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> Some of the artists sell their art to people in other towns. Ah ha! The author realized that a village full of artists selling their art to each other would
by cousin_it 10y ago
> Some of the artists sell their art to people in other towns.
Ah ha! The author realized that a village full of artists selling their art to each other would be nonsense. But didn't stop to notice that a whole world of people like that would be just as surreal.
That's not just a minor problem, it blows the whole scheme apart. Attention economies are always very winner-take-all, and become more so as you remove barriers. If you relieve people of all tasks except showing off to each other, that will create cutthroat competition for attention where only a small minority can ever flourish. In my eyes that's much worse than the current situation, where an uninteresting person can still become worthwhile to others by doing necessary work.
The monumentally hard part of writing any utopia is fulfilling people's need to be needed. Writers need to get serious about that challenge, instead of talking about bread and circuses for the thousandth time.
- ppod 10y ago>Attention economies are always very winner-take-all, and become more so as you remove barriers. If you relieve people of all tasks except showing off to each other, that will create cutthroat competition for attention where only a small minority can ever flourish. In my eyes that's much worse than the current situation, where an uninteresting person can still become worthwhile to other people by doing necessary work. I find this very interesting and it sounds correct to me. Did you read it somewhere? Can you recommend anything?
- cousin_it 10y agoThank you! I can't point to a single source. There were some seed ideas, but I've been bouncing them off people for a long time and it's morphed a lot. HN and Reddit are great for building interesting worldviews iteratively.
- ikeboy 10y agoTo state what should be obvious, starving << being uninteresting Do you think people working at subsistence wages today have fulfilling lives? I'm having a hard time seeing how they're better off than if they wouldn't have to do anything to survive but maybe were low status.
- wallacoloo 10y agoIt would have been more worthwhile in my eyes had the author simply omitted that sentence. Since the focus is on "zero cost living", selling your work isn't strictly necessary - The Machine provides for your basic living requirements. However, s/he mentioned healthcare as an open problem. And if you're worried about what happens when 10%+ of people spend more than 20% of their time on art, I don't think you need to be. My social needs are by and large not dependent on impressing strangers, but by doing with my equals. I play music with my friends, and no audience, for example. We're out-talented pretty much everywhere we look in that aspect, but it doesn't make things any less enjoyable in the least. The author seems to predict this will decrease some forms of inequality. If that's the case, I'll have more equals to befriend. I'll have more opportunities to engage in fulfilling collaborations. My sense of social worth will only increase.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- undershirt 10y agoReminds me of Agent Smith's speech on the failure to build a utopian matrix. Can we ever find solutions to problems that only manifest later? In other words, if we can't get to utopia by iterating on locally rational decisions, we may need AI to help us. Convincing ourselves to follow its advice may introduce new problems.