When I began pestering all my friends last year about the inevitable implosion of our broken economic OS, they would often ask, “well, how would YOU do it better?” Or hide behind tired old dismissive cliches about, “American Capitalism is the worst system in the world, except for all the others.”

My point then was the same as it is now, it’s not up to me to redefine your entire new economic system; I can faithfully and accurately observe many of the symptoms, problems, and clear failures without yet knowing a single solitary solution. In fact, I’d be a fool to NOT begin by observing the points of failure before spouting off ideological pseudo-solutions and polemics posing as answers. No, thanks. My appeal to them was then the same as it is now, “Please, let’s all think about these things as a community and specify the solutions, TOGETHER.” This is a textbook High Stakes Shared Fate situation, where top-down solutions are not likely to be of the variety we are looking for. Really, you don’t WANT me or any other individual or very small group to have The Answers anyway, because the issue is so important to each of us that we all need to have a hand in forging the solutions.

Which raises the challenge of Methods of that Collaboration. Which brings us to the first subject of this post (with thanks to @bentrem and gnodal):


Introduction to the MIT Collaboratorium



The overarching introductory point is: in defining present actions that directly impact such long term, large scale problems, we need to continually seek out and adopt the Best Collaborative Decision Making Tools and Processes; particularly when tackling large shared-fate questions that impact scientific, public, and social policies. No individual — short of an AGI, perhaps — can do an adequate job of articulating and implementing solutions to our most pressing challenges.

However, a small group of committed citizens can plant and tend the first seeds that will eventually blossom into any number of domain- and situation-specific policies, procedures, and norms that are better adaptive for the post-scarcity scenario. The post-scarcity scenario is rendered essentially irrefutable if the claims of abundant wind, solar, nanotechnology, and molecular assembly are weighted with even a 50% future net effectivess.

Think about the way the house of cards is toppled when ALL ENERGY IS FREE. Energy abundance is a primary pillar of post-scarcity. Today, only acts of will stand between us and that reality. The distribution and maintence of distribution systems will remain as costs of conditioning and transporting energy; but if the entire country is plugged into portions of the States of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas covered with solar panels; THE ENERGY ITSELF COSTS ZERO. We’ve plugged our extension cord directly into the sun.

Of course, we can debate time frames, but if the doppler whistle of post-scarcity is even ever-so-faintly rising in the distance, we are compelled to specify and immediately begin implementing the post-scarcity social contract. Why immediately? Because we are duty-bound to intercept such readily forecastable eventualities? Because those who have ears to hear and eyes to see? Because what better way to demonstrate to the AGI that we are indeed worthy of the soft take-off for which we all hope? Or maybe simply because the ships of State and Commerce are the most unweildy and slow to change course. One thing is certain: if we remain on a scarcity-defined course, we will remain in a scarcity-driven world.

In no particular order, some of characteristics of Capitalism++ that I have advanced to date include:

  • Realize that we are today forging the foundations of the 22nd Century social contract, not the 20th.
  • Acknowledge the magnitude and unsustainability of present resource skews and the mathematically inevitable systemic consequences of those skews.
  • Change the zeitgeist (yes, a tired term) of “Free and Fair” to “Open and Transparent.”
  • Understand and act now upon the foreseeable scenario of material SUFFICIENCY on the way to abundance; founded upon reasonable shared forecasts for advances in NBIC and Energy technologies. Even if diamond mechanosynthesis is 100 years off, how long will it take to prepare the Social Interface for the post-scarcity scenario?
  • Address the means and methods by which value is ascribed and conveyed in the post-scarcity scenario.
  • Establish a Basic Income in the U.S. and globally, as quickly as possible, to minimize avoidable disruptions and displacements as we continue to transition over the next 20, 50, 100 years.
  • Wage persistent friendly discursive warfare upon the industrialist robber baron norms. Don’t even jokingly pretend that greed is good; nor stupidity. Both characterstics which the likes of Larry Kudlow and Steve Forbes would love to just chuckle and shuffle right back into some nondescript hall closet at the Federal Reserve. Example: the sentence, “He’s a greedy bastard, but a great CEO” is reframed as a logical impossibility. Just chuckle and shuffle back, “Actually, to be a GREAT ceo, you can’t be a greedy bastard. Great and Greedy don’t logically belong in the same sentence, right?”
  • Awaken ourselves and others from the JOB trance, described below.

Obviously, we can’t legislate ethics, but we can model different choices and better answers to the same old questions.

One huge problem in gaining high-level buy-in for this project is that most of the Respected Authorities of the currently prevalent 19th Century Industrial Model are not going to have much interest in participating; because for them, the status quo is what makes them Authorities. So this has to be a grass roots movement, including breaking the JOB Trance, which is nothing more than a vestigial sociological heritage of the Protestant Work Ethic. A heritage that was functional and adaptive for moving from agrarian to industrial society, but increasingly insufficient and even maladaptive for maturing from industrial to FULLY informational, and to post-information society.

The JOB Trance

The JOB trance, in general, asserts as Immutable Fact from On High that JOB and only JOB equates to Meaningful, Useful, Sociologically Validating WORK. It insists that WORK equals JOB and that only JOB equals WORK.

JOB is the only defensible Justification Of Being.

If one does not have a JOB, then one does not WORK.

In actuality, WORK does not equal JOB. We already know this, just as we know that tree does not equal leaf. JOB is only one kind of WORK. The JOB trance helps us to act daily as if we do not know this, and it helps us to hold one another over the same peer-pit of punji sticks that we too are held over by an entranced society. “So, what are you DOING, these days?” If no remuneration is involved in that answer, little or no sociological, much less intellectual standing is granted.

Stephen Barley at Stanford begin pointing out that Proximity =! Productivity over a decade ago, at a time when companies continued to insist upon bodily presence in a cubicle, while knowledge worker productivity had nothing to do whatsoever with physical presence. The JOB trance is behind that, as well. The trance fosters all manner of absurd assumptions; if one is not found regularly within the vicinity of a prescribed geographic and sociological configuration, one must be either A.) not productive or B.) possibly dangerous, or C.) probably both.

Admittedly, in its heyday, the JOB trance helped with community surveillance as villages converged upon cities. This is something that a community has a right to do; to keep itself safe from potentially unstable or threatening constituents. However, for the information workers of today, if we are in the same Glue (AdaptiveBlue) community — or any of a number of other similar information tribes — we are free to pretty much see the entirety of one another’s everyday ventures and misadventures.

Yet, it is Open Source software that is perhaps among the very best evidence of the fact that educated (yes, yes, insert standard valid edu-facts) humans are, in fact, Inherently Productive and Creative; not genetically infused with the Original Sin of lechery and laziness. We WORK because we are wired to do so, it makes us happy, it keeps us well. Even children naturally Build and Do; they don’t lay down by default. Humans don’t lay down, by default. They must be taught, sometimes rather persistently, to sit passively in front of the indoctrination box instead of BUILDING THINGS with sticks or FORGING RELATIONSHIPS with imaginary talking sock puppets or dolls. All too often, the most effective behavior imposed over the past half century was Sitting Passively. Sitting idly is not how humans are wired. Couch potato is not the default human configuration.

Unless you grow them that way, of course. Just because we grew them that way for the past 50 years, doesn’t mean that’s what we’re doing for the next 50. We need to remember that we are creating the foundatin for the next 50 years, not blindly perpetuating every last failing of the past 50 merely because it’s what we know and it’s what makes us feel safe.

The Future of Meaningful Work

We often do our most meaningful work before, between, and all too often even in spite of jobs.

Don’t get me wrong, jobs are one important and useful activity for humans; obviously, there are many jobs that need doing; however, a job is not the one and only activity that creates and distributes economic value, gives human life worth and dignity, or rightly measures out social capital.

Mothers have perhaps known this more than anyone, for eons. If I hire someone to change diapers, vacuum, cook, and clean, then all of those tasks instantiate Economic Value, however modest. Yet, if I perform the exact same tasks, the ascribed value is ZERO. Help me Eliezer, you’re my only rational hope.

For many, it is feared that a Basic Income would prevent all needful jobs from ever being performed at all. It’s not even a slippery slope function; for them, it is a discontinuity. In one step, all of a sudden, everyone, everywhere will do NOTHING if there is a basic income. Couch potato populations will spontaneously combust. Web browsing for porn will take the place of working minimum wage to buy porn magazines. Entire empires will crumble.

Oh wait, entire empires crumbled due to the safe and sure way Things Have Always Been. Note to Mr. Schumpeter: creative destructionism is fine for product cycles, but Not For Humans. It’s simply not acceptable to destroy the lives of every third generation in the name of your favorite theory. Do it to ball bearings and computer memory, but not us.

In the context of our discussion, the irrational quantum disaster crowd is not likely to be vindicated, primarily because Capitalism++ is BUILT UPON Capitalism. With a Basic Income, all we are really doing is removing the punji sticks of poverty. Some successful experiments have even taken place on this very North American continent.

As an advanced commercial market society, we have perfected and continue to perfect the fine art of sculpting INSATIABLE CONSUMERS. The populace will always WANT MORE and that is the carrot that will forever incentivize workers to do the jobs that need to be done in order to attain sufficient income to exceed subsistence.

Moreover, universally assured subsistence fosters universal social stability; even through protracted cyclical disruptions and transformations. In the immortal words of Pink Floyd, “With, without; and after all, it’s what the fighting’s all about.”

One human behavior outcome of Assured Subsistence is likely to be a more satisfied and productive work force, because we will be picking up trash because we are making “extra” money — perhaps while acting upon an interest in improving conservation and recycling — rather than laboring in daily suppressed-panic that if I lose this lousy job I will be homeless, uninsured, and rapidly disenfranchised with no other options.

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

Capitalism++ is about incremental improvement; building on stacks that work; ditching or re-coding the ones that don’t; exploring and identifying the solutions that are both more sociologically adaptive and economically efficient for society. For our own future.

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