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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Giovanni Santostasi<br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, June 18, 2012 5:43 PM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Spike,<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>you still don't address the question of what happens with the robots do all the menial tasks.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Can you give me a piece of you mind on that?<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Giovanni<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Good question Giovanni. I don’t have the answers, but what I find remarkable is that we discussed this at length in ExI-chat right here about 15 yrs ago, back when I did a lot more reading than I did posting. We never did figure out the answers to that in those days, and still haven’t. Little has changed really, other than now machines already do a lot of the work humans used to do. We recognized back then that as time went on, the problem would only get larger, as work went from being comprised of moving objects about to moving bits. Brainwork was taking over. The amount of physical work humans can do generally spans a single order of magnitude from the weakest to the strongest. But in the kinds of work we have left, humans can span several orders of magnitude. Example: coding. Some people can crank out really good computer code, but most people can’t write two lines that work together.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>We had a guy back then (don’t remember who it was) making a very similar argument to yours. Actually he was more coming on saying capitalism was a complete failure and we need to institute communism before it is too late, which is related to your contention I think, possibly more extreme. He might have been intentionally baiting us too, knowing we were a bunch of libertarian types and we wanted to see if we had any real ideas on how the future of production would look. What I do remember from those days is a general realization that communism wouldn’t solve the problem, even with the general notion that capitalism wouldn’t solve it. I get the vague feeling Greece is mostly concluding the same thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>All that being said, one way or another I am convinced that competition is good. Because of competition we have created a world in which those who lose the competition still can have a mostly decent life, few luxuries but seldom will starvation threaten. Fairly recently starvation was a constant threat.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>