[ExI] Post-scarcity & positional goods.

[darren shawn greer]

Tom:

 

Personal opinion,. but I liked your post. I was considering yesterday unsubscribing from this list, because it seemed an inordinate amount of time was being spent discussing religion and politics. Important discussions, of course, but I get a lot of that in my non-virtual life. When I joined this list and others I was hoping for more discussions about how we get from "here" to "there". It's a subject that interests me and I don't think it's simply a matter of convincing the world to stop being such techno-phobes or defending cryogenics. When I first stumbled upon post-humanism I distinguished it quite radically from trans-humanism. I read Peppernel and others and tried to fit their ideas into the sea-change I was feeling in my own life and the way I looked at the world. I ran across a group of post-humanists in the flesh that were using technology to interface with the real world in ways that most weren't -- one of them had actually been identified by a Tuft's university professor in a lecture as the first and only public embodiment of a post-humanist on our planet. For them, it seems, technology is a feature of post-humanism that can only be fully utilized if there is a reduction of ego, a measure of emotional self-control, and a jettison of old morality and current ethical, national and spiritual distinctions. The search for meaning inside finite but unbounded (or closed) systems--binary and other-wise-- is more important and ultimately more valuable that searches for deeper meaning in physics and theology. Running afoul of the law is not uncommon for them; hierarchy based on talent and experience and knowledge is vital. Most importantly, and this leads back to ego-reduction, the idea of gestalt is paramount. Up to this point individual personalities have fueled history. These people see themselves not so much as individuals but as cogs in a wheel, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. To be post-human, or trans-human, in other words, is perhaps advancing the agenda of the species towards some utopia without being around to benefit greatly from the results. We could in fact simply be in a marked transition stage. I might not get to benefit from intelligence-enhancing drugs and I might not be able to afford a deep-freeze with hopes of revival, but I can promote it for the betterment of my species. Or I might contract for freezing and the contract superceded even when the technology is available because I am deemed too undistinguished or antedated for revival. (For those of you more familiar with the process, this is a philisophical point only. I can look the contract details up on-line if I'm truly interested.)

 

How this relates to your discussion of property owner-ship and post-scarcity I'm not sure. Perhaps just that a reduction of ego might reduce our desires to the essential -- not food or water or social equality or machines necessarily, but essential for the betterment of the species. I'm perfectly willing to accept that role. I don't think of it as self-sacrifice, and neither do my friends. I'd love to live in a world where hierarchy and brother-hood can happily co-exist, a sense of safety and belonging both. For after all, our economy, our religions and our politics, I believe, are simply manifestations of the search for those things anyway. 

 

Darren

 


 

Per Ardua Ad Astra
For more info on author Darren Greer visit 
http://darrenshawngreer.blogspot.com
 


 

> Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:12:31 +0000
> From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: [ExI] Post-scarcity & positional goods.
> 
> We often talk of future technologies delivering a world of "post-scarcity", especially molecular nanotech assembly. Some academics use the term post-scarcity to refer to western societies where peoples basic needs are cheaply and easily covered (or welfare is available to cover) and the majority of economic activity is centred on meeting desires rather than the lower steps of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
> 
> I've been reading up on various critiques of consumer society, plus the Canadian riposte "The Rebel Sell" which shows how the counter-culture is in fact all about consumers distinguishing themselves by consuming different goods to the mainstream. Sooner or later these discussions always come round to positional goods - things that define status by you having a higher status item than others, or are necessarily restricted in number. When you can get a perfect copy of any other physical item, how are people going to choose their positional goods?
> 
> There will probably still be some positional things in the physical world - property has always been about "location, location, location" and despite the presence of telecommuting people still want to physically locate themselves close to services they value or in a community surrounded by people of similar status. Positional experience - or just how exclusive a holiday you had, or exclusive a golf club you're playing at - will remain scarce in the physical world. Virtual worlds may have less of a problem with these, although I've heard that property values in Second Life can be affected by location.
> 
> I'll stop here before my post becomes so long everyone skips over it - but how are people going to fulfil their status-seeking/hierarchical behaviour when everyone can have any item possible? Will we be able to reduce human desire for such goods? I'm just wondering how we get from "Here" (21st century consumers) to "there" (future versions of ourselves in a world of 3D printers for all)
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> 
> 
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