Asking The Right Questions

In concept, I have no problem with robots.  The idea of having tireless machines doing the necessary labor to free up humans for higher pursuits sounds vaguely Star Trekky and Utopian.

Suppose robots tilled the soil, picked the fruits, delivered it to your door.  Suppose they built our houses, trimmed our lawns and rattled the pots in the kitchen.  Suppose they operated the generators, purified the water and produced our clothing.  Suppose anything we wanted or needed was delivered promptly to our doors around the clock every day of the year by machines that needed no sleep or vacations.  Suppose robots did everything for us so that we were completely freed of drudgery and able to pursue self-enrichment and art for the rest of our lives.

There'd be no need for money.  Who would you pay?  Everything is done by self-repairing and -replicating machinery.  The farms and factories would run themselves with virtually zero human input - oh, maybe the occasional check-in to see if the robots' self-diagnostics were sufficiently tweaked.  Maybe a handful of folks, on a rotating basis, to scan the error reports for problems the machines couldn't handle.

If there was no human labor, no person giving up a part of their life and talents to produce some necessity, and everything one could imagine came to the door within minutes of ordering, what would things cost?  After all, machines would mine the raw materials, refine them, recreate and train themselves, constantly maintain and upgrade the infrastructure of civilization - and all without a human even batting an eyelash in the direction of manual labor.  What would there be to pay for?

We wouldn't need governments because the machines would be self-regulating.  We wouldn't need banks or financial institutions.  There would be no markets to trade goods that are automatically distributed according to whatever is needed at any given location.

Machines would feed themselves and the rest of us with electricity that they produce as a matter of course.  They would refine, process and package our goods, collect the trash, recycle it and produce something else with the materials.

The machines would routinely maintain parks and recreation areas.  They would scurry out at night to repair roads, cars and aircraft every night, so that the next day, everything was in perfect operating order.  They would operate the amusement parks, constantly swim around the oceans clearing trash and pollutants.  They would fan out across the Solar System, using whatever resources locally available to pre-build colonies that we would blithely inhabit once they were fully operational.

Humans would thus be free to study and learn, think and create art, explore and aspire.  No longer constrained by government or labor, humanity would blossom into a benign race of hyper-intellectuals, focused entirely and for life on developing our minds and souls, each of us becoming demi-gods aided and abetted by semi-autonomous creations.

When you think about it, it sounds wonderful.  There would be no elites, everything we need and want would be provided in lavish amounts completely free of cost of any kind.  Money would vanish, becoming a quaint old idea.  Every individual would be free to consume the entire creative output of humanity and then add new concepts and ideas to the greater good.

It sounds wonderfully idyllic.  It sounds too good to be true.

We must assume two possible outcomes: 1) all of humanity, collectively and individually, grows to the next level of self-actualization, or 2) an elite determines that it is the sole beneficiary of this paradise and the rest of us need to be eliminated.

Given the history of humanity, I suspect the latter scenario is the most likely.

Whatever the outcome, we have taken the first steps towards this destination.  The EU has passed legislation granting robots "electronic personhood," and the concept of universal guaranteed income is being bandied about as a solution for displaced labor.

At some point on this path, money must become obsolete; after all, who needs cash when everything costs nothing?  Governments and corporations become redundant, because the production and distribution systems are completely automated.  Eventually, a whole bunch of people become unnecessary to those who fancy themselves the rulers - and certainly more valuable than the rest of us.

It seems to me the real conversation here is NOT what will happen to humanity when the machines take over, but what will happen to the elites?

If there is no need to governments, money or economy even vaguely resembling what we know now, doesn't that really make the elites redundant?  Doesn't the complete democratization of knowledge and necessities really mean there is no place for an elite?

Perhaps we are now witnessing the end of Controllers.  Perhaps the fear and loathing many of us have noticed on the parts of the elite is really the horrifying realization on their part that they are quickly becoming superfluous buffoons who are powerless to control resources, and thus the rest of us.  What happens when there are only a few thousand self-proclaimed and out-moded elites and a few billion of the rest of us who are suddenly freed from the day-to-day grind and have time to think, read and ponder?

Suppose the Neo-Populist movement sweeping the world is just the opening salvo across the bow of the elite class, and that at some level - mostly subconscious at this point - we all realize what is coming and what it could mean for all of us?

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question here.  It is not what the elites will need with us when the future arrives, it is what we will need with elites when we are all members of that class?

Designed Obsolecense

I used to think I hated Mondays.  Then I came to realize that I pretty much hate any day during which I have to work.  It's not that I don't like work.  Lord knows I make enough of it for myself.  But I hate having artificial schedules and deadlines forced on me.

I once thought it would be cool to have a Star Trek world where you just walk up to the wall and speak and out pops food, beverage and clothing to order.  But then I realized that all the characters on the show had to give up significant amounts of their lives to 'serve the good of all Mankind' to get all the freebies.  Even in the 24th century, there ain't no free lunch.

It seems, though, as if we are coming to a major nexus in history.  As our technology evolves, we have less and less actual work to do.  Eventually, 3-D printing will replace most manufacturing and transportation of goods.  3-D print files will (and already are) become a form of currency.  Most people won't have to travel more than a few blocks from their houses to work or get the things they need.

With one tiny little problem.

Sure things like 3-D printing will free up a lot of time and effort and literally destroy millions of jobs worldwide.  But worse, there will ultimately form a tiny minority of people producing the food and raw materials for the rest of our lifestyles of vast leisure.

What happens when the vast majority of us become designers and traders of ideas, and only a small number are doing all the work of mining, refining and growing all our necessities?  Not only will those people demand far more attention, but they will literally hold the world hostage.  As a consequence, the leisure classes will be required to 'hold a gun to the heads' of the underclasses, or face the utter collapse of society.  In other words, slavery.

This seems to be an intractable conundrum.  The global economy is on an inexorable march towards everyone thinking and no one working.  Even on Star Trek, the replicators have to be fed raw materials to produce all the products on demand.  The crew of the Enterprise blithely fly around talking about how humanity has reached a point where everyone is an intellectual, yet every other episode involves some mining planet or food planet in trouble.  Obviously, not everyone gets to be an intellectual.  Yet the issue of who actually does all the work is never really addressed unless one of the labor planets has a problem.

We all talk about great new inventions and labor-saving devices, but there is very little discussion about what will happen when there are 4 billion people without jobs.  How will they make money?  Who will supply all the raw materials to support this enormous class of non-productive humans?  Will we each own a labor machine and make money based on its output while we sit around pursuing our intellectual advancement?  And what about all the people now who use all their free time watching TeeVee and playing games?  Will we have created a labor-free world so that we can turn our brains to jelly, since it seems most people don't want to read or pursue intellectual hobbies?

Obviously, all this talk of utopian lifestyles imply either a vast reduction in population, or a small minority who actually get to live that life while the rest of us toil in the salt mines to support their utopia.  From the looks of things, we are already at the latter stage.

I, for one, can't see how we achieve our technological dreams without some radical changes in how we do things.  Sure, it's great to talk about living Olympian lifestyles, but what happens to the part of humanity that still has to do the labor?

It's easy to say that we will ultimately produce machines to do all the work so everyone can enjoy the leisure life, but even having all those wonderful machines means that someone has to make them.  Unless they are self-designing and replicating, which has all sorts of unsavory implications itself.  Frankly, I just can't see how we achieve the liberal wet dream society without somewhere along the line having an underclass to serve the needs of the ubermenchen.  At that point, we arrive at Huxley's Brave New World of selective breeding and designer worker bees.

There are already a great number of folks without jobs and they are living in poverty, not wandering around the garden reading Emily Dickinson and discussing the symbology of T.S. Eliot.  The idea of zipping around in star ships while listening to opera and quoting Shakespeare seems a long way off, even though all these folks have the time to do it.

Though the headlines crow about each new breakthrough in technology, we need to keep in mind - and earnestly discuss - what we are going to do with the people already out of work, much less those who will be displaced by the new technology.

As the pace of innovation increases, there is less and less time to process the displaced workers and guide them into new careers.  We are obviously not at the point where one can live a life of intellectual pursuits without the need for income of some kind, and that means work, which is increasingly hard to find.

So, while the Enterprise is zipping around the galaxy with a host of neo-Platonists onboard, the rest of us are stuck with the drudge work to maintain their lofty lifestyles.  How long do you think that will last?  It won't be long before those of us doing the dirty work will start to resent the privileged few who live off our sweat.

There's some serious contemplation to do in our afternoon walks through the cloister pondering the Universe's Great Mysteries.