[ExI] Post-Scarcity

[Emlyn]

2009/2/4 Thomas <thomas at thomasoliver.net>:
>  [. . .] post scarcity is the thing.
> These scarcity based philosophies are all rationing, deciding who
> can't have something. Crappy and boring.
> Technically minded people can do better. Ask yourself "how can I make
> something free forever for everyone?". You can assume volunteers and
> donations to help bridge the gap between "now" and "success", and you
> can assume that free just means so very cheap that you can disregard
> the price.
> If enough of us can do that, rationing is moot.  [...]
> --
> Emlyn
>
> The post scarcity thing  seems a lot like the technocracy movement.
> http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/bitstream/1892/5072/1/b13876442.pdf

No. It's probably a lot more like anarchy with a very particular set of values.

I've come across this idea of energy based currency elsewhere, it
seems stupid beyond belief.

> The predictions fizzled, but Howard Scott managed to keep collecting dues
> for decades.
> Do you think the internet and the open source movement, together with the
> Venus Project, etc.
> can carry these ideas past futile utopianism into some kind of practical
> reality?

Yes I do. Note that the open source movement is anything but futile
utopianism. These days much of it is looking encouragingly like an
example of how big enterprise can be part of the post-scarcity
movement, and enjoy the ride.

My thinking is that, in big groups (eg: nations) we decide, one way or
another, what to treat as scarce and what to treat as non-scarce. This
bears little or no relation to any intrinsic cost of things. eg: in
the West, we treat information as scarce (and so IP laws, yada yada),
even though the costs are negligible, whereas we treat roads as
non-scarce, and in many countries we treat healthcare as non-scarce,
even though the costs are actually huge. We make up for the gap with
taxation.

I think with a bit of imagination, we can change our values, to be
"everything should be able to be treated as non-scarce". Now clearly
everything can't be at the moment. We should see this as a failure
though, as something in need of fixing.

How you get from here to there, then, is about groups of like-minded
individuals banding together to solve what scarcity problems they can.
Because existing information is now non-scarce (you can replicate at
practically zero cost), intelligent people can create designs,
recipes, and everyone can use them. So you use that ability. And of
course they can discover and innovate and invent, so you use that,
everything only needs doing once. Add volunteerism and donations to
the mix and you can get things, piece by piece, over the non-scarce
line.

What's the non-scarce line? It's where something is cheap enough that
you can treat it as free. You may need to impose some limits to how
much of a "free" resource a person can take at any time, but only at a
level way above what anyone would ever want anyway (eg: my free bean
shop might impose a limit on beans of 10kg/day/person unless otherwise
negotiated) (note: a free bean shop is probably wrong on many levels,
it's just an example).

I think we can do this with little or no government involvement up
front; we don't need it. Just get out there and start something
that'll free something, or join in with someone else doing the same.
Mainstream society will take a while to catch on, and government
tracks with them, so they'll be mostly useless for a while; doesn't
matter. When they start to get it, they can help by changing R&D
funding away from helping people to make money (it's often vital in
these grants that you will gain closed IP, ridulous), toward helping
people make a thing be free / more free. Also, small subsidies to help
things get across the post-scarce line would be a good move (remember
we subsidize much more ludicrous things now).

> Do we need alternative (local) currencies to "bridge the gap?"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_currency

We have a perfectly good system of scarcity management, called
capitalism. I'm thinking of change from within here, after all. While
we are still living with a mix of scarce and non-scarce things, using
money to control the trade of the non-scarce things seems like a fine
idea.

The one thing I will say about alternative currencies is that it
provides a way for money to not flow from one domain to another. My
intuition is that the ability for money to work in all domains is its
greatest strength and its greatest liability. If you look at a
reputation economy (the kind of thing that turns up in post-scarce
spaces), reputation does not flow from one domain to another. Just
because you are a lead developer on an operating system kernel does
not get you credit as a musician, and vice versa. Now this is good,
because it means if you want to play in the main game in some social
space, you need to earn your stripes. Money, on the other hand, lets
you succeed in, say, real-estate, then take that bundle and use it to
impose your will on, say, a bunch of engineers, and that cash makes
you the boss, even though you are entirely ignorant. At the macro
level, we've had the finance guys calling the shots for everyone else,
even though they only know finance. That makes no sense if you think
about it a bit.

> How do we prevent a violent backlash from
> the collective unconscious?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_jung

That's imaginary, so I am not super worried about it.

> We still have stone age brains.
> http://www.oculture.com/2007/10/our_ancestral_mind_in_the_modern_world_an_interview_with_satoshi_kanazawa.html
> -- Thomas

Yep, it's a drama alright. In the realm of "reciprocal altruism",
money pushes our "reciprocal" buttons. We need to start pushing the
altruism buttons a bit more. But not in a la la fairy land way. In a
scarcity bounded space, altruism is a loss for the giver. In a
post-scarce environment, altruism floats all the boats, and the
altruist is also in a boat. Think of it as
enlightened-selfish-altruism.

-- 
Emlyn

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