The Laborless Society

This all sounds like the ravings of a techie with a hard-on for Marxism. But this is still intriguing.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

A nice theory. Only a fool would claim to know exactly how our economic paradigm works. Like Adam Smith. With GOD's "invisible hand" of the market jerking our economy off for 'his' pleasure.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

At the beginning of our industrial civilization this utopian thinking was quite prevailant. It's really too bad that most people nowadays work longer and harder then medieval serfs. Traditionally they only had to give three days labor to their overlord. As opposed to 40 hours a week. 30(?) in France, 35(?) in the rest of Europe for the majority of people.

This is just the same kind of rational argumant that brought us manditory public education. Which as a whole has made the population much stupider if literacy rates are any indication. In the US at least. Compare literacy rates in the 1890's, 1930's, and 1990's.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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

Utopian nonsense. If it could've happened it would've happened. In an era of climate change/collapse, resource depletion, and a massive worldwide population boom this is hard to contemplate occuring. Or maybe I need to spend some time with Green Anarchists, who attempt to adhere to ideas like these.

We'd all like to quit our jobs/school/etc. This isn't the solution though. Personally, I'd hope for a depression worse then the Great Depression.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

The Federal Reserve controls the flow of capital. There's a well accepted theory by numerous economists that the mishandling of capital by the Reserve Bank caused the Great Depression. As for extracting wealth......

Easy. Just do what they did in the Middle Ages; negative bank interest. Works like this; if you have $100,000 in the bank then whatever the current interest rate is have automatically deducted rather then added to the accounts total. During the Middle Ages this happened and the rich spent most of their money on worthwhile investments of priceless value; Cathedrals, and art basically. Enforcement wouldn't be a problem. They didn't have an IRS agency to enforce this either. Most wealth nowadays are numbers on a computer.

Redistibulating the wealth is too... Marxist for me to really seriously consider. But doesn't everybody -even to this day- benefit from those old Medieval Churches?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

Couple of assumptions here. People assume that wealth will make you happy. Big assumption. A vast majority of the world does not enjoy the material and technological wealth the West does. Does that mean they're miserable without it? Not necessarily.

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

What's Marxist about this whole issue is that he's essentially talking about a hierarchy-less society/civilization. The reality of which is what Marxism envisioned when we hit the utopia phase. Instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. Civilization and society have always revolved around hierarchy throughout the ages.

Which brings me to another point; The transition phase would be as easily as corruptable. The world is far from ideal. If it was, Marxism-Communism would've worked and we wouldn't even have to worry about the robots doing our work for us. The power ceded to the government would be far from incorruptable, and would not be returned. In the nightmare scenario of such a transition we could all be living in slums patrolled by Terminator Robots with a oddly familiar Austrian accent.....

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.

*edit*What about robot equality? Why do they have to be slaves?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

This leads to another question. What can you dominate in a laborless society?

Resources. Access to resources. Whether that's clean drinking water, food, energy, infastruture etc. It's the competitive (greedy?) spirit of mankind. There is plenty of sociopaths out there.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

In any case, it's all the distribution of the wealth generated by the automated industry.

It's the distribution of theoretical wealth. Meaning it's value is just a matter of prospective. If everyone has equal access to it, is it really of any value?

Say for example, gold was more abundant then concrete. Everybody would live in gold houses, but some people (the elite) would feel compelled to live in concrete houses for one reason or another. Surely some would be content with their gold houses, but I'm guessing most would not be.

Competition whether it be economic, industrial, or military in nature has been the basis of civilization.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

What then when material possessions become immaterial??

Is it in the human spirit to manage such a feat? You have more faith in our species then I do.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

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.

No, it didn't. But it did vastly increase the energy expenditure/gain ratio.

We were supposed to work less for more gain. Instead we spent more time producing more commodities for the mass consumption for everybody, while rapidly expanding our population base.

There's nowhere I can't reach.