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Thanks for the interesting reply. Related to the Swiss model, how society controls levels of automation, and also resilience, you might like the sci-fi novel "R

Thanks for the interesting reply. Related to the Swiss model, how society controls levels of automation, and also resilience, you might like the sci-fi novel "Retrotopia" by John Michael Greer. It explores those issues from one perspective. Here is one chapter from the novel (more are on that blog if you don't want to buy the book): https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-12-31/retrotopia-neglected-technologies/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-12-31/retrotopia-neg... "This is the twelfth installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator attends the Lakeland Republic’s annual drone shoot, and finds out that not all technological innovations start out from the current state of the art..."

kkfx 5y ago
Thank you for the insights :-) I'll read tomorrow! About the real world, ideally the society control the automation in a very simple manner: since the public (State) fund well public research most of the private sector just implement @the good/practical part of those public research, think about what happen in IT or pharma industry, Xerox research, AT&T research were formally private, but practically a public paid and public pushed research, GAFAM born out of it and after those big labs no more real evolution/revolution happen; similarly for pharma industry in USA there was (ok, still is but just for name) the NIH, others just produce drugs discovered and tested by them. In such model there is not much room to steer the society, the most advanced research born out of public bodies who work for public interests, private can't compete, they can obviously research for themselves, avoid building something they dislike etc but can't really steer. That's is. In laws term suffice ensuring an effective private-public separation forbidding the sliding door's mechanism and paying well enough, giving research facilities and freedom enough to discourage the jump toward the private sector. Once schools/uni are a public-almost-only show, research is mostly public the private sector is powerless. They can make good profits of course, but not against the public. If you observe the past in the end companies who have built and sold public research were very profitable and even with high taxation the sole who gain less than now were top management and private equity investors, all the others gains more and for good. If you analyze the history most advancement born out of public research or free research (old patronages), private research have given something to the history but small things not high tech, yes, most advancement are born out of military needs, but still, public needs. To arrive at this point we need culture, so we need a middle class wealthy enough to study and live to live and progress not just to amassing money like classic stereotypical parvenues. That's why wall street was always against the middle class and culture, they prefer Marxists other bourgeois for this very reason, in the end they know that even Marxism promise much but never give real power to the masses, witch is just another form of neoliberal capitalism, like the actual Chinese one, while a classic bourgeois society actually gives power to the masses, in a substantial Democracy because that's the sole form of organization that ensure to most people the best social protection and they can't just select by census much.
- pdfernhout 5y ago
  Related to your point on public research, here is something I wrote in 2001 originally to the Markle Foundation on public funding of digital public works: https://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html https://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html A shorter version: "An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society" https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors... "Executive summary: Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations." And much more recently, from 2015, an email to Richard Stallman suggesting a campaign about a a pledge for foundations and non-profits to only fund and create free works. https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-works.html https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-w...

kkfx 5y ago

Thank you for the insights :-) I'll read tomorrow! About the real world, ideally the society control the automation in a very simple manner: since the public (State) fund well public research most of the private sector just implement @the good/practical part of those public research, think about what happen in IT or pharma industry, Xerox research, AT&T research were formally private, but practically a public paid and public pushed research, GAFAM born out of it and after those big labs no more real evolution/revolution happen; similarly for pharma industry in USA there was (ok, still is but just for name) the NIH, others just produce drugs discovered and tested by them. In such model there is not much room to steer the society, the most advanced research born out of public bodies who work for public interests, private can't compete, they can obviously research for themselves, avoid building something they dislike etc but can't really steer. That's is. In laws term suffice ensuring an effective private-public separation forbidding the sliding door's mechanism and paying well enough, giving research facilities and freedom enough to discourage the jump toward the private sector. Once schools/uni are a public-almost-only show, research is mostly public the private sector is powerless. They can make good profits of course, but not against the public. If you observe the past in the end companies who have built and sold public research were very profitable and even with high taxation the sole who gain less than now were top management and private equity investors, all the others gains more and for good. If you analyze the history most advancement born out of public research or free research (old patronages), private research have given something to the history but small things not high tech, yes, most advancement are born out of military needs, but still, public needs. To arrive at this point we need culture, so we need a middle class wealthy enough to study and live to live and progress not just to amassing money like classic stereotypical parvenues. That's why wall street was always against the middle class and culture, they prefer Marxists other bourgeois for this very reason, in the end they know that even Marxism promise much but never give real power to the masses, witch is just another form of neoliberal capitalism, like the actual Chinese one, while a classic bourgeois society actually gives power to the masses, in a substantial Democracy because that's the sole form of organization that ensure to most people the best social protection and they can't just select by census much.

pdfernhout 5y ago
Related to your point on public research, here is something I wrote in 2001 originally to the Markle Foundation on public funding of digital public works: https://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html https://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html A shorter version: "An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society" https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors... "Executive summary: Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations." And much more recently, from 2015, an email to Richard Stallman suggesting a campaign about a a pledge for foundations and non-profits to only fund and create free works. https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-works.html https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-w...