[ExI] Abundance Economy

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 10/01/2025 02:16, Stuart LaForge wrote:
> It is funny to me as a Yank, how your misspelling of aluminum...

I'm not going to rise to that, we all know where it leads. I think we 
should just accept that there's English and there's American, and leave 
it at that.

I can't see lebensraum being a problem. I wasn't suggesting that we all 
live as tightly packed as we would be if we all lived on Madagascar! 
That was just an illustration of how much area on earth there is, 
compared to how many people there currently are. I'm not going to try to 
do the maths, but it's not difficult to see that we could probably 10x 
the number of humans and still have plenty of room, given the right 
level of technology.

Anyway, that's not really relevant to the concept of an abundance 
economy, we won't have 10x the current population for a while, if ever, 
and I suspect by that time, technology will make the world (and people) 
unrecognisable from our current perspective.

I don't see that biology is an obstacle to an abundance economy. Global 
population seems to be declining at the moment, and better living 
conditions fuel that trend, as far as we can see. Abundance economy 
means amazingly good living conditions, by definition, so what other 
factor is relevant to biology being an obstacle? I can't think of any.

The earth can support 8 billion people, it's doing so now, so there's no 
problem with the chemical resources that our bodies need, so that leaves 
the other things that we want, rather than need, so we can all live 
happy lives.

Basically, it comes down to money, doesn't it. Money, and freedom. I 
wouldn't suggest doing away with money, that probably would never work, 
but a certain amount of free money given to every person, to spend how 
they like, would probably be a good idea. Enough to cover basic needs - 
food, shelter, transport, access to medical treatment, education, 
entertainment, communication (including internet access, or whatever 
equivalent emerges), and probably a couple of other things I haven't 
thought of. Gainful employment (as in working for money) would then be 
an option rather than a necessity, and people who want to, could take up 
non-money-making occupations without any downside.

Where would all this money come from? The same place it comes from now, 
except instead of humans toiling to produce the goods, robots and other 
automatic systems would. Specialised AIs would control the robots.

Transition to an abundance economy would probably be gradual, via a 
modest Universal Basic Income first. The issue of 'who do the fruits of 
the labour of the robots belong to?' would have to be sorted out in a 
way that benefits the general population, not just a small group of 
people that own the robots. Perhaps some way of creating 'ownerless' 
robots could emerge. AI would probably help with this. If corporations 
can be legal persons, AIs could too, and they would be in charge of some 
of the robotic systems, and ensure that the money generated doesn't just 
enrich a few already rich people, but goes to the general populace 
instead, as an 'automation dividend'. As the benefits of this system 
become more widely understood and appreciated, it would probably spread, 
and gradually ramp up the amount of money available to distribute to 
everyone.


The 'Freedom' aspect is a different kettle of fish. Even those of us in 
the 'free west' are constantly confronted with restrictions on our 
freedom, and it only gets worse as time goes on.
Some of the restrictions are driven by ideology, religious or otherwise. 
Many of them are driven by money. Rich people want to be richer, often 
to the detriment of others, and oppose any move to prevent that. This 
has resulted in ridiculous copyright laws, hostility to free 
distribution of culture and open access to research, etc. This is a 
thorny issue, and I'm not sure how it can be tackled. Supporting things 
like the Freedom to Tinker movement, open-source things and the EFF are 
ok, but that's only nibbling at the edges of a huge problem. This might 
be a swamp that we're not capable of getting ourselves out of, and need 
the help of more intelligent beings for.

-- 
Ben
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