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The seasteading institute hopes for an exploration of possibilities. Not implementing one particular agenda. And exploring the solution space could lead to unfo
by SudarshanP 16y ago
The seasteading institute hopes for an exploration of possibilities. Not implementing one particular agenda. And exploring the solution space could lead to unforeseen rewards.
For eg. the open source movement hacked the legal system to come up with an awesome solution. It was different from capitalism, which assumes that innovation happens only if people see financial reward. In a communist system, you are "expected" to innovate by an order from the top. But these systems never thought that people could do stuff like writing things like Operating systems, Compilers, browsers, databases... medicine... electronics, architecture, movies, novels and even ads "just for the sake of doing it."
Our current systems are tied to labor as a critical cog for the economics to work out. In the future automation will significantly reduce the need for labor in manufacturing and services. This will be a disruptive change. Right now the labor that gets outsourced to cheaper countries will finally be outsourced to machines. A lot of services like mechanical turk will even take up skilled jobs like even that of doctors.
Right now though machines do most of our manufacturing, we have invented absurdly complex services to keep 6 billion people busy. But at some point we can stop and ask... is this the best way to let 6 billion people have what they want/need.
Right now we technically have driverless cars. It is not inconceivable we will automate most of humanity's grunt work. The rest is FUN to do "just for the sake of it". So it will be a time to ask whether capitalism+voter elected oligarchy is the best way to live in such a world.
Watching this video from the venusproject was a real eyeopener: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3932487043163636261# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3932487043163636261#
http://www.thevenusproject.com/ http://www.thevenusproject.com/
Another interesting take on the effect of automation on the way we live is this short story at http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Carl Marx codified communism, The French revolution gave us the modern democratic framework, Stallman and others gave us the skeleton for open source. It just shows radical changes are possible. Maybe we will invent something totally different from what we currently have. Maybe not. But why ridicule a guy like Thiel who wants to sail west to reach the east. Maybe he will end up doing something very different from what he set out to do.
- arvinjoar 16y agoThe problem with the Venus project is that its leading proponents do not understand basic economic principles and how they apply to scarcity. Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman are not part of the Venus project, they are libertarian transhumanists. Full disclosure, I am a libertarian too, and if you're interested in the economic aspects of why I don't think the Venus project is a good thing, read this article, http://mises.org/daily/4636 http://mises.org/daily/4636. This is HN, so I won't get into any political debates, but I do think that the information I've provided is relevant.
- arethuza 16y agoSo what are the differences between the Venus Project and Communism as described by Marx?
- stcredzero 16y agoA lot of services like mechanical turk will even take up skilled jobs like even that of doctors. There are already organizations which try to increase the efficiency of doctors by maximizing the time they see patients and increasing their throughput. My experience is that many manage to increase profits while depersonalizing care.
- olalonde 16y agoI guess that's meant to be a criticism of capitalism. Note however that health care is a highly regulated market which is much more likely to be accountable for the behavior you noticed.
- BerislavLopac 16y agoIn a communist system, you are "expected" to innovate by an order from the top. You're confusing communism with totalitarianism. It's a forgiving mistake considering that most nominally communist systems in history were actually totalitarian states with a communist ideology for the masses. Of course, it's a whole separate discussion whether a true communism can ever really arise from the people, i.e. bottom-up, as opposed to being "declared" by the ruling class.