The Laborless Society

Why work?

In his book, The RICH Economy, by Robert Anton Wilson, Wilson argues that unemployment is part of the natural growing pains involved in economic evolution. Unemployment, according to Wilson, is not a disease but the natural result of automisation, and that Labor Unions, the government, and corporations have slowed the rate of automisation out of the fear of unemployment.

The following solutions for the unemployed society are presented:

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Many farseeing social thinkers have suggested intelligent and plausible plans for adapting to a society of rising unemployment. Here are some examples.

1. The National Dividend. This was invented by engineer C. H. Douglas and has been revived with some modifications by poet Ezra Pound and designer Buckminster Fuller. The basic idea (although Douglas, Pound, and Fuller differ on the details) is that every citizen should be declared a shareholder in the nation, and should receive dividends on the Gross National Product for the year. Estimates differ as to how much this would be for each citizen, but at the current level of the GNP it is conservative to say that a share would be worth several times as much, per year, as a welfare recipient receives -- at least five times more. Critics complain that this would be inflationary. Supporters of the National Dividend reply that it would only be inflationary if the dividends distributed were more than the GNP; and they are proposing only to issue dividends equal to the GNP.

2. The Guaranteed Annual Income. This has been urged by economist Robert Theobald and others. The government would simply establish an income level above the poverty line and guarantee that no citizen would receive less; if your wages fall below that level, or you have no wages, the government makes up the difference. This plan would definitely cost the government less than the present welfare system, with all its bureaucratic red tape and redundancy: a point worth considering for those conservatives who are always complaining about the high cost of welfare. It would also spare the recipients the humiliation, degradation and dehumanization built into the present welfare system: a point for liberals to consider. A system that is less expensive than welfare and also less debasing to the poor, it seems to me, should not be objectionable to anybody but hardcore sadists.

3. The Negative Income Tax. This was first devised by Nobel economist Milton Friedman and is a less radical variation on the above ideas. The Negative Income Tax would establish a minimum income for every citizen; anyone whose income fell below that level would receive the amount necessary to bring them up to that standard. Friedman, who is sometimes called a conservative but prefers to title himself a libertarian, points out that this would cost "the government" (i.e. the taxpayers) less than the present welfare system, like Theobald's Guaranteed Annual Income. It would also dispense with the last tinge of humiliation associated with government "charity," since when you cashed a check from IRS nobody (not even your banker) would know if it was supplementary income due to poverty or a refund due to overpayment of last year's taxes.

4. The RICH Economy. This was devised by inventor L. Wayne Benner (co-author with Timothy Leary of Terra II) in collaboration with the present author. It's a four-stage program to retool society for the cybernetic and space-age future we are rapidly entering. RICH means Rising Income through Cybernetic Homeostasis.

Stage I
is to recognize that cybernation and massive unemployment are inevitable and to encourage them. This can be done by offering a $100,000 reward to any worker who can design a machine that will replace him or her, and all others doing the same work. In other words, instead of being dragged into the cybernetic age kicking and screaming, we should charge ahead bravely, regarding the Toilless Society as the Utopian goal humanity has always sought.

Stage II
is to establish either the Negative Income Tax or the Guaranteed Annual Income, so that the massive unemployment caused by Stage I will not throw hordes of people into the degradation of the present welfare system.

Stage III
is to gradually, experimentally, raise the Guaranteed Annual Income to the level of the National Dividend suggested by Douglas, Bucky Fuller, and Ezra Pound, which would give every citizen the approximate living standard of the comfortable middle class. The reason for doing this gradually is to pacify those conservative economists who claim that the National Dividend is "inflationary" or would be practically wrecking the banking business by lowering the interest rate to near-zero. It is our claim that this would not happen as long as the total dividends distributed to the populace equaled the Gross National Product. but since this is a revolutionary and controversial idea, it would be prudent, we allow, to approach it in slow steps, raising the minimum income perhaps 5 per cent per year for the first ten years. And, after the massive cybernation caused by Stage I has produced a glut of consumer goods, experimentally raise it further and faster toward the level of a true National Dividend.

Stage IV
is a massive investment in adult education, for two reasons.

1. People can spend only so much time fucking, smoking dope, and watching TV; after a while they get bored. This is the main psychological objection to the workless society, and the answer to it is to educate people for functions more cerebral than fucking, smoking dope, watching TV, or the idiot jobs most are currently toiling at.

2. There are vast challenges and opportunities confronting us in the next three or four decades, of which the most notable are those highlighted in Tim Leary's SMI2LE slogan -- Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension. Humanity is about to enter an entirely new evolutionary relationship to space, time, and consciousness. We will no longer be limited to one planet, to a brief, less-than-a-century lifespan, and to the stereotyped and robotic mental processes by which most people currently govern their lives. Everybody deserves the chance, if they want it, to participate in the evolutionary leap to what Leary calls "more space, more time, and more intelligence to enjoy space and time."

The end result in the laborless society is where human creative potential is achieved through education and social interaction. People would be able to do what they want to do instead of forcing themselves to work in order to do what they want because machines have already enabled them.

Machines, after all, only require as much wealth is necessary to maintain them, getting more from doing less.

How do you feel about the prospect of the Laborless Society?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

And that's essentially the problem. Who owns the flow of capital? How do you extract wealth to insure that all citizens are capable of maintaining a minimum standard of living without disadvantaging others? That's an issue of extraction, though, not of a dualistic wealth vs. poor dichotomy.

Besides, the very nature of a Laborless Society is that material wealth is meaningless, and that the things of greatest value are derived from creative input and scientific advancement.

People assume that a life of leisure creates happiness, but that leisure is meaningless without meaningful social interaction. In a society where everyone maintains a state of leisure, the wealthy will integrate themselves in order to achieve happiness.

When Emile Durkheim found that the wealthy had a much higher suicide rate than the poor, it became painstakingly clear that wealth alone does not generate happiness. If there is no need to acquire wealth in order to be happy, then you're looking at the perfect society.

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In what types of job is human emotion entirely necessary?

Entertainment and the arts. Which in a Laborless society wouldn't be merely Jobs anymore. Comedians work so that they can keep doing standup. If nobody had to work, then creative potential becomes maximized.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

None of those require human emotions. Everything you've just listed up there is based on imperical reasoning and scientific method. Sociology, Medicine, Ethnography, and Psychiatry are harmed when people apply emotions to reasoning.

Humans are only required to interpret data, not to acquire it. Even then you could theoretically create a machine that can interpret data, and then the only thing humans will be capable of is creativity.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Right, however interpretation does not require emotional input on the part of the interpreter. If somebody walks to the other side of the street in order to avoid a bum, it doesn't take much emotional input from myself to interpret that this person is afraid of homeless people.

Emotional input is what leads to stuff like ethno-centric reasoning.

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The problem is though in order to get to this state everyone has to accept the idea that their wealth does mean nothing and offer it up (property what have you) in order to benefit mankind. And some will definitely put up a fight to keep what they believe is rightfully theirs.

Not if you've come up with a system where you can extract that wealth consentually so that it can be re-distributed according to the above plans. A Consumtion tax is the perfect way to do this.

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Part of the problem is machine maintenence.

Which can be solved by maintenance machines. If machines can be programmed to maintain other machines, then you have a self-sustaining labor force.

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Or new machines. Someone will want to make the new, better machines. And, you'd be hard pressed to find people who want to make said machines if they see everyone else just sitting on their asses all day. So you'd have to give that person more money to do it. Which means there needs to be a premium on the machine, which means the people who want to use them will have to pay for them, which they can't, because we all make the same thing anyway, so they will have to get jobs to pay for them making new machines (or "becoming" machines, doing machine labor), which means we're right back where we started.

However, if people want to make a new machine then they'd have the resources at their disposal to do so. You can collectivise capital and receive investments in order to develop a new machine. A minimal standard of living has nothing to do with it, because people won't be making the same thing. People who produce items of high value would be receiving a greater reward than those who do "nothing." You're confusing socialism with collective ownership of GNP.

Besideswhich, people can not merely do nothing and sit on their asses all day. Eventually they'll get bored, which is where education comes in. People would want to become scientists or artists, or comedians because that's what they want to do, and they can spend as much time as they like dedicating themselves to their professions due to the laborless society.

Take the current state of Authoritative Education. Colleges insist that we take classes we don't want to in order to become "well-rounded individuals." Why should we become well-rounded individuals? Because it makes us more competitive in a labor market. Therefore, if we remove labor altogether, then people would only have to educate themselves according to what they excel at.

The current system encourages us to strengthen our weaknesses, but if we start focusing on what we do poorly, then we only become mediocre. You have no unique or extraordinary people because everybody has the same capabilities.

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I mean, that 4th step in the RICH example, we can't enjoy space and time without being there first, and being there takes work from humans.

Right, so actually physically getting somewhere completely refutes the notion of abolishing the need to work to enable oneself to get somewhere. The entire point of a laborless society is that machines have enabled us.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Somehow I don't think that College Algebra or Calculus is going to further myself as a writer.

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Any reason why you couldn't program a machine to be creative for us?

Not really. The only problem is how do you create a creative machine?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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The problem with it, though, is you've removed incentive. With people's buying power grouped so closely together, a high amount of work/extra income will be required for a small amount of reward.

The reward involved in creating new products of a laborless society comes predominantly from a love of the subject. Take the internet, for instance. There's a massive amount of projects of love that are more often than not superior to commercially-produced products, released for free with the only reward derived from the thanks of the community, and the use of the product by its creator. Sun Microsystems, for instance, released the Open Office suite, and what reward have they derived from it?

In a capitalist society, people make High-Definition tvs because they want more money, but in the Laborless society, people would make High-Definition tvs because they want better televisions.

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What makes you so sure? People sit on their asses all day now. A multitude of people who take advantage of the welfare system prove this. And these people don't sit there complaining about how they wish they could go to college more.

People that abuse the welfare system are the exceptions, not the rule. There are millions of people who receive government benefits just to go to College, and many welfare recipients work hard to better themselves. Not to mention the people that don't receive welfare benefits like you or I. Is it reasonable to apply the results of a poor, ignorant minority living in squalor to the rest of society?

Besides, going to college still costs money, and not everybody is willing to take student loans.

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Additionally, you have to look at crime statistics. Crime generally goes up in the summer, and that is generally attributed to students who don't have high school to go to in the summer. That could be as much of an outlet for someone than education or working for more than you're already getting for absolutely nothing.

So, where exactly does it say that higher crime rates during the summer are attributed to minor delinquints? What kind of crime are we talking about? Who commits the crime? Where do they live? You're not considering enough factors involved in the rise of crime rates to make any definite statement on the effects of idleness. Crime isn't as much an outlet as creativity or work, because crime carries social stigmas.

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Another issue is government. I assume we are giving machines the task of running governments? So what about idealistic differences. A robot handles when Iran pops up with nukes? And...we vote for what programming is implemented? Or the robot just decides?

That's something developed as the process goes along. A government run by machines could never be possible so long as all nations on the world are trapped in a constant state of competition. Certainly, though, the beurocratic functions of government could be processed expertly by machines.

FELIPE NO

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Or maybe get you to understand a little bit more about other people that specialize in other things so you can socialize with them.

Maybe calculus might be an interesting conversation piece, but College Algebra? =P

Besideswhich, my main issue with the state of higher learning is that they force you to pay for classes you don't want to take.

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I'd imagine you'd do it the same way you'd 'theoretically' make one to interpret data.

Even if a machine can interpret data, though, that doesn't mean that it's capable of coming up with a solution. Ultimately though, the creative machine problem comes down to issues of emotion. How do you make a machine feel emotion? If it does feel emotions, will it be capable of creating in the arts? Can a machine make the BESTEST VIEDO GAM EVAR!??!?!!11

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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And never mind trying to make a psychologist robot (that's rich!); you can't even make a good experimenter robot. Design of experiment is a very complicated, creative process. You have to know enough about the situation and the world at large to design controlled, repeatable tests that hold as many variables as possible constant. You have to use judgement to decide how many factors to test and to what level of detail. You have to make a "soft" call between different equations of fit for your data.

I never said that robots could make good psychologists, only that human emotions aren't necessary for those fields.

As for technology, this isn't expected to be feasible in any sense for several decades, if not centuries, but presumably one would program robots based on Asimov's laws, and a robot that performs welding functions would have a built-in welding tool.

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Stage 1 makes no sense. In addition to being almost impossible (see above), you set special rewards for people who remove their own jobs. Like the fry cook at the Burger King is going to be able to handle that. Like the logger has access to that kind of hardware in his spare time. Also: who says you can only build a machine that does your job? What if you find a way to change how society works so your job isn't necessary? Biological or procedural changes ftw.

If you find a way that makes your job unnecessary, then you've essentially fulfilled a step of transition into a laborless society. As for whether or not burger flippers can have access to hardware is besides the point. The point is that some of them will have the ingenuity to design a machine that will replace their function. I mean, working in a fast food resturaunt is practically mechanical in and of itself. If workers replace themselves with machines then all you'd need is a foreman who can watch the machines and correct any irregularities, up to the point where the machines can correct irregularities themselves.

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This whole idea of the other stages is self-contradictory: we're supposed to be enlightened enough to not care about money enough to give everyone plenty to survive on. And yet, use money as a way to encourage people to be creative or "invent" themselves into obsolescence.

The idea behind creative incentive is simply human curiosity and the need for creative output itself. Using money as an incentive to get people into the laborless society is a draw. Eventually as the need for money declines, so will money itself, until you have an entire economy managed by robots, and its output accessible to the humans that want them. Resources would be allocated to the most appropriate products based on their demand, and humans would create new products to improve the standard of living.

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Why does education wait until stage 4? Stage 1 requires massive education. In stage 2 and 3 people are supposed to be out of jobs in droves. Somehow these jobless wraiths will not be bored, humiliated, and depressed, like what happens in real life today. Because they're not welfare recipients - they're shareholders!

Stage 4 is the immediate result of stages 2 and 3. If people become idle the demand for education will increase. It's the natural development during the transition.

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The plan assumes that rich societies should channel their wealth into automating work and raising the standards of living of their own unemployed people. But countries do not exist in a vacuum. Wouldn't other people emigrate into the free hand-outs country? Should people with such awesome wealth be putting everyone on middle class while others live on $1/day?

I don't follow. Presumably as one society becomes automated, others would follow their example, and the process of immigration and naturalisation would be dependant on factors set by society. A robotics engineer, for instance, would be given more priority for immigration than some guy who will open a Qwik-E-Mart.

Or do you mean that it's somehow immoral for some countries to be fully automated while others aren't? Immorality doesn't factor into any of this. Whether or not the members of a nation want to export the surplus of the automated industry is up to them.

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If the job's being automated and we have insanely self-sufficient automatons do we care it takes 10 robots to do the job of 3?

Yes. Waste reduction is the natural progression of any field. After all, if you can build 3 robots that do the job previously fulfilled by 10, then the cost of production goes down, the GNP goes up, and as a result, so does the Negative Minimum Wage, or Dividends, or what have you. Those who design the robots then make more money as their designs are purchased, which grants them access to more resources to design even better robots, or live more extravagantly.

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Maybe the designer robot comes up with a method that completely devastates the environment, or breaks our morals in some other way, but there's no human ethics informing it's actions.

Again, this is where the Law of Robotics comes in. The first law of Robotics states that no robot can harm a human or allow a human to come into harm. This law supercedes all other laws. Therefore, even if the robot does come up with a way to extract diamonds more efficiently, if that extraction creates a negative impact on the environment, which then leads to human suffering, then the robot will not consider it an acceptible choice.

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Lastly, economics is the science of allocating scare resources. Unfortunately, this author lives in a fantasy world where almost everything is done for us and all of our needs are met. Is that even economics anymore? It seems to me we should be debating the philosophy of happiness in paradise - which this thread assumes exists, and will be maintained for the entirety our somehow-extended lives.

Aha! And thus you've struck on the greatest incentive for creative and scientific development of them all: the acquisition of greater resources. An automated industry cannot maintain itself indefinitely with the resources available to us, which means that developing the resources of outer space becomes a necessity.

Besides, money hasn't as of yet been completely eradicated, and the price of goods would still depend on the supply and demand of that good. So, I guess what I'm really getting around to is, what's your point?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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Does that mean they're miserable without it? Not necessarily.

This is pretty much what I am saying.

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Second assumption is that wealthy people seek more wealth to be happier. Power (wealth is power) corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Long after the elite few billionaires have made their billions, there's not much left to buy in the world. I doubt this is what drives them onward from that point. I think they're more driven by their will to dominate even more.

This leads to another question. What can you dominate in a laborless society? If you push, people will push back, and since their well-being is pretty much guaranteed by automated industry, people won't care how much money one has.

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Redistibulating the wealth is too... Marxist for me to really seriously consider.

Then wrap it in the veneer of collective ownership and dividends, and it doesn't sound so Marxist anymore. In any case, it's all the distribution of the wealth generated by the automated industry. The big difference between Marx and the Laborless society is precisely Labor. Marxism still presumes that material objects possess the most important value and must be equally distributed. What then when material possessions become immaterial?

The problem with Socialism is that people will only work enough to not get fired (or executed). What then if people don't have to work altogether?

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At the beginning of our industrial civilization this utopian thinking was quite prevailant.

The beginning of the Industrial Revolution also didn't have calculating machines. We're coming closer and closer to the point where an automoton can perform the equal physical functions of a human. It's not as unfeasible as you think.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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Let's keep in mind that people try to bring down computer systems around the world for free, for fun, for the challenge. That would happen in this society.

So why is it then that no automobile factory has ever been shut down by hackers?

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You can't just throw out government and say, "We'll figure that out once the ball gets rolling."

Nobody said that government would be thrown out. In fact, I explicitly stated that a government run by machines would be impossible so long as nations are in competition with each other. As for your assumtion about the government being run by machines, you were wrong to assume that. My "get the ball rolling" thing is a matter of developing the structure of a machine government.

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I'd like to be able to get rid of that, but 92% of Americans believe in God, I imagine over 50% want law based on religion...so robots can't make them.

Uh, Robots do what they're told, buddy. Unless, of course, they think that the laws they're told to make would harm people. In either case, understanding human reasoning is irrelevant. Unless the law violates the robot's ethical programming, he'll make it.

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But calculation is a simple task, as are most physical functions. Calculation was limited by our ability to run complex systems; physical functions were limited by our ability to construct rigid materials. Reason, imagination, creativity (not artistic, necessarily, but the ability to create something from nothing or to build upon past ideas)...these aren't things that are solved physically.

So explain to me how much creativity is involved in flipping burgers, or taking orders, or driving a truck, or working a mine? Somebody would have to provide input in order to enhance the process, of course, but this can also be eventually phased out.

Don't presume that we can't replicate brain-like functions in an automoton. Geneticists used to think that the human genome was too complex to understand and now we're trying to map it. What's holding us back is our perception and capabilities, not because it's "too hard."

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How simple do you think it is to say "Allow no human to come to harm?" Will my fast food robot stop me from eating a Big Mac because it's not good for my health? Do we program robots as utilitarians or with Kantian ethics?

The question was presented for situations that would already require a robot to have advanced reasoning abilities. A McDonalds robot would only be concerned with getting your burger on the counter.

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How is that really any different from governments forcing you to pay for programs you don't want to participate in? (Or, for that matter, any situation where you pay for a large object and don't get a choice in every little option. Maybe there's some people out there that would opt not to have a catalytic converter on their car, for example.)

Yes, I have pretty much argued against that before.

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Which brings me to another point; The transition phase would be as easily as corruptable.

That depends on its implementation. You can arm people so that they have no fear of robots, for instance. As for comparing it to Marxism, the problem with a Marxist system was that it required a totalitarian state to forcefully redistribute income in order to make sure all workers were equal. In the case of the above plans, we can distribute that income essentially using the current system. The Negative Income Tax for instance is essentially the opposite of extraction, which Marxist socialism is based around. So now we've come to the prospect of everybody living in slums, which is politically unrealistic considering you've already armed the population in order to get them to accept the transition.

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Equality on the scale this theory proposes seems impossible. Even if the technology is there. Especially given the ethnic/gender issues that have been so defined in the past worldwide plague us to this day.

I'm not really seeing the problem. I mean, we don't tax based on ethnicity, right? What's going to be so different about distributing the minimum income?

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Resources.

Fair enough. The problem with that, though, is that it's already practically impossible to bribe members of a society that maintains a minimum of comfortable living. It's easy to maintain ethics when you don't have to worry about eating, or getting cable. So even if one does control the flow of resources, they can't abuse that power since they run the risk of it being seized.

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Surely some would be content with their gold houses, but I'm guessing most would not be.

Well then, that would simply be their perogative, wouldn't it? Even if people compete for things like concrete houses, the point is that they no longer have to compete for a comfortable living. Material competition essentially becomes pointless. So I suppose the people wanting to build concrete houses would have to live with the stigma of being wasteful.

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Instead we spent more time producing more commodities for the mass consumption for everybody, while rapidly expanding our population base.

Right, and yet we've come to a point where our population growth is seriously declining. The problem with the Industrial Revolution was that the increase in energy extraction enabled us to do more, but measures were never taken that allowed us to do more with less. We've already got the infrastructure to distribute products for mass consumtion, and a serious downturn in breeding. This new turn is entirely feasible.

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I'm not sure how much people would like living with Judge Dredd or ED-209 sitting around outside their door.

These are the popular images, but a law-enforcement machine could be made to be much more non-threatening, even non-lethal.

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And yet you were saying earlier how if someone invents something they would only be doing it for the love of the activity of it, not for the profit.

And? So long as people base the economy on money, profit would always be a factor. The difference is now that people don't really need to make a profit, only if they want to.

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It's a little absurd to ask that since to this point those factories aren't quite hackable (you know, lack of any form of connectivity to the outside world and everything)

Yeah, pretty much. There's no reason that factories can't have closed systems.

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I get that. But who gets to tell the robots what to do?

Well, people, obviously. What type of programming goes into robots would be determined by their demand and political force. Step 1 is not all-encompassing. It's a gradual process in which certain jobs are fased out. When the point comes where people are making police bots and politician drones, there would have to be compromises made in their design to satisfy the concerned. It's not as if a representative society goes down the drain with labor.

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But the system doesn't work if you don't replace all jobs. Why would a person in a skilled position say, "Hey, guys, let's start making robots that replace all the low-skill jobs so they don't have to work anymore...even though we have to keep working..."

Profit. Also, presumably skilled workers would be trying to design machines that replace themselves. Then once they're replaced, they would either do nothing or try and design other machines to replace other jobs for even more profit.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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Of course, the one problem is what happens when someone that's just had fun hacking the local factory decides it would be an even better time to try and hack the local police station? Saying you'll make it hackproof doesn't really mean a whole lot, since a motivated individual could just design a machine to do it for them (and then it just comes down to the skill of individual programmers and, oh wait, we're back at people having to do work ).

Which is a minor problem in the first place. So what if people have to be police officers or politicians? They perform the duties because they want to. I suppose one method to encourage public service would be a Starship Troopers-like system of citizenship in exchange for duty.

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It's not like today's millionare needs to make a profit, but if they've got a way to raise their consumption compared to everyone else, you can be sure that some of them will do their best to do it, and, during that, will have to deprive other people of wealth in some way.

It doesn't matter how rich you are, one always needs to make a profit. A fortune can still be lost, and while it may not matter to the CEO that he makes a few hundred thousand more a year, it certainly matters to the company he runs whether or not it generates a profit.

If you don't make a profit, you end up with a deficit. No matter how massive of a fortune you have, it can be whittled away to nothing depending on the expenditures of the owner, and his progeny.

EDIT: you also seem to be operating on a mercantilistic method of reasoning. The world doesn't have a finite amount of wealth, only resources. Simply because Person A gets richer does not mean that Person B gets poorer.

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That, and for someone that's using Asimov's Laws of Robotics in an argument, I'm surprised that you didn't bring up his planet of Solaria in which robots do all the work in the planet and person to person contact is seen as repulsive.

Yes, and on Earth humans outnumbered robots, and robots were seen as repulsive, while in his third book, the numbers were proportionately equal.

The problem with Solaria is that they dedicated a massive amount of resources to a very small number of people, which lead to isolation. We also aren't a pioneering civilization going out into the universe to make it our own. We've live on this planet for millenia, and just because we'd reach a higher standard of living for everybody doesn't mean that we would all of a sudden abandon every social norm.

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One of my biggest problems with this theory is that there's magically enough resources to go around to everyone in the world. Couldn't it be quite possible that there's no way to get everyone's standard of living up to what we'd want?

Yep, it's entirely possible, in fact, probable. Which is why it would still be necessary to go out into outer space and take advantage of its resources. We have worlds-worth of minerals and other resources waiting for us out in the asteroid belt, and we still can't get a man beyond the moon. In an automated society, developing outer space becomes a necessity.

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In the future, if they can get a bigger news story out of figuring out a way to hack a factory, don't you think they'd do it?

Sure, but that's no reason to resist advancement and adaptation. Like you mentioned before, computer systems are hacked all the time, and yet somehow the global economy hasn't ground to a halt because of it, and we don't stop making increasingly advanced computers.

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Then again, maybe I just don't like this kinda of utopia because I find the whole idea of it repulsive.

How so?

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It is one thing to make a robot that can adjust itself to properly weld a car door onto a frame. It is something else to amass the manpower it would take to create this army of robotic laborers.

As the efficiency of extracting more energy from less material increases, the need for the kind of manpower you're thinking of decreases, perhaps exponentially. Don't think of the present as the measuring stick.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The same process is being applied to coding. Do you think you'd be typing on a messageboard this good if we were still coding with machine languages?

FELIPE NO

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This isn't an industry bogged down by unions or overreaching government oversight. The average Microsoft employee works about 60-70 hours a week, so, if you spread a normal person's work week, you're looking at 10,000 - 12,000 employees needed. So how many man-hours to create a humanish robot? And one with no errors, because you can't go around releasing these things into the public if they don't work?

Quite a lot. Then again, assuming we've already created simple robots that perform simple jobs, you're looking at a huge amount of man-hours that have been freed for robot design. Sure it's not as if everybody who drove a truck for a living would necessarily want to become a robot engineer, but the potential is still there.

Yes, it would take a long time. Quite a lot, actually. Then again, that's progress.

Also, I notice the banner has a lot to advertise to me about robots and engineering.

How ya doing, buddy?

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This sounds an awful lot like Communism to me, only with 21st century things applied to it (such as robots).

Only, it's not at all like Communism. Communism requires that a central authority artificially set the income for all citizens regardless of the wealth they produce. That's quite simply not happening here.

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I don't think most Americans (or anyone from a first/second world country) will want to be seen as equal with equal access to stuff as some nomad from Africa or a bum living in the middle of Eastern Europe or the Middle East.

The system doesn't advocate global equality, only that all participants in the economy have a minimum income. This isn't Communism.

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Secondly, there will always be an "elite" class, and a "poor" class, with some "middle class" thrown in for good measure.

However, if the "poor" class is on par with what we presently identify as the middle class, then economic class identifiers lose their relevancy. "Elites," then would be based more on merit than any kind of vast wealth.

The failures of Communism simply do not apply in this situation. Nobody is being forced to share the wealth that they have produced, only the wealth produced by machines is being distributed. This system does not require that one cede all aspects of personal sovereignty to the government, nor does it require that one must cede his wealth to the government, which were the exact issues that made people resist Communism.

Again, and I can't emphasize this enough, Communism and Socialism force a maximum ceiling of reward. There is no loss of profit motive, here.

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Third, this is assuming that we're at a stage where robotics, electronic engineering and computer programming is on the same level as stuff you'd see in Star Wars or Star Trek. They're still trying to design robots that can mimic human movement, and they're probably doing that stuff because of the incentives of getting a ton of fame, and paid the big bucks if they pull it off. While it might be to help out society, I doubt many people are doing a lot of the things they do because "it's the right thing", and if they're not going to get paid for it, or receive some other incentive, why should they bother doing it?

Yes, the system does require an advanced level of robotics in order to replace the need for all menial labor. That is the presumtion of the system.

Secondly, people aren't doing what they want to do because it's "the right thing," they're performing tasks because it's the task that they want to perform. There's nothing "right" about making High-Definition tvs, the only real factor is the want to have one.

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In a society where you have unlimited free time, while there will be some who will no doubt try to improve society, I'm willing to bet there will be a lot more people doing rowdy things and probably committing crimes since they have so much free time on their hands, and not everyone is going to be an engineer to help further this society

People don't commit crime, however, becuase they have time on their hands, they commit crime because of deviant influences or in order to gain access to opportunities that aren't available to their economic status. Or, as well, to subsidize their habits, which is a topic for another time.

You're essentially making blanket statements about society that have no real bearing on how people function. Every crime has a motive, and "Idle Hands" are not the source.

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I know I'd stop doing anything other than surfing the web or playing games if I didn't have school and two jobs to worry about, screw everyone else, I want to enjoy this free time.

And you don't think you'd ever get bored just surfing the internet and playing games all day? I know I would, and I lack any respectable work ethic whatsoever. Eventually you'll become possessed with the desire to do something constructive that you've always wanted to do, but never had the time or resources to commit yourself to it. Why do you think lottery winners still hold their old jobs?

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Yes, this stuff sounds great on paper, but factor in human nature and it'll fall apart pretty quickly. And I'm trying to be nice about this too (again, you can bet a madman who manages to break into the computer system would go nuts doing whatever the heck he wants, even if it means the death of thousands or millions of people). I could invent some pretty sick and twisted "what if's" for this post, but I'm going to try to stay PG-13 (other versions that stuck in my head would have massive killings and what not, to the point where all humans should just be killed off and replaced with AI robots who will continually improve themselves on their own. But I don't think humans would willingly let themselves be killed off for this to work).

Which are themselves wild-eyed paranoid fantasies. There are risks involved in any system, and it's a natural process of error-proofing them. Of course, this would require a perhaps never-ending process.

As for sadists, the gun somehow hasn't caused the downfall of free societies from militias. Nor has NORAD been hacked into and the world held hostage with the threat of nuclear annhilation (hell, we haven't even been threatened by a crackpot with maybe one nuke).

An automated industry is only as vulnerable as the homogenous nature of its automotons, and I can guarantee you that there would be a wide range of robots, AIs, and machine hierarchies. It wouldn't be nearly as simple as you all fear it would be.

Lastly, pranking an automated industry is highly impractical, since the effects of factory closure can be seen in the economy at large. If a factory goes down, everyone feels it, because it becomes reflected in the minimum income. This may not mean much to someone who makes more than that minimum, but it would to the vast majority of concerned society, making the prosecution of such pranks an extreme deterrent.

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I meant both issues. That
a) If a single country or small block of countries achieved this, other people would be desperate to get into that country (Mexico anyone?), and they wouldn't all be desperate to start designing the new urinal cake changers
b) Would it not be infuriating and disgraceful to the rest of the world, for people to die for lack of drinking water while we are soaking 1000s of manhours into eliminating the "watches other robots work McDonald's" jobs?

All I really have to say to that is... so what? It's not as if we can't close our borders to illegal immigration, nor export the surpluses of an automated society. Presumably the freed manhours would cause more dedication to charity and positive action for the world at large. Bored Americans could spend time in Sub-Saharan Africa digging trenches instead of trying to design better robots.

It's all an issue of culture, and really, who cares what the rest of the world thinks?

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I have to agree with Mikey: it is impossible enough to create some kind of intelligent, adaptable robot that can work with almost no supervision for days at a time. Even designing a burger-flipping robot would take an insane amount of testing. If you want to start making robots that will be dispensing medical advice, or acting as law enforcement, it's even worse.

It's far from impossible, but only improbable that the solutions are generated withing our lifetimes, which I think is your primary source of concern. I mean, we've created conditions of quantum teleportation on a small scale, and you think it's impossible to create autonomous machines?

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Getting things into and out of space is pretty damned difficult, to put it lightly. Unless we all suddenly agreed space elevators are viable?

Then the solution is to come up with cheaper methods of launching objects into space. Retrieving objects from space is only difficult on a mathematical level. I mean, objects fall into the earth constantly and it doesn't cost us a dime. Retrieval then, is mostly a matter of propulsion, which isn't going to be that hard to figure out.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

People know what makes themselves happy, and the whole point of a RICH economy, or Laborless Society, is that it enables people to focus on what they want to do.

While one may presume that it encourages extravagant living, it's like we've all established before, the world only has a finite amount of resources. People would be able to buy frilly outfits and 15 cars (presuming they had the money for it) if they were willing to carry the stigma of being wasteful, thus risking isolation.

Once you've increased average consumtion to the point of "comfort," people will lose the overall desire to consume, and consumtion would drop to what people perceive they need in accordance to their interests. Also, if you don't have to pay machines beyond what is necessary to maintain them, then the long-term livability of a consumer item becomes a non-issue. Consumer items are already designed to go out at almost a pre-determined time as a failsafe to ensure consumtion. Manufacturers have made this a practice since the Depression, when people stopped buying cars and refridgerators because they didn't need another one. When people stopped buying cars, factories shut down, and led to massive unemployment.

What tragedy is there in an unemployed robot? Or, is it even possible for a robot to be unemployed? As consumtion drops, couldn't that machine labor and resources be dedicated to pursuits that would be more beneficial beyond individual consumtion?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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What I'm asking is if we can look at society and see that people with more money are actually more happy.

They're not, though if that were the case, then why not make everybody poor so that we have to interact with each other?

Avoiding depression and suicide is a matter of changing the social culture. If suicide reaches epidemic levels, then people will probably be encouraged to "get out" more. Besides, I'd argue that depression is a much more beneficial element of society than we presume, as it causes unique characteristics in the people that suffer from it. Look at any extraordinary individual and chances are that they've suffered through severe bouts of depression.

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I feel all these resources you want to put into making machines to take over for society's work would be better put into figuring out ways to getting people to actually enjoy their lives

I'm telling you, though, people already know how to enjoy their lives. How can you set general goals of achieving overarching happiness in a society of individuals? It seems like you're making more generalizations about people than I am. What makes people "happy" to begin with? Most studies on depression and suicide tend to pin it on human nature as social animals, and I don't think that a bunch of machines working around the clock on fuck all knows what is going to improve that. Ephemeralization doesn't mean anything if it doesn't enable all people to live leisurely. You think there's going to be much point in Fusion power if we still have both parents working jobs just to maintain a desired level of consumtion in low-child households?

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People don't do well with absolutes because they're neither predictable nor uniform in decisions.

Which is the beauty of the system. It doesn't force uniformity.

Everything I've said in this thread is based on reasonable assesments of human nature. If economic factors affect everyone through the dividends as opposed to certain sectors, then people will be encouraged through self-interest not to rock the boat. A minimum "comfortable" standard of living will reduce the want for needless consumtion, if not immediately, because there's no point in it, and that fact will dawn on people as they realize that trying to "outdo" the Joneses isn't getting them anywhere.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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Do you mean that people who go out shopping for stuff they don't need will no longer do so because now there are no starving, homeless people to gloat about their exploits to?

If you consider that the need for economic competitiveness, then yes. People work towards an income because the alternative is starvation. If starvation is no longer a factor, then the need to acquire wealth is removed, and one is only left with the want. Wealth no longer becomes an indicator of success, and it loses its social status, because that's ultimately what people are competing for beyond basic need, status. Comfort doesn't really mean jack when there's no alternative.

If wealth loses its importance, then it becomes replaced by merit as a means of gaining status. As many people as I've worked with, there's always a consistant need to maintain their current level of consumtion. Almost all of the guys I've worked with would have rather spent their time doing what they liked instead of working at a minimal-gain job for some asshole. The company policy was that salary earners had to stay at work and complete their hours regardless of whether or not there was any work. Meaning, that it wasn't a rare occurrence that they'd be sitting in the parking lot, drinking beer, when they'd rather be at home with their families or out doing whatever.

People justify the means (work) with the ends (consumtion), because they despise the means. They reason hating what they do with shiny thingamabobs that are rarely used because they spend the majority of their waking time working. In other words, if people had the time to enjoy what they had, the want to have more decreases.

People work to support their families, and themselves, and the greater amount of wealth one collects, the safer position they are in. Now remove the need for that safety, and remove the need to provide for oneself and one's loved ones. "Splurging" stops, waste stops, because that spending cash is being invested in personal interests as opposed to excess consumtion.

This is not an instantaneous process, but one that requires a long trend of introversion and social interaction. Once people find the time to think, then the reality of the situation will dawn on them.

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You're right, it just assumes it as a given.

Does the current system not presume uniformity? Do we not now rely on social trends to determine what is and isn't deviant behavior? Simply because a behavior is not legislated against, doesn't mean that it isn't frowned upon, and the same holds true for a laborless society. The difference is, that in a laborless society people would actually have the time to reason for themselves what is truly deviant behavior, and I believe they'll come to the reasonable conclusion.

Maybe I put too much faith in people's ability to think for themselves, I dunno.

How ya doing, buddy?

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Oh, wait, that's right, making it look like I want everyone to be poor makes my ideas look horrible.

No, I'm just saying that I've already stated your point, and that bringing it up doesn't really mean anything. Wealth doesn't guarantee happiness, no fucking shit. Maybe if people had the time provided by leisure they'd be able to find out what it was, exactly, that makes them happy.

As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, "What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?" The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.

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It's just a shame when that depression happens after they've become extraordinary and stops them from continuing to be extraordinary (as it seems to happen quite often).

Such as in what cases? All I can think of right now is Hemingway, and though I'm sure there are plenty more, I'm not certain I get your point. If the depression is the causation for the extraordinary, then these individuals that stopped being extraordinary would have remained mediocre their entire life in the absence of depression.

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I don't really think most people know how to enjoy their lives, they know what they think they need to achieve in order to have a happy life, but then when they get there they realize it's not actually what they wanted.

Also, I don't really know where you get a room full of robots speculating on human happiness, since I don't think I talked about that anywhere along the line.

I also think a life of leisure is a life of waste, so maybe that's part of my problem with this whole plan.

Only waste, perhaps, in the material. Then again, we have the robots covering for us, so I don't understand the problem.

People don't know what they want because they haven't been granted the time to discover themselves in a world that demands their constant attention just to remain competitive. It took me years to figure out that I wanted to be a journalist. There's no guarantee that I'll be happy with it, but there's no more rewarding experience to me than to write and know that people are being enlightened or better informed because of it.

I didn't mean to imply that we'd have a bank of AIs sitting around trying to figure out what makes Umans tick, but only that your assertion that a bunch of machines could somehow be working towards an unidentified, non-descript general goal that will magically make humanity as a whole (which it won't, because humans don't comprise a whole) happier. What is it that the manufacturing power of machines can be put towards that better humanity? Bigger shit? Bigger guns? More paperweights? I don't follow you. Trying to set machines working towards some goal that you have no concept of while insisting that people remain toiling, unhappy, grudging wage-slaves comes across more sadistic than benevolent.

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Any reason those people haven't realized that outdoing their neighbors hasn't gotten them anywhere yet with our current system?

Because they aren't granted the time to enjoy the fruits of their labour. People spend so much time working that they honestly don't know what they want. They can't think, can't rest, and can't play. Therefore, people consume what is insisted that they consume.

I was speaking idiomatically.