoworker".
So, in short, it seems you can't, or won't, cite any specific examples
of jobs (e.g. waitress, airline pilot, medical doctor, sanitation
worker, computer programmer, wind energy technician) to be created and
sustained in the long term by the policies you advocate.
Nor do your prioritize issues of how the workplace itself is structured?
That puts you in good company with many, many, other writers about
economics. In fact, almost all of them.
Of course, you might also realize, I'm going to suggest, for almost any
specific paid job you list, that, at this point in time in the 21st
century, if we wanted to we could greatly reduce (or eliminate) those
jobs by robotics and other automation, better design including open
hardware and FOSS, and voluntary social networks? :-) By the way,
interesting related reading, and not by me: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation#During_the_2000s_and_2010s
And also, again, for context, this discussion started because you said a
basic income would not work, and you say your arguments are too complex
or whatever to discuss (even as a summary of the logic) via email here,
despite thousands of words exchanged. And so, presumably, we should
implement whatever you say because we (or at least just I) are too dumb
(or lazy) to appreciate what you have to say, and other alternative
ideas that many people have spent years researching are broken?
OK. :-)
I am reminded of this Bob Black quote:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should
end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl
Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy.
Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm
not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for
permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the
ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan
to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say
so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions,
exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about
anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for
us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in
the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details.
Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives
in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists
think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should
be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes,
so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have
serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as
clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of
them want to keep us working."
Could you consider for a moment that maybe some of the things I suggest
are implicit assumptions in you analysis maybe are indeed implicit
assumptions? Stuff like assumptions about the need to link work to pay
(a basic income)? Or the need to "motivate" people with external rewards
(Alfie Kohn)? Or the assumption, that as regards our socioeconomic
paradigm, that a little change may be easier than a big change(when a
little change might be just as hard, or harder, because it has less
support (as demonstrated in the USA by the sick care bill fracas that
still leaves the US health system in crisis)?
But in any case, it's all academic, since we are probably not going to
get wage subsidies or a basic income anytime soon (you're no doubt right
about the political difficulties). That is true even though now is when
they could make a big difference, not twenty to thirty years from now
when 3D printers and service robots will be everywhere (assuming we
don't blow ourselves up first with the tools of abundance, fighting over
scarcity perceptions, in part from lack of a basic income type of
ideology).
As is pointed out in the Wikipedia automation link, something like a
basic income (or, for that matter, wage subsidies) is actually to prop
up market capitalism. From there: "Brain[9] and Ford's[10] books, in
stark contrast to Rifkin's, came later and were written by engineers
with extensive under-the-hood knowledge of modern production methods,
computer hardware and software, and the Internet's underpinnings. They
explicitly reject non-market solutions as unworkable and instead suggest
new kinds of markets. Rather than being "post-market" proponents, such
authors could be called "new-market" proponents. They vigorously
distance themselves from socialism or welfare states�generally seeking
to keep a market economy with private enterprise, which they believe
cannot be preserved unless its foundation is modified from its current
structure. Thus, quite contrary to being anti-market agents (as critics
might suppose them to be), they believe themselves to be salvaging
markets from destruction. They envision creating consumer purchasing
power by some other mechanism than the traditional labor market as we
have known it so far, in order that free markets may continue to provide
the invisible-hand component of production-possibilities decisions. In
other words, they believe that market forces are necessary to generate
allocative efficiency, and they believe that without a structural
modification that decouples purchasing power from employment determined
by the traditional labor market, there will be a systemic market
failure, which they seek to avoid."
Although, personally, I think we also need things like a gift economy,
stronger local subsistence economies, and democratic resource-based
planning to set taxes, subsidies, collective investments, and
regulations, to make it all work out.
Anyway, we are in agreement about some things, for sure. You mention in
passing moving through wage subsidies to a future that might involve
"Distributism", which would essentially be the equivalent of every home
around the globe having a really amazing 3D printer. From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
"Distributism (also known as distributionism, distributivism) is a
third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Roman Catholic thinkers
as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc to apply the principles of
Catholic Social Teaching articulated by the Catholic Church, especially
in Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum[1] and more expansively
explained by Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno[2] According to
distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread
as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being
centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or a few
large businesses or wealthy private individuals (plutarchic capitalism).
A summary of distributism is found in Chesterton's statement: "Too much
capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists."[3]"
And I'd agree that last line is pretty insightful.
Of course, then we could talk about who controls the designs for such
printers and what they print, which brings us back to open manufacturing.
> You will find that one of the avenues into employment is where people
> simply go onto employers' payrolls to collect unemployment benefits
> that way instead of via the government bureaucracy; they might even
> get more by doing that, since there would be less cost consumed by the
> bureaucracy and more left for the unemployed. Some might say that
> those aren't "real jobs", just being paid for leaning on a broom or
> whatever, but someone like you with a Basic Income perspective
> shouldn't have any objections to that even if it were the the case,
> which it isn't.
As might seem obvious from other things I've written, or citing people
like Bob Black, I think "makework" is an unpleasant notion. The thought
of forcing someone into an authoritarian workplace to "lean on a broom"
doing work that is neither very useful to society or very interesting to
themselves, just so they can eat and have a place to sleep and clothes
to wear is, IMHO, morally wrong at this point in our cultural and
technological evolution. So is IMHO forcing the same person at a young
age into an authoritarian classroom to "lean on a book" in order to get
the job where they "lean on a broom".
Anyway, I can't understand why you might write "someone like you with a
Basic Income perspective shouldn't have any objections to that", given
all that, other than to think it indicates the issue of the social
dynamics of the workplace and the nature of work is not an issue you
have spent much time considering. I think it shows we are looking at
this structural unemployment situation from completely different
assumptions. You seem to imply there is nothing wrong with the idea of
the government giving "wage subsidies" which essentially just magnify
the power of the business sector, whereas if such monetary transfers
were done as a basic income, it would change the social dynamics of the
system. There is a huge difference, but, as with your above comment, it
is not something you seem to even acknowledge an advocate for a basic
income would think about.
And open manufacturing is, in part, about changing some of those
assumptions, to the point where people can create more things for
themselves, or change the things that others supply in ways more to
their liking, for reasons like personal development, personal
subsistence, freedom of choice, and just for fun. It's just a very
different outlook than a compulsory-labor-based economy.
Again, this is not to say that in the short term, within our current
economic framework, suggestions like wage subsidies might not make sense
or be more politically acceptable right now (in the USA, in Australia,
or wherever, especially Western Europe where they are being used in a
way as part of the "job sharing" plans).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurzarbeit
"Kurzarbeit (German for "short-work") is a short-term, recession-related
program operating in several European countries in which companies have
entered into an agreement to avoid laying-off any of their employees by
instead reducing the working hours of all or most of their employees,
with the government making up some of the employees' lost income. If an
employee agrees to undergo training programs during his or her extra
time off, they can often maintain their former income."
So, that's certainly proof that your ideas have some merit. :-)
John Griessen
> On 10/28/10 10:14 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
>> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> So, in short, it seems you can't, or won't, cite any specific examples of jobs (e.g. waitress, airline pilot, medical doctor,
> sanitation worker, computer programmer, wind energy technician) to be created and sustained in the long term by the policies you
> advocate.
.
.
.
> And also, again, for context, this discussion started because you said a basic income would not work, and you say your arguments
> are too complex or whatever to discuss (even as a summary of the logic) via email here, despite thousands of words exchanged. And
> so, presumably, we should implement whatever you say because we (or at least just I) are too dumb (or lazy) to appreciate what you
> have to say, and other alternative ideas that many people have spent years researching are broken?
>
> OK. :-)
>
> I am reminded of this Bob Black quote:
> http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
Most of these have been tooo long to read all, but this one I liked Paul. :-)
Thanks for the link to "For example, Marshall Brain,[9] Martin Ford,[10] and others have suggested
that exponentially accelerating information technology (IT) may ultimately result in widespread
structural unemployment" in wikipedia.
John Griessen
John Griessen
> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>> > On 10/25/10 8:45 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
>>> > > Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>>>> > >> On 10/24/10 9:15 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
>>>>> > >>> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
I just read Phelps' Rewarding Work 2007 prologue and it seems reasonable to me,
and even something republicans and democrats could go for. He says, "What's so valuable about
working?" and I agree that it's valuable as a being included part of society, even if it does
not prepare low paid workers for the onslaught of automation. There's a long transition period
where, for example today, lots of men are doing some remodeling of retail space across the street,
not robots, and they will be for the next twenty years, I'm sure.
If we ignore the low paid another twenty years, we will have that many more welfare
great-grand-moms popping out new welfare moms, plus more drug addicts.
Why put up with that?
Robots as we know them, (and perhaps build them), aren't going to fix that...
John G
robot fan
Paul D. Fernhout
Sure.
A basic income (or other approach) might help with that though. There is
a big difference between being unemployed and broke and being unemployed
and having some spending money and not needing to look for a job. (The
internet has changed some of this, because it provides a lot of free
entertainment, more so than even cable TV.)
A lot of people can create their own activities if they have the time
and the means (whether being a parent, or doing home remodelling, or
starting their own business, or gardening, or, yes, hanging out and
sometimes even making trouble).
A big issue is about social power. Do the average citizens get the
social power that comes with getting money through the state (as "social
credit"), or do business owners get the social power (as "business credit")?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_condensation
"Wealth condensation is a theoretical process by which, in certain
conditions, newly-created wealth tends to become concentrated in the
possession of already-wealthy individuals or entities, a form of
preferential attachment. According to this theory, those who already
hold wealth have the means to invest in new sources and structure thus
creating more wealth or to otherwise leverage the accumulation of
wealth, thus are the beneficiaries of the new wealth. ... Wealth
condensation is generally defended by proponents of capitalism. ..."
This can happen in other ways, too:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/world/europe/01ecoles.html
"The result, critics say, is a self-perpetuating elite of the wealthy
and white, who provide their own children the social skills, financial
support and cultural knowledge to pass the entrance exams, known as the
concours, which are normally taken after an extra two years of intensive
study in expensive preparatory schools after high school. The problem is
not simply the narrow base of the elite, but its self-satisfaction.
�France has so many problems with innovation,� Mr. Descoings said. Those
who pass the tests �are extremely smart and clever, but the question is:
Are you creative? Are you willing to put yourself at risk? Lead a
battle?� These are qualities rarely tested in exams."
From the review of Phelps' book here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GPo0o0OSl0wC
"Since the 1970s a gulf has opened between the pay of low-paid workers
and the pay of the middle class. No longer able to earn a decent wage in
respectable work, many have left the labor force, and the job attachment
of those remaining has weakened. For Edmund Phelps, this is a failure of
political economy whose widespread effects are undermining the
free-enterprise system. His solution is a graduated schedule of tax
subsidies to enterprises for every low-wage worker they employ. As firms
hire more of these workers, the labor market would tighten, driving up
their pay levels as well as their employment."
See, apparently, Phelps would put the social power in the hands of those
wealthy and powerful enough to already own a business successfully
(often because of inherited wealth or other family support), thus making
worse the rich/poor divide we already have.
As Marshall Brain pointed out, a major problem of automation is it
concentrates wealth. Phelps' proposal presumably does not address that.
Correct me if I am wrong, as I have not read that book, but, there are
"No results found in this book for concentration of wealth" when I
searched. Same for "rich/poor divide". Does Phelps consider this other
issue at all?
See Marshall Brain's diagram on wealth concentration here:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
"With most of the rank and file employees replaced by robots and
eliminated from the payroll, all of the money flowing into a large
corporation has only one place to go -- upward toward the executives and
shareholders. The concentration of wealth will be dramatic when robots
arrive."
Of course, the basic income is not the only way to distribute social
power. As P.M. Lawrence referred to with a reference to "Distributism",
having social policy that encourages the widespread ownership of the
means of production can accomplish some of that too. Usually that is
meant as broad stock ownership.
http://www.peoplescapitalism.org/
But in an open manufacturing sense, that can mean every home has a fancy
3D printer, solar panels, a plastic recycling system, an organic garden,
and a service robots (all with open designs).
I'm thinking, especially seeing what just happened with the US
elections, that the odds of any sensible US policy are approaching zero
for the near future (hopefully we'll avoid more wars than the three or
four already ongoing). So, I am thinking that open manufacturing is
probably going to surpass what social policy does anytime soon as far as
"distributism".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
Which is often Kevin Carson's point about falling costs of the means of
production. So, he may be right the most in the end. :-)
John Griessen
>> Robots as we know them, (and perhaps build them), aren't going to fix
>> that...
>>
>> John G
>> robot fan
>
> Sure.
>
> A basic income (or other approach) might help with that though.
I see what P.M.Lawrence was saying. You're just talking a torrent about the same thing
without responding to the conversation.
JG
Paul D. Fernhout
Sorry that you thought that reply was non-responsive. I was trying to
get at why a core assumption of Phelps' argument (that the place to
intervene is promoting the power of business) is problematical.
OK, let me go point by point through what you said and also a bit more
pointedly in relation to more from what Google Books lets me read from
Phelps' book: :-)
http://books.google.com/books?id=GPo0o0OSl0wC
> I just read Phelps' Rewarding Work 2007 prologue and it seems
> reasonable to me, and even something republicans and democrats could
> go for. He says, "What's so valuable about working?" and I agree that
> it's valuable as a being included part of society,
I can agree with the general theme on being included. I do agree that is
very important. I've previously cited E.F. Schumacher on that:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to
enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people
in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a
becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are
endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless,
boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little
short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than
with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of
attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence.
Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be
considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of
human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of
the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the
joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
But, I've also cited Bob Black (although EF Schumacher also touches on
this), because meaningless work (or work designed to be boring and
repetitive) is still pointless when you could be spending time helping
raise children, or doing some personally meaningful hobby, or being
involved in civic duties otherwise neglected. See:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then
most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing
fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense
and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal
appendages. "
Anyway, it's hard to have a discussion about this when the basic issues
are ignored. Work can be meaningful, but it can also be meaningless, and
a lot depends on the context. It is not just an issue of "wages", even
though high wages today (even for bad work) can let you walk away from
bad work in the future.
Why do people work? What is it for? What is being produced? Who gets the
fruits of labor and why? What is the actual work experience like? These
are all issues that relate to the context of work.
Consider the example of the work involved with cleaning a toilet.
Scrubbing your own toilet may be work of one sort, scrubbing the toilet
of a wealthy person who you have to work for because you are poor is
work of a completely different type of work. Both involve mostly the
same physical actions for the chore, but they involve different outcomes
(as well as different risks -- you're already exposed to your own
household's germs, but not those of a random stranger). Likewise,
operating a robot to scrub a toilet, or designing an open source design
for a self-cleaning toilet are different forms of "work" with different
contexts, but are still about cleaning toilets. (Of course, using
toilets that involve sitting instead of squatting are probably not
healthy in general because of human muscle physiology, but that's
another issue -- how the west got such crazy toilets in the first place. :-)
Sure, personal self-worth is important. But, there are lots of ways to
get that other than wage-slavery. But the many years in compulsory
schooling make it hard for people to even understand what a self-chosen
life might be like, when so much of our formative years have been spent
becoming accustomed to being ruled over all day by some random authority
in the room.
Consider:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-
schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among the
best of my student's parents, only a small number can imagine a
different way to do things. "The kids have to know how to read and
write, don't they?" "They have to know how to add and subtract, don't
they?" "They have to learn to follow orders if they ever expect to keep
a job."
Only a few lifetimes ago things were very different in the United
States; originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from
regimentation made us the miracle of the world, social class boundaries
were relatively easy to cross, our citizenry was marvelously confident,
inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for
themselves. We were something, we Americans, all by ourselves, without
government sticking its nose into our lives, without institutions and
social agencies telling us how to think and feel; no, all by ourselves
we were something, as individuals."
Phelps' plan, whatever one can say about the value of good work or hard
fun, presumably ignores this deeper democratic issue? Maybe P.M.
Lawrence could comment on that?
> even if it does
> not prepare low paid workers for the onslaught of automation.
And that's where a basic income, gift economy, resource-based planning,
and stronger local subsistence economies come in, as well as a paradigm
shift.
Dante-Gabryell sent me this link to a video (translated from French to
German) about the basic income and how important it is including
(presumably, from the images) in the context of the lives of people
doing basic manual labor (garbage collection, leaf blower operators,
supermarket checkout clerks, etc.):
http://ia700204.us.archive.org/19/items/le_revenu_de_base/FILM_le_revenu_de_base.mp4
The German version:
http://www.initiative-grundeinkommen.ch/content/home/
http://vimeo.com/3121396
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedingungsloses_Grundeinkommen
There is not an English version I know of, but here is one with English
subtitles (it says there are 17 translations):
http://dotsub.com/view/26520150-1acc-4fd0-9acd-169d95c9abe1
(I may have linked to that months before, but a different version.)
Here is a trailer for a related video in English (but more on global
issues, another thing Phelps presumably ignores?):
"The End of Poverty"
http://mypeace.tv/group/basicincomeguaranteetheendofpoverty
http://www.theendofpoverty.com/
http://www.hulu.com/the-end-of-poverty
About seven minutes in they make the point that the Western European
aristocracy both in their own country and in other countries confiscated
the communal land of others and deprived people of their livelihood
(using their own legal/commercial system). Example: "In countries where
the in no settled form of government, the land belongs to the Queen of
England."
So, the roots of all this, the issue of who is a wage-slave, and who is
a land-owner (or "capital" owner), go way, way back. Sure, there are
other dynamics. But the whole "work" system is build on shaky things
like "might makes right" and "finders/keepers". At some point, we need
to move beyond those as central organizing principles of our society.
The thing is, economists with tenure and a Nobel Prize (enough money
equivalent to giving someone a lifetime basic income) going on about how
wonderful manual labor is, like the existential meaning of scrubbing the
toilets of Nobel Prize winners in a desperate struggle to keep your
family fed and housed, well, it just seems a bit potentially
conflict-of-interest hypocritical, right? :-) See also:
"Right of Self Determination - Monty Python Holy Grail : Autonomous
Collective "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8bqQ-C1PSE
On Phelps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Phelps
"Edmund Strother Phelps, Jr. (born July 26, 1933) is an American
economist and the winner of the 2006 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic
Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Early in his career he became
renowned for his research at Yale's Cowles Foundation in the first half
of the 1960s on the sources of economic growth. His demonstration of the
Golden Rule of national saving, a concept first devised by John von
Neumann and Maurice Allais, started a wave of research on how much a
nation ought to spend on present consumption rather than save and invest
for future generations. His most seminal work inserted a
microfoundation�one featuring imperfect information, incomplete
knowledge and expectations about wages and prices�to support a
macroeconomic theory of employment determination and price-wage
dynamics. This led to his development of the natural rate of
unemployment�its existence and the mechanism governing its size."
So, not only should poor people be cheerfully scrubbing his toilets for
pay while they neglect their own, a bunch of poor people should be not
even be allowed to scrub toilets for pay (or probably have a basic
income, either) because the economy works better when some people are
"naturally" desperate. See also:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"According to the new mythology, human beings are economic competitors.
The �marketplace� is the new �Valhalla�, where �economic man� frolics.
The �market� we are told, contains its own �rationality�. It rewards the
efficient. It rewards that list of virtues George Will cites, like
�thrift�, �delayed gratification� and of course, �hard work�. Free
competition in the market place �rationally� selects the more �worthy�
competitor. Thus, the wealthy are the superior competitors who have
�earned� their elite status. If you haven�t succeeded it can only be
because of your �inferiority�. Before debunking this whole ideology, a
few observations are in order. First of all, notice that the
hierarchical social order is back. It has a new veneer of �rationality�,
but it is the same old ugly reality. Elites are �better� than you. The
non-elites who do the work have �earned� their position, and are proper
objects of scorn. Thus, we have a handful of haves, worthy of admiration
and respect, and a large class of industrial serfs who own nothing but
their bellies. The theory has changed, but the reality is just the same.
Not surprisingly, cheap-labor believers in the �rational� hierarchy are
hostile to democracy. In fact, they have decided that democratic
government is an enemy to �market efficiency�. What Thomas Jefferson won
through debunking the old forms of social hierarchy, today�s cheap-labor
conservative is busy taking back through his new �rational� form of the
same old shit."
See also:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16
"�Cheap labor�. That�s their whole philosophy in a nutshell � which
gives you a short and pithy �catch phrase� that describes them
perfectly. You�ve heard of �big-government liberals�. Well they�re
�cheap-labor conservatives�."
Of course, Phelps has elevated the concept of cheap labor one notch
further. Not only are people still to be poorly paid, but government
spending should pay for a lot of the low wages. :-) What's not to like
if you are a business person? And the best thing is, you can tax all the
laborers to pay for the labor of others, and then they can fight it out
amongst themselves.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
"How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor,
building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black
youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of
impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and
the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free
milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to
meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small
special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for
jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the
fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred-by
economic inequity-faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention
from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by
men in executive offices. "
No wonder Phelps is so celebrated in financial and business circles. :-)
Anyway, open manufacturing and "Distributism" may eventually put an end
to that exploitation-celebrating wage-slavery
scrub-my-toilet-for-cheap-so-I-can-write-books-about-why-you-should-be-happy-to-be-poor
paradigm, even if we never get a basic income or sensible transparent
democratic resource-based planning. :-)
I scrub the main toilet in our house about once a week. It's not that
pleasant a job. But it is rewarding in its own ways to have a clean
bathroom. In this culture, scrubbing someone else's toilet for low pay
would be demeaning, as would hiring someone to do it for us. But, if I
had more time, would I make a robot or other appliance to do it?
Probably yes. :-)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2823640/Mahatma-Gandhis-mobile-toilet-recreated.html
And if toilet scrubbing paid US$200 an hour (relative to current
prices), would I do it for pay? I might. :-) Of course, I'd still might
feel about it the same way I feel cleaning up the mess some people leave
behind in their software and management projects. :-) But, ideally, you
want to have systems that don't get as messed up in regular use -- it's
just unaesthetic. You want to teach people not to make such a mess
day-to-day and to be able to take care of their own basic systems, or
engineer them so they are easier to take care of.
Why fight about who cleans the toilet when they can be made easier to clean?
http://www.google.com/search?sq=self-cleaning+toilet
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet#Advantages_of_squat_toilets
Anyway, I consider part of what I do here is cleaning up after the shit
that mainstream economists like Phelps leave behind. :-) So, I'm
cleaning intellectual toilets in that sense. :-) Someone has to do it.
And, I guess I have more self-respect doing it "for free". :-)
Let me contrast Phelps' book with this one, by an intellectual who
decided that, for him, manual labor of a certain sort (really, labor
using both mind and hands) was more satisfying than intellectual-only labor:
"The Case for Working With Your Hands "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1
I tend to have more faith in what Matthew Crawford talks about there,
even though it no doubt overlaps some with Phelps' points (yes, work can
be connecting and it can feel worthwhile, and exchange can be part of
what makes a society work).
The problem is that Phelps probably believes this version of history,
where exchange is central:
"School House Rock: Barter"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7hNOt2Y0J8
Whereas a gift economy was more the ancient norm (not barter):
"Gift Economy: Refuting the Market Logic"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4hFVcl6Vo
> There's
> a long transition period where, for example today, lots of men are
> doing some remodeling of retail space across the street, not robots,
I won't disagree.
But, what I'm also saying is that these people might rather be doing
something else right now. They may be forced to be away from their
families, to subject themselves to humiliating control over when they
can go to the bathroom, to expose themselves to toxic chemicals. Why are
they forced to suffer like this (even as they may genuinely like making
stuff)? Is this all so they can remodel some boutique to sell junk no
one needs (in exchange for imaginary fiat dollar ration unites) to
people who are already materially obese way past any law of diminishing
returns and into negative returns?
"The Culture of Affluence: Psychological Costs of Material Wealth"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/
That's the kind of deeper issue mainstream economics often ignores.
Again from Bob Black: "Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious
differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly,
none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to
keep us working."
So, there are several levels to this issue of "work".
Would those boutique-renovation people rather be fixing up their homes,
or playing with their kids, or starting their own business, or doing
research, or gardening or farming? But they don't get that chance for
socioeconomic reasons.
Look, it's all poetic to talk about the nobility of work, especially
when you are a mainstream/conservative college professor with a Yale
degree, and not, say, a progressive activist:
"The murdering of my years: artists & activists making ends meet"
http://books.google.com/books?id=iBA7vACOwngC
I agree work (in the sense of doing something meaningful to you) is an
essential part of a good life. But "wage slavery" is an entirely
different thing. See:
http://www.whywork.org/about/faq/wageslave.html
"So what exactly IS a wage slave, anyway? It's doubtful that you'd be
exploring this web site if you didn't have some idea at least, but for
the sake of ease, we'll clarify further. Here are some brief and
incomplete definitions from CLAWS members:
"Wage slavery is the state where you are unable to perceive choices
and create courses of action different from the grind of the job."
"Wage slave: A wage earner whose livelihood is completely dependent
on the wages earned."
The point here, of course, is that we don't have a single agreed-upon
definition of wage slavery. Many of us prefer to focus on wage slavery
as a state of mind, while others prefer to focus on the external aspects
of wage slavery such as the wage economy. But overall, we seem to sense
something rotten at the core of what we've been taught about "making a
living", and that's the place to begin our questioning."
Does Phelps have anything to say about wage slavery? In my reply, I had
searched on some other terms. Now I search on "slavery" in the book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GPo0o0OSl0wC&q=slavery#v=snippet&q=slavery
There are three matches that look incidental from what I can see. If
"work" is so good for people, does that me we can generalize that
"chattel slavery" (like Blacks suffered under in the US South) is good
for people? Of course not. So then why can we assume that "wage slavery"
is that much better? But, I'd suggest that is perhaps an implicit
assumption in Phelps' analysis, that wage slavery is good? Or maybe that
is such a deeply woven assumption into what he does that like water to a
fish he will never see it?
> and they will be for the next twenty years, I'm sure.
Bucky Fuller has proposed things like one-piece bathrooms made of
stainless steel that would be easy to install and clean. So, better
design, like modular homes, or even 3D printing of buildings, may change
how a lot of this is done. But, I agree, that is something that is
taking place over time, and twenty to thirty years sounds about right.
http://www.thirteen.org/bucky/bathroom.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
> If we ignore
> the low paid another twenty years,
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but a basic income is directly
addressing this issue, given the assumption that people will, in time,
create their own meanings if a basic income is a right of citizenship,
not a sign of disability and personal defect. To an extent, we create
our economies through our assumptions and self-fulfilling prophecies
about human nature. If we say only losers would volunteer, and healthy
people are really competitive and want to live in big houses, then we
may tend to get a lot of competitive people living in big houses.
Googling around finds this from 1905:
"Unconscious Assumptions in Economics"
http://books.google.com/books?id=4CIDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA529&lpg=PA528
But I know I was reading something very recent on that yesterday, but
can't recall enough to find the link.
> we will have that many more
> welfare great-grand-moms popping out new welfare moms, plus more drug
> addicts. Why put up with that?
I think there are several problematical fundamental assumptions here
that I disagree with, but I wanted to politely avoid a direct
confrontation on. :-)
But, to bring them up:
What is wrong with wanting to be a parent and have children?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting
http://www.amazon.com/Caring-Milton-Mayeroff/dp/0060920246
http://www.auuf.net/about-auuf/sermons/71-caring-sermon
Especially considering the birth rate of industrialized countries is
falling below replacement levels? See:
"[p2p-research] Peak Population crisis (was Re: Japan's Demographic
Crisis)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004174.html
What's wrong with more children in this seemingly almost entirely empty
solar system and universe? See:
"[p2p-research] Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004242.html
Were hunter/gatherers who picked the fruit off the trees "welfare moms"
to be despised? See:
"The Original Affluent Society"
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
Is it really true that as Phelps suggests (without using the phrase)
that "idle hands are the devil's playground" as on page vii?
http://books.google.com/books?id=GPo0o0OSl0wC&pg=PR7&lpg=PP1
He actually says: "Likewise, the lack o participation among so many not
engaged in the business life of a community tends to erode the place
accorded to contribution and to engender instead on underground economy
based on a drug trade and violent crime."
What about being a good neighbor, or being a good parent, or being a
volunteer, or doing street theater, or becoming involved in a (UK) "Big
Society"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Society
These are all actions outside of "the business life of the community".
Presumably Phelps thinks they are all examples of delinquency because
people are not being paid to do them?
What dim and horrendous view of human nature is it that only within
conventionally structured wage-slavery can human beings find meaning and
social relationships? Is such a belief not just some form of dogma or
insanity? I've seen the same reaction to "unschooling" -- the
conventional argument, made by people based on their own years of
dysfunctional schooling, is that only if kids are compelled to "learn"
(by some combination of bribes and threats) will they grow. Alfie Kohn
lists a huge parade of scientific studies calling all that into question:
"Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans,
A's, Praise, and Other Bribes"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
But, it does not matter what the science says, because people have had
beaten or bribed into them over the course of many painful (or even
pleasant) years that only authorities can get people to grow by telling
them what to do every minute. Phelps seems to be saying the same thing
about work.
Phelps also talks on that page about "the populist attack on free
enterprise" as if wages were the only issue, not concentration of wealth
or the presence of externalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
And that is just before he goes on to bash the "universal income
guarantee" (another term for a "basic income") where he (on the next
page) "bewailed the failure of European social scientists to grasp how
profoundly misguided that position is". Well, a little factoid for Phelps:
http://www.lloydmorgan.co.uk/2007/07/
http://web.archive.org/web/20080119001830/http://www.adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Generation_Fcked_How_Britain_is_Eating_Its_Young.html
"The reason our children�s lives [in the UK] are the worst among
economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the
USA, so the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age
of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given
it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates."
He concludes the preface (my additions in brackets): "I still believe
that instituting a substantial low-wage employment subsidy would permit
[US] America to be what it has always seen itself as becoming -- a
nation in which practically all persons can have the prospects of a
[materially] rewarding career [as a wage-slave] and a satisfactory
realization of their [market-related] potential [as an exploitable
commodity until we can replace you with one of robotics or other
automation, better design, or a voluntary social network and so cut
management costs too]."
On page 3 he says something I agree with that "it is apparent from
observations of poor areas that many working-age people can no longer be
self-sustaining...". No doubt there are many other things he says that
I'd agree with. But then the issue is how to interpret those facts (like
a 40% growth in US GDP over the past decade but a 0% net growth of
employment even with rising population) and then what to do about it.
On page 4 he says essentially that welfare causes problems because
people people won't be so eager to take crappy low paying jobs. I'll
agree with that too. But he sees that as a problem whereas I see that as
a good thing. And that gets to the core of his argument, that such
payments by society should be conditional to jobs -- presumably to force
people to accept crappy working conditions or starve. And that kind of
thinking was part of the "welfare to work" reform under Clinton (which
probably only worked because the economy was growing a lot then between
the dot com boom and the financial housing bubble).
He goes on to blame "idleness" (and deprivation) for the rise of
alcoholism, drug addiction, and a propensity for violence. But he
ignores things like vitamin D deficiency, increasingly dysfunctional
test-focused schools, and a malfunctioning agrobusiness sector pushing
animal products and processed foods and other junk food over whole
foods, where there is a direct link between poor nutrition and violence.
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat:
Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies
may play a key role in aggressive bevaviour"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
But those kind of crappy junk food producing companies are exactly the
kind of thing he wants to subsidize to create employment, right? In
fact, his plan will just lower the cost of junk food by lower employment
costs as companies rely on income subsidies for workers as they lower
prices? See, here is where a mainstream failure to contemplate
systematic democratic resource-based planning comes in.
I could go on (that is only page 4), but I think it would be just more
of the same. And as I said, I probably agree with some of what Phelps
says, too. But issues of deprivation are meaningless when we have the
capacity to produce for all now with robotics etc.. And issues of career
satisfaction are meaningless when practically no one has careers anymore
and there are so many things that need doing but no one has time to do
them because things like being a good parent or a good neighbor are not
"profitable"; I'm not saying they should be "profitable" just that we
should not have to slight them to work excessively for pay at low wages
instead.
Note that in the Preface he talks about being funded by the the Bradly
Foundation, Russel Sage Foundation for one year, and the John M. Olin
Foundation.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Foundation
"The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
is a conservative foundation with about half a billion US dollars in
assets. .. The Bradley Foundation has provided funding for the Project
for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent
members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate
their neoconservative foreign policy, including sending a letter to
President Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq."
And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Olin_Foundation
"John M. Olin Foundation was a grant-making foundation established in
1953 by John M. Olin, president of the Olin Industries chemical and
munitions manufacturing businesses. ... It made its last grant in the
summer of 2005 and officially disbanded on November 29 of that year
after having disbursed over $370 million in funding, primarily to
conservative think tanks, media outlets, and law programs at influential
universities."
The Russel Sage Foundation seems a bit more neutral or progressive
(ignoring a conservative bias at most big foundations):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Sage_Foundation
"In its early years, the foundation worked with the problems of the poor
and the elderly, to improve hospital and prison conditions, and in the
development of social work as a profession; it helped achieve early
reforms in health care, city planning, consumer credit, labor law, and
social security programs."
On problematical foundations in general:
"The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate
Our Kind Hearts, Too"
http://www.counterpunch.org/roelofs05132006.html
So, Phelps gets the equivalent of a basic income to write about why the
average person should not have one. It's just ironic, sorry, and a very
sad comment on US society.
Returning to your own assumptions, behavior that looks like drug
addiction generally emerges out of a stressful environment (the very
concept of "addiction" may not exist apart from a stressful environment
for most cases). See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
"Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57
consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between
plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they
chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "...
produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in
a reasonably normal environment."[1] Control groups of rats isolated in
small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent
experiments."
And there are probably other assumptions here, considering a US cultural
context, about "social power" (which I referred to in my reply).
Consider that people in the USA may became "welfare moms" and "drug
addicts" because they have had so much of their social power taken away
from them for a variety of reasons. These including a tax code focused
on promoting the power of business, like with tax preferences. So, we
have welfare moms and drug addicts in part through the sort of
thoughtless policies that mainstream economists like Phelps advocate
(like by a wage subsidy that gives more power to wealthy businesses),
going on about the joys of "work", all the while igoring that they are
reinforcing a wage-slavery-based status-quo that is harmful to so many
people like who become welfare moms and drug addicts whether they can't
get a job (like because of the lack of parent-friendly workplaces) or
even if they can. Example:
http://www.dailyjournal.com/cle.cfm?show=CLEDisplayArticle&qVersionID=124&eid=653639&evid=1
"On-the-job stress is responsible for many illnesses: high blood
pressure, headaches, fatigue, heart attacks, asthma, insomnia, and
depression. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, a proponent of integrative
medicine, which combines ideas and practices of alternative and
conventional medicine, "All illnesses should be assumed to be
stress-related until proved otherwise. Even if stress is not the primary
cause of illness, it is frequently an aggravating factor." (Spontaneous
Healing (Ballantine Books, 1995), 264.)"
Why should probably the most important thing done in a society, raising
the next generation, especially in the first few critical years of life,
be considered to be a personal endeavor and a *negative*? Why should not
all moms (and dad) of young children not get every possible social
support and encouragement? Overpopulation? But what about seasteads,
space habitats, and new ways of building more efficient cities? The
universe is pretty empty out there, but meanwhile people are saying
certain other people having children (generally, when the parents are
"poor") is a bad thing. We have, say, China, with its one child policy
that has lead to endless abortions and now a society of spoiled children...
But, in the religious dogma of mainstream economics,
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
welfare moms and drug addicts are that way purely through personal
choice. It's true that personal choices are involved, but one also has
to talk about the context in which those choices are made (the legacy of
Black slavery, perhaps, or the 100X higher spending on the military to
fight over resources than the space program to get access to new
resources, or the role of state-backed monopolies in keeping people
poor, the history of land enclosure and privatization, and so on.)
Anyway, so there are a lot of assumptions involved in all this. Ask
yourself, who really benefits from some assumptions and paradigms? Who
benefits from convincing other people they represent "overpopulation"?
Who benefits from convincing others that wage-slavery is the only way to
organize an abundant society? Who benefits from saying businesses need
to be given more power to give people meaning in life? Who benefits from
convincing everyone that the obvious solution to poverty, simply giving
people money, can't possibly work? :-)
As Keynes wrote in his book above about his own predecessors:
"The completeness of the [classical] victory is something of a
curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of
suitabilities in the doctrine to the environment into which it was
projected. That it reached conclusions quite different from what the
ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added, I suppose, to its
intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was
austere and often unpalatable, lent it virtue. That it was adapted to
carry a vast and consistent logical superstructure, gave it beauty. That
it could explain much social injustice and apparent cruelty as an
inevitable incident in the scheme of progress, and the attempt to change
such things as likely on the whole to do more harm than good, commended
it to authority. That it afforded a measure of justification to the free
activities of the individual capitalist, attracted to it the support of
the dominant social force behind authority."
So, Phelps has a Nobel Prize and a basic income (for bashing the basic
income), and I (despite trying to get a PhD several times with ideas
related to open manufacturing)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
scrub our toilet as a stay-at-home Dad, post a bit here and there like
on this list, and my wife works hard to bring home the vegetables. :-)
I should count myself lucky to not be like Phelps, even as I feel
everyone should have a basic income at this point. :-) See:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book
about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the
workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as
is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that
professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are
hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict �ideological
discipline.� The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues
Schmidt, is the professional�s lack of control over the political
component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to
make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our
system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an
acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals
typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative
potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy. Schmidt
details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to
pursue one�s own social vision in today�s corporate society. He shows
how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional
employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank
book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about
his or her job."
Paul D. Fernhout
> On 11/3/10 6:54 PM, John Griessen wrote:
>> If we ignore
>> the low paid another twenty years,
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by this, but a basic income is directly
> addressing this issue, given the assumption that people will, in time,
> create their own meanings if a basic income is a right of citizenship,
> not a sign of disability and personal defect. To an extent, we create
> our economies through our assumptions and self-fulfilling prophecies
> about human nature. If we say only losers would volunteer, and healthy
> people are really competitive and want to live in big houses, then we
> may tend to get a lot of competitive people living in big houses.
>
> Googling around finds this from 1905:
> "Unconscious Assumptions in Economics"
> http://books.google.com/books?id=4CIDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA529&lpg=PA528
>
> But I know I was reading something very recent on that yesterday, but
> can't recall enough to find the link.
Ah, here it is:
"It�s not the economists, it�s the economics"
http://blogs.reuters.com/barbarakiviat/2010/11/01/its-not-the-economists-its-the-economics/
"As economist Robert Frank once wrote, �Our beliefs about human nature
help shape human nature itself.� I am indebted to Joe Magee for pointing
me to this fantastic paper (PDF), which explains how the economic world
view might be influencing us to act more in line with its
assumptions�such as the primacy of self-interest in how people make
decisions. The paper includes a number of great examples, including how
the Chicago Board Options Exchange wound up conforming to option-pricing
theory and why companies often think layoffs are the path to maximum
value. Here�s a more trivial, although particularly salient,
illustration that involves people playing the prisoner�s dilemma: "[The]
game was called, in one instance, the Wall Street Game and, in the
other, the Community Game. This simple priming using different language
produced differences in participants� choice of moves, as well as
differences in the moves subjects anticipated from their counterparts.
When the game was called the Community Game, �mutual cooperation was the
rule. . .and mutual defection was the exception. . . . whereas the
opposite was the case in the Wall St. Game� (Liberman et al., 2003: 15).
Both participants and those that nominated them did not anticipate the
extent to which this simple labeling or naming affected responses, and
subjects� responses to the situation were much more strongly predicted
by the name of the situation than by the person�s presumed likelihood
and reputation for being cooperative or defecting.""
The article also links to:
"Economics language and assumptions: How theories can become
self-fulfilling"
http://web.nmsu.edu/~yuxia/portfolio/ferraro.pdf
So, how will open manufacturing become a self-fulfilling prophecy about
cooperation and abundance?
I commented in a post the other day that we could use a billionaire who
realizes his or her money will be mostly obsolete in twenty to thirty
years to fund open manufacturing research and other initiatives to a
saner world. But, that's also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't
it? A few billion dollars put into open-manufacturing research and open
3D printers and open robotics and open energy and so on, and money will
mostly be obsolete... :-)
Or, billionaires can say money will always have value, and like Phelps
say that people are better off if forced to work at what billionaires
want them to work at, and they can use their billions to try to ensure
that is the case, and maybe delay a social transcendence by a decade or
so (and probably at a greatly increased risk of everything blowing up).
P.M.Lawrence
Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> On 10/28/10 10:14 PM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
.
.
> > would come from a Negative Payroll Tax, start by going to any of the
> > items on my publications page, e.g. http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN
> > that I cited before. Then do a search for suitable terms, like "jobs",
> > "work", or "apprentice", then read the context around that. But don't
> > make up stuff like those you just mentioned.
>
> Your comments here seem to be getting more and more personal.
told various things to my face that I had already shown do not apply.
>
> I spent a minute doing exactly what you suggested and did not find a
> specific example of a "job". Not a mention of increasing the number of
> "waitresses" or "farmers" or "physical therapists" or "call center
> employee" or "solar panel installation technician" or "autoworker".
free markets - that they don't spell out precise details the way the
planners do. But that's the point of the flexibility! If A doesn't
come through, there's still B. And a minute doesn't cut it.
>
> So, in short, it seems you can't, or won't, cite any specific examples
> of jobs (e.g. waitress, airline pilot, medical doctor, sanitation
> worker, computer programmer, wind energy technician) to be created and
> sustained in the long term by the policies you advocate.
what need was there?
More to the point, ANY workplace in which existing staff are
overworked in preference to taking on more people would be a likely
candidate. Kevin Carson's occasional descriptions of his hospital work
come to mind.
>
> Nor do your prioritize issues of how the workplace itself is structured?
But I did point out in the linked material that the first effects
would be in less downsizing and more apprenticeships.
>
> That puts you in good company with many, many, other writers about
> economics. In fact, almost all of them.
>
> Of course, you might also realize, I'm going to suggest, for almost any
> specific paid job you list, that, at this point in time in the 21st
> century, if we wanted to we could greatly reduce (or eliminate) those
> jobs by robotics and other automation, better design including open
> hardware and FOSS, and voluntary social networks? :-) By the way,
> interesting related reading, and not by me: :-)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation#During_the_2000s_and_2010s
>
> And also, again, for context, this discussion started because you said a
> basic income would not work, and you say your arguments are too complex
> or whatever to discuss (even as a summary of the logic) via email here,
> despite thousands of words exchanged.
have raised the stakes for just how much effort I would have to put in
for you. You would need far more written out just for you than others
would settle for. And it's also been something of a dollar auction
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction).
And so, presumably, we should
> implement whatever you say because we (or at least just I) are too dumb
> (or lazy) to appreciate what you have to say, and other alternative
> ideas that many people have spent years researching are broken?
>
> OK. :-)
No, these things should be implemented because RESEARCH HAS SHOWN that
they would be fast acting and would work (your own disabilities in
getting it don't come into it), and because the alternatives you
suggest are NOT "broken", unless they are set too high (which,
unfortunately, you DO propose), but DO have insuperable intrinsic
IMPLEMENTATION problems when started just like that. Far from being
inconsistent with what would work in a fundamental sense, they would
actually turn up as a late stage in the workable transitions I have
investigated - only, there are yet further and better stages, towards
something like Distributism, under which people would control THEIR
OWN private resources rather than having them churned through a Basic
Income system.
That comment of yours just there was another example of you again
telling me what you have already been told isn't so.
.
.
.
> Could you consider for a moment that maybe some of the things I suggest
> are implicit assumptions in you analysis maybe are indeed implicit
> assumptions? Stuff like assumptions about the need to link work to pay
> (a basic income)?
NO, I already told you that I do not assume that. It would be bloody
silly if I did, considering (as you have not) that I already told you
that there are further stages without that and that even this stage
could just pay people for leaning on a broom (if anyone were so
foolish as not to do more and get more).
That comment of yours just there was another example of you again
telling me what you have already been told isn't so.
Or the need to "motivate" people with external rewards
> (Alfie Kohn)? Or the assumption, that as regards our socioeconomic
> paradigm, that a little change may be easier than a big change(when a
> little change might be just as hard, or harder, because it has less
> support (as demonstrated in the USA by the sick care bill fracas that
> still leaves the US health system in crisis)?
irrelevant, since a straight-to-Basic Income approach is unworkable
for other reasons.
.
.
.
> Anyway, we are in agreement about some things, for sure.
are nobody with standing to tell me anything of the sort, considering
how many things you believe I think that I do not in fact think. The
polite method, which you have not used, is to ASK me if I agree about
something that YOU agree with.
You mention in
> passing moving through wage subsidies to a future that might involve
> "Distributism", which would essentially be the equivalent of every home
> around the globe having a really amazing 3D printer.
In a world in which there were such printers, no doubt people under
Distributism would have convenient access to them. But I neither
believe that Distributism requires such a world, nor do I believe that
merely owning them would be sufficient in such a world (as other
constraints could still be there, preventing Distributism).
.
.
.
> > You will find that one of the avenues into employment is where people
> > simply go onto employers' payrolls to collect unemployment benefits
> > that way instead of via the government bureaucracy; they might even
> > get more by doing that, since there would be less cost consumed by the
> > bureaucracy and more left for the unemployed. Some might say that
> > those aren't "real jobs", just being paid for leaning on a broom or
> > whatever, but someone like you with a Basic Income perspective
> > shouldn't have any objections to that even if it were the the case,
> > which it isn't.
>
> As might seem obvious from other things I've written, or citing people
> like Bob Black, I think "makework" is an unpleasant notion. The thought
> of forcing someone into an authoritarian workplace to "lean on a broom"
> doing work that is neither very useful to society or very interesting to
> themselves, just so they can eat and have a place to sleep and clothes
> to wear is, IMHO, morally wrong at this point in our cultural and
> technological evolution. So is IMHO forcing the same person at a young
> age into an authoritarian classroom to "lean on a book" in order to get
> the job where they "lean on a broom".
wrote and linked to.
Anyone who wanted to go into a workplace and work could do that, and
get paid commensurately more than for just leaning on a broom.
Anyone who wanted to go into a workplace and just lean on a broom
could do that, and get paid commensurately.
AND, anyone who wanted to stay at home and merely receive unemployment
benefits could still do that.
You MADE UP that tosh about forcing.
>
> Anyway, I can't understand why you might write "someone like you with a
> Basic Income perspective shouldn't have any objections to that", given
> all that, other than to think it indicates the issue of the social
> dynamics of the workplace and the nature of work is not an issue you
> have spent much time considering.
which I just now repeated but which you had not absorbed, and you
should have no objections to the way it would lead to a (deliberately
insufficient, granted) Basic Income further down the transition
sequence.
I think it shows we are looking at
> this structural unemployment situation from completely different
> assumptions. You seem to imply there is nothing wrong with the idea of
> the government giving "wage subsidies" which essentially just magnify
> the power of the business sector,
If you don't know what I meant, ask, don't make it up.
If I thought there was nothing wrong with it, morally, I wouldn't
propose further transition stages - since this delivers all the
economic stuff early on without later stages.
If it didn't improve the position of actual and potential workers it
wouldn't be delivering; since it would, there's no "essentially just
magnify the power of the business sector" about it.
whereas if such monetary transfers
> were done as a basic income, it would change the social dynamics of the
> system. There is a huge difference, but, as with your above comment, it
> is not something you seem to even acknowledge an advocate for a basic
> income would think about.
have spotted the transitional problems of doing it your way. For
instance, sticky wages would mean workers resisting reductions of paid
wages even when they got a Basic Income - yet a workable economy would
need that. There would be lower employment, and less production of
stuff for people to buy with what money they did get. The Negative
Payroll Tax stage avoids all that.
.
.
.
> economic framework, suggestions like wage subsidies might not make sense
> or be more politically acceptable right now (in the USA, in Australia,
> or wherever, especially Western Europe where they are being used in a
> way as part of the "job sharing" plans).
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurzarbeit
> "Kurzarbeit (German for "short-work") is a short-term, recession-related
> program operating in several European countries in which companies have
> entered into an agreement to avoid laying-off any of their employees by
> instead reducing the working hours of all or most of their employees,
> with the government making up some of the employees' lost income. If an
> employee agrees to undergo training programs during his or her extra
> time off, they can often maintain their former income."
>
> So, that's certainly proof that your ideas have some merit. :-)
churning, funds which need to be obtained and paid out.
You have completely failed to absorb a key feature, that this is NOT
an actual wage subsidy but a virtual one. P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> This is written after some time away to restore balance.
Thanks for your additional comments and clarifications. I'm sorry I have
obviously offended you and read things into what you wrote that you say
you did not mean.
Anyway as long as your replies are going to mostly be pointing to stuff
on the web (where when I look at it it does not seem to directly support
your points), or meta comments about our discussion and my intelligence
or integrity, it's hard to make progress on this dialog.
Could I invest a *lot* more time trying to read through things you have
pointed to as support for claims you make here, and things they in turn
link to, and so on, to see if what you are sort of saying (or not
saying) about a basic income and so on is true in some way? Maybe. But
you have not convinced me it is worth the time for me right now. Maybe
someday?
And I'm sure people could say the same about a lot of what I write. :-)
It just gives me pause that I can point to a library of papers working
out the details on a basic income:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html
And it also gives me pause that your stuff seems to be leaning towards
mainstream economics in overall approach (tinkering with wages and
unemployment?) from what little I have read of it. Not to say that means
it's wrong -- it may be very right and very useful, as far as it goes,
to the extent any underlying assumptions hold true. And your overall
style of discussion also gives me pause. Sorry, but that is how I see it
right now. You have not convinced me that I should be reading your
stuff. Now, maybe that's because I'm an idiot, :-) but in any case, you
have not made a persuasive case to me personally right now to interest
me into looking further at what you are doing, especially with so much
other stuff going on.
I did like your link to the "Dollar Auction", as yet another example of
the folly of competition and arms races. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_race
Anyway, there are a lot of people on this list and others may well find
your approach of interest. Still, even when I talk about economics, I
try to link it to the vision of a changing society that open
manufacturing will bring about with increased abundance. So, to interest
people here in your work, you might want to spell out more of the
connections between it and some notion of abundance and local
empowerment or some broader theme that is going to give people more time
for volunteering and gift giving by making designs under free licenses,
or something like that. I'm not saying there might not be such links,
just that in promoting your work it might help to spell them out more.
Anyway, we will see if the concentration of wealth and power in various
businesses and the social dynamics of the workplace will resolve itself
with a somewhat-standard-to-me-sounding economics argument about a
"freed labour market" solving such issues, perhaps through wage
subsidies. I hope so, but I fear a concentration of wealth resulting
from automation is more likely to end up as Marshall Brain outlines in
"Manna" and "Robotic Nation" without other positive forces becoming
stronger (3D printing, local power, democratic change, a basic income,
accounting for externalities, turning work into play, and so on):
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
P.M.Lawrence
> On 11/17/10 3:26 AM, P.M.Lawrence wrote:
> > This is written after some time away to restore balance.
>
> Thanks for your additional comments and clarifications. I'm sorry I have
> obviously offended you and read things into what you wrote that you say
> you did not mean.
repeated the same misrepresentations even after you were told you had
got things wrong. That is, you compounded matters.
>
> Anyway as long as your replies are going to mostly be pointing to stuff
> on the web (where when I look at it it does not seem to directly support
> your points),
about anything that you thought meant that.
or meta comments about our discussion and my intelligence
> or integrity, it's hard to make progress on this dialog.
about them, meta is all you can get.
If I point out chapter and verse about things you get wrong, as I am
going to do again below, the objective is to get the point across.
However, there are going to be unavoidable but incidental implications
about your intelligence and/or integrity. If I choose to draw out and
make explicit inferences about those, the purpose is constructive
criticism: to get your attention and rub your nose in what is actually
there, so we can move on with a common basis of fact and theory, i.e.
so that a meeting of minds can come about - which does NOT mean
agreement but a foundation for enquiry on which we may honestly end up
disagreeing.
>
> Could I invest a *lot* more time trying to read through things you have
> pointed to as support for claims you make here, and things they in turn
> link to, and so on, to see if what you are sort of saying (or not
> saying) about a basic income and so on is true in some way? Maybe.
have to do to be intellectually honest is:-
- put in SOME time (as I shall show other readers below, you have not
even done that); or
- admit that you have not looked into what was offered WITHOUT
claiming that what I have posted is mere hand waving (since there is
backing).
But it is not open to you to claim that you weren't offered something
you could check - not even to claim that what you were offered doesn't
stand up, since (as I shall show) your remarks here prove that you
didn't use the material offered.
But
> you have not convinced me it is worth the time for me right now. Maybe
> someday?
since you have spent so much time and trouble replying without
studying, which you could have used in paying attention.
>
> And I'm sure people could say the same about a lot of what I write. :-)
>
> It just gives me pause that I can point to a library of papers working
> out the details on a basic income:
> http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
> http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html
book by Professor Phelps that he can access more easily in the USA
than I can here in Australia.
> And it also gives me pause that your stuff seems to be leaning towards
> mainstream economics in overall approach (tinkering with wages and
> unemployment?) from what little I have read of it.
is making stuff up. The very first link I gave him was
http://users.beagle.com.au/peterl/publicns.html#LIBRESLN, which
includes this about Negative Payroll Tax: "[t]he improvements are in
these areas... [t]here is less time delay or political trouble until
full or partial results, since wages paid do not have to drop".
There IS NO "tinkering with wages"; they are left untouched. The only
part of that material that discusses that is where it describes that
as being involved in some of the alternatives that have more problems,
particularly Negative Income Tax (proposed by some Australian
economists) and the American Earned Income Tax Credit but also (with
even more problems) our Green Party's idea of a Guaranteed Adequate
Income, i.e. a Basic Income.
I mention this TO PROVE that you have not been paying attention, in
the hope that you will begin to do so. Of course, there is the
unavoidable but incidental implication that you are lying about having
read the material, that you have read it but are lying about what is
in it, or that you have indeed read it but that you have some kind of
disability that not only made you forget it but also made you
substitute the product of your imagination for the gaps in your memory
(which I believe can happen to people with some conditions). There may
be some more charitable interpretation, but none springs to mind.
Whatever the case is, you have certainly misrepresented what I wrote,
and if the only way I can put the record straight involves making it
clear that you do not know what you are talking about, then I would
rather make that clear at the cost of offending you than spare your
feelings at the cost of allowing the misrepresentation to stand; but
offending you is incidental and meant constructively, not the object
of the exercise.
Not to say that means
> it's wrong -- it may be very right and very useful, as far as it goes,
> to the extent any underlying assumptions hold true.
test them - but don't substitute your confabulations for what is there
and make a straw man out of it.
And your overall
> style of discussion also gives me pause. Sorry, but that is how I see it
> right now. You have not convinced me that I should be reading your
> stuff. Now, maybe that's because I'm an idiot, :-)
the materials contain the facts and reasoning that are relevant.
Address them or not, don't guide things to this meta and personal
level that you yourself complained about.
but in any case, you
> have not made a persuasive case to me personally right now to interest
> me into looking further at what you are doing, especially with so much
> other stuff going on.
put in great effort dismissing these matters and yet refuse to look at
them on the ground that it is too much effort.
>
> I did like your link to the "Dollar Auction", as yet another example of
> the folly of competition and arms races. :-)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_race
>
> Anyway, there are a lot of people on this list and others may well find
> your approach of interest. Still, even when I talk about economics, I
> try to link it to the vision of a changing society that open
> manufacturing will bring about with increased abundance. So, to interest
> people here in your work, you might want to spell out more of the
> connections between it and some notion of abundance and local
> empowerment or some broader theme that is going to give people more time
> for volunteering and gift giving by making designs under free licenses,
> or something like that. I'm not saying there might not be such links,
> just that in promoting your work it might help to spell them out more.
general than that, something that would not only apply to such a world
but does actually apply to the here and now and even to less advanced
times and places? Trying to yoke this to your preferred area of
interest would lose anyone who wasn't into that who might suppose that
it would only work if things were like that (just as a Basic Income
set at your preferred levels wouldn't have long term problems under
that, but would under our constraints). But it would still work under
your preferred world, even if it would make even more sense to move
onto the later stages of a transition towards full private ownership
of necessary personal resources.
>
> Anyway, we will see if the concentration of wealth and power in various
> businesses and the social dynamics of the workplace will resolve itself
> with a somewhat-standard-to-me-sounding economics argument
have just proved you didn't pay any attention to the material
provided) or you are unfamiliar with "standard" economics, or possibly
both. For instance, I have used Game Theory in my analysis, which does
not happen much in "standard" economics, and also "standard" economics
tends to model things using aggregates in a way that fails to register
these effects.
about a
> "freed labour market" solving such issues, perhaps through wage
> subsidies. I hope so, but I fear a concentration of wealth resulting
> from automation is more likely to end up as Marshall Brain outlines in
> "Manna" and "Robotic Nation" without other positive forces becoming
> stronger (3D printing, local power, democratic change, a basic income,
> accounting for externalities, turning work into play, and so on):
> http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
> http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
interest. P.M.Lawrence.
P.M.Lawrence
.
.
.
> that has been more the case in Western Europe (who generally seem more
> sensible than US Americans about a lot of things).
>
> But, I'm not sure culturally that could happen in the USA. It increases
> overhead to have more employees working less hours -- something few
> companies would do unless there was a mandate that all companies do it.
> And even then, with a mandate, what about small business or sole
> proprietors or consultants?
Negative Payroll Tax, without needing a mandate; the "lump of labour"
fallacy does actually apply, instantaneously and as a short term
working approximation.
>
> France has had an issue with restricting working hours and it has been
> problematical and people are arguing it is hurting France's
> competitiveness and Frances economy relative to other countries (even
> though, frankly, I think the criticism is probably in error in terms of
> assuming that there would be more work, assuming, as I do, "saturated"
> demand -- even though, sure, if France can do better than other
> countries for a fixed pie, it might benefit).
as a Pigovian measure - it removes an economic drain. That is, the
total work done would increase rather than simply being shared (the
"lump of labour" only applies instantaneously), and more would be
produced in total even though the number of hours per person actually
in work could (not "must") end up lower. Professor Swales's analysis
projects a GDP percentage increase of about half the emplyment
percentage increase, over a wide range of other parameters.
P.M.Lawrence.
Paul D. Fernhout
> Other readers, I already gave him links and even mentioned a hard copy
> book by Professor Phelps that he can access more easily in the USA
> than I can here in Australia.
And on Nov 4 2010 I spent pages and pages pointing out problems with
assumptions in Edmund S. Phelps book ("Rewarding work: how to restore
participation and self-support to free enterprise") going page by page
for the early pages here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/6be52ff228b9e115?hl=en
One item I wrote there: "Phelps' plan, whatever one can say about the
value of good work or hard fun, presumably ignores this deeper
democratic issue? Maybe P.M. Lawrence could comment on that?"
Although I did not see a reply by you on that. Since that post was in
reply to something John G. raised, perhaps you did not see it.
One point (of many) from there:
"On page 4 [Phelps] says essentially that welfare causes problems because
people people won't be so eager to take crappy low paying jobs. I'll
agree with that too. But he sees that as a problem whereas I see that as
a good thing. And that gets to the core of his argument, that such
payments by society should be conditional to jobs -- presumably to force
people to accept crappy working conditions or starve. And that kind of
thinking was part of the "welfare to work" reform under Clinton (which
probably only worked because the economy was growing a lot then between
the dot com boom and the financial housing bubble).
He goes on to blame "idleness" (and deprivation) for the rise of
alcoholism, drug addiction, and a propensity for violence. But he
ignores things like vitamin D deficiency, increasingly dysfunctional
test-focused schools, and a malfunctioning agrobusiness sector pushing
animal products and processed foods and other junk food over whole
foods, where there is a direct link between poor nutrition and violence.
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat:
Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies
may play a key role in aggressive bevaviour"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.uk...
But those kind of crappy junk food producing companies are exactly the
kind of thing he wants to subsidize to create employment, right? In
fact, his plan will just lower the cost of junk food by lower employment
costs as companies rely on income subsidies for workers as they lower
prices? See, here is where a mainstream failure to contemplate
systematic democratic resource-based planning comes in.
I could go on (that is only page 4), but I think it would be just more
of the same. And as I said, I probably agree with some of what Phelps
says, too. But issues of deprivation are meaningless when we have the
capacity to produce for all now with robotics etc.. And issues of career
satisfaction are meaningless when practically no one has careers anymore
and there are so many things that need doing but no one has time to do
them because things like being a good parent or a good neighbor are not
"profitable"; I'm not saying they should be "profitable" just that we
should not have to slight them to work excessively for pay at low wages
instead."
Anyway, so I did respond in detail to some of the basic assumption of
Phelps's arguments.