Marshall Brain's Robotic Nation & comments
Paul D. Fernhout
I've often mentioned Marshall Brain here but have never devoted a post
directly to his Robotic Nation Work. Essentially, Marshall Brain says robots
are going to take over most jobs in the next twenty or so years; he suggests
a guaranteed basic income as a way to address the related social issues, to
make that change a good thing rather than a bad thing for most people.
Here are the five most essential links to that essay and supporting information:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-faq.htm
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/
His online fictional story "Manna" is essentially a first-person fictional
view of the trends he outlines there:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
A surprising chain of links led me to think about his work yesterday. I read
a health care comment referencing Daniel Patrick Moynihan (involved with the
last reform attempt) leading to learning about Richard Nixon's(!) attempt at
a Guaranteed Annual Income (wonder if that was the real reason Nixon was
impeached? :-). And that made me think of rereading Marshall Brain's work.
Anyway, I feel everyone here (or elsewhere) should visit those five links
above (plus Manna) if you have not.
Marshall Brain wrote much of that around 2003 it seems, with the last two
links of the five being updated as time goes by.
Now, to be frank, I was somewhat underwhelmed when first reading those
essays by Marshall Brain. I thought, well, the "Singularity" is coming, so
of course jobs are going away, we have bigger things to worry about (like,
say, small robotic replicators like in StarGate destroying humanity), and
Marshall Brain is just droning on and on, in baby steps, on this one boring
issue of jobs, and how elementary that is, etc.. I never said that out loud
in such a dismissive tone, but, deep down, that is essentially how I felt a
some years ago reading his stuff for the first time -- that it was too timid
and besides-the-point in a sense, compared to "the big picture".
But now, I read his essays again and I think they are amazing for two reasons:
* he is communicating ethical values in relation to the singularity, and
* he is explaining this in terms the average person can understand and
relate to and take action on, including then with links to current
technological events.
The first issue, now seeing the importance of combining ideas about ethics
and the singularity, reflects how my own feeling about "The Singularity"
have changed. Vernor Vinge who popularized the term, said in the 1980s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create
superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended.
... I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030."
Certainly, computer-wise Vinge is right; from recent news:
"DARPA Wants a 19" Super-Efficient Supercomputer"
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/27/2118232/DARPA-Wants-a-19-Super-Efficient-Supercomputer
"If you can squish all the processing power of, say, an IBM Roadrunner
supercomputer inside a 19-inch box and make it run on about 60 kilowatts of
electricity, the government wants to talk to you. The extreme scientists at
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this week issued a call for
research that might develop a super-small, super-efficient super beast of a
computer. Specifically, DARPA's desires for Ubiquitous High Performance
Computing (UHPC) will require a new system-wide technology approach
including hardware and software co-design to minimize energy dissipation per
operation and maximize energy efficiency, with a 50GFLOPS per watt goal."
Essentially, that would allow every military vehicle to have a machine
intelligence onboard, as 60kW electric is feasible to generate in vehicles.
The Prius, for example, uses a gasoline engine that produces about that
amount of power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius
So, Vinge is right about the development of such systems. Yet, he is also
somewhat fatalistic, that there is nothing we can do. And people like Ray
Kurzweil are somewhat worshipful, racing us even faster to that assuming the
result will be a good thing. And Hans Moravec (who I've hung out with), has
a very rosy view it will all work itself out for the best with benevolent
mind children (or, also, that it is inevitable anyway).
I've been thinking that the singularity is a mirror. It is a mirror of our
individual personalities as we look at it (Kurzweil sees who he is,
capitalistic and libertarian). But it also may be a mirror maybe in the
sense that the ethical trajectory we have going in may affect our ethical
trajectory going out. So, I feel there is a lot of reason to focus in
getting our ethical house in order (like ending global starvation) *before*
we go through it, rather than hand-wave that all our problems will be solved
afterwards.
So, one can see a very different political bent among those who might call
themselves "transhumanist". For example:
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=27424
http://www.nhne.org/default.aspx?tabid=400&mid=864&articleId=3717&articleType=ArticleView&dnnprintmode=true&SkinSrc=%5BG%5DSkins%2F_default%2FNo+Skin&ContainerSrc=%5BG%5DContainers%2F_default%2FNo+Container
"""
I discover the less egalitarian side to the transhumanist community when I
meet Marvin Minsky, the 80-year-old originator of artificial neural networks
and co-founder of the AI lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Ordinary citizens wouldn't know what to do with eternal life," says Minsky.
"The masses don't have any clear-cut goals or purpose." Only scientists, who
work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for
extended lifespans, he argues. He is also staunchly against regulating the
development of new technologies. "Scientists shouldn't have ethical
responsibility for their inventions, they should be able to do what they
want," he says. "You shouldn't ask them to have the same values as other
people." The transhumanist movement has been struggling in recent years with
bitter arguments between democrats like Hughes and libertarians like Minsky.
Can Kurzweil's keynote speech unite the opposing factions? On the final day
of the meeting, the diminutive 59-year-old takes the podium, complete with
horn-rimmed glasses, utilitarian blue suit and Mickey Mouse watch. Kurzweil
offers a few possible solutions to today's global dilemmas, such as
nano-engineered solar panels to free the world from its addiction to fossil
fuels. But he is opposed to taxpayer-funded programmes such as universal
healthcare as well as any regulation of new technology, and believes that
even outright bans will be powerless to control or delay the end of humanity
as we know it.
"""
So, there we have a basic conflict of values and assumptions.
By the way, by some quirk of fate, I am the same hierarchical parentage
"rank" as Minsky in the AI hierarchy, as we both had the same advisor -- Dr.
Wordnet, George A. Miller. :-)
Of course, many people could say that they worked with George, although most
of George's students may not have been as interested in both AI and robotics
as Marvin Minsky and I were.
So, in a sense, one could consider me the newer version between the two of
us, one especially more interested in narrative intelligence, or "Lore".
Of course, we all know how that ended up on Star Trek. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek)
"Lore (played by Brent Spiner) is a prototype android and the brother of
main character Data and of B-4. However, while Data is virtuous and B-4 is
primitive, Lore is sophisticated, clever, jealous and self-serving, making
him the evil twin brother of the group."
And I know enough about psychology and myself and limited self-awarenses to
wonder... :-)
And, as the one of the two more interested in narrative:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/StoryHarp/
and probably the less conventionally stable too (fighting against the PhD
process, for example, but for other reasons) one can also make a case for
who stacks up where in that analogy not very flattering to me, regardless of
who graduated first or second. :-)
Anyway, what I now see in Marshall Brain's writing is an attempt to direct
the singularity in a more humane direction by addressing the issues that
Vinge is fatalistic about, and which Minsky and even Kurzweil are too
elitist and/or libertarian about. And fundamentally, Libertarianism has
serious flaws, even as it has many truths, same as Marxism:
"Libertarianism: Marxism of the Right"
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom,
though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. ... But
security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most
real people and the principal issues that concern governments."
Manuel de Landa's Meshwork and Hierarchy idea explains this paradox -- that
Marxism is too much hierarchy-oriented and Libertarianism is too much
meshwork-oriented.
"Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces"
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."
That's why a Libertarian society as a society (not as charitable libertarian
individuals perhaps, who may be generous) has no problem with people
starving to death because they can't find a job because of robotics and the
centralization of wealth. Nor does a Libertarian society (as a society) have
a problem with people dying on the streets in front of hospitals with empty
beds because they could not afford health insurance. Libertarians and
Republicans claim private charity will take care of that as we all get
wealthy in our society, but then why is it usually the poor who give more of
their money per-capita to charity? And why are billions of people still
hungry in the world when we already have enough food to feed everyone?
Part of it is a conservative obsession with cheap labor, one thing driving
robotics and automation, both to lower prices and to threaten workers with:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16
"These aren’t the only examples of “cheap-labor conservative” policies and
positions. While I will be supplementing and expanding this list from time
to time, you should be getting the idea. Anytime a cheap-labor conservative
takes a position on anything at all, take a look at the details. See if
somewhere in those details there isn’t some way the wage-earner loses out. I
have not yet failed to find the connection. Either the conservative position
undermines the bargaining power of the wage earner, limits his economic
options, harasses the wage earner in some way, raises his cost of living,
increases his economic vulnerability or accomplishes some combination of the
above."
Marshall Brain has another answer in Manna in what one character "Burt"
says, essentially out of sight, out of mind:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm
"Your parents had a 3,000 square foot house and the pool at the turn of the
century. You were living it up. Unfortunately, at that moment in history,
there were billions of people around the world living in poverty -- they
were living off a dollar or two per day. Meanwhile, your family had 300
dollars a day. Did you do anything about it? Billions and Billions of people
living in third-world countries, squatting together in the dirt, crapping in
ditches. They would walk down by the river just like we are doing right now
and say to each other, 'There must be a way out.' They could see that they
were lost -- totally wasted human potential trapped in a terrible situation.
Their kids and their kids' kids forever would live like this because there
was absolutely no way out. Did anyone stop to help them? Did you stop to
help them? No. You were too busy splashing in the pool. Those billions of
people lived and died in incredible poverty and no one cared."
Of course, what is worse is that before the USA and other industrialized
countries got involved in many of those materially poor people's lives, they
had at least subsistence hunter/gatherer/farmer economies with rich social
networks and generous cultural traditions and were probably much happier,
before colonialism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism
The Americas seem like they were a happier place before Columbus overall in
many ways (even with shorter life spans and more feuding included in that
assessment.)
From "A People's History of the United States":
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
"""
Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their
villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the
strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying
swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food,
water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:
"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many
other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells.
They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with
good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know
them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves
out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They
would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and
make them do whatever we want."
...
The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their
possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When
you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they
offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a
little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his
next voyage "as much gold as they need ... and as many slaves as they ask."
He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives
victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to
pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise
to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and
his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons
fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three
months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around
their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off
and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around
was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down
with dogs, and were killed.
Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced
Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took
prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass
suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from
the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of
the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were
taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were
worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515,
there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five
hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or
their descendants left on the island.
"""
This is the history that Minsky and Kurzweil are either ignorant of or
dismissive of. And it is something that I did not know either until fairly
recently, despite many, many years of schooling. That was the past of
industrialization. It may well be the future too, if humans have to compete
with robots for jobs.
Anyway, so, I now appreciate Marshall Brain's writings more for their intent
-- intentionally or not -- to shape the singularity in a more humane way.
And I now appreciate them more for another reason -- Marshall Brain's step
by step explaining of all the obvious things. His brilliance there is
specifically in stating the obvious -- obvious to me and many on this list
at this point, but not obvious to others. So, Marshall Brain is a true
public educator in that sense -- stating the obvious that is obvious only
after it has been stated. :-) And that is hard. And it shows great insight
and clarity of thought and presentation, at a Freeman Dyson level.
I have written much on this stuff, but I have to admit, people would learn a
lot more of greater immediate value by reading through those five links
above (and Manna) than by reading everything I have written -- even
everything I have written here.
Still, I don't think I am completely useless. :-) Here are four things that
could be "improved" in Marshall Brain's presentation: :-) I put improved in
quotes since maybe they would just add confusion or more points people would
resist. So maybe his presentation is better as is. In any case, these four
issue jump out at me rereading it.
=== Point 1: Limited Demand
Marshall Brain has to do some handwaving about mainstream economics not
providing everyone jobs. It is a major point of mainstream economics that
new jobs are created as old ones are lost, with people buying new products.
The basic idea is that there is unlimited demand for goods and services, so,
anyone put out of work by innovation can just go to work in a new industry
that makes some new additional thing as the economy "grows". Endless growth
is also built into capitalism for another reason, because, as soon as growth
stops, profits drop through increasing competition, and no one will wager
capital to build businesses without likely profits. But, as long as we have
endless growth of the economy, there will always be full employment, or so
mainstream economics goes. And presumably, the economy will always be able
to grow in all ways forever, right? And all sorts of growth, whether
agricultural production, manufacturing, personal services, and producing
patents and copyrights are all identical in implications, right?
If one assumes, say, that the total demand for toaster ovens in the world is
limited, then if you figure out how to make more with less people, then the
question is, where do the people who lose their jobs go to work? If you
assume demand is unlimited, then you assume everyone is getting (forever)
bigger homes, second homes with more toaster ovens, new types of computing
devices, new types of vehicles (personal flying cars) and so on -- forever.
So, basically, every person accumulates more and more junk, until the planet
is buried under castles full of variations of snowmobiles.
Marshall Brain addresses job loss by stating that there will be turmoil for
a time (which everyone can agree is bad) and also that robots will make more
robots, and new robots will work in new industries. While those are all
true, a bigger issue even without advanced robotics (just better design and
increasing simple dumb automation) is just that demand for new products by
psychologically healthy humans is limited.
Why is demand limited? In reality, most human happiness is not found in
material goods (even if material good are important for survival today,
given a much higher population than nature can support, and so a need for
intensive agriculture.) Financially obese or mentally dysfunctional humans
might all want to have castles that span acres, but healthy humans are
generally content with, at most, a house with a room for every person in the
family who wants one and a nook or workshop for every major hobby, and
enough food to eat and clean water. (In a pinch, most people can be happy
dispensing with even the house, with just the food and water if they have
friends and family and a warm and dry place to sleep.) Why is this? Most of
human happiness is coming from family, cheap recreation like being in nature
or talking or walking, and from helping others and doing good work. Most of
the other big things in life people might want to play with (boats,
snowmobiles, planes, vacation homes, ATVs) might be better off rented for a
day or a week anyway. Those castles of old were basically hotels with large
staffs anyway, so even within them Kings and Queens had very little personal
space (and maybe no private space at all). Another reason is a growing
environmental ethic and social ethic as people realize we do not pay the
true cost of all our purchases at the cash register (a point made in "The
Story of Stuff"). Both of those trends (limited demand and emergent ethics)
combine to produce a form of "voluntary simplicity"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=voluntary+simplicity
where, beyond a certain minimum amount of goods, most people are happy with
spending more time interacting with other people and the goods they have
than in acquiring more goods -- because everything you own in some sense
also owns you, one reason why renting a boat or a cabin for week may be a
lot more fun than owning one for most people. So, all these factors in real
life suggest demand is limited.
Why is this so important? Limited demand would make a major assumption of
macroeconomics wrong. In turn, macroeconomics would get divide-by-zero
errors in all its equations. The rest of the world is busy industrializing
and is saturating its economies with toaster ovens and snowmobiles. At some
point, after pent up demand for exports from the USA or China or local
products is met, then, at that point, when people lose jobs from increasing
automation, there will be no need for more workers that there are already,
because people will have most everything they need, One might even see a big
contraction based on saturation alone, even without continued innovation to
do more with less, whether by better design, better processes, or robotics
and AI. The basic premise of job replacement of macroeconomics is predicated
on continual growth of paid-for goods and services, but we can see the
outlines of how that growth is coming to a global end. People may still need
some goods and services for upkeep and replacement due to accidents and wear
and tear, but even that is changing as better design allows products to last
longer or be easier to repair. So, classical macroeconomics has a bad
assumption, and thus classical macroeconomists are helpless to understand
what is going on. Thus the news these days.
The notion of "limited demand" (or at least, demand growing more slowly than
increasing productive capacity, a weaker form of it that may me truer) is
missing from "Robotic Nation" and it is a reason why macroeconomics is wrong
and why jobs will not endlessly get created. Marshall Brain is right that
finding a new job is trouble, and robots can make and fix robots, but this
saturation issue is an important part of the understanding. One can argue
about where we are on a curve of saturation, especially giving global needs,
but that is different then arguing about whether consumer saturation will
occur. I'd argue it has occurred in much of the USA and Europe, and is
occurring in many other nations.
Only advertising and planned obsolescence has propped things up this long --
by creating artificial demand for fad goods or things that are ultimately
disappointing.
To understand this just look around you. Really, how many people here (with
jobs :-) have more of a problem with clutter around the house than with
buying new stuff?
=== Point 2: Rising Debt
In "Capitalism Hits The Fan",
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
Economics Professor Richard Wolff shows how we are already seeing trends
like Marshall Brain outlines. Real wages for most workers in the USA have
been about the same since the 1970s (and, although the quality of some goods
like car and computers have improved, the quality of others like food have
decreased). Wolff shows how for the last three decades, more money is going
to CEOs and stockholders than to employees, centralizing wealth into fewer
and fewer hands. Wolff makes the point that it is only because of borrowing
(mostly on home equity, but also credit cards) that US workers have been
able to afford to buy so much stuff, stuff they have been conditioned by
advertising and media to expect they needed or wanted. So, we are already in
the midst of these trends just from regular automation and social trends
that have been going on since the 1970s in the USA, and we are now seeing
that entire system collapse. That is also related so having a fiat currency
money supply based on debt. So, considering Wolff's ideas is another way of
linking these trends to what is going on right now in many people's lives. I
don't agree with everything Wolff suggests, but these trends seem to be
something anyone could agree with, as well as the interpretation of what the
trends meant, given what we are seeing now.
=== Point 3: The Funds Are Mostly Already There
Marshall Brain lists several funding proposals for a Guaranteed Basic Income
towards the end of here:
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
But while he does mention things like property tax (Georgism?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
and how we have social security in the USA for everyone over 65 (why not any
age?), he does not mention school funding.
In New York State, where I live, the average funding per kid in school is
now about US$20K a year. NYS is high, but countrywide you are going to see
at least US$10K per student:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/National_average_cost_per_student_in_public_school
Those figures are all complex and subject to political interpretations, for
example:
"The Real Cost Of Public Schools"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402921.html
"""
We're often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the
spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending
is close to $25,000 per child -- on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the
private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s. What accounts for the
nearly threefold difference in these numbers? The commonly cited figure
counts only part of the local operating budget. To calculate total spending,
we have to add up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten
through 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher
education. For the current school year, the local operating budget is $831
million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund.
The capital budget is $218 million. The District receives about $85.5
million in federal funding. And the D.C. Council contributes an extra $81
million. Divide all that by the 49,422 students enrolled (for the 2007-08
year) and you end up with about $24,600 per child.
"""
I'd point out that for all that spending, in some places more than 50% of
kids don't get a high school diploma. And in general the schools dumb kids
down and make them unhappy, see John Taylor Gatto.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
Marshall Brain suggests a guaranteed income of $25K per person in the USA
per year. But we can see that that much is already being spent on behalf of
many children in the USA from around ages four through eighteen. (More is
spent on college subsidies, maybe through age 30 for people who go to grad
school and get a Masters and then a long PhD.)
So, that "education" money spent on schooling would be much better given
directly to the kids or parents. A major argument for schooling is so kids
can get jobs. But if the jobs are going away, then what is the point?
Be careful how you answer that question (learning to read, learning history,
learning to be a good citizen), because, for most kids, could not the
parents and extended family and neighborhood do a better job? Especially if
everyone in the country got a basic income and so had more time for being
neighborly and helping out with local kids' education? As NYS Teacher of the
Year John Taylor Gatto says here:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method of
mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons
of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with
themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self- motivation,
perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and lessons in
service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life."
Schools are a lot like Marshall Brain's "Terrafoam" dystopia in a way. John
Taylor Gatto, if he read "Manna", might suggest most of us were already
raised in Terrafoam and have essentially already put our kids in Terrafoam,
through the school system, at least eight hours a day five days a week for
the bulk of our waking hours.
So, for a family with two kids in school, NYS is already spending $40K per
year on that family. For most families in NYS, would they be happier with an
extra $40K in their pocket each year and "homeschooling", or with their kids
in conventional school day prisons with one parent working at a job outside
the home they probably don't like? Pretty much anyone can homeschool. And if
they can't, $25K a year per kid (Marshall Brain's suggestion) can buy a lot
of private schooling. That's what Sidwell Friends costs. So, there would be
no big loss there, even if parents decided they were unable to teach their
own, because they could just spend the money on private school.
"Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling"
http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Own-John-Homeschooling/dp/0738206946
Public schooling has made the mistake of conflating the notion of a public
run institution called a school with the notion of income redistribution to
families with children.
Also, the regular prison system costs something like US$35K a year per
person (with about two million inmates). I'm not advocating throwing bricks
and anything, but the fact is, anyone in the USA can throw a brick through a
shop window and spend time in jail, costing the government $20K a year to
run the jail (much more in places like New York or California, where it is
like $35K a year), and do it over and over again.
Here is an example:
"One Man's Home, for the Holidays"
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/24/nyregion/jersey-one-man-s-home-for-the-holidays.html
"""
TALK about holiday anxiety. Mark Morris broke into the Camden County Jail
just so he could spend Christmas in peace and safety. Twice. ... Often
befuddled about the past, and evidently oblivious to a future beyond his
next court date in January, Mr. Morris is homeless and troubled. Last month,
when the weather turned cold, all allure went out of the prospect of
spending another holiday season on the bleak streets of Camden, where the
homeless roam through the night like dog packs. So he threw a brick through
a window of the county courthouse. Then he stood there waiting. Sure enough,
he was quickly accommodated in jail, where he knew he'd get safety, warmth
and three squares a day. ... Mr. Morris figured he might even be good for
the whole winter, with court backlogs. But to his chagrin, he was released
instead on Dec. 6. Outside, on the windy plaza between the jail and the
courthouse, he shivered and scowled at the grim concrete face of downtown
Camden. Then he spotted a brick. You can guess what came next. ... Mr.
Morris himself is under psychiatric observation at the jail, where he has
caused no problems. Meanwhile, he is looking forward to spending Christmas
and New Year's in a place where no harm will come to him if he toes the
line. "This place is a fortress," he said. "They look out for you. I find
peace." He has friends, food, clothes, indoor plumbing and a rigid daily
routine that he welcomes. He has a warm bed, and sometimes he lies there and
struggles to break through the memory fog banks. The other day, he recalled
snippets of Christmases from his boyhood, long before life went so wrong.
"We had a big family," he said. "I always had toys. That much I remember. As
a boy, yeah, I used to think that tree was just for me." He shut his eyes.
"I remember I never said 'Merry Christmas.' Instead, I would say, 'Thank you
for this day,'" said Mr. Morris, who will be home for Christmas, if only in
his dreams.
"""
So, that homeless guy found a way to give himself the equivalent of a basic
guaranteed income. Still, $20K a year doesn't get one that much, as is said
at the above link:
"""
"It's not like he was heading back to some pleasure palace," the sheriff
said. Like most jails, Camden's is grossly overcrowded. Built to hold 450,
it had 1,459 inmates the other day. "They're sleeping six in cells designed
for two," the sheriff said.
"""
But prison-like "Terrafoam" in Marshall Brain's Manna is better for most
people than freezing to death or starving:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=homeless+freeze+to+death
Granted, dealing with mentally ill people who want a safe and warm place to
sleep and three meals a day is not just a US problem, and there are no easy
answers:
http://blog.fotolove.com/daviddehghan/archive/2005/12/22/402.aspx
"Every winter in Toronto a few dozen homeless people freeze to death. I tend
to believe that there are shelter beds that left empty every night meanwhile
some homeless people refuse to use those beds because they can’t put up with
the rules and regulations that they have to abide by."
Though, from what I read of some US homeless shelters, some jails may be
safer. (Of course, jails vary from place to place.)
Anyway, the point is that the USA already spends a lot on schools, jails,
social security, and so on. As is said in the Triple Revolution memorandum
in 1964:
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing
proportion of resources while the men who are displaced become dependent on
minimal and unrelated government measures — unemployment insurance, social
security, welfare payments. These measures are less and less able to
disguise a historic paradox: That a substantial proportion of the population
is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time
when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of
everyone in the U.S."
So, we don't need "open manufacturing" to fix that problem in the sense that
there is already enough made to go around -- there is a question of how it
is distributed. Even for "open manufacturing" using open source designs,
without addressing the issue of distribution, there may be a big problem, if
the homeless or poor cannot access 3D printers or afford the toner for them
or afford the rent for the home to keep a 3d printer in, even if the designs
are free.
But in any case, we are already, as a society, spending vast amounts of
money on these issues. But ideologically, while we can lend money to workers
instead of give them raises, and we can pay teachers to run schools or
guards to run jails, all from taxes on property or income, the one thing we
seem to never be able to do is just give people the money so they don't need
the school or the prison or the loan.
Except when our government give people the money directly anyway:
"She Wants My ... Stimulus PACKAGE"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwJduPtCvSM
That humorous video is a little risque (from "Barely Political", but safe
enough for work :-), but it's an interesting take on these ideas, and has a
lot of interesting truths and confrontational half-truths in it about a
basic income guarantee. :-)
So, when you add up Social Security, education spending, prisons, and
"stimulus packages", the USA is already spending approaching $10K per
citizen anyway, but is doing it in an ideological way that can't admit it
would just be easier to give people the money directly as a basic income, so
that the part of capitalism that actually works could retune itself to meet
what people saw as their real needs (unlike institutions like school or
prison which are essentially Terrafoam precursors).
=== Point 4: Historic and current links
The Triple Revolution memorandum was mentioned above, but the US history of
abundance goes back further than that.
Many Native Americans (see above) had abundance and believed in an economics
of abundance before Columbus. See also:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as
Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on
the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When
the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to
assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native
understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is
shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick
was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually
understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack
of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful
teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking
much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has
provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by
the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have
forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that
comes once a year."
Richard Nixon proposed a guaranteed annual income:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan
"Moynihan supported Richard Nixon's idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income
(GAI). Daniel Patrick Moynihan had significant discussions concerning a
Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso."
There is along history of it mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income_Guarantee
From there: "A form of basic income dates to Thomas Paine's Agrarian
Justice of 1795, there paired with asset-based egalitarianism
(redistribution of wealth, not simply income)."
Charles Fourier also advocated something like it as part of a larger social
change.
There are current movements related to it; from the last link: "The Basic
Income Earth Network (BIEN) describes one of the benefits of a basic income
as having a lower overall cost than that of the current means-tested social
welfare benefits. However critics have pointed out the potential work
disincentives created by such a program, and have cast doubts over its
ability to be implemented. In later years, BIEN has made several fully
financed proposals."
Link:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
And for the USA:
http://www.usbig.net/
(Of course, our society might transform in lots of other ways afterwards to
move beyond currency for a lot of things, but a guaranteed basic income
might be a good first step.)
====
Now, most of these points are things I have only become of recently, so I'm
not faulting Marshall Brain for not knowing of them six years ago if he did
not. I'm just pointing them out now. And it may well be that Marshall Brain
knew all these things but saw fit not to include them, as they are very
controversial topics, and might distract from his message.
Anyway, again, I'd recommend people look at those five links to Marshall
Brains Robotic Nation ideas (plus Manna). We can talk all we want about the
value of open manufacturing and peer production, but unless it is in the
context of these more general social trends about the manufacturing base we
have now, it seems it will not be as effective.
Inspired by rereading his stuff yesterday, I have made a list of about
twenty ways people can relate to these trends as individuals (and in some of
which open manufacturing plays a role). I have been thinking about in a
computer game context to get more people thinking about these issue (so, I
am giving away my store, I guess, but maybe someone else will succeed if I
fail or get distracted).
Here they are about twenty ways to approach a Robotic Nation, with most
suggestions assuming robots achieve sentience, at least as a network:
* Ignore the issue and just keep going from one job to another as long as
possible;
* Compete with the robots, trying to stay smarter and more nimble;
* Cooperate with the robots (like Baltar and the Cylons) to take over;
* Cooperate with the robots and then defect at a critical point;
* Pretend to be a robot (like Woody Allen in "Sleeper");
* Skulk around the edges like a rat surviving within the global machine;
* Raise global consciousness to ignite a humane post-scarcity society (like
Marshall Brain does with his writings)
* Merge with the robots in some transhuman cyborg way (neural implants?);
* Merge with the robot network just through regular GUIs;
* Invent some "Skills of Xanadu" portable computer way to link humanity to
not need robots;
* Escape to self-replicating space habitats or ocean habits (after designing
and building them first);
* Fight the robots (like in the Terminator movies);
* Become friends with the robots, so things are done in friendship;
* Develop friendly AI to run the robots and take care of humanity as a
benevolent force (not exactly the same as the previous);
* Become pets or amusements for the robots and AIs and live off treats;
* Become a museum or zoo specimen for the robots;
* Get the robots to leave by convincing them space is more interesting;
* Negotiate directly with the robots a win/win relationship;
* Get control of the robots by working up through the corporate hierarchy
and becoming the richest person in the world;
* Invent biotech alternatives to things we use robotics for and control those;
* Create an alternative personal robot army to take on the global robots;
* Create a software program or AI that can take over the robots;
* Create something like OSCOMAK or SKDB or Appropedia and so on that
provides a way humans can move to open manufacturing using better designs
where there is more local ownership of the means of production and more
local p2p sharing of production; and
* Create 3D printers (open or proprietary) that are robots but are personal
and so naturally distribute abundance.
There are no doubt other possibilities too. And I can see how every one of
those possible strategies might succeed wonderfully or go horrible wrong.
(Thus some game possibilities. :-)
But seeing this larger spectrum of possibilities is one way I have grown
from my own writings about related topics around 1998, where I mainly saw
the escape to space option, in post to comp.robotics.misc:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.robotics.misc/browse_thread/thread/120e0b8be71f887d/f8ee6c8c58497e53?hl=en&q=john+fernhout+robotics#f8ee6c8c58497e53
"One of the reasons John’s post draw such ire (besides of course the
uppercase and rambling form, which provide an excuse to be impolite),
may be that he chose to post to a forum made up mostly by people who
love working on robots. Nobody wants to hear their “mind children” might
become an evil force (as was taken to an extreme in the sc-fi robot film
“Demon Seed”)."
Although I've seen since how even the escape to space option might be
overwhelmed by self-replicating robots spreading from Earth.
More I wrote then is in that thread here:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.robotics.misc/msg/b5d175edf804df7a?hl=en
"Since almost everyone is criticizing the form of John’s post, I thought I
would translate it as best I can, since I think some of the substance makes
sense. ..."
There are now over a million search results for military robot on Google,
one concern raised by the original poster, "John":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=military+robot
What kind of world are we going to build with this post-scarcity technology?
Marshall Brain at least has a plausible, coherent, and easily understandable
answer.
Unlike me. :-) But I'm trying, inspired by his example. :-)
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/