January 12, 2013
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We could have post-scarcity any day now
JDN 2456305 EDT 15:30
Within a few years, a decade or two at most, we could easily have a fundamentally new economy, built not around the allocation of limited resources or the maximization of profit, but the satisfaction of human needs. And yet, we may not… for our cultural norms are standing in the way.
Norms, that, on their own, seem reasonable enough: “Everyone should receive in proportion to what they produce.” “The best person to make something should be the one who makes it.” “If possible, everyone should have their basic needs met.” Yet the three of these together, combined with some basic facts about productivity, yield… impossibility.
We are now at the historical epoch in which one person can literally produce 1,000 times as much as another person. How? By inventing a robot that performs a task that previously took 1,000 workers to do.
When this happens (and it does rather often), the “best-person” principle means that the robots get used and the workers get laid off. The “proportion” principle means that the inventor gets paid for the robots and the workers receive nothing. And then the “basic needs” principle? Well, it pretty much gets ignored.
In reality, there are serious problems in our intellectual property system and corporate regulations which mean that it’s usually not the actual inventor of a new technology who receives the income that technology generates. But even if it were, would that really be what we want? Given the choice between two worlds, one in which a thousand workers live middle class, and a second in which one inventor is a billionaire and those thousand workers starve, would we really prefer the latter?
In fact, there is a third option (a Third Option!): A world in which the thousand workers live middle-class and the inventor is a millionaire instead of a billionaire. How is this possible? Well, the robots really are more efficient, so there’s more stuff to go around. We can give most of the surplus to the inventor, and then everyone else gets what they already had plus a little bit extra. The beautiful part is that this is incentive-compatible; everyone is better off with the robots installed, so there’s no reason for the workers to object or the inventor not to do it.The problem, of course, is that this is not what a competitive capitalist market would produce. Capitalism starts with world one, and leads to world two. World three is never even considered.
And the problem, I think, is a very deep one: It is competition. It is the notion that economics (or life in general!) is about competing, where some people win and other people lose. As long as humanity continues to live in those terms, the world will never be at peace.
We must re-evaluate our entire concept of what economics is about, to one of collaboration. How can we help each other? What does each person have to contribute? How can we make the best of the resources available to us? We are all a family (literally); can’t we live like one?
Is this socialist? I suppose it is. Maybe socialism is exactly what the world needs.
Comments (3)
I think it’s possible that in a capital system, there is a path to World 3…but you may have to travel through World 2 first. Eventually, the billionaire realizes that without a market for his good, his ownership will yield him nothing. If everyone else is too poor to buy what he makes (and they all have relatively equal purchasing power), the monopoly turns into an effective monopsony and the owner is a price-taker more than a price-maker. Just because “competition” exists, doesn’t mean it’s not itself without other ideological/motivational competitors.
I enjoyed this; thanks for sharing!
I really like this post. I think our economy is definitely driven by the need to compete, the need to be better, and the need to feel superior to everybody else. it’s all just one huge ego trip.
Socialism is given a real negative light in today’s society. While I’m a firm believer in making something big on your own and reaping the benefits of it, I also say that we are in the middle of a hushed class war and have been since we entered the current economy “style” (if you will) that we are in now. If giving up that competitive edge meant that we could feed everybody and make sure that we advance as an entire civilization, it would get my vote. Good read, my friend.