Post-scarcity Economies and the societies that result
Michael Altarriba
which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
We've seen a few examples of such an economy in SF literature - "The
Culture" of Iain M. Banks, the Chironians of James P Hogan's "Voyage
From Yesteryear", and the Pendorans of Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries."
Post-scarcity economies are usually shown to be the result of a very
high technology. In essence, humans don't have to run the machinery that
translates desires into physical artefacts. Future technologies like
strong AI or nanotechnology are usually invoked.
How realistic is a post-scarcity economy? What would be the political
and social impact of such an economy? How can a post-scarcity economy be
implemented?
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
I personally have a really hard time believing in them, which may be
part of the trouble I have with Banks (but not a big part, since I
can't get in deep enough to bump up against it, usually: I love the
way Banks sounds when described, though, so I intend to keep trying
his books out).
Lucy Kemnitzer
Charlie Stross
as <mik...@jps.net> declared:
> A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
> which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
> availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
:
> How realistic is a post-scarcity economy? What would be the political
> and social impact of such an economy? How can a post-scarcity economy be
> implemented?
Cough, cough ... I can feel a Law coming on!
Stross's Law: in any post-scarcity economy populated by humans scarcity
will be re-defined so that somebody gets to be poor, because
humans tend to form hierarchical communities and the ones
at the social centre will seek to differentiate themselves from
the ones at the edge.
Put it another way, here in the UK the social services have gotten to the
point where they've redefined poverty as a set of traits that include not
having a colour television set or carpet. If you know anything about
conditions at the beginning of the 20th century, that's worthy of serious
becrogglement -- nevertheless, people who lack these items other than through
choice are deemed to be excluded from the mainstream of society. It used
to be that if you were poor you starved; now you do without TV and you
can't afford a car. In the developed world poverty is a moving target,
and more rational definitions of it centre around a hierarchy of need,
starting with food, water and shelter, but then moving into more abstract
realms such as ability to participate in the normal social life of the
culture.
In a society where the price of all manufactured goods has fallen towards
the cost of raw materials, and where 'manufactured goods' means any
physical structure made out of atoms, I'd expect poverty to be redefined
in terms of not having the option to use expensive bespoke hand-made
goods, or to attend social functions, or to pay for lots of premium rate
video-on-demand media.
To satisfy _these_ needs is an AI-complete problem: it takes a host of
servants to make the bespoke hand-made goods or act as social secretaries
or whatever. So in the end we either have to have lots of slave AI's,
or we're back to scarcity economics -- although even the most poverty-
stricken miserables will be able to eat well, clothe themselves well,
and live in a home that by 2002-era middle class US/EU standards would
qualify as a mansion.
(What was that Frederick Pohl novel from the 1970's, about the guy who
wakes up in 2300 and finds that everybody is rich? And then ...)
-- Charlie
Michael Altarriba
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <mik...@jps.net> declared:
>
>
>>A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
>>which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
>>availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
>>
> :
>
>>How realistic is a post-scarcity economy? What would be the political
>>and social impact of such an economy? How can a post-scarcity economy be
>>implemented?
>>
>
> Cough, cough ... I can feel a Law coming on!
>
> Stross's Law: in any post-scarcity economy populated by humans scarcity
> will be re-defined so that somebody gets to be poor, because
> humans tend to form hierarchical communities and the ones
> at the social centre will seek to differentiate themselves from
> the ones at the edge.
>
This could be the case... then again, the presumption inherent in this
law is that humans don't themselves change. Yes, humans tend to form
social hierarchies - but, is this an inevitability? I don't know, but I
do think that forever is a long, long time, and nothing, including those
attributes that some label "human nature" is eternally static.
> Put it another way, here in the UK the social services have gotten to the
> point where they've redefined poverty as a set of traits that include not
> having a colour television set or carpet. If you know anything about
> conditions at the beginning of the 20th century, that's worthy of serious
> becrogglement -- nevertheless, people who lack these items other than through
> choice are deemed to be excluded from the mainstream of society. It used
> to be that if you were poor you starved; now you do without TV and you
> can't afford a car. In the developed world poverty is a moving target,
> and more rational definitions of it centre around a hierarchy of need,
> starting with food, water and shelter, but then moving into more abstract
> realms such as ability to participate in the normal social life of the
> culture.
>
Sadly, people starve to death or die of treatable diseases in the
"developed" world, too. In a world where you want for no material need,
but don't get invited to the parties you want to be invited to, I'd
still say we were talking about post-scarcity.
> In a society where the price of all manufactured goods has fallen towards
> the cost of raw materials, and where 'manufactured goods' means any
> physical structure made out of atoms, I'd expect poverty to be redefined
> in terms of not having the option to use expensive bespoke hand-made
> goods, or to attend social functions, or to pay for lots of premium rate
> video-on-demand media.
Maybe.
Captain Button
[ text distributed to the masses ]
> (What was that Frederick Pohl novel from the 1970's, about the guy who
> wakes up in 2300 and finds that everybody is rich? And then ...)
_The Age of the Pussyfoot_. There has been no inflation since the
1960s, but a no-skill entry-level job pays about $1,000,000 a year.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Joe Slater
>(What was that Frederick Pohl novel from the 1970's, about the guy who
>wakes up in 2300 and finds that everybody is rich? And then ...)
_The Age of the Pussyfoot_. More appropriately, his _The Midas
Plague_ imagines a world where [spoiler] wealth is being allowed to do
without things. It's just so easy and efficient to let robots produce
goods that consumption is a patriotic necessity.
jds
--
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must
have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even
the most decadent of communities.
_Beyond the Wall of Sleep_ by H P Lovecraft
GSV Three Minds in a Can
the wonderful person Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> said
<snip>
>(What was that Frederick Pohl novel from the 1970's, about the guy who
>wakes up in 2300 and finds that everybody is rich? And then ...)
I love the 'throw away' bit of _Marooned in Realtime_ where it was
apparent that in the (nearish) future the well-heeled had their own
medical support somewhat in advance of a 20th century hospital, and
'security forces' that could take out a medium size superpower without
any problem except 'we can't replace attrition, since we've lost the
underlying technology'. Now that's =useful= wealth. 8>.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Mark Atwood
>
> Sadly, people starve to death or die of treatable diseases in the
> "developed" world, too. In a world where you want for no material
> need, but don't get invited to the parties you want to be invited to,
> I'd still say we were talking about post-scarcity.
So the occupied territories in _Diamond Age_ are post-scarcity then?
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
James Bodi
Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>
>Cough, cough ... I can feel a Law coming on!
>
>Stross's Law: in any post-scarcity economy populated by humans scarcity
> will be re-defined so that somebody gets to be poor, because
> humans tend to form hierarchical communities and the ones
> at the social centre will seek to differentiate themselves
from
> the ones at the edge.
---I've been waiting for this topic, and the same thought had occurred to
me. But I'd wondered whether the post-scarcity society would rely more on
nonmaterial means of establishing heirarchy: access to special knowledge,
or an honours system, whether inherited social standing or reputation acquired
by the individual him or herself. Or certain unalterable personal characteristics
such as beauty. In that way, a post-scarcity society might resemble a traditional
economy. And I think that humans would find a way to establish a social
pyramid even if we had AIs running around making custom suits or down-to-the-atom
copies of the Monda Lisa. Only one person can be the Duke of wherever or
Times Man of the Year. And desirable living space will always be at a premium.
But in any case, I think that post-scarcity will never be more than potential,
and that whatever technological means could bring the state about will be
appropriated by some social group who will use it to gain or maintain their
hold on the rest of us by ensuring that the necessities of life aren't _quite_
free.
>
David T. Bilek
wrote:
>Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on Mon, 28 Jan 2002 23:34:12 +0000, Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>
>[ text distributed to the masses ]
>
>> (What was that Frederick Pohl novel from the 1970's, about the guy who
>> wakes up in 2300 and finds that everybody is rich? And then ...)
>
>_The Age of the Pussyfoot_. There has been no inflation since the
>1960s, but a no-skill entry-level job pays about $1,000,000 a year.
>
That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Was he
being serious?
-David
Michael Altarriba
> Michael Altarriba <mik...@jps.net> writes:
>
>>Sadly, people starve to death or die of treatable diseases in the
>>"developed" world, too. In a world where you want for no material
>>need, but don't get invited to the parties you want to be invited to,
>>I'd still say we were talking about post-scarcity.
>>
>
> So the occupied territories in _Diamond Age_ are post-scarcity then?
>
>
It's been a while since I read "Diamond Age"... care to refresh my memory?
Joe Slater
>>1960s, but a no-skill entry-level job pays about $1,000,000 a year.
dbi...@mediaone.net (David T. Bilek) wrote:
>That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Was he
>being serious?
His argument was that goods are becoming cheaper and more widely
available. He used the example of aspirin; now it's so cheap that
you're basically paying for packaging, but a couple of hundred years
ago nobody could have afforded it.
It's an amusing example because when Pohl wrote it nobody knew just
what a great drug aspirin is: not only does it cure headaches, but it
helps prevent strokes and heart disease! And you can buy it by the
tonne, if you're so inclined!
Omri Schwarz
Everyone has matter compilers.
The poor have slow matter compilers.
--
Omri Schwarz --- ocs...@mit.edu ('h' before war)
Timeless wisdom of biomedical engineering: "Noise is principally
due to the presence of the patient." -- R.F. Farr
Mark Atwood
This makes sense only if there is a something like a 99.99% unemployment rate.
Mark Atwood
> Mark Atwood wrote:
>
> > Michael Altarriba <mik...@jps.net> writes:
> >
> >>Sadly, people starve to death or die of treatable diseases in the
> >>"developed" world, too. In a world where you want for no material
> >>need, but don't get invited to the parties you want to be invited to,
> >>I'd still say we were talking about post-scarcity.
> >>
> > So the occupied territories in _Diamond Age_ are post-scarcity then?
(insert, my mistake, its "Leased Territories")
>
> It's been a while since I read "Diamond Age"... care to refresh my memory?
Nell and her brother, while on the run, were able to get camping
supplies, clothing, and nutritious food from the public matter
compilers. It's mentioned elsewhere in the book that the MCs will
also give you, just for the asking, pharmaceuticals and nanocine that
is offpatent or been donated to the public by charity groups.
Said food and clothing is not "cool" wrt to media and advertising (Bud
was tired of eating the food, and he blew all his money on a set of
*real* leather clothes) , and the medical not as effective as the
owned designs, but still, the food was purer and more nutritious than
anything on the supermarket shelves today, and the medicine better
than anything available in the 20thC.
It's implied that MCs with higher Feed rates are available for pay
(Nell's mother grouses about the 5g/s Feed to the MC in their apt),
but there seems to be a bottom limit to a MC's Feed rate, there are
MCs *everywhere* (they seem to be even more common and available as
xerographic photocopiers are today (one character uses a high rate MC
in a post office, and Nell makes a chainsaw supersword in an unused MC
she finds in a closet in an office building)), and the public MCs are
more than capable of nourishing, medicating, and clothing the tens of
thousands of the homeless and semi-homeless (such as Bud, ferex) who
live in the LTs.
(MC's can also "dek" stuff (decompile it), and return it to the Feed.
The only garbage is "litter", i.e. bags, packing materials, and MC
construct support stuff that lazy people toss over their shoulder,
rather than stuff back into a local MC.)
Gareth Wilson
> A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
> which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
> availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
Interesting definition. Almost all post-scarcity societies in SF are
supply-side: they have more stuff than our society and demand is the same or
higher. What about the other approach, lowering demand? Spider Robinson's
Stardance series is a bit like this: the symbiote doesn't really increase your
standard of living that much but it also seems to brainwash you into a
Communist, or at least a liberal Democrat.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gareth Wilson
Christchurch
New Zealand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Andrew Maizels
>
> dbi...@mediaone.net (David T. Bilek) writes:
> > On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 01:19:00 GMT, but...@io.com (Captain Button)
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >_The Age of the Pussyfoot_. There has been no inflation since the
> > >1960s, but a no-skill entry-level job pays about $1,000,000 a year.
> >
> > That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Was he
> > being serious?
>
> This makes sense only if there is a something like a 99.99% unemployment rate.
Or massive subsidies, some sort of negative income tax. You'd probably
need price controls too. Haven't read the book, so I can't comment on
how Pohl handles it.
Andrew.
--
We handle four billion calls a year, for everyone from presidents and
kings to the scum of the earth. So your call doesn't go through once in
a while, or you get billed for a call or two you didn't make. We don't
care. We don't have to, we're the phone company. -- Lily Tomlin
Michael Altarriba
> Michael Altarriba wrote:
>
>
>>A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
>>which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
>>availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
>>
>
> Interesting definition. Almost all post-scarcity societies in SF are
> supply-side: they have more stuff than our society and demand is the same or
> higher. What about the other approach, lowering demand? Spider Robinson's
> Stardance series is a bit like this: the symbiote doesn't really increase your
> standard of living that much but it also seems to brainwash you into a
> Communist, or at least a liberal Democrat.
As opposed to being brainwashed into being a loony Libertarian or
heartless Republican?
Michael Altarriba
Note to self: do not post while tired and cranky.
Nancy Kress wrote a trilogy of books, the first of which was "Beggars in
Spain". In this trilogy, a set of engineered children ended up creating
a single injection that made people, in effect, photosynthetic, such
that someone who was injected no longer needed to worry about food (or,
I think, shelter). That would be one example of reducing demand rather
than increasing supply. Another way are the polises of Greg Egan's
Diaspora, in which everyone was running in software rather than
biological in nature - quite a reduction in demand there.
Michael Altarriba
> Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Cough, cough ... I can feel a Law coming on!
>>
>>Stross's Law: in any post-scarcity economy populated by humans scarcity
>>
>
>> will be re-defined so that somebody gets to be poor, because
>>
>
>> humans tend to form hierarchical communities and the ones
>> at the social centre will seek to differentiate themselves
>>
> from
>
>> the ones at the edge.
>>
>
> ---I've been waiting for this topic, and the same thought had occurred to
> me. But I'd wondered whether the post-scarcity society would rely more on
> nonmaterial means of establishing heirarchy: access to special knowledge,
> or an honours system, whether inherited social standing or reputation acquired
> by the individual him or herself. Or certain unalterable personal characteristics
> such as beauty. In that way, a post-scarcity society might resemble a traditional
> economy. And I think that humans would find a way to establish a social
> pyramid even if we had AIs running around making custom suits or down-to-the-atom
> copies of the Monda Lisa. Only one person can be the Duke of wherever or
> Times Man of the Year. And desirable living space will always be at a premium.
I don't see social hierarchies as being a requirement, and you don't
have to stay on Earth.. given the resources of a post-scarcity economy,
why stay on Earth at all? You could construct ships or orbitals or
whatever to suit yourself, and the Duke of whatever can go to hell -
what does anyone need a Duke for?
>
> But in any case, I think that post-scarcity will never be more than potential,
> and that whatever technological means could bring the state about will be
> appropriated by some social group who will use it to gain or maintain their
> hold on the rest of us by ensuring that the necessities of life aren't _quite_
> free.
I don't agree. I have a more hopeful view of the future. Besides,
despotic leaders or states or social groups need to win every battle if
they intend to keep people down.. the freedom fighters only have to win
once. The universe is vast - plenty of room for like-minded group A to
live free of of would-be dictator B.
Gareth Wilson
> Gareth Wilson wrote:
>
> >Spider Robinson's
> > Stardance series is a bit like this: the symbiote doesn't really increase your
> > standard of living that much but it also seems to brainwash you into a
> > Communist, or at least a liberal Democrat.
>
> As opposed to being brainwashed into being a loony Libertarian or
> heartless Republican?
Now I think about it, we didn't get all that many scenes from the symbioted humans'
point of view so what I said might be inaccurate. It's what the sympathetic
characters expected, though. "A man with a symbiote is a natural Communist, you
can't sell him anything."(quote from memory).
Gareth Wilson
> Nancy Kress wrote a trilogy of books, the first of which was "Beggars in
> Spain". In this trilogy, a set of engineered children ended up creating
> a single injection that made people, in effect, photosynthetic, such
> that someone who was injected no longer needed to worry about food (or,
> I think, shelter). That would be one example of reducing demand rather
> than increasing supply.
Yeah. The problem is that only takes care of the most basic needs, and there can
still be shortages of things besides food.
> Another way are the polises of Greg Egan's
> Diaspora, in which everyone was running in software rather than
> biological in nature - quite a reduction in demand there.
Good example. A Egan Polis is even more post-scarcity than the Culture. You
can't even have a shortage of processing power: just turn your clock speed down!
Unless you're interested in the real universe, of course.
Joe Slater
>> > >1960s, but a no-skill entry-level job pays about $1,000,000 a year.
>> dbi...@mediaone.net (David T. Bilek) writes:
>> > That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Was he
>> > being serious?
>Mark Atwood wrote:
>> This makes sense only if there is a something like a 99.99% unemployment rate.
Andrew Maizels <andrew...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Or massive subsidies, some sort of negative income tax. You'd probably
>need price controls too. Haven't read the book, so I can't comment on
>how Pohl handles it.
I think the world's population may be much lower, but in any event
it's an economy of great wealth, but with so many luxuries that you
can blow a huge amount of money very easily on drugs, personalised
cooking, expensive recreations and the like.
If it makes things easier to follow, imagine that the introduction of
robot labor meant everything manufactured in today's economy cost
about 1/1000 of its cost today. Now people hardly need to work to stay
alive, but this means that they have more money to spend on luxuries
and more time in which to use those luxuries. So they work about the
same amount of time, but they spend most of that time creating
luxuries - massages, gardening services, sex, composing personalised
poetry, sex, gourmet cooking, and sex. In terms of necessities, people
would earn 1,000 times as much. In terms of what people would consider
a necessary income they'd earn pretty much what we earn today - they'd
just spend it on different things.
Bill Snyder
<joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>>(What was that Frederick Pohl novel from the 1970's, about the guy who
>>wakes up in 2300 and finds that everybody is rich? And then ...)
>
>_The Age of the Pussyfoot_. More appropriately, his _The Midas
>Plague_ imagines a world where [spoiler] wealth is being allowed to do
>without things. It's just so easy and efficient to let robots produce
>goods that consumption is a patriotic necessity.
I think he got that from Sheckley -- not the wealth business, but the
Idiot Society routine. "It's obviously a Good Thing, so why bother to
include an off-switch, or even a volume control?"
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
John S. Novak, III
> _The Age of the Pussyfoot_. More appropriately, his _The Midas
> Plague_ imagines a world where [spoiler] wealth is being allowed to do
> without things. It's just so easy and efficient to let robots produce
> goods that consumption is a patriotic necessity.
That sounds more like [something I thought was] Asimov, with a follow-up
story about someone getting the brilliant idea of letting robots
*consume* the resources, as well.
Even as a fairly young reader, that story made no sense.
"Turn. The production. Robots. Off."
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
James Nicoll
IMS, the original short story was to order: an editor specified
the cunning twist and Pohl provided the story. Not Sheckley's fault but
the fault of the specs.
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one
god. They're just this far away from atheism."
Wayne & Schuster
Charlie Stross
> Michael Altarriba wrote:
>
>> A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
>> which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
>> availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
>
> Interesting definition. Almost all post-scarcity societies in SF are
> supply-side: they have more stuff than our society and demand is the same or
> higher. What about the other approach, lowering demand? Spider Robinson's
> Stardance series is a bit like this: the symbiote doesn't really increase your
> standard of living that much but it also seems to brainwash you into a
> Communist, or at least a liberal Democrat.
John Varley's "eight worlds" stories have human/plant symbiotes living
in the rings of Saturn who are basically 100% self-contained. That's one
option. Another is "Pacific Edge" by Kim Stanley Robinson -- mid-21st
century ecotopia in which it looks at first as if a lot of old high-
tech big stuff has gone away, and then we learn halfway through that
actually there's a Mars landing in progress and all sorts of other
stuff going on: it's just much lower-key.
One issue worth considering is change in demand. For example, imagine
I offer to replace your 1958 Cadillac Dreadnought with a weedy pedal-
powered go-kart. You'll probably say no, right? But if the go-kart has an
ultralightweight polymer body that doubles as solar cells, can do 80mph
on the roads using high-capacity batteries or fuel cells, has all the
modern safety features and luxuries, and weighs a tenth as much as the
Cadillac, it begins to sound like a different proposition. Especially
if I then point out that gas costs $80 a gallon, and that putting in
half an hour of (optional) pedalling three times a week during your
commute to work will do you as much good as a work-out in the gym. At
this point, we can see the attractive points of big-ass Detroit iron
diminishing in comparison with weedy green pedal-powered go-karts that
you can fold up and carry in through your front door when you get home.
You can still buy a horse-drawn carriage, new. They cost about as much
as a mid-priced car, although they'll take about a year for a craftsman
to build -- nobody mass-produces them any more. No heating, no air bags,
no stereo, and you need to feed and groom the horse at least twice a day,
every day. Isn't it odd how what was once the aspirational transport
device of its day is now undesirable to most people?
-- Charlie
Charlie Stross
> So the occupied territories in _Diamond Age_ are post-scarcity then?
Like I said: they've redefined scarcity. Nel's parents are poor because
they're too ill-educated to realise just what they can do with the stuff
around them, or even to realise that they're ill-educated. Social
exclusion as poverty -- QED.
-- Charlie
Captain Button
> Michael Altarriba wrote:
>> A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
>> which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
>> availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
> Interesting definition. Almost all post-scarcity societies in SF are
> supply-side: they have more stuff than our society and demand is the same or
> higher. What about the other approach, lowering demand? Spider Robinson's
> Stardance series is a bit like this: the symbiote doesn't really increase your
> standard of living that much but it also seems to brainwash you into a
> Communist, or at least a liberal Democrat.
In John Varley's Eight Worlds series of stories and novels, the
human-symb pairs are like this. A symb is a engineered biological
lump of stuff that surrounds and penetrates your body. It is a
kind of plant, so it absorbs your carbon dioxide and excess water
and other wastes, and uses sunlight to turn it into food, some of
which it sticks back into your bloodstream to keep you healthy.
The symb has a mind of its own that runs in parallel in the human
brain and "talks" to the human mind.
So a human-symb "pair" is a mostly closed ecology with regard to
matter. Sunlight input and waste heat output still exist, of
course.
Pairs live in space in microgravity. They can manuever slowly,
at the expense of spending reaction mass. It isn't clear, but
I think they mine asteroids and Saturn's rings for most of their
mass needs.
In one story "Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance" a pair comes to a human
settlement to sell music they composed. It is noted that the
human agents make out like bandits because the pairs really
don't need much money, and so will agree to absurdly small
royalties. At the end of the story, the pair leaves with a
handful of capsules of the few trace elements pair ecology
needs that are hard to find in space. And leaving a bank
account behind that will keep the pair in such capsules for
centuries.
In another story we learn about the major conflict in
symb culture, between the faction that wants to color
a ring of Saturn red and the faction that wants to prevent
this. Certainly suggests that pairs can't find anything
more practical to fight about.
Ron Bean
Gareth Wilson <gr...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz> writes:
>Interesting definition. Almost all post-scarcity societies in SF are
>supply-side: they have more stuff than our society and demand is the same or
>higher. What about the other approach, lowering demand?
Low-demand lifestyles can be outlawed. For example, you're not
allowed to buy a car that's the equivalent of a '62 volkswagen,
because they don't meet current safety laws (and all the real '62
volkswagens are collector's items). So you work the same number
of hours to buy safer transportation instead of cheaper. If cars
got cheaper instead of safer, you could work fewer hours and
still have transportation. You don't get a choice, the choice has
been made for you (maybe for good reasons, or maybe not).
Same thing with housing-- there are any number of inexpensive
ways to get a roof over your head, but most of them are illegal
(mostly due to zoning, some due to building codes).
In some ways health insurance is the same way-- you can't really
buy a health insurance policy that says "just give me the level
of care I could have expected in 1960". It would be cheaper, but
most doctors would probably consider it unethical.
The only way it could happen is if productivity were so high that
you could have all those improvements and still work fewer
hours. But then you have two choices-- everyone works fewer
hours, or fewer people work the same number of hours and the rest
are unemployed. But in that case, if the few people with jobs
would spend their money on services, that would create jobs for
the rest. The result would be a "service economy". Isn't that
what we're supposed to have now?
Mark Jason Dominus
John S. Novak, III <j...@cegt201.bradley.edu> wrote:
>Even as a fairly young reader, that story made no sense.
>
>"Turn. The production. Robots. Off."
Makes sense to me. If the government mandates that the production
robots be turned off, then all the production companies will go
bankrupt and their owners will lose all their money. So there's a
strong politicial force pushing to keep the production robots turned
on.
I didn't read the story, so I don't know if that was the situation in
that world, but it's a plausible scenario for our world. Remember a
few years ago, when all the reasonable plans for a national
health-care system had to be scrapped because they would have put the
private health insurance companies out of business?
--
@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*=2)+=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[P.]/&&
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&<$_>}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print
Mark Jason Dominus
Gareth Wilson <gr...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>Good example. A Egan Polis is even more post-scarcity than the
>Culture. You can't even have a shortage of processing power: just
>turn your clock speed down! Unless you're interested in the real
>universe, of course.
Or if you're interested in interacting with the other citizens. When
you turn down your clock speed, you drop out of society.
So now imagine a mathematician, Norbert, who wants to run some
CPU-intensive experiment for a while. But ve doesn't want to drop out
of society until it's complete. So Norbert finds another citizen,
Parvati, who *doesn't* mind dropping out of society for a few megatau,
and leases Parvati's clock cycles for the duration of the experiment.
Parvati goes into suspecnded animation for a while, and ver quota of
clock cycles will be allotted to Norbert's experiment.
Now multiply this situation by 10,000 pairs of citizens and you get a
market in clock cycles. You get an allotment, and you can spend some
of them on running your brain software (analogous to basic necessities
like food and shelter costs) or you can spend less of them on your
brain, and use the rest for something else, like your elaborate
simulations of 15th-Century African ecology. You can lend them out
and charge interest. Clock cycles are highly fungible. Tadaaa!
Money! What you can't do is steal them. (I've been trying to think
for a while about what sort of crimes a Polis might have, but I
haven't come up with many that are compelling.)
This all assumes that there is a shortage of clock cycles in the first
place. Maybe Egan doesn't think there will be one, but I do, and I
think he does too. I wonder wish he had spent some time discussing
cycle allotment and the accompanying politics.
Captain Button
> In article <a36cfp$15quik$1...@ID-100778.news.dfncis.de>,
> John S. Novak, III <j...@cegt201.bradley.edu> wrote:
>>Even as a fairly young reader, that story made no sense.
>>
>>"Turn. The production. Robots. Off."
> Makes sense to me. If the government mandates that the production
> robots be turned off, then all the production companies will go
> bankrupt and their owners will lose all their money. So there's a
> strong politicial force pushing to keep the production robots turned
> on.
> I didn't read the story, so I don't know if that was the situation in
> that world, but it's a plausible scenario for our world. Remember a
> few years ago, when all the reasonable plans for a national
> health-care system had to be scrapped because they would have put the
> private health insurance companies out of business?
As I recall it, it was something like that, a society stuck in
an economic fix where if they stopped consuming the economy
would crash, so people were legally *required* to consume.
No doubt there would be ways to fix that in the long run, but
drastic sudden changes to an economic system tend to have drastic,
sudden and unpredictable effects.
Michael Altarriba
Yes, assuming they are CPU bound (and I dont' remember any indication
that they were, or that they couldn't just whip up more CPU volume if
they needed to (witness the many many many miles-long particle accelerator).
Here's what I don't get: it seems as though there are many people who
feel that economies and hierarchies are automatic and inevitable. Why?
Surely, in SF expecially, we can take off our 21st-century,
democracy/free-market capitalism glasses and imagine a viable culture
that doesn't look exactly like our culture, except for better tech?
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
>which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
>availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
>
>We've seen a few examples of such an economy in SF literature - "The
>Culture" of Iain M. Banks, the Chironians of James P Hogan's "Voyage
> From Yesteryear", and the Pendorans of Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries."
I suspect that one of the earliest examples appears in George O.
Smith's Venus Equilateral stories. The protagonists invent
duplicator, and all hell breaks loose, after which things settle down,
and the world becomes a very nice place, all around.
>
>Post-scarcity economies are usually shown to be the result of a very
>high technology. In essence, humans don't have to run the machinery that
>translates desires into physical artefacts. Future technologies like
>strong AI or nanotechnology are usually invoked.
>
>How realistic is a post-scarcity economy? What would be the political
>and social impact of such an economy? How can a post-scarcity economy be
>implemented?
I hate to sound like I'm trying to burst your bubble, but the answer
to your first question is, well, "not really." Let's suppose we
develop a matter manipulator, or replicator, or whatever you want to
call it. Put some matter in one hopper, and out the other hopper
comes whatever you want. So, basically, you've got free
manufacturing. A boon to humanity in the long run, no doubt, though
it would undoubtedly cause some short term dislocation.
But your matter mixer isn't going to be free, because, on presumes,
this process takes at least some energy. Probably, like, a lot of
energy. So unless energy becomes free, the products of your matter
mixer won't be free, either. I'm willing to posit cheap energy --
from really good fusion reactors, say -- but not free energy.
Manufacturing costs will be nero zero, but they won't be zero. There
will still be some scarcity.
But even if you handwave a source of free energy -- Ayn Rand's static
electricity generator, for example -- there are still some things that
are going to be scarce. Hand-made items of all sorts require actual
human effort. Services -- massage therapists, doctors, entertainers
and the like will all demand payment for their services. Even prime
real estate will be scarce. Given my druthers, I'd like to live in a
mansion in Malibu, on the beach. But hey, even if buildings are free,
there's only so much beachfront real estate. Real property is
inherently scarce.
Don't get me wrong; it's quite possible that technologies will make us
all richer. Industrial robots already replace some human labor in
manufacturing -- matter assemblers would undoubtedly replace a lot
more. But human desires are fairly flexible; it seems extremely
unlikely that we'll reach the point of total satiation.
--
Pete McCutchen
Steinn Sigurdsson
> Michael Altarriba wrote:
> > A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
> > which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
> > availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
> Interesting definition. Almost all post-scarcity societies in SF are
> supply-side: they have more stuff than our society and demand is the same or
> higher. What about the other approach, lowering demand? Spider Robinson's
KSRs "Gold Coast" trilogy,
the one that was supposed to be utopian was low demand society,
always thought it was the most dystopic of the three,
the "future LA" one sounded more managable.
djolds
> Charlie Stross wrote:
>
> > Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> >
> >
> >>A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
> >>which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
> >>availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
> >>
> >
> >>How realistic is a post-scarcity economy? What would be the political
> >>and social impact of such an economy? How can a post-scarcity economy be
> >>implemented?
> >>
> >
> >
> > Stross's Law: in any post-scarcity economy populated by humans scarcity
> > will be re-defined so that somebody gets to be poor, because
> > humans tend to form hierarchical communities and the ones
> > at the social centre will seek to differentiate themselves
> > from the ones at the edge.
> >
>
> law is that humans don't themselves change. Yes, humans tend to form
> social hierarchies - but, is this an inevitability? I don't know, but I
> do think that forever is a long, long time, and nothing, including those
> attributes that some label "human nature" is eternally static.
As long as humans remain biologically and neurologically human, then yes,
it is an inevitability. Posit genetic-engineering to create posthumans, or
some sort of technological intervention like Greg Bear's "therapy," and the
equation may change...
For a (non-PC) exploration of the basis of hierarchy, read the first three
chapters of Stephen Goldberg's "Why Men Rule;" specifically pages 90-100.
John Schilling
>Michael Altarriba wrote:
>> Another way are the polises of Greg Egan's
>> Diaspora, in which everyone was running in software rather than
>> biological in nature - quite a reduction in demand there.
>Good example. A Egan Polis is even more post-scarcity than the Culture. You
>can't even have a shortage of processing power: just turn your clock speed
>down!
>Unless you're interested in the real universe, of course.
Or your entertainment, status, and/or self-image comes from playing
"Quake XXIV", and the people you are playing against can afford the
fast processors.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
James Nicoll
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
snip
>But your matter mixer isn't going to be free, because, on presumes,
>this process takes at least some energy. Probably, like, a lot of
>energy. So unless energy becomes free, the products of your matter
>mixer won't be free, either. I'm willing to posit cheap energy --
>from really good fusion reactors, say -- but not free energy.
>Manufacturing costs will be nero zero, but they won't be zero. There
>will still be some scarcity.
You can get very inexpensive energy by setting the CP conservation
setting to "NO". Remember to use your tongs when handling antimatter.
David E. Siegel
> In article <r5vb5ukeh91mbtei8...@4ax.com>, Joe Slater wrote:
>
> > _The Age of the Pussyfoot_. More appropriately, his _The Midas
> > Plague_ imagines a world where [spoiler] wealth is being allowed to do
> > without things. It's just so easy and efficient to let robots produce
> > goods that consumption is a patriotic necessity.
>
> That sounds more like [something I thought was] Asimov, with a follow-up
> story about someone getting the brilliant idea of letting robots
> *consume* the resources, as well.
>
> Even as a fairly young reader, that story made no sense.
>
> "Turn. The production. Robots. Off."
No this was Pohl. Damon Knight called this story a 'second order idiot
plot' [ in _In Search of Wonder_], not only must all the characters be
idiots or the problem would never arise and there would be no story,
but so must everyone in the society at large.
-DES
John Schilling
>In article <3C564C79...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz>,
>Gareth Wilson <gr...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>>Good example. A Egan Polis is even more post-scarcity than the
>>Culture. You can't even have a shortage of processing power: just
>>turn your clock speed down! Unless you're interested in the real
>>universe, of course.
>Or if you're interested in interacting with the other citizens. When
>you turn down your clock speed, you drop out of society.
[...]
>Now multiply this situation by 10,000 pairs of citizens and you get a
>market in clock cycles. You get an allotment, and you can spend some
>of them on running your brain software (analogous to basic necessities
>like food and shelter costs) or you can spend less of them on your
>brain, and use the rest for something else, like your elaborate
>simulations of 15th-Century African ecology. You can lend them out
>and charge interest. Clock cycles are highly fungible. Tadaaa!
>Money! What you can't do is steal them.
An open challenge to every hacker in the polis - and we're talking
transcendant hackers here. I rather suspect you'll find quite a few
clock cycles turning up stolen...
>This all assumes that there is a shortage of clock cycles in the first
>place. Maybe Egan doesn't think there will be one, but I do, and I
>think he does too.
There will be. If you and I are having an argument, I want 3600 times
as many available clock cycles as you have. That way, I can spend a
subjective hour thinking up the absolutely perfect witty comeback that
you (and the audience) hear one second after the provoking comment.
I assume you want the same advantage. No possible allotment of any
finite number of clock cycles will satisfy us both; one of us at least
is going to want three orders of magnitude more than we've got.
Rosy with a why
> In John Varley's Eight Worlds series of stories and novels, the
> human-symb pairs are like this. A symb is a engineered biological
> lump of stuff that surrounds and penetrates your body. It is a
> kind of plant, so it absorbs your carbon dioxide and excess water
> and other wastes, and uses sunlight to turn it into food, some of
> which it sticks back into your bloodstream to keep you healthy.
>
> The symb has a mind of its own that runs in parallel in the human
> brain and "talks" to the human mind.
>
> So a human-symb "pair" is a mostly closed ecology with regard to
> matter. Sunlight input and waste heat output still exist, of
> course.
Yes, there's no getting round the 2nd Law... but I still have a
nagging feeling. Plants are low-energy organisms. They take energy in
at a low grade and convert it to slightly more refined stuff. Animals
eat this - a lot of this - and have slightly more active metabolisms
:). And the animals that eat those animals - a lot of them - are
active indeed. The active parts of a closed ecosystem, I'm thinking,
have to be seperated from the phlegmatic parts, and make up far less
biomass. Any thoughts on this from techie-types?
Mark Atwood
> place. Maybe Egan doesn't think there will be one, but I do, and I
> think he does too. I wonder wish he had spent some time discussing
> cycle allotment and the accompanying politics.
He seemed to handwave it away, and when discussing other points about
shaper self-education, seemed to imply that there was a certain
"maximum size" to a polis citizen. Plus, there is some sort of
cultural taboo, shared by all polisians, by all gleisners, and by all
fleshers, *including* unmodified human version 1.0 ones, that
terraforming, "excessive contruction", and any sort of exponential
process is Bad Bad Bad, and Tacky to boot.
Riiight.
He did it as a cheat. It's a cheat as big as, and less honest than,
Vinge's zones, and done for the same reason, which was so that he
could actually write _Diaspora_, instead of try to figure out how to
write a novel in a setting where the entirity of the condensed matter
in the solar system had been converted into a Jupiter Brain sometime
around 2200, which is what *would* have happened, given the timeline
and technology he has in the book.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Captain Button
> In article <6n9d5usdogk8ck241...@4ax.com>,
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> snip
>>But your matter mixer isn't going to be free, because, on presumes,
>>this process takes at least some energy. Probably, like, a lot of
>>energy. So unless energy becomes free, the products of your matter
>>mixer won't be free, either. I'm willing to posit cheap energy --
>>from really good fusion reactors, say -- but not free energy.
>>Manufacturing costs will be nero zero, but they won't be zero. There
>>will still be some scarcity.
> You can get very inexpensive energy by setting the CP conservation
> setting to "NO". Remember to use your tongs when handling antimatter.
[ Trained Quantum Mechanic operating in a closed universe. Do Not
Attempt. ]
Gary J. Weiner
Don't forget that scarcity itself is a desirable quality, even if the
object that is scarce is not necessarily desirable on its own.
I saw something yesterday on History Channel about a big blizzard that
hit NYC in the late 19th century. The city was cut off from the outside
and some staple items became ridiculously expensive. Milk was $1.50 a
glass (19th century dollars), so rich businessmen who hadn't tasted milk
in years ordered it, just to show they could.
--
Gary J. Weiner - webm...@hatrack.net
http://www.hatrack.net
HatRack Web Design & Hosting - Hang your web with us
Mark Atwood
>
> Like I said: they've redefined scarcity. Nel's parents are poor because
> they're too ill-educated to realise just what they can do with the stuff
> around them, or even to realise that they're ill-educated. Social
> exclusion as poverty -- QED.
They "excluded" themselves!
Nell's mother knows why the Vickys are rich. And she knows she is
unwilling to live their lifestyle.
Timothy A. McDaniel
If anyone else had written that, I wouldn't ask, "Personal
experience?".
--
Tim McDaniel is tm...@jump.net; if that fail,
tm...@us.ibm.com is my work account.
"To join the Clueless Club, send a followup to this message quoting everything
up to and including this sig!" -- Jukka....@hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
Chuck Bridgeland
>
Who had the story about the "poor" person who had huge houses and lots of
>goods to consume, who programmed his robots to consume them for him?
>Sounds sort of like Knight.
Frederik Pohl. The title I do not recall -- maybe "The Midas Plague". I
think it might date from the 1960s.
Rich people were those privledged enough not to have to relentlessly
consume.
--
"Congress shall make no law" and "shall not be infringed."
It's not just a good idea, it's the Law.
Chuck Bridgeland, chuckbri at computerdyn dot com
http://www.essex1.com/people/chuckbri
Mark Jason Dominus
John Schilling <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote:
>m...@plover.com (Mark Jason Dominus) writes:
>>Money! What you can't do is steal them.
>
>An open challenge to every hacker in the polis - and we're talking
>transcendant hackers here.
Yes, but they're hackers who are confined to *inside* the system.
Cracking the security when you're inside can be substantially harder
than doing it from outside, and may in fact be impossible.
I suppose you might get a really determined citizen who would actually
mount a physical attack on the polis hardware itself. I'm surprised
that the citizens in _Disapora_ knew the physical location of the
polis. I wouldn't have told them. Perhaps they'd been deceived.
>>This all assumes that there is a shortage of clock cycles in the first
>>place. Maybe Egan doesn't think there will be one, but I do, and I
>>think he does too.
>
>There will be. If you and I are having an argument, I want 3600 times
>as many available clock cycles as you have.
The operating system might enforce an upper bound on the number of
cycles that could be used by any particular citizen--perhaps the
designers decided that a speedup of 700 is enough for anyone. If the
total capacity of the hardware exceeds the system-enforced top rate,
then there would be a real surplus. (Held in trust to be allotted to
future citizens.)
Jason Bontrager
> But hey, even if buildings are free,
> there's only so much beachfront real estate. Real property is
> inherently scarce.
So far. Give Marshall Savage a replicator and a fusion reactor
and you'll have beaches coming out your ears:-). And then
there's always Australia. Most of it's pretty useless, so just
carve really big canals through it from coast to coast.
Jason B.
Jason Bontrager
> A post-scarcity economy: a set of conditions in which the degree to
> which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
> availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
Beware the monsters of the Id.
Jason B.
Dan Swartzendruber
Omri Schwarz
> Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> writes:
> >
> > Like I said: they've redefined scarcity. Nel's parents are poor because
> > they're too ill-educated to realise just what they can do with the stuff
> > around them, or even to realise that they're ill-educated. Social
> > exclusion as poverty -- QED.
>
> They "excluded" themselves!
>
> Nell's mother knows why the Vickys are rich. And she knows she is
> unwilling to live their lifestyle.
Y'all may want to take a peak at
Theodore Dalrymple's book "Life At Bottom."
That's exactly what he describes.
--
Omri Schwarz --- ocs...@mit.edu ('h' before war)
Timeless wisdom of biomedical engineering: "Noise is principally
due to the presence of the patient." -- R.F. Farr
Joe Slater
>>Remember to use your tongs when handling antimatter.
tm...@jump.net (Timothy A. McDaniel) wrote:
>If anyone else had written that, I wouldn't ask, "Personal
>experience?".
Out of which material do you make your tongs?
There's a Jewish story that you can't work metal without tongs, and
since tongs are made from metal, the very first tongs must have been
made at the time of creation - at sunset before the first Sabbath,
together with everything else which would otherwise be logically
impossible.
ObSF: _The House the Blakeneys Built_ by Avram Davidson. Horrid little
story.
jds
--
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must
have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even
the most decadent of communities.
_Beyond the Wall of Sleep_ by H P Lovecraft
Ryan Klippenstine
Dominus) wrote:
>In article <a3750d$r03$1...@spock.usc.edu>,
>John Schilling <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote:
>>m...@plover.com (Mark Jason Dominus) writes:
>>>Money! What you can't do is steal them.
>>
>>An open challenge to every hacker in the polis - and we're talking
>>transcendant hackers here.
>
>Yes, but they're hackers who are confined to *inside* the system.
>Cracking the security when you're inside can be substantially harder
>than doing it from outside, and may in fact be impossible.
And I imagine there would be a truly staggering amount of security, up
to and including lethal countermeasures (hey, a context where Black
ICE is plausible). The potential for abuse if someone managed to crack
the system and gain control would be horrendous; in a polis, root
really *is* God.
>I suppose you might get a really determined citizen who would actually
>mount a physical attack on the polis hardware itself. I'm surprised
>that the citizens in _Disapora_ knew the physical location of the
>polis. I wouldn't have told them. Perhaps they'd been deceived.
Enh. The polis inhabitants would have to be insane to entrust
themselves completely to one set of hardware. If they had any brains
at all, there would be backups and redundant systems spread over half
the solar system.
Mark Atwood
>
> Enh. The polis inhabitants would have to be insane to entrust
> themselves completely to one set of hardware. If they had any brains
> at all, there would be backups and redundant systems spread over half
> the solar system.
And they say exactly that, at the very beginning, in chapter one,
talking to the still unborn Yatima, during the asteroid trimming.
Inoshiro turned to the orphan and added reassuringly, "But we'll be
all right. Even in it wiped out Konishi on Earth, we're backed up
all over the solar system."
David Johnston
> Yes, assuming they are CPU bound (and I dont' remember any indication
> that they were, or that they couldn't just whip up more CPU volume if
> they needed to (witness the many many many miles-long particle accelerator).
>
> Here's what I don't get: it seems as though there are many people who
> feel that economies and hierarchies are automatic and inevitable. Why?
> Surely, in SF expecially, we can take off our 21st-century,
> democracy/free-market capitalism glasses and imagine a viable culture
> that doesn't look exactly like our culture, except for better tech?
Whoa. Wait a second. Economies and hierarchies not limited to our culture.
They exist in _every_ human culture. Shoot, heirarchy exists in chimps and dogs.
They ARE automatic and inevitable and that has nothing to do with looking
exactly like our culture except for better tech.
David Johnston
>
> James Bodi wrote:
>
> > Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Cough, cough ... I can feel a Law coming on!
> >>
> >>Stross's Law: in any post-scarcity economy populated by humans scarcity
> >>
> >
> >> will be re-defined so that somebody gets to be poor, because
> >>
> >
> >> humans tend to form hierarchical communities and the ones
> >> at the social centre will seek to differentiate themselves
> >>
> > from
> >
> >> the ones at the edge.
> >>
> >
> > me. But I'd wondered whether the post-scarcity society would rely more on
> > nonmaterial means of establishing heirarchy: access to special knowledge,
> > or an honours system, whether inherited social standing or reputation acquired
> > by the individual him or herself. Or certain unalterable personal characteristics
> > such as beauty. In that way, a post-scarcity society might resemble a traditional
> > economy. And I think that humans would find a way to establish a social
> > pyramid even if we had AIs running around making custom suits or down-to-the-atom
> > copies of the Monda Lisa. Only one person can be the Duke of wherever or
> > Times Man of the Year. And desirable living space will always be at a premium.
>
> I don't see social hierarchies as being a requirement,
They are only a requirement if you have groups of people with human psychology.
Other than that they are quite dispensable.
and you don't
> have to stay on Earth.. given the resources of a post-scarcity economy,
> why stay on Earth at all? You could construct ships or orbitals or
> whatever to suit yourself,
You could, but I'm betting natural environments go up in value if artificial
environments become readily affordable for all.
and the Duke of whatever can go to hell -
> what does anyone need a Duke for?
Prestige at your party.
>
> >
> > But in any case, I think that post-scarcity will never be more than potential,
> > and that whatever technological means could bring the state about will be
> > appropriated by some social group who will use it to gain or maintain their
> > hold on the rest of us by ensuring that the necessities of life aren't _quite_
> > free.
>
> I don't agree. I have a more hopeful view of the future. Besides,
> despotic leaders or states or social groups need to win every battle if
> they intend to keep people down.. the freedom fighters only have to win
> once.
Hah! Funny joke. That's the kind of victory you need to keep winning again
and again.
Andrew Ducker
@gslis.utexas.edu:
ObSF: The story by Lem where the people with ultimate technology have turned
their planet into one huge beach and do nothing but sunbathe all the time
(having grown out of the immature habit of spelling words with suns and
creating square planets)
Andy
Charlie Stross
> Here's what I don't get: it seems as though there are many people who
> feel that economies and hierarchies are automatic and inevitable. Why?
> Surely, in SF expecially, we can take off our 21st-century,
> democracy/free-market capitalism glasses and imagine a viable culture
> that doesn't look exactly like our culture, except for better tech?
Hmm.
I don't think hierarchies are inevitable and automatic. On the other
hand, I have a feeling that because they're embodied in almost all
currently existing human societies, it's be rather difficult to see how
to get to a hierarchy-free society from here. It's a self-perpetuating
system, much like any major religion, and about as difficult to get rid
of: it can be done, but it's difficult and takes generations because the
assumptions that derive from it our built into our culture and language.
Which leaves your question about SF and its depiction of alternatives.
I'd throw Banks's Culture novels in the ring, but there _is_ a
hierarchy inside the Culture, albeit a subtle one. There's le Guin's
"The Disposessed", but again, there are wheels turning within social
wheels. KSR's "Pacific Edge" comes close to depicting a post-hierarchical
society in 21st century California. And then -- well. Next, anybody?
-- Charlie
Andrew Ducker
news:slrna5fog8....@raq981.uk2net.com.antipope.org:
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <mik...@jps.net> declared:
>
>
>> Here's what I don't get: it seems as though there are many people who
>> feel that economies and hierarchies are automatic and inevitable. Why?
>> Surely, in SF expecially, we can take off our 21st-century,
>> democracy/free-market capitalism glasses and imagine a viable culture
>> that doesn't look exactly like our culture, except for better tech?
>
> Hmm.
>
> I don't think hierarchies are inevitable and automatic. On the other
> hand, I have a feeling that because they're embodied in almost all
> currently existing human societies, it's be rather difficult to see how
> to get to a hierarchy-free society from here.
Make that "all currently existing primate societies" or "most currently
existing mammal societies"
Andy D
Charlie Stross
> But your matter mixer isn't going to be free, because, on presumes,
> this process takes at least some energy. Probably, like, a lot of
> energy. So unless energy becomes free, the products of your matter
> mixer won't be free, either. I'm willing to posit cheap energy --
> from really good fusion reactors, say -- but not free energy.
> Manufacturing costs will be nero zero, but they won't be zero. There
> will still be some scarcity.
Actually, if you read Drexler, you'll find that his projections of the
amount of energy a mature nanotechnology requires are quite low. This
is because it is, by definition, highly efficient -- it doesn't waste
potloads of energy heating up atoms so that they bounce around and flow
easily (i.e. melting them). You're right about it not being free, and
you missed the need for raw materials that aren't free either -- but it's
cheap enough in energy and material requirements that you can run it on
a kitchen garden basis, using a smallish plot of high-efficiency solar
cells and mostly organic compounds as feedstock.
Some artefacts that require lots of dumb matter -- a traditionally
structured house, for example -- will remain expensive because they're
massive and need labour to assemble (although it might be robot labour
rather than human). But a lot of what we see as consumer durables
drop right down in price, to the point where a refrigerator, a sack of
potatoes, and a refrigerator-full of prime steak, all cost exactly as
much when adjusted for weight. The other cost determinant will be
the intellectual property reified in physical matter by a matter
compiler -- who owns the source code? I think some sort of hardware
equivalent of the Free Software Foundation will inevitably arise, and a
lot of the essential templates will end up being free, but if you want
to drive a BMW unstead of a copy of GNU Automobile 18.56 that you've
hand-tailored and painted yourself (and it shows), you'll end up paying.
> But even if you handwave a source of free energy -- Ayn Rand's static
> electricity generator, for example -- there are still some things that
> are going to be scarce. Hand-made items of all sorts require actual
> human effort.
Yes, and this means they'll be at a premium. Rich people wear hand-woven
shirts and eat off hand-made pottery, even today: it's going to go a lot
further in a post-scarcity ubiquitous nanotechnology world.
> Services -- massage therapists, doctors, entertainers
> and the like will all demand payment for their services. Even prime
> real estate will be scarce. Given my druthers, I'd like to live in a
> mansion in Malibu, on the beach. But hey, even if buildings are free,
> there's only so much beachfront real estate. Real property is
> inherently scarce.
Yup. Or rather, its scarcity is demand-driven. You might quite like to
live somewhere that the masses haven't cottoned onto yet. One of the cute
things about these technologies is that they make formerly uninhabitable
regions a bit more hospitable.
> Don't get me wrong; it's quite possible that technologies will make us
> all richer. Industrial robots already replace some human labor in
> manufacturing -- matter assemblers would undoubtedly replace a lot
> more. But human desires are fairly flexible; it seems extremely
> unlikely that we'll reach the point of total satiation.
There are, however, some limits.
I am not rich (although I'd rate myself as comfortable by current-day
middle class British standards). I can see uses other than investment
for, say, a million Euros. Buy a bigger house, buy a nice car, buy a
nice car for my partner (and pay for her driving lessons :), and so on.
I can, given a bit of time for head-scratching, see my way to spending
more than a million Euros on myself. But because I don't have a gambling
habit or other open-ended vices it rapidly gets into the territory of
"set up trust funds for my nephews; set up a fully-vested pension for my
brother and sister; give large donation to charity <x>". As in, there's
stuff I just don't particularly need. I mean, I _could_ buy a Boeing
Businessjet (converted luxury executive 737 with trans-Atlantic range),
but why bother blowing thirty mil when you can hire one by the flight
for a tiny fraction of that? Again, why buy a two hundred foot luxury
yacht with a staff of forty and a helicopter when you can hire one for
the odd couple of weeks a year when you might want it? Even shacking up
in a stateroom on the QE2 or some over luxury cruise liner doesn't cost
_that_ much.
What this demonstrates indirectly is the diminishing marginal utility of
money. If you're on the breadline, a thousand Euros is a lot of money --
maybe a few months income, enough to do all sorts of things with. If you're
me, a middle-class self-employed person, it's nice -- you can maybe go on
a cheap holiday or upgrade your laptop, but it's substantially less than
you earn in a month, or maybe a week. If you're the [former] CEO of Enron,
it's lost in the noise -- and if you're Bill Gates, it's not worth stooping
to pick it up off the sidewalk on your way to work because you earn more
than that every second.
Basically, all money can buy you is immunity from sources of pain (such
as hunger, thirst, homelessness, and social exclusion), and time (by
paying for services you'd otherwise have to perform yourself). This isn't
to minimize the importance of these things, but the curve of perceived
value per unit currency is steepest at the bottom. There are few things
costing a million euros that can make as much difference to my life as
twenty-five Penicillin VK tablets (costing pennies) at the right time.
It's because of this skewed curve (wealth making more of a difference to
poor people) that I'd expect the social effects of a cheap ubiquitous
mature nanotechnology to be a drastic flattening of the social pyramid
-- at least in terms of access to material posessions. The necessities
will be in reach of everyone, and may items that are considered luxuries
today will be in the basket of necessities. What's left over will be art
or personal services, and those will be the new determinants of social
position.
-- Charlie
Richard Kennaway
jab...@my-deja.com writes:
>But I'd wondered whether the post-scarcity society would rely more on
>nonmaterial means of establishing heirarchy: access to special knowledge,
>or an honours system, whether inherited social standing or reputation acquired
>by the individual him or herself.
You are describing Usenet.
-- Richard Kennaway
Mark Jason Dominus
Ryan Klippenstine <ry...@westman.wave.ca> wrote:
>Enh. The polis inhabitants would have to be insane to entrust
>themselves completely to one set of hardware. If they had any brains
>at all, there would be backups and redundant systems spread over half
>the solar system.
They do, but there's also a primary system buried in Siberia.
Captain Button
> Yes, Doctor.
This problem is easily avoided by sensible interface design, like
that used by the designers of the ancient cities in Moorcock's
"Dancers at the End of Time" SF novels. The anything machines
only operate when you twist the appropriate jeweled ring.
Human factors engineering.
A.C.
> No this was Pohl. Damon Knight called this story a 'second order idiot
> plot' [ in _In Search of Wonder_], not only must all the characters be
> idiots or the problem would never arise and there would be no story,
> but so must everyone in the society at large.
I actually found it realistic, in the sense that once you got over the
somewhat unrealistic premise, the actual social hierarchy that it
resulted in made sense.
By the way, I believe the name was Midas World, but I guess alternate
titles could exist (or quite possibly it was a collection of
shared-world short stories, can't remember)
There's another (short) story which I can't remember, that followed a
somewhat similiar plot; in order for the economy to function, people
had to engage in constant mass consumption. After so many months, you
were expected to buy a new car, or a washing machine, etc. Eventually
government and business grew so dependent on the endless consumerism
they started bombarding people with subliminal advertising. This was
a lot more realistic, considering they used their own money (and
somewhat prophetic, considering the current US government's urging to
buy retail goods in the name of patriotism)
Anyone have any idea of what this could be? Its at least a decade
old, probably more.
Pete McCutchen
<cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>I'd throw Banks's Culture novels in the ring, but there _is_ a
>hierarchy inside the Culture, albeit a subtle one.
Subtle? The Minds run the show; the humans are pets. How "subtle" is
that?
--
Pete McCutchen
Michael Altarriba
I've heard this claimed many times, and it still sounds just as bogus.
The Culture cares about the intellect, not the package it comes in. How,
precisely, are humans pets? What are humans forbidden from doing? What
are they compelled to do against their will? Just because the Minds have
more intellectual horsepower doesn't mean they are owners. The Culture
is most definitively NOT a hierarchy in the sense that our culture is.
Sure, Minds can do things that organics can't, and that creates a sort
of hierarchy... but that is a long, long way from ownership.
Charlie Stross
It's flat-out wrong. At least, that's what Iain says, and he should know.
(If you are going to assert that you know more about the books than their
author does I will beg to differ ... )
-- Charlie
Gareth Wilson
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> declared:
>
> > Subtle? The Minds run the show; the humans are pets. How "subtle" is
> > that?
>
> It's flat-out wrong. At least, that's what Iain says, and he should know.
What evidence do you have from the books themselves that humans aren't pets?
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gareth Wilson
Christchurch
New Zealand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arthur Green
wrote:
>> Subtle? The Minds run the show; the humans are pets. How "subtle" is
>> that?
>>
>
>I've heard this claimed many times, and it still sounds just as bogus.
>The Culture cares about the intellect, not the package it comes in. How,
>precisely, are humans pets? What are humans forbidden from doing? What
>are they compelled to do against their will? Just because the Minds have
>more intellectual horsepower doesn't mean they are owners. The Culture
>is most definitively NOT a hierarchy in the sense that our culture is.
>Sure, Minds can do things that organics can't, and that creates a sort
>of hierarchy... but that is a long, long way from ownership.
As I read it, almost all decision-making is done by Minds, I think
because very few humans have decision-making abilities to match the
Minds. If I recall, one peripheral character in "Consider Phlebas" was
a decision maker (she was the mountaineer with a broken leg).
I suspect that the humans are too busy having fun to worry about
running the Culture.
- AG
Michael Altarriba
> Charlie Stross wrote:
>
>
>>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>>as <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> declared:
>>
>>
>>>Subtle? The Minds run the show; the humans are pets. How "subtle" is
>>>that?
>>>
>>It's flat-out wrong. At least, that's what Iain says, and he should know.
>>
>
> What evidence do you have from the books themselves that humans aren't pets?
> --
>
You made the assertion that "the humans are pets." Where is -your- evidence?
Charlie, can you point me to a reference where Iain explicitly states
that humans aren't pets? I've read "A Few Brief Notes on The Culture",
but don't remember anything to this effect.
Mark Atwood
> and the Duke of whatever can go to hell -
> > what does anyone need a Duke for?
>
> Prestige at your party.
ObSF: The native culture of Rod Gallowglass, the Royal Warlock.
Ryan Klippenstine
Dominus) wrote:
>In article <3c5781c7....@news.westman.wave.ca>,
>Ryan Klippenstine <ry...@westman.wave.ca> wrote:
>>Enh. The polis inhabitants would have to be insane to entrust
>>themselves completely to one set of hardware. If they had any brains
>>at all, there would be backups and redundant systems spread over half
>>the solar system.
>
>They do, but there's also a primary system buried in Siberia.
Umm... so then why would you think the polis would be so paranoid as
to lie about the position of the hardware to its own citizens?
Charlie Stross
> Charlie, can you point me to a reference where Iain explicitly states
> that humans aren't pets? I've read "A Few Brief Notes on The Culture",
> but don't remember anything to this effect.
I can't point you to explicit written statements. I'm going by what
Iain says in person. (Far as I can tell, the whole point of the culture
as a fictional construct is that Iain sees it as a refutation of our
current dog-eat-dog view of the inevitability of hierarchy in society.)
-- Charlie
James Nicoll
Joe Slater <joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>Remember to use your tongs when handling antimatter.
>
>tm...@jump.net (Timothy A. McDaniel) wrote:
>>If anyone else had written that, I wouldn't ask, "Personal
>>experience?".
>
>Out of which material do you make your tongs?
Light.
>There's a Jewish story that you can't work metal without tongs, and
>since tongs are made from metal, the very first tongs must have been
>made at the time of creation - at sunset before the first Sabbath,
>together with everything else which would otherwise be logically
>impossible.
>
I think that's crept into other cultures as well.
ObSF: the Jack Williamson Seetee books.
--
"Don't worry. It's just a bunch of crazies who believe in only one
god. They're just this far away from atheism."
Wayne & Schuster
Dave O'Neill
"Charlie Stross" <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote in message
news:slrna5gjbv....@raq981.uk2net.com.antipope.org...
*please excuse name dropping*
I've discussed this with Iain on a few occasions, often after alcohol has
been consumed, and his public line is as Charlie puts it. However, he would
admit that to all intents and purposes the Minds run the culture with the
humans there for light relief and to introduce interesting random effects.
Pet's is probably too strong a word, as that doesn't really match the
relationship.
Ben Aaronovitch in his Dr Who New Adventures uses the Culture as the People
and puts it thus; "live without people? But we'd get bored..."
--
Dave O'Neill
Principle Word Wraggler - Atomicrazor
The lowest editorial standards on the web!
Dave O'Neill
"Pete McCutchen" <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:6n9d5usdogk8ck241...@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 20:59:07 GMT, Michael Altarriba <mik...@jps.net>
> wrote:
> But your matter mixer isn't going to be free, because, on presumes,
> this process takes at least some energy. Probably, like, a lot of
> energy. So unless energy becomes free, the products of your matter
> mixer won't be free, either. I'm willing to posit cheap energy --
> from really good fusion reactors, say -- but not free energy.
How about nano-manufactured photocells covering roads, buildings and
everywhere else. Because of the nature of the manufacture they can be
robust etc and with Nano techniques I'd warrent that highly efficient
storeage mediums become available. Even in the UK you could run your home
pretty much off Solar panels if you could justify the £20K price tag.
phil hunt
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> declared:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Jan 2002 12:07:36 +0000, Charlie Stross
>><cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>>
>>>I'd throw Banks's Culture novels in the ring, but there _is_ a
>>>hierarchy inside the Culture, albeit a subtle one.
>>
>> Subtle? The Minds run the show; the humans are pets. How "subtle" is
>> that?
>
>It's flat-out wrong.
In what way is it wrong? The Minds control where the ships go. The minds
control Contact and SC operations. What exactly do the humans control?
--
===== Philip Hunt ===== ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk =====
Herbivore, a zero-effort email encryption system. Details at:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
Mark Jason Dominus
Ryan Klippenstine <ry...@westman.wave.ca> wrote:
>>They do, but there's also a primary system buried in Siberia.
>
>Umm... so then why would you think the polis would be so paranoid as
>to lie about the position of the hardware to its own citizens?
Perhaps because they wouldn't want to have to worry that someone might
mount a physical attack on the primary polis hardware.
This is so obvious that you can't possibly have overlooked it. It
seems pretty clear that we're not going to have a meeting of the
minds, so let's just abandon the discussion here.
--
--
Mark Jason Dominus m...@plover.com
Philadelphia Excursions Mailing List: http://www.plover.com/~mjd/excursions/
Gareth Wilson
> You made the assertion that "the humans are pets."
No I didn't. Actually I've never read a Culture book and have no opinion on the
matter. But "I ran into Iain down at the pub and he said..." [1] didn't strike me
as very sophisticated literary analysis and I wondered if he had any evidence from
the books themselves.
[1] Quote invented for rhetorical effect. No offense intended.
Ryan Klippenstine
Dominus) wrote:
>In article <3c5847d2....@news.westman.wave.ca>,
>Ryan Klippenstine <ry...@westman.wave.ca> wrote:
>>>They do, but there's also a primary system buried in Siberia.
>>
>>Umm... so then why would you think the polis would be so paranoid as
>>to lie about the position of the hardware to its own citizens?
>
>Perhaps because they wouldn't want to have to worry that someone might
>mount a physical attack on the primary polis hardware.
But if they did, it wouldn't be a catastrophe, because they have
backups. Hence no need for hysterical paranoia.
>This is so obvious that you can't possibly have overlooked it.
Well, no.
>It
>seems pretty clear that we're not going to have a meeting of the
>minds, so let's just abandon the discussion here.
Whatever.
Mark Atwood
>
> Perhaps because they wouldn't want to have to worry that someone might
> mount a physical attack on the primary polis hardware.
Information Processing Hardware in _Diaspora_, at least on Earth, is
armored with defensive nanotech. At least, the Flesher's stuff was,
to the point that the Shapers couldn't tap into it (the physical taps
were being physically destroyed).
I somehow doubt that that polis's hardware were less protected than
the Flesher's network routers.
Remember, the Flesher/Shaper cultural split was the result of a
particularly nasty war, possibly the most destructive war in human
history, and ended not with a victory, but with a stalemate/ceasefire
that had been held in a carefully balanced state of mutual
ignoring-each-other for over 800 years.
Charlie Stross
> No I didn't. Actually I've never read a Culture book and have no opinion on the
> matter. But "I ran into Iain down at the pub and he said..." [1] didn't strike me
> as very sophisticated literary analysis and I wondered if he had any evidence from
> the books themselves.
Frankly, I think you're over-reaching.
Probably the ultimate example of bloodless embarrassment is what you
get when someone who spends a year researching a master's thesis on the
works of a [living] author, submits it, gets the sheepskin, and is on
a podium discussing their analysis of the author's works, only for the
author to stand up and says "but that's wrong".
The thing is, we've got to take the author's word about what they meant
to say. They might have mis-spoken on paper, leading to some degree of
confusion among the readers. And they might, jokingly, lead a particularly
annoying interrogator around by the nose ("no, Use of Weapons wasn't
about the morality of of violent intervention in primitive societies;
it was about my idea of the ultimate typing chair"). But because a work
of fiction is an attempt by the author to communicate some ideas to the
reader, the only way we've got of double-checking the intended meaning of
the work is to *ask the author*.
Deconstructing a text in search of hidden meaning is a waste of time
and effort when the authoritative source is drinking a pint of beer at
the next table and willing to answer tedious questions.
In the case of the Culture books, no -- he doesn't explicitly come out
of the woodwork and say "this is how my universe works". If he did that,
it would tend to undermine the seamless fictional conception of the world,
by providing an external, omniscient narrator who was also a critic. But
if you read those books you won't find anything to contradict their general
theme, and if you ask Iain what the Culture represents he'll tell you what
I just told you[*], and it's consistent with the books.
(Maybe you'd have been happier if Isaac Asimov had had Hari Seldon say
"of course, the Foundation is just a fictional reinterpretation of the
role of the monasteries in preserving knowledge in the wake of the collapse
of the western Roman Empire" ? Or if Heinlein had written an appendix to
"Starship Troopers" explaining what parts of the politics of Earth as
depicted in the novel he thought were Pretty Neat Ideas, and which parts
he thought made for a good novel but he wouldn't want to live under?)
It's fiction. All we can do is take the author's word about what they meant
to say.
-- Charlie
[*] Unless he's in a mood to take the piss. Which he doesn't normally do
with fans.
Captain Button
> In article <t40f5uc13vppmag1s...@4ax.com>,
> Joe Slater <joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>>>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>>Remember to use your tongs when handling antimatter.
>>
>>tm...@jump.net (Timothy A. McDaniel) wrote:
>>>If anyone else had written that, I wouldn't ask, "Personal
>>>experience?".
>>
>>Out of which material do you make your tongs?
> Light.
>>There's a Jewish story that you can't work metal without tongs, and
>>since tongs are made from metal, the very first tongs must have been
>>made at the time of creation - at sunset before the first Sabbath,
>>together with everything else which would otherwise be logically
>>impossible.
>>
> I think that's crept into other cultures as well.
I recall seeing somewhere something about Allah giving the first
tongs to the first smith, in some SF work or another.
Jens Kilian
> Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on 30 Jan 2002 15:35:26 -0500,
> James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> > In article <t40f5uc13vppmag1s...@4ax.com>,
> > Joe Slater <joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
> >>There's a Jewish story that you can't work metal without tongs, and
> >>since tongs are made from metal, the very first tongs must have been
> >>made at the time of creation - at sunset before the first Sabbath,
> >>together with everything else which would otherwise be logically
> >>impossible.
> >>
> > I think that's crept into other cultures as well.
>
> I recall seeing somewhere something about Allah giving the first
> tongs to the first smith, in some SF work or another.
They just haven't seen the relevant Far Side cartoon.
"Hey! Look what Zog do!"
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
PGP: 06 04 1C 35 7B DC 1F 26 As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
0x555DA8B5 BB A2 F0 66 77 75 E1 08 so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
Margaret Young
<cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <gr...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz> declared:
>
>> No I didn't. Actually I've never read a Culture book and have no opinion on the
>> matter. But "I ran into Iain down at the pub and he said..." [1] didn't strike me
>> as very sophisticated literary analysis and I wondered if he had any evidence from
>> the books themselves.
>
>Frankly, I think you're over-reaching.
>
>Probably the ultimate example of bloodless embarrassment is what you
>get when someone who spends a year researching a master's thesis on the
>works of a [living] author, submits it, gets the sheepskin, and is on
>a podium discussing their analysis of the author's works, only for the
>author to stand up and says "but that's wrong".
>
I actually witnessed something similar to that in real life. Speaker
at the podium made a statement, person in audience questioned it on
the basis of research that could be found in *important book* written
by *famous person* . Speaker defended herself by stating that *famous
person* had not included the phenomena she was speaking about in his
*important book* because data from that time and place had not been
available when he was writing. Several people in the audience tried
politely to tell her that the data had been available and was in the
book. She argued in a spirited manner, sure in her own conviction that
she was right. Unfortunately one of the people with whom she was
arguing was *famous person* .
Moral of the story. At least know what the famous person looks like.
--
Margaret
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Margaret Young
<cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote:
>What this demonstrates indirectly is the diminishing marginal utility of
>money. If you're on the breadline, a thousand Euros is a lot of money --
>maybe a few months income, enough to do all sorts of things with. If you're
>me, a middle-class self-employed person, it's nice -- you can maybe go on
>a cheap holiday or upgrade your laptop, but it's substantially less than
>you earn in a month, or maybe a week. If you're the [former] CEO of Enron,
>it's lost in the noise -- and if you're Bill Gates, it's not worth stooping
>to pick it up off the sidewalk on your way to work because you earn more
>than that every second.
>
When I am teaching the _very basics_ of statistics I love to use money
as an example of something that appears to be interval/ratio level of
measurement (ordered with equal increments between value) but in _real
life_ is not. Your first dollar and your last dollar are not
necessarily of equal value or importance to you. And not understanding
this leads to some really bad economic analyses.
David E. Siegel
> sie...@acm.org (David E. Siegel) wrote in message n
>
> > No this was Pohl. Damon Knight called this story a 'second order idiot
> > plot' [ in _In Search of Wonder_], not only must all the characters be
> > idiots or the problem would never arise and there would be no story,
> > but so must everyone in the society at large.
>
> I actually found it realistic, in the sense that once you got over the
> somewhat unrealistic premise, the actual social hierarchy that it
> resulted in made sense.
>
> By the way, I believe the name was Midas World, but I guess alternate
> titles could exist (or quite possibly it was a collection of
> shared-world short stories, can't remember)
>
in the same world as "The Midas Plague", including the direct sequel
"The man who ate the World" (about a person who grew up before the
change, and was tramatized by the old system, and couldn't adapt to
the new one). I could read all of the other stories in it.
> There's another (short) story which I can't remember, that followed a
> somewhat similiar plot; in order for the economy to function, people
> had to engage in constant mass consumption. After so many months, you
> were expected to buy a new car, or a washing machine, etc. Eventually
> government and business grew so dependent on the endless consumerism
> they started bombarding people with subliminal advertising. This was
> a lot more realistic, considering they used their own money (and
> somewhat prophetic, considering the current US government's urging to
> buy retail goods in the name of patriotism)
>
I remember this, and I think it was by a differeent author. i doin't
recall title or author, but I think i saw it in an anthology of
phycologically oriented SF stories -- and if so, it is at least 20
years old. The hero finally sabotoges a giant billboard which is
providing subliminal msgs. Earlier we are told that specially tuned
rumble strips make your care shake dangerously if it is out-of-tune,
the the strips are changed every couple of years so that all older
cars are out-of-tune, iirc.
> Anyone have any idea of what this could be? Its at least a decade
> old, probably more.
-DES
David E. Siegel
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>
>
> > Here's what I don't get: it seems as though there are many people who
> > feel that economies and hierarchies are automatic and inevitable. Why?
> > Surely, in SF expecially, we can take off our 21st-century,
> > democracy/free-market capitalism glasses and imagine a viable culture
> > that doesn't look exactly like our culture, except for better tech?
>
> Hmm.
>
> I don't think hierarchies are inevitable and automatic. On the other
> hand, I have a feeling that because they're embodied in almost all
> currently existing human societies, it's be rather difficult to see how
> to get to a hierarchy-free society from here. It's a self-perpetuating
> system, much like any major religion, and about as difficult to get rid
> of: it can be done, but it's difficult and takes generations because the
> assumptions that derive from it our built into our culture and language.
>
"Alomst all"? Can you name even *one* currently existing (or
historically known, for that matter) human society which does not
embody one or more hierarchies? They aren't all hierarchies of wealth,
perhaps, but some sort of hierarchy of power or status is present in
any human culture that I can think of. Whether it is an essential
part of "human nature" could be debated, but all the (incomplete)
evidence suggests that it is.
> Which leaves your question about SF and its depiction of alternatives.
>
> I'd throw Banks's Culture novels in the ring, but there _is_ a
> hierarchy inside the Culture, albeit a subtle one.
Haven't read enough Banks to say.
>There's le Guin's
> "The Disposessed", but again, there are wheels turning within social
> wheels.
Indeed. That whole book is about hierarchies (amoug other things) and
there are just as clearly hierarches on Annares as on Urras, although
they are not labeled as such, and take different forms, and they do
tend to be flatter and have more room for people outside them on the
fringes -- but they *are* on the fringes (consider Bedap, frex).
>KSR's "Pacific Edge" comes close to depicting a post-hierarchical
> society in 21st century California. And then -- well. Next, anybody?
>
>
> -- Charlie
Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_ makes an attempt to describe a
society without hierarchy, but its all handwaving.
-David E. Siegel
Sie...@acm.org
Michael Altarriba
> Charlie Stross <cha...@nospam.antipope.org> wrote in message news:<slrna5fog8....@raq981.uk2net.com.antipope.org>...
>
>>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>>as <mik...@jps.net> declared:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Here's what I don't get: it seems as though there are many people who
>>>feel that economies and hierarchies are automatic and inevitable. Why?
>>>Surely, in SF expecially, we can take off our 21st-century,
>>>democracy/free-market capitalism glasses and imagine a viable culture
>>>that doesn't look exactly like our culture, except for better tech?
>>>
>>
>>Hmm.
>>
>>I don't think hierarchies are inevitable and automatic. On the other
>>hand, I have a feeling that because they're embodied in almost all
>>currently existing human societies, it's be rather difficult to see how
>>to get to a hierarchy-free society from here. It's a self-perpetuating
>>system, much like any major religion, and about as difficult to get rid
>>of: it can be done, but it's difficult and takes generations because the
>>assumptions that derive from it our built into our culture and language.
>>
>>
>
> "Alomst all"? Can you name even *one* currently existing (or
> historically known, for that matter) human society which does not
> embody one or more hierarchies? They aren't all hierarchies of wealth,
> perhaps, but some sort of hierarchy of power or status is present in
> any human culture that I can think of. Whether it is an essential
> part of "human nature" could be debated, but all the (incomplete)
> evidence suggests that it is.
>
<snippety>
Is there an anthropologist in the house? Were hunter-gatherer groups
hierarchical? I'm talking early humna, <= 150 people / group.
David E. Siegel
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 20:59:07 GMT, Michael Altarriba <mik...@jps.net>
> wrote:
>
> >which resources are available is so much greater than the demand that
> >availability, as a practical matter, is effectively infinite.
> >
> >We've seen a few examples of such an economy in SF literature - "The
> >Culture" of Iain M. Banks, the Chironians of James P Hogan's "Voyage
> > From Yesteryear", and the Pendorans of Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries."
>
> I suspect that one of the earliest examples appears in George O.
> Smith's Venus Equilateral stories. The protagonists invent
> duplicator, and all hell breaks loose, after which things settle down,
> and the world becomes a very nice place, all around.
>
I thought that the magnatude and duration of the "hell" was pretty
minimal in this story, and the utopian outcome was far to much taken
for granted. The outcome of a similar invention in Damon Knight's _A
for Anything_ was a tyrannical hierarchy, and i thought that was more
plausible. I recall a story "Buisness as Usual, During Alterations"
about the dislocations which attend the introduction of a "magical"
replicatior (i.e. no apparent power source or matter input, able to
replicate themselves.) It was intersting, but I thought that it
minimized the changes that would result -- but it assumed that
hierarchies and wealth would persist.
> >
> >Post-scarcity economies are usually shown to be the result of a very
> >high technology. In essence, humans don't have to run the machinery that
> >translates desires into physical artefacts. Future technologies like
> >strong AI or nanotechnology are usually invoked.
> >
> >How realistic is a post-scarcity economy? What would be the political
> >and social impact of such an economy? How can a post-scarcity economy be
> >implemented?
>
> I hate to sound like I'm trying to burst your bubble, but the answer
> to your first question is, well, "not really." Let's suppose we
> develop a matter manipulator, or replicator, or whatever you want to
> call it. Put some matter in one hopper, and out the other hopper
> comes whatever you want. So, basically, you've got free
> manufacturing. A boon to humanity in the long run, no doubt, though
> it would undoubtedly cause some short term dislocation.
>
> But your matter mixer isn't going to be free, because, one presumes,
> this process takes at least some energy. Probably, like, a lot of
> energy. So unless energy becomes free, the products of your matter
> mixer won't be free, either. I'm willing to posit cheap energy --
> from really good fusion reactors, say -- but not free energy.
> Manufacturing costs will be nero zero, but they won't be zero. There
> will still be some scarcity.
>
True unless we repeal conservation of mass-energy and the 2nd & 3rd
laws of thermodynamics.
> But even if you handwave a source of free energy -- Ayn Rand's static
> electricity generator, for example -- there are still some things that
> are going to be scarce. Hand-made items of all sorts require actual
> human effort. Services -- massage therapists, doctors, entertainers
> and the like will all demand payment for their services. Even prime
> real estate will be scarce. Given my druthers, I'd like to live in a
> mansion in Malibu, on the beach. But hey, even if buildings are free,
> there's only so much beachfront real estate. Real property is
> inherently scarce.
>
> Don't get me wrong; it's quite possible that technologies will make us
> all richer. Industrial robots already replace some human labor in
> manufacturing -- matter assemblers would undoubtedly replace a lot
> more. But human desires are fairly flexible; it seems extremely
> unlikely that we'll reach the point of total satiation.
I tend to agree. But it can be an interesting story background.
-DES
Justin Fang
Dave O'Neill <da...@atomicrazor.com> wrote:
>*please excuse name dropping*
>I've discussed this with Iain on a few occasions, often after alcohol has
>been consumed, and his public line is as Charlie puts it. However, he would
>admit that to all intents and purposes the Minds run the culture with the
>humans there for light relief and to introduce interesting random effects.
>Pet's is probably too strong a word, as that doesn't really match the
>relationship.
>
>Ben Aaronovitch in his Dr Who New Adventures uses the Culture as the People
>and puts it thus; "live without people? But we'd get bored..."
The relationship between humans and Minds is kind of like the relationship
between cats and humans would be if you gave cats intelligence, thumbs,
speech, and citizenship, without changing their basic personalities and
concerns.
--
Justin Fang (jus...@panix.com)
Mark Atwood
>
> I actually witnessed something similar to that in real life. Speaker
> at the podium made a statement, person in audience questioned it on
> the basis of research that could be found in *important book* written
> by *famous person* . Speaker defended herself by stating that *famous
> person* had not included the phenomena she was speaking about in his
> *important book* because data from that time and place had not been
> available when he was writing. Several people in the audience tried
> politely to tell her that the data had been available and was in the
> book. She argued in a spirited manner, sure in her own conviction that
> she was right. Unfortunately one of the people with whom she was
> arguing was *famous person* .
>
> Moral of the story. At least know what the famous person looks like.
Would $FAMOUS_PERSON == "David Korn", or was this a different incident?
Christopher K Davis
> Margaret Young <mmy...@umich.edu> writes:
>>
>> I actually witnessed something similar to that in real life. Speaker
>> at the podium made a statement, person in audience questioned it on
>> the basis of research that could be found in *important book* written
>> by *famous person*
>> Moral of the story. At least know what the famous person looks like.
> Would $FAMOUS_PERSON == "David Korn", or was this a different incident?
The details sound different, certainly.
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/02/06/2030205.shtml has David Korn's
comments on this incident.
"This story is true. It was at a USENIX Windows NT conference and
Microsoft was presenting their future directions for NT. One of their
speakers said that they would release a UNIX integration package for NT
that would contain the Korn Shell.
I knew that Microsoft had licensed a number of tools from MKS so I came
to the microphone to tell the speaker that this was not the "real" Korn
Shell and that MKS was not even compatible with ksh88. I had no
intention of embarrassing him and thought that he would explain the
compromises that Microsoft had to make in choosing MKS Korn
Shell. Instead, he insisted that I was wrong and that Microsoft had
indeed chosen a "real" Korn Shell. After a couple of exchanges, I shut
up and let him dig himself in deeper. Finally someone in the audience
stood up and told him what almost everyone in the audience knew, that I
had written the 'real' Korn Shell. I think that this is symbolic about
the way the company works."
--
Christopher Davis * <ckd...@ckdhr.com> * <URL:http://www.ckdhr.com/ckd/>
Put location information in your DNS! <URL:http://www.ckdhr.com/dns-loc/>
Bill, n. 2. A writing binding the signer [...] to pay [...]
Gates, n. 4. The places which command the entrances or access [...]
David Johnston
> Deconstructing a text in search of hidden meaning is a waste of time
> and effort when the authoritative source is drinking a pint of beer at
> the next table and willing to answer tedious questions.
This is not an issue of hidden meaning but of what is actually in
the book. Are there any indications that humans are equal to Minds?
David Johnston
> The relationship between humans and Minds is kind of like the relationship
> between cats and humans would be if you gave cats intelligence, thumbs,
> speech, and citizenship,
Citizenship? What input do the humans have into the decisionmaking process?
And are the humans as intelligent as the Minds?
Justin Fang
>> The relationship between humans and Minds is kind of like the relationship
>> between cats and humans would be if you gave cats intelligence, thumbs,
>> speech, and citizenship,
>Citizenship?
I was using "citizenship" to mean "not property or serfs" Legally equal, if
not politically equal. (Even if they had sentience and the vote, would most
cats bother to show up at the polls on election day? I doubt it. Okay, so
a lot of human don't bother either. But even fewer cats would.)
>What input do the humans have into the decisionmaking process?
They can make decisions about their own lives. If they don't like how a
Mind runs its GSV, they can always leave. They can decide issues a Mind
doesn't care about or doesn't want to get involved in or isn't available to
decide on (like the bit with the pylons in _Look to Windward_). The Minds
sometimes ask for their opinions on what to do, and occasionally even
follow them, like the human who gets asked for her analysis of the
situation in _Consider Phlebas_.
But yes, Minds make all the large-scale decisions, and the Culture humans
are perfectly happy to let them do it. Any who don't like it would, I
presume, either stop being Culture or stop being human.
>Are the humans as intelligent as the Minds?
Of course they aren't. I did say "kind of", above.
If you don't like that analogy, they how about this: the humans are perpetual
kids in the eternal theme park run by the Minds.
--
Justin Fang (jus...@panix.com)
Margaret Young
No. Nor was he or she anyone who has ever posted here.
I missed the David Korn incident. Share?
Margaret Young
Knowing my cats I had presumed that it would be cats in control.