[ExI] Social Credit versus Labor-based currency (was: Re: Using Time Based Currency?)

Bryan Bishop kanzure at gmail.com
Sun Jul 6 14:26:58 UTC 2008


While we're on about the redesign and modernization of governments and 
springboards:

On Sunday 06 July 2008, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> The original poster's idea (crazimyke) on Time Based Currency
> reminds me a little of a "LETS" system:
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems
> but with additional restrictions and a more sophisticated accounting
> system. I agree one can improve on what we have in various ways in
> those directions. But ultimately, in a society with advanced
> automation there is a deep problem with any system based around
> earning credits through "the amount and type of labor" a person does.
> It is described here:
> http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution
>.htm "The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in
> the U.S. is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed
> to undergird people’s rights as consumers. Up to this time economic
> resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to
> production, with machines and men competing for employment on
> somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system,
> potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines
> which will require little cooperation from human beings."
>
> So, there is no longer that much of a logical connection between
> labor and output. The original poster did include "type of labor" in
> the idea, but I'd expect that would still break down eventually as an
> idea. A highly automated society like Virgle (or even just Google :-)
> will need to wrestle with that idea pretty quickly. And a system with
> more and more AI will need people less and less even for services and
> design work. Unless we think about that idea, we may well see world
> wide starvation and poverty in the face of huge warehouses stuffed
> full of food and goods no one can afford -- same as during the Great
> Depression of the 1930s. The Great Depression was in that sense a
> failure of imagination, not a failure of productivity.
>
> Because of this cybernation idea that labor is no longer very related
> to output, if we still need to *ration* (and that is what currency is
> about -- rationing) then I like the idea of "free and equal credit"
> idea in the Manna story by Marshall Brain if we need one (assuming a
> simple gift economy won't work). An excerpt from his story:
>   http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
> """
> "It works like this. Let's say that you own a large piece of land.
> Say something the size of your state of California. This land
> contains natural resources. There is the sand on the beaches, from
> which you can make glass and silicon chips. There are iron, gold and
> aluminum ores in the soil, which you can mine, refine and form into
> any shape. There are oil and coal deposits under the ground. There is
> carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen in the air and in the water. If
> you were to own California, all of these resources are 'free.' That
> is, since you own them, you don't have to pay anyone for them and
> they are there for the taking."
>
> "If you have a source of energy and if you also own smart robots, the
> robots can turn these resources into anything you want for free.
> Robots can grow free food for you in the soil. Robots can manufacture
> things like steel, glass, fiberglass insulation and so on to create
> free buildings. Robots can weave fabric from cotton or synthetics and
> make free clothing. In the case of this catalog you are holding,
> nanoscale robots chain together glucose molecules to form laminar
> carbohydrates. As long as you have smart robots, along with energy
> and free resources, everything is free."
>
> Linda chimed in, "This was Eric's core idea -- everything can be free
> in a robotic world. Then he took it one step further. He said that
> everything should be free. Furthermore, he believed that every human
> being should get an equal share of all of these free products that
> the robots are producing. He took the American phrase 'all men are
> created equal' quite literally."
>
> ...
>
> "That's what I wanted to ask about. If everything is free, then
> what's to stop me from demanding a 100,000 foot house on a thousand
> acres of land and a driveway paved in gold bricks? It makes no sense,
> because obviously everyone cannot demand that. And how can anything
> be free? That is hard to believe in the first place." I said.
>
> "Everything is free AND everyone is equal." Linda said. "That's
> exactly how you phrased it, and you were right. You, Jacob, get equal
> access to the free resources, and so does everyone else. That's done
> through a system of credits. You get a thousand credits every week
> and you can spend them in any way you like. So does everyone else.
> This catalog is designed to give you a taste of what you can buy with
> your credits. This is a small subset of the full catalog you will use
> once you arrive. You simply ask for something, the robots deliver it,
> and your account gets debited."
>
> "Let me show you." said Cynthia. She opened her catalog to a page,
> and pointed to one of the pictures. It was clothing. "This is what I
> am wearing." she said. "See - it is 6 credits. In a typical week I
> only spend about 70 or so credits on clothes. That's why I like to
> wear something new every day."
>
> "The robots did manufacture Cynthia's outfit for free. They took
> recycled resources, added energy and robotic labor and created what
> she is wearing. It cost nothing to make it. She paid credits simply
> to keep track of how many resources she is using."
>
> "Where did the energy come from?" I asked.
>
> "The sun. The Australia Project is powered mostly by the sun and the
> wind, and the wind comes from the sun if you think about it."
>
> "Where did the robots come from?"
>
> "The same place Cynthia's outfit came from. It's the same thing.
> Robots take recycled resources, add energy and robotic labor and make
> new robots. The robots are free, the energy is free, the resources
> are all completely recycled and we own them, so they are free.
> Everything is free."
>
> "The credits simply make sure that everyone gets equal access to the
> resources. There is a finite amount of power that can be generated on
> any given day, for example. Things like that. The credits make sure
> everyone gets an equal share of the total pool of resources."
>
> "Holy shit." I said. I was looking through the catalog again. Page
> after page after page of products. There were thousands of different
> types of housing, for example. And they all seemed to fall in the
> range of 100 to 500 credits per week. Clothing cost nothing. Food
> cost nothing.
>
> "I'm not getting this." I said. "I'm not sure I could spend a
> thousand credits if this catalog is right."
>
> "Many people don't spend a thousand credits." she said. "If you are
> working on a project you might, but that's about it."
>
> "So how do I earn the credits?" I asked.
>
> "Earn?" Linda asked back.
>
> "No no no..." said Cynthia.
>
> "Do you give me a job? The reason I am here is because I have no
> job," I said.
>
> "No. You see, it's all free. By being a shareholder, you already own
> your share of the resources. The robots make products from the free
> resources you and everyone else already owns. There is no forced
> labor like there is in America. You do what you want, and you get
> 1,000 credits per week. We are all on an endless vacation."
> """
>
> Although on the value of labor in a good life, see:
>   http://www.schumachersociety.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
> "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
> threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties;
> to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other
> people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services
> needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow
> from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it
> becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the
> worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater
> concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a
> soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of
> this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an
> alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding
> of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and
> leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot
> be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of
> leisure."
>
> Frances Moore Lappe talks about how there is starvation because,
> unlike in the past when everyone had access to the land to hunt and
> gather, almost all food in our society is under lock and key and you
> can only have access to it through the market economy, so if you can
> not participate in the market economy (no job, no skills, poor
> health, racial or other discrimination, politics, etc.) then you are
> unable to buy food and so you starve. What Marshall Brain's idea
> suggests is that everyone should have a basic amount of credit in our
> society every month, and then starvation will go away. (There might
> have to be laws against selling future credits to sell yourself into
> slavery.)
>
> There have been political parties with ideas like this:
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
>
> And there are also variations on libertarianism vaguely related to
> this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialist
>
> Again from the "Triple Revolution" (written almost 50 years ago!):
>  
> http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution
>.htm "... As machines take over production from men, they absorb an
> increasing proportion of resources while the men who are displaced
> become dependent on minimal and unrelated government
> measures—unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments.
> These measures are less and less able to disguise a historic paradox:
> That a substantial proportion of the population is subsisting on
> minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when
> sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of
> everyone in the U.S. The existence of this paradox is denied or
> ignored by conventional economic analysis. The general economic
> approach argues that potential demand, which if filled would raise
> the number of jobs and provide incomes to those holding them, is
> underestimated. Most contemporary economic analysis states that all
> of the available labor force and industrial capacity is required to
> meet the needs of consumers and industry and to provide adequate
> public services: Schools, parks, roads, homes, decent cities, and
> clean water and air. It is further argued that demand could be
> increased, by a variety of standard techniques, to any desired extent
> by providing money and machines to improve the conditions of the
> billions of impoverished people elsewhere in the world, who need food
> and shelter, clothes and machinery and everything else the industrial
> nations take for granted. There is no question that cybernation does
> increase the potential for the provision of funds to neglected public
> sectors. Nor is there any question that cybernation would make
> possible the abolition of poverty at home and abroad. But the
> industrial system does not possess any adequate mechanisms to permit
> these potentials to become realities. The industrial system was
> designed to produce an ever-increasing quantity of goods as
> efficiently as possible, and it was assumed that the distribution of
> the power to purchase these goods would occur almost automatically.
> The continuance of the income-through jobs link as the only major
> mechanism for distributing effective demand — for granting the right
> to consume — now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited
> capacity of a cybernated productive system."
>
> Anyway, I'd suggest the issue in that last sentence is the key one to
> think about: "The continuance of the income-through jobs link as the
> only major mechanism for distributing effective demand — for granting
> the right to consume — now acts as the main brake on the almost
> unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system."
>
> What I imagine is two mathematical curves on a graph (relative to a
> fixed population), with time as the X axis, and two items on the Y
> axis -- the effort required for universal abundance and the amount of
> free time people are willing to give away.  Ignore what is on the
> axes here: :-) "Supply and demand curve"
>   http://economics.blog.co.in/files/2008/03/equilibirium.JPG
> With a bottom X axis of time, think of "Supply" as "Supply of free
> time that can be used to make gifts" and "Demand" as "Demand of free
> time required to produce universal abundance for everyone with
> improving automation". :-)
>
> I'd expect that with increasing technology, over time the curve for
> time vs. effort required for universal abundance would be dropping
> towards zero, and the curve for time vs. amount of free time people
> are willing to give away would be rising. At some point those two
> curves cross, and after that point in time, universal abundance
> through a post-scarcity economy (however it is organized in detail)
> is very possible. So, it is both the cultural evolution towards
> increasing charity and compassion and freedom as well as the
> improvements in automation that make an abundant future for all more
> and more possible even with a large population (a population too
> large to sustain by hunting and gathering). Example:
> "How overfishing can alter an ocean’s entire ecosystem"
> http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/06/19/how-overfishing-
>can-alter-an-ocean%E2%80%99s-entire-ecosystem/
>
> --Paul Fernhout
>
> mike1937 wrote:
> >> But to Bryan: I don't think mankind is anywhere near ready for
> >> such systems (and I'm not entirely confident it ever will be).
> >> Without very rigid structure.. greedy, malevolent, and reckless
> >> people will tear all of society apart.
> >
> > I wrote an essay on that :-)
> > http://williamabaris.net78.net/motivationmoralityandcapitalsim.html
>
> ...
>
> > On Jul 2, 11:18 am, crazimyke <crazim... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I have an idea very similar to the Man-Hour, except that it
> >> differentiates between the values of engineering/medical/menial
> >> labor and so forth. Basically, you get "credit" based on the
> >> amount and type of labor that you perform. After that, you can
> >> exchange this credit for goods or services. The important
> >> difference between this and money is that you can't toss this
> >> "credit" around. You couldn't pay people off for things that
> >> aren't registered. This has many implications, such as it makes
> >> bribery and black market business practically impossible. It also
> >> prevents upstarting residents from having unfair financial
> >> advantages over others (i.e. a kid from a rich family won't have
> >> any major advantage over a kid from a poor family). This means
> >> that there's no longer such a thing as inheritance, but personally
> >> I don't feel inheritance should be necessary in the first place.
> >> The idea is to make sure that the whole system is a meritocracy,
> >> is free of corruption, and, most importantly, money does not rule
> >> all of society and government. Of course, the real challenge is
> >> designing and maintaining a safe and secure exchanging network...
> >> preventing hackers from messing around with credit records.
> >>
> >> I should note that a person would be perfectly able to invest and
> >> save credit in much the same way that money can be used on Earth.
>
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