Yes to all of that - but - you can't expect individuals or even groups of individuals to do anything about it, especially those working in the industry. Unfortunately, control and/or mediation has to be done by National Governments working together within International frameworks. We don't want to shackle creativity which leads to greater productivity but we can regulate to protect and share employment and enhance working conditions, and tax profits to redistribute to the roots of the Economy through provision of what have hitherto been thought of as tax burden jobs - caring for the sick and elderly, better education, healthcare, environmental improvements and law enforcement and justice. Much better to provide well paid useful work than social security handouts - and the alternative could be mass unemployment where eventually the have-nots outnumber the haves, and you get increasing crime and eventually revolution.
There is currently not much useful work, and there hasn't been for a long time because the capitalist economy is not incentivised to offer useful work. People still believe that the government can keep capitalism on the rails, but it has gone of the rails a long time ago. Most people just haven't caught up yet because the decor is still in place, but there is no real democracy anymore.
Capitalism is not about the free trade of goods and services, like most people believe. The trade of goods and services is just a side-effect of capitalism, a means to an end. Capitalism as it exists today is really only about the accumulation and concentration of wealth and power. The real essence of capitalism is in what is called 'corporate capitalism'. It basically means the trade of the means of production, nature, capital, and labor. This inevitably leads to the mentioned concentration of wealth and power.
For a while, governments were able to treat the negative symptoms of this with taxation, legislation, and other types of interference, but that only slows down the process, and makes it less visible, making capitalism look far more possitive than it really is. It does not treat the actual problem, so the acquisition of wealth and power keeps growing until it has taken over government. This has already happened.
And just to give you an idea of how long people have been warning about this, here are two quotes from Roosevelt about this problem:
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
"Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."
Many different shades of Capitalism and Socialism and I agree the balance has shifted to the right Globally. I hope it can be brought back by showing electorates that extreme selfishness is short sighted and self-defeating - 'austerity' has surely been shown to be a failure - as is ' cut taxes and let the people keep their own money and it will trickle down', - it doesn't trickle down, Capitalism is designed to take a profit from every transaction and suck it up to the top.
Feed the economy at its roots, watch it grow, harvest the produce, fairly, through progressive taxation, and reinvest it by feeding the roots (providing the useful jobs). The people at the bottom don't consume money, they spend it on what they consume and the money gets sucked back up to the top. Waste is the waste of labour in keeping people idle.
One of the problems we have allowed through Globalisation is that Balances of Trade have become unbalanced and money is being lost out of National Economies to come back as asset purchases by foreigners - individuals and Governments - which means we end up paying them rents, dividends and interest.
Produce more of what we consume, restore National food and energy security and keep the investment in National economies. Global trade by all means, but get it back into overall balance over time. This may mean tariffs and subsidies but they should get less as a balance is achieved. It has taken 100 years or more to get like this - we need to view our economies more long term like, for example, the Japanese and Chinese - we should be able to get back to more balance in 30 years or so - and AI and automation and sharing the benefits should help.
"Many different shades of Capitalism and Socialism and I agree the balance has shifted to the right Globally."
It is not about balance shifting anymore. The process of accumulation and concentration of wealth and power is inevitable in capitalism. Capitalism is simply unsustainable and can't be kept in balance long term. Governmental corrections can only slow down the process, but they can't stop it. Capitalism is per definition a permanent threat against freedom and democracy, and we have reached the end of this process.
For a society to be in balance, you need an economy that is self-balancing, like the 'invisible hand'. This invisible hand also exists in capitalism, but it is constantly pushing towards increased accumulation and concentration of wealth and power, meaning it is unbalancing.
When you have a self-balancing economy, the government no longer has to be as huge as it is now, nor does it have to increasinly interfere in people's lives. Capitalism and big governments go hand in hand, and both threaten freedom because big governments are prone to bureaucracy and corruption, and eventually private wealth and power will move to take over the government.
This is happening right now in the US (although the take-over process started a long time ago). While Trump is distracting people with chaos, the techno-feudal state is being setup in the background, whith things like digital money, digital ID, and AI surveillance. This push towards a techno-feudal state comes from the forces of 'corporate capitalism', the shadow government behind the pseudo-democratic mask.
I imagine the following scenario could take place in the US: After Trump, reforms will probably be suggested to prevent future presidents and administrations from doing the same thing he is doing now. That, and the chaos that his actions have provoked in society and the US financial situation, will then be the opportunity for many of these techno-feudal elements to be introduced as 'solutions'.
What is the alternative to rebalancing the shift - revolution? Revolutions are destructive, as you pass through 180 everything gets dumped on its head and trashed, then you get through to 360 and the same sort of people are in charge but more violent. While ever we have some form of democracy were it is possible to change Governments at the ballot box that is what we should be doing. And voters prefer incremental changes where the outcomes are more predictable. If you want change join a political party, campaign for your preferred representative or stand yourself. Convincing voters to see Macro Economic sense is tough but they won't vote for revolution.
We need to learn to think beyond what we are taught about history at school. Revolution is not necessarily the only possible option, but sometimes it is. It depends on the situation. The problem with revolutions is that they don't normally lead to the desired result, just like you said. But it depends on the kind of revolution as well. Not all revolutions are violent (think Gandhi, for example).
The most important (r)evolution has to happen in the people themselves. That is where change really happens. The rest is just symptoms and consequences. This inner revolution can only happen when people start to realize how the situation really is. Growing awareness leads to inner evolution, which in turn leads to outer evolution, which could turn out to be a revolutionary kind of non-violent revolution.
To me, it seems like the time of 'Simpol' has arrived. We need citizens to govern themselves globally without political parties interfering and Simpol offers that:
Tariffs won't accomplish this. The very classic example is: CompanyA gets BizBangs from China. CompanyB gets BizBangs locally. When a tariff is put in place, CompanyA will either fold entirely, OR more likely, they will just raises their prices. CompanyB also will raise their prices, but may still choose to be "just below" that of CompanyA in order to have an edge. For consumers, prices across the board have increased. CompanyA's profits have taken a hit. CompanyA may try to source locally, but very likely, those prices will not come down.
What we really need is to tax the profits of companies. Instead of letting that money "trickle upward", force companies to redistribute it by reinvesting in themselves and their workers, if they don't spend it, it'll be taxed, like 90% tax. This assumes though that the government will in fact spend the money well, instead of as an example, funneling into Defense Contracts, of which those companies basically have a monopoly, and there's no competition there to keep prices low.
I hate to propose tariffs because it smacks of Trumpism but they have always had their place - he is just weaponizing them. Tariffs and import restrictions were how China, Japan, South Korea built their exporting industries, motor cycles, cars, electronics etc., how the EU started by protecting its coal and steel industries. They have to be changed gradually and by negotiation within a framework of International Law. Local businesses and their employees who suffer from changes in legislation/tariffs, for the common good, have to be supported to change with the new circumstances, compensated from the common good.
Yes we need Social Security but as you say we need people to pay in to be able to draw out later. AI is bringing a world where fewer and fewer people pay in *ever* - increasing youth unemployment - unless Governments do something about it by paying for useful work from taxes taken proportionally from people who are benefitting in higher pay from increasing AI/automation. I used the term 'handouts', which right-wingers use pejoratively, to then counter it with the alternative which is more jobs which pay at least a 'living wage' - not just a minimum wage. Personally, I don't like the idea of a Universal Basic Income or 'helicopter money' as it feeds into the idea that Governments would prefer to keep their populations idle, dependent, and malleable with a diet of moronic screen activity, junk food and 'soft' drugs.
This is interesting because there's a lot of interconnected issues that are contributing to the problem. For one, learning is productive. You don't need to be employed to be productive. That is a myth that props up Capitalism. I support education, and if that's all some people do for years at a time, that's ok too.
We definitely are seeing the need for education become required, not just "a way to compete". I imagine a world where robots can do lots of menial tasks, drive cars, prepare food, move freight around, all without human intervention. As you said, that means our youth will be without work, and you are not wrong. But is the solution really to prevent the automation so that youth can be employed? Will this automation create people that are lazy, or rather enable people to focus their time on things they enjoy. There's always going to be work to do, it's whether or not it helps you more, or helps the rich get richer.
If we were to zoom ahead, say 1000 years, imagining a very advanced society, people won't be doing menial tasks. They would be doing advanced tasks. Tasks that require higher and higher levels of education. That tells me we need education, to be the foundation of society now. Which means we need to be able to support our youth (not require them to work in other to get educated).
I didn't suggest preventing progress only that people need a reasonable income so whatever they do we have to devise a way to pay them. I think that will have to be progressive income tax on those who are benefitting from higher incomes from increased productivity.
Yes, people need money to survive, that is a requirement of Capitalism (it's in the name). UBI satisfies that.
Also yes, the exploitation needs to stop. That's also the foundation of Capitalism (extract "extra" value, in the form of profits, which are _not_ given to the workers). The fix is to give that money to the workers. We need to care about each other and be OK with distributing wealth to those who need it.
Thanks, Brett, for this insightful letter. I've reposted it with this comment:
"This essay by Brett Scott clearly exposes the rat race we are all caught up in and its utter futility. Let’s all get off this treadmill, exit the matrix, and use whatever time and resources we have left to build a cooperative, convivial, and peaceful society. How? “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Brett, I do not know about, ".. technology doesn’t fundamentally make our lives easier from an economic standpoint. Rather, it mostly just makes our lives faster. ..."
— I think that is a little too rhetorically quick. Technology *can* fundamentally make life easier. My ancestors worked in coal mines & textile factories, and none of my kids will ever have to.
If you change the wording to, ".. technology doesn’t *automatically* make our lives easier ..." I would 100% agree. The focus has to be on what people do with resources, but any old resources, it it is not just a "high tech" story. It's about all real resources. The most precious of which is our people (at least in my culture, the tangata whenua of Aotearoa). So (if you are "government" then do not chronically unemploy them for no good reason whatsoever!!!! (unemployment does not 'fight inflation').
I fully endorse the rest of your essay.
Although it is dated back to 2000, Pauline Borsook's pop anthropology of the Silicon Valley--Washington DC weirdo mindmeld (they sort of hate each other, but will get along for the sake of libertarian ideology uber alles) is a good insight into the techno-libertarian mindset that people on the outside would do well to comprehend. The books is "Cyberselfish", the title says it all.
NB: defeating the NAIRU myth would be a far more useful use of activism effort I think than fighting the 'war on cash', just imho. Greater payments clearing privacy does not protect a democracy (or really, get a democracy in the first place) as much as having fair and effective recourse to justice. Justice overrides "liberty", because the former is the means for gaining the latter, it does not work the other way around. Protecting your precious "liberty" is a very Anglosphere centric notion, and a cause of a lot of stupidity, not because liberty is a bad thing to have, but it ignores how you get it in the first place. It's always on the back of people who do some pretty socially necessary but ꕷꖾꕯꖡꖡꔇ work who are terribly under-compensated for that effort.
- Well I did say 'mostly just makes our lives faster', but sure, I could add in 'doesn't automatically'
- I'm not sure your example of coal mines and textile factories does what you think it does - these are examples from modern capitalism, both of which were enabled by technology too. In other words, the age of coal mines and textile factories was a technological age where accumulation of capital and proletarianisation were creating a class of workers who had to work incredibly long hours for factory owners. This same situation does not necessarily apply when you reverse back thousands more years
- Your kids might not have to work in coal mines, but the idea that their lives will be easier, more relaxed and more fulfilled than the hundreds of thousands of years of human history before that is highly questionable, unless you're prepared to make blanket statements about billions of past people's lives you've never met before
But I agree with your points on real resources. And thanks for the book recommendation - sounds super interesting
My pro-cash activism doesn't come from a libertarian perspective, but I agree with the points on the libertarian fixation on liberty. When you zoom out though, there is a division of activist labour in society, so I'll leave to you to focus on defeating the NAIRU ;)
Nicely put. For those interested, I recently published an essay with similar themes, looking at the roots of today's AI in the modern states and corporations which have made it possible:
Thanks. That is a really clear and helpful thing to say, and for us to repeat. Reminds me to also keep on calling for cash in the bars and corner shops too!
Also, I think you are over-selling the AI/tech story. Most of it is technology we do not need to live a decent life. A ꕷꖾꔇꖡꗍ-tonne of software industry workers are white-knucklers who have no fun at the weekend down at Colorado or Burning Man etc., and who are miserable and resentful. Most of their code is broken and/or obsolete in a few years, and they're not building any useful tools, for the most part.
Also, why appeal to the higher-up the food-chain tech nerds anyway? They've shown they do not care, how many times do you have to see them turn a blind eye to human suffering? With their ultradarwinist nonsense, blind to the fact the government and Its regulations enabled them all to succeed. The easier thing to do is stop using their software. No one needs Apple Inc or Micro$oft. So stop pretending you need them. The out-of-work programmers can always be employed to do better things, start community gardens, pour espresso for me, teach math to kindergartners, help old people retire in dignity, help prevent accounting fraud, ... a million other good and useful things that will have lasting positive impact on society.
I am, at one level, appealing to people higher up the food chain, but I also write this to express the frustration felt by many others outside of the sector. I'm not politically naive, and I know full well that this will not have an affect on the systemic picture, but cultural expressions of frustration are allowed
Maybe I am overselling the AI/tech story, but of course we don't need the technology - the vast majority of technology is never 'needed', but rather introduced to boost output and acceleration in an economy, after which it becomes artificially 'needed' (aka. nobody 'needed' the Internet in 1950, but they certainly need it now).
I think if you apply a functional lens to this - aka. if you pretend that what drives technology is human need - you're probably missing what drives this stuff. Power and capital accumulation and the inertia of systemic entanglement drives most of this stuff, and of course we don't need it. So I guess when you say 'stop pretending that we need Microsoft', I'd just say 'stop pretending that need drives society'
Do not propagate doomer myths. There is plenty of good meaningful work to do, we wake up every day to severe labour shortages. I have an insatiable need for research assistants (like, beginning with one🤣) and gardners, and highly paid sanitation workers, that's must myself. If governemtn supplies me with sufficient tax credits I would pay them all more than I'd pay myself, that's just called fair compensation and reciprocity. (It is not a "wage slave" situation then.)
You need to understand the source of all unemployment in a monetary economy — it is not the private sector, it is government, Government can also immediately eliminate all the unemployment it creates by design, the people running governemtn do not not understand this, nor do most people.
Unemployment is defined as people seeking to exchange their goods or labour for tax credits, who are unable to do so (you can add, "unable to do so to have a decent life" if you are a bleeding heart, which I am).
You remind me a lot of a social entrepreneur friend of mine who always complains that I am not positive enough, but in my world 'doomerism' is not some negative thing. There is nothing wrong with allowing your mind to consider the dark side, and excessive optimism is not a true basis for hope
You also remind me of him in the sense that he seldom recognises the division of labour in the social critique-solution space - you might think that me writing a piece addressing AI workers is not the most important thing to do, and that I should devote my time to educating people on inflation and unemployment, but that's your speciality and I'm not motivated to do it in the same way as you are, because I'm a different person to you. In particular, it feels like you have a lot more of that MMT-ish, Keynesian-ish, social democracy-ish 'we can make a good society' foundation to your thinking, which I appreciate, but it's not really who I am, so I wouldn't be convincing if I was to devote all my energy to that message
That was great, Scott! Thank for writing this.
No problem Paul, glad you like it
Yes to all of that - but - you can't expect individuals or even groups of individuals to do anything about it, especially those working in the industry. Unfortunately, control and/or mediation has to be done by National Governments working together within International frameworks. We don't want to shackle creativity which leads to greater productivity but we can regulate to protect and share employment and enhance working conditions, and tax profits to redistribute to the roots of the Economy through provision of what have hitherto been thought of as tax burden jobs - caring for the sick and elderly, better education, healthcare, environmental improvements and law enforcement and justice. Much better to provide well paid useful work than social security handouts - and the alternative could be mass unemployment where eventually the have-nots outnumber the haves, and you get increasing crime and eventually revolution.
There is currently not much useful work, and there hasn't been for a long time because the capitalist economy is not incentivised to offer useful work. People still believe that the government can keep capitalism on the rails, but it has gone of the rails a long time ago. Most people just haven't caught up yet because the decor is still in place, but there is no real democracy anymore.
Capitalism is not about the free trade of goods and services, like most people believe. The trade of goods and services is just a side-effect of capitalism, a means to an end. Capitalism as it exists today is really only about the accumulation and concentration of wealth and power. The real essence of capitalism is in what is called 'corporate capitalism'. It basically means the trade of the means of production, nature, capital, and labor. This inevitably leads to the mentioned concentration of wealth and power.
For a while, governments were able to treat the negative symptoms of this with taxation, legislation, and other types of interference, but that only slows down the process, and makes it less visible, making capitalism look far more possitive than it really is. It does not treat the actual problem, so the acquisition of wealth and power keeps growing until it has taken over government. This has already happened.
And just to give you an idea of how long people have been warning about this, here are two quotes from Roosevelt about this problem:
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
"Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."
Many different shades of Capitalism and Socialism and I agree the balance has shifted to the right Globally. I hope it can be brought back by showing electorates that extreme selfishness is short sighted and self-defeating - 'austerity' has surely been shown to be a failure - as is ' cut taxes and let the people keep their own money and it will trickle down', - it doesn't trickle down, Capitalism is designed to take a profit from every transaction and suck it up to the top.
Feed the economy at its roots, watch it grow, harvest the produce, fairly, through progressive taxation, and reinvest it by feeding the roots (providing the useful jobs). The people at the bottom don't consume money, they spend it on what they consume and the money gets sucked back up to the top. Waste is the waste of labour in keeping people idle.
One of the problems we have allowed through Globalisation is that Balances of Trade have become unbalanced and money is being lost out of National Economies to come back as asset purchases by foreigners - individuals and Governments - which means we end up paying them rents, dividends and interest.
Produce more of what we consume, restore National food and energy security and keep the investment in National economies. Global trade by all means, but get it back into overall balance over time. This may mean tariffs and subsidies but they should get less as a balance is achieved. It has taken 100 years or more to get like this - we need to view our economies more long term like, for example, the Japanese and Chinese - we should be able to get back to more balance in 30 years or so - and AI and automation and sharing the benefits should help.
"Many different shades of Capitalism and Socialism and I agree the balance has shifted to the right Globally."
It is not about balance shifting anymore. The process of accumulation and concentration of wealth and power is inevitable in capitalism. Capitalism is simply unsustainable and can't be kept in balance long term. Governmental corrections can only slow down the process, but they can't stop it. Capitalism is per definition a permanent threat against freedom and democracy, and we have reached the end of this process.
For a society to be in balance, you need an economy that is self-balancing, like the 'invisible hand'. This invisible hand also exists in capitalism, but it is constantly pushing towards increased accumulation and concentration of wealth and power, meaning it is unbalancing.
When you have a self-balancing economy, the government no longer has to be as huge as it is now, nor does it have to increasinly interfere in people's lives. Capitalism and big governments go hand in hand, and both threaten freedom because big governments are prone to bureaucracy and corruption, and eventually private wealth and power will move to take over the government.
This is happening right now in the US (although the take-over process started a long time ago). While Trump is distracting people with chaos, the techno-feudal state is being setup in the background, whith things like digital money, digital ID, and AI surveillance. This push towards a techno-feudal state comes from the forces of 'corporate capitalism', the shadow government behind the pseudo-democratic mask.
I imagine the following scenario could take place in the US: After Trump, reforms will probably be suggested to prevent future presidents and administrations from doing the same thing he is doing now. That, and the chaos that his actions have provoked in society and the US financial situation, will then be the opportunity for many of these techno-feudal elements to be introduced as 'solutions'.
What is the alternative to rebalancing the shift - revolution? Revolutions are destructive, as you pass through 180 everything gets dumped on its head and trashed, then you get through to 360 and the same sort of people are in charge but more violent. While ever we have some form of democracy were it is possible to change Governments at the ballot box that is what we should be doing. And voters prefer incremental changes where the outcomes are more predictable. If you want change join a political party, campaign for your preferred representative or stand yourself. Convincing voters to see Macro Economic sense is tough but they won't vote for revolution.
We need to learn to think beyond what we are taught about history at school. Revolution is not necessarily the only possible option, but sometimes it is. It depends on the situation. The problem with revolutions is that they don't normally lead to the desired result, just like you said. But it depends on the kind of revolution as well. Not all revolutions are violent (think Gandhi, for example).
The most important (r)evolution has to happen in the people themselves. That is where change really happens. The rest is just symptoms and consequences. This inner revolution can only happen when people start to realize how the situation really is. Growing awareness leads to inner evolution, which in turn leads to outer evolution, which could turn out to be a revolutionary kind of non-violent revolution.
To me, it seems like the time of 'Simpol' has arrived. We need citizens to govern themselves globally without political parties interfering and Simpol offers that:
https://simpol.org/
Tariffs won't accomplish this. The very classic example is: CompanyA gets BizBangs from China. CompanyB gets BizBangs locally. When a tariff is put in place, CompanyA will either fold entirely, OR more likely, they will just raises their prices. CompanyB also will raise their prices, but may still choose to be "just below" that of CompanyA in order to have an edge. For consumers, prices across the board have increased. CompanyA's profits have taken a hit. CompanyA may try to source locally, but very likely, those prices will not come down.
What we really need is to tax the profits of companies. Instead of letting that money "trickle upward", force companies to redistribute it by reinvesting in themselves and their workers, if they don't spend it, it'll be taxed, like 90% tax. This assumes though that the government will in fact spend the money well, instead of as an example, funneling into Defense Contracts, of which those companies basically have a monopoly, and there's no competition there to keep prices low.
I hate to propose tariffs because it smacks of Trumpism but they have always had their place - he is just weaponizing them. Tariffs and import restrictions were how China, Japan, South Korea built their exporting industries, motor cycles, cars, electronics etc., how the EU started by protecting its coal and steel industries. They have to be changed gradually and by negotiation within a framework of International Law. Local businesses and their employees who suffer from changes in legislation/tariffs, for the common good, have to be supported to change with the new circumstances, compensated from the common good.
Sorry, social security handouts?
We pay into social security, so that we can get it out when we need to later in life. Could you clarify?
Yes we need Social Security but as you say we need people to pay in to be able to draw out later. AI is bringing a world where fewer and fewer people pay in *ever* - increasing youth unemployment - unless Governments do something about it by paying for useful work from taxes taken proportionally from people who are benefitting in higher pay from increasing AI/automation. I used the term 'handouts', which right-wingers use pejoratively, to then counter it with the alternative which is more jobs which pay at least a 'living wage' - not just a minimum wage. Personally, I don't like the idea of a Universal Basic Income or 'helicopter money' as it feeds into the idea that Governments would prefer to keep their populations idle, dependent, and malleable with a diet of moronic screen activity, junk food and 'soft' drugs.
This is interesting because there's a lot of interconnected issues that are contributing to the problem. For one, learning is productive. You don't need to be employed to be productive. That is a myth that props up Capitalism. I support education, and if that's all some people do for years at a time, that's ok too.
We definitely are seeing the need for education become required, not just "a way to compete". I imagine a world where robots can do lots of menial tasks, drive cars, prepare food, move freight around, all without human intervention. As you said, that means our youth will be without work, and you are not wrong. But is the solution really to prevent the automation so that youth can be employed? Will this automation create people that are lazy, or rather enable people to focus their time on things they enjoy. There's always going to be work to do, it's whether or not it helps you more, or helps the rich get richer.
If we were to zoom ahead, say 1000 years, imagining a very advanced society, people won't be doing menial tasks. They would be doing advanced tasks. Tasks that require higher and higher levels of education. That tells me we need education, to be the foundation of society now. Which means we need to be able to support our youth (not require them to work in other to get educated).
I didn't suggest preventing progress only that people need a reasonable income so whatever they do we have to devise a way to pay them. I think that will have to be progressive income tax on those who are benefitting from higher incomes from increased productivity.
Yes, people need money to survive, that is a requirement of Capitalism (it's in the name). UBI satisfies that.
Also yes, the exploitation needs to stop. That's also the foundation of Capitalism (extract "extra" value, in the form of profits, which are _not_ given to the workers). The fix is to give that money to the workers. We need to care about each other and be OK with distributing wealth to those who need it.
Great Scott!!! :)
Great reminder for the nerds and techies and their believers, thank you Brett.
Maybe add some practical guidelines for the options of scepticals in a next post? Things like:
"Please help us as the rest of humanity to get a chance to stop the machines - just in case"
:-)
Ha ha, sure, I'll work on that
Thanks, Brett, for this insightful letter. I've reposted it with this comment:
"This essay by Brett Scott clearly exposes the rat race we are all caught up in and its utter futility. Let’s all get off this treadmill, exit the matrix, and use whatever time and resources we have left to build a cooperative, convivial, and peaceful society. How? “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Beautifully put. Thanks for the support Thomas
Thank you for this powerful letter.
I'm glad you like it Rosa
Thanks so much for your open letter. Somebody needed to say it and you did, and very articulately.
I'm glad you like it Robin - thanks for the support
Totally agree Scott.
Everybody should resist digital ID and CBDC .
We need 'self-sovereign ID'. And we need digital money (not crypto) as well as paper money.
CBDC can be made to work with self-sovereign ID in a way that protects privacy and avoids the scams of crypto
Couldn't agree more. How do we build AI that truly relaxes us? Your perspective is brillant!
Glad you find it useful Roxy
Maybe every technological development since the dawn of civilization has been (mis)used to concentrate wealth and power.
And you'd think we'd have learned that by now
Brett, I do not know about, ".. technology doesn’t fundamentally make our lives easier from an economic standpoint. Rather, it mostly just makes our lives faster. ..."
— I think that is a little too rhetorically quick. Technology *can* fundamentally make life easier. My ancestors worked in coal mines & textile factories, and none of my kids will ever have to.
If you change the wording to, ".. technology doesn’t *automatically* make our lives easier ..." I would 100% agree. The focus has to be on what people do with resources, but any old resources, it it is not just a "high tech" story. It's about all real resources. The most precious of which is our people (at least in my culture, the tangata whenua of Aotearoa). So (if you are "government" then do not chronically unemploy them for no good reason whatsoever!!!! (unemployment does not 'fight inflation').
I fully endorse the rest of your essay.
Although it is dated back to 2000, Pauline Borsook's pop anthropology of the Silicon Valley--Washington DC weirdo mindmeld (they sort of hate each other, but will get along for the sake of libertarian ideology uber alles) is a good insight into the techno-libertarian mindset that people on the outside would do well to comprehend. The books is "Cyberselfish", the title says it all.
NB: defeating the NAIRU myth would be a far more useful use of activism effort I think than fighting the 'war on cash', just imho. Greater payments clearing privacy does not protect a democracy (or really, get a democracy in the first place) as much as having fair and effective recourse to justice. Justice overrides "liberty", because the former is the means for gaining the latter, it does not work the other way around. Protecting your precious "liberty" is a very Anglosphere centric notion, and a cause of a lot of stupidity, not because liberty is a bad thing to have, but it ignores how you get it in the first place. It's always on the back of people who do some pretty socially necessary but ꕷꖾꕯꖡꖡꔇ work who are terribly under-compensated for that effort.
Thanks for the reflections Bijou
On your points about technology
- Well I did say 'mostly just makes our lives faster', but sure, I could add in 'doesn't automatically'
- I'm not sure your example of coal mines and textile factories does what you think it does - these are examples from modern capitalism, both of which were enabled by technology too. In other words, the age of coal mines and textile factories was a technological age where accumulation of capital and proletarianisation were creating a class of workers who had to work incredibly long hours for factory owners. This same situation does not necessarily apply when you reverse back thousands more years
- Your kids might not have to work in coal mines, but the idea that their lives will be easier, more relaxed and more fulfilled than the hundreds of thousands of years of human history before that is highly questionable, unless you're prepared to make blanket statements about billions of past people's lives you've never met before
But I agree with your points on real resources. And thanks for the book recommendation - sounds super interesting
My pro-cash activism doesn't come from a libertarian perspective, but I agree with the points on the libertarian fixation on liberty. When you zoom out though, there is a division of activist labour in society, so I'll leave to you to focus on defeating the NAIRU ;)
To quote Donald Duck, "Technology always goes bad."
Nicely put. For those interested, I recently published an essay with similar themes, looking at the roots of today's AI in the modern states and corporations which have made it possible:
https://evernotquite.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-machine
Looks very interesting - will try find some time to read it soon
It turned out to be pretty long, but I hope its length is redeemed by the completeness of the argument.
Thanks. That is a really clear and helpful thing to say, and for us to repeat. Reminds me to also keep on calling for cash in the bars and corner shops too!
Absolutely! Thanks for the support
Also, I think you are over-selling the AI/tech story. Most of it is technology we do not need to live a decent life. A ꕷꖾꔇꖡꗍ-tonne of software industry workers are white-knucklers who have no fun at the weekend down at Colorado or Burning Man etc., and who are miserable and resentful. Most of their code is broken and/or obsolete in a few years, and they're not building any useful tools, for the most part.
Also, why appeal to the higher-up the food-chain tech nerds anyway? They've shown they do not care, how many times do you have to see them turn a blind eye to human suffering? With their ultradarwinist nonsense, blind to the fact the government and Its regulations enabled them all to succeed. The easier thing to do is stop using their software. No one needs Apple Inc or Micro$oft. So stop pretending you need them. The out-of-work programmers can always be employed to do better things, start community gardens, pour espresso for me, teach math to kindergartners, help old people retire in dignity, help prevent accounting fraud, ... a million other good and useful things that will have lasting positive impact on society.
I am, at one level, appealing to people higher up the food chain, but I also write this to express the frustration felt by many others outside of the sector. I'm not politically naive, and I know full well that this will not have an affect on the systemic picture, but cultural expressions of frustration are allowed
Maybe I am overselling the AI/tech story, but of course we don't need the technology - the vast majority of technology is never 'needed', but rather introduced to boost output and acceleration in an economy, after which it becomes artificially 'needed' (aka. nobody 'needed' the Internet in 1950, but they certainly need it now).
I think if you apply a functional lens to this - aka. if you pretend that what drives technology is human need - you're probably missing what drives this stuff. Power and capital accumulation and the inertia of systemic entanglement drives most of this stuff, and of course we don't need it. So I guess when you say 'stop pretending that we need Microsoft', I'd just say 'stop pretending that need drives society'
Do not propagate doomer myths. There is plenty of good meaningful work to do, we wake up every day to severe labour shortages. I have an insatiable need for research assistants (like, beginning with one🤣) and gardners, and highly paid sanitation workers, that's must myself. If governemtn supplies me with sufficient tax credits I would pay them all more than I'd pay myself, that's just called fair compensation and reciprocity. (It is not a "wage slave" situation then.)
You need to understand the source of all unemployment in a monetary economy — it is not the private sector, it is government, Government can also immediately eliminate all the unemployment it creates by design, the people running governemtn do not not understand this, nor do most people.
Unemployment is defined as people seeking to exchange their goods or labour for tax credits, who are unable to do so (you can add, "unable to do so to have a decent life" if you are a bleeding heart, which I am).
You remind me a lot of a social entrepreneur friend of mine who always complains that I am not positive enough, but in my world 'doomerism' is not some negative thing. There is nothing wrong with allowing your mind to consider the dark side, and excessive optimism is not a true basis for hope
You also remind me of him in the sense that he seldom recognises the division of labour in the social critique-solution space - you might think that me writing a piece addressing AI workers is not the most important thing to do, and that I should devote my time to educating people on inflation and unemployment, but that's your speciality and I'm not motivated to do it in the same way as you are, because I'm a different person to you. In particular, it feels like you have a lot more of that MMT-ish, Keynesian-ish, social democracy-ish 'we can make a good society' foundation to your thinking, which I appreciate, but it's not really who I am, so I wouldn't be convincing if I was to devote all my energy to that message