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- From: kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu (SunCat)
- Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp
- Subject: Re: FAR future programs
- Message-ID: <1992Nov16.231905.22441@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
- Date: 16 Nov 92 23:19:05 GMT
- References: <37595@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu>
- Sender: news@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu
- Organization: Michigan State University
- Lines: 103
-
- In article <37595@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> jfh@beach.cis.ufl.edu (James F.
- Hranicky) writes:
- > In article <BxD9xx.MF3@ccu.umanitoba.ca> browns@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Stuart
- Brown) writes:
- >
- >
- > >If society can painlessly produce all the basic needs for everyone,
- then
- > >why this obsession with how each and every person can pay for thier
- needs
- > >and get paid for thier choice of work?
- >
- > Society cannot painlessly produce all the basic needs for everyone.
- > In order to survive, someone must work...if you obtain things without
- > working for them, someone else has worked for you. The idea that
- automation
- > will eliminate the need for anyone to work is absurd.
-
- I believe he was talking about basic needs. As is there are jobs to do
- and people to do them but plenty of things never get done.
- [...]
-
- > Ah, naivete!
- >
- > So the answer is to just "automate" industries which produce these
- things,
- > but who will do it?
- >
- > In this world where noone works, who will build and keep up these
- > Utopian factories?
- >
- > Build machines to keep up the machines, etc...eventually, people are
- > going to have keep an eye on things, aren't they?
-
- I would certainly work to make and maintain a better world if I only knew
- I could.
-
- > So, no one who likes collecting garbage, treating sewage, producing
- > food, etc. just quits....geeze. How much will you enjoy this scenario
- > when you have to do all this yourself? If people do this, someone has
- > to then come up with ways to automate these things...but no one wants
- > to, because they hate to work, so nothing gets done. The automation
- > has to come first, doesn't it?
- Yes it does. I see it as a kind of technological bootstrap situation.
- Something like a compiler--hard to write the very first one, but after
- that one's abilities are multiplied greatly. Work actually pays off.
- [...]
- I'm sure that
- > >there will be an ample supply of tecnophiles to keep the gears of the
- > >automated industy oiled as long as some attractive compensations are
- > >offered.
- >
- > Who will pay for their compensation?
-
- They may do it because they like it.
-
- [...]
- > This is exactly what capitalism is--each individual is a trader in
- > society, and in order to get something, he must give something in
- > return ("do ut des"). Capitalism is less fear driven than reward
- > driven.
- You have described a society unlike present-day US. Yet you call it
- capitalism. Here those who work the hardest get the least reward. And
- those who benefit from high federal deficits get a reward for something
- that undercuts America's ability to produce, inovate, support research and
- development, entrepeneurship.
- >
- [...]
- the socialist
- > countries are completely impoverished.
- Cause or effect? Are these countries being destabilized by the CIA. Are
- they Stalinist or socialist?
- [...]
- > Jim Hranicky (jfh@reef.cis.ufl.edu)
- James S. Albus wrote _Peoples' Capitalism: The Economics of the Robot
- Revolution_ yet he once said * that it probably wouldn't happen here
- first. It would happen first in some small country that isn't so afraid
- of socialism (Scotland? Norway?)
-
- See Bob Black's _Abolition of Work and other Essays_ for more "work sucks;
- productive play is good" talk.
-
- Here is (IMHO) a relevant quote:
- "The [Reagan] administration was committed to...a massive increase in
- the state sector of the economy in the traditional American way,
- through the Pentagon system -- a device to force the public to invest
- in high technology industry by means of the state-guaranteed market
- for the production of high technology waste (armaments), and thus to
- contribute to the general program of public subsidy, private profit,
- called ``free enterprise''"
- Noam Chomsky, _Libya in U.S. Demonology_, Covert Action
- Information Bulletin #26, Summer 1986.
-
-
- * in "Robot Welfare" by Ben Bova in _The Astral Mirror_
-
- =========SunCat++++ | kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu
- "Society is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
- Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the
- better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty
- of
- the eater."
- --Ralph Waldo Emerson
-