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Good comment: I don't really disagree with you. I probably shouldn't have thrown that thing in there about hoarding cause it's more of a gripe than anything. I

by ixtli 9y ago

Good comment: I don't really disagree with you. I probably shouldn't have thrown that thing in there about hoarding cause it's more of a gripe than anything. I guess what I was trying to say is that our current relation to power (that is, capital) results in serious inefficiencies like huge amounts of food going to waste because no one near them will pay, or people dying of preventable causes within walking distance of the services to prevent that outcome. This is kinda what i meant by hoarding: the resources that we can easily automate production of are just getting stockpiled instead of given to people. Even worse, we "hoard" more abstract things like education. The means to pay for free education for all in America is well within the accumulated wealth of a few of those who have been most successful at accumulating it. For sure I agree, though, that some sort of soviet-era attempt at forced redistribution wont magically solve all our issues. As you say, resources are limited and only further technology development will solve those issues.

Bartweiss 9y ago
Ah, thank you for the followup - you're right that we don't much disagree! There's undoubtedly room to go back and forth on specifics, but it's hard to deny the extreme cases; access to things like clean water, mosquito netting, and essential medicines are exceedingly low cost for their amount of benefit. The education point is even more poignant - faced with the sudden ability to offer educational resources at near-zero marginal cost, we've instead devoted huge effort to recreating scarcity (e.g. with login access codes in textbooks). Even outside gatekeeping spaces like college degrees, we end up with absurd situations like artificial limits on how many times a digital library book can be 'loaned' before it has to be 'destroyed'. It's been a depressing road seeing that even in the least-scarce domains imaginable, we can't accept ways to create wealth other than artificial scarcity. (And conversely, it's been awesome to see things like Patreon sponsor free-for-everyone content creation.) I'm not sure what the answer will be - it's pretty clear that new technology will be necessary to make non-scarcity possible, but insufficient to make it happen.
- ixtli 9y ago
  Your comment made me wonder how deleterious it would be to a top university, say, Harvard, to add an extra student to each major track every semester that expressed a strong genuine desire to attend but could pass no admissions threshold. Lets say the costs were covered by me, personally. Would 50 majors * 8 semesters = 400 extra students† who didn't pass entrance muster really negatively effect the operation of the university or change existing student's access? Your point about gatekeeping of resources that don't cost anything (perhaps for prestige?) is very striking. † There are ~20k matriculating students at Harvard currently according to google so this increases the load by 2%. Also I totally made up the 50 major tracks figure. Just a guess.

by ixtli 9y ago

Bartweiss 9y ago

Ah, thank you for the followup - you're right that we don't much disagree! There's undoubtedly room to go back and forth on specifics, but it's hard to deny the extreme cases; access to things like clean water, mosquito netting, and essential medicines are exceedingly low cost for their amount of benefit. The education point is even more poignant - faced with the sudden ability to offer educational resources at near-zero marginal cost, we've instead devoted huge effort to recreating scarcity (e.g. with login access codes in textbooks). Even outside gatekeeping spaces like college degrees, we end up with absurd situations like artificial limits on how many times a digital library book can be 'loaned' before it has to be 'destroyed'. It's been a depressing road seeing that even in the least-scarce domains imaginable, we can't accept ways to create wealth other than artificial scarcity. (And conversely, it's been awesome to see things like Patreon sponsor free-for-everyone content creation.) I'm not sure what the answer will be - it's pretty clear that new technology will be necessary to make non-scarcity possible, but insufficient to make it happen.

ixtli 9y ago
Your comment made me wonder how deleterious it would be to a top university, say, Harvard, to add an extra student to each major track every semester that expressed a strong genuine desire to attend but could pass no admissions threshold. Lets say the costs were covered by me, personally. Would 50 majors * 8 semesters = 400 extra students† who didn't pass entrance muster really negatively effect the operation of the university or change existing student's access? Your point about gatekeeping of resources that don't cost anything (perhaps for prestige?) is very striking. † There are ~20k matriculating students at Harvard currently according to google so this increases the load by 2%. Also I totally made up the 50 major tracks figure. Just a guess.