[ExI] Terraforming Earth

[Stuart LaForge]

Tara Maya wrote:

>If large corporations use money to influence governments to over-regulate
>industries and censor free speech — which is what they are currently
doing >both in the EU and in the US and even more in China — then this
keeps out >competition. The competition is the ordinary people, who
cannot make the >leap past the regulations and restrictions to create
competitive products >with the big corporations. Furthermore, if most
“ordinary people” actually >only survive day to day because of Universal
Income, which I imagine would >keep them feed, maybe even fat, but not be
enough to enable them to start a >company in a highly regulated
environment, then it’s an even bigger >psychological leap for them to
give up that money and risk starting their >own business.

Universal Income and regulatory barriers to market entry are separate
issues. One does not entail the other although the two together are a
nasty combination. Why should they have to give up their Universal Income
in order to start their own businesses if there is no law requiring it?

>If people are raised by working parents who teach them how to work hard
and >take risks, they will know that they can work hard and take risks.
If they >are raised by parents — or, worse,  a single parent — who has
never worked >either, then who is to raise them with the values of
courage and >self-reliance needed to create something new and daring?

Boredom can spawn courage almost as well as desperation. And novelty is
its own reward. People will adapt or become irrelevant.

>This is the way an entire culture becomes apathetic and stagnant once the
>divide between rich and poor becomes too large. I believe that most
people >who propose a Universal Income see this danger, actually, and
don’t want a >huge divide between a few wealthy oligarchs and a mass of
ordinary people, >but think that a Universal Income can stop this. That’s
why I just wanted >to say that I think the exact opposite is true,
because a Universal Income >can never bridge the gap in a way that true
market freedom can.

You can have both a free market and UI and there never need be a shortage
of novel goods and services for you to spend your UI on. UI could instead
be the rain that encourages seeds to grow. Think of it as dividends paid
for ownership of "stock" in the entire economy with one share per person.

>
>I should admit, however, that in a true free market, you’d still have a
>huge divide between super-rich and super poor, so on the surface, it
>wouldn’t be obviously better. It’s only better if you look at the
society >over several generations, because that’s when you’d see that in
a free >society, the composition of “rich” and “poor” is constantly
changing, >whereas in a stagnant society, you’d have the same 200
families ruling for >a thousand years.

I think you underestimate the volatility of humanity. There have been 198
empires in recorded history to date. Only 3 of which have survived more
than a thousand years. Even if ruling families don't murder each other
quite to the same extent that they used to, I don't see the same state of
political affairs in place for a thousand years. Not unless society
stumbles onto something on par with Pharaonic Egypt. Which is highly
unlikely.

I mean there will predictably be oligarchs, but the oligarchs should
change. But then again with AI who knows?

>I forgot to add — is there a way we can make the tropics a healthy place
>for dense human habitation, in a way that actually preserves or even
>increases biodivisity in the ecology? Rather than cut down rainforests,
can >we find a way to build around and with rainforests? Could we even
create >hothouse skyscrappers that create islands of rainforest in other
parts of >the world, even the tundra? Imagine if you walked into a
skyscrapper in the >middle of a big city, and instead of floors and
offices, you saw tropical >trees, monkeys, parrots? Or redwoods, ferns
and owls?

Sure we could. Aesthetics are marketable, therefore beautiful life-forms
should thrive in a free market.

>It would be nice if our niche, as a species, could be one of enabling
>greater biodiversity, rather than our current role, of instigating the
>sixth great extinction.

Great extinctions are part of the natural order. If it is our destiny to
bring about the sixth, then so be it. From destruction springs creation,
new niches needing filling, surviving creatures adapting, radiating,
generating new and greater biodiversity.

Blessed are the losers; for they are the martyrs of evolution.

Stuart LaForge