Apprehending Postscarcity

Inevitable Obsolescence of Human Labor

2012-09-18T14:05:00.001-07:00

It's just not theoretical anymore. the forecasts of the past century or so have come to pass. We're here, now. We need to be in the present when we're making public policy that shapes and guides the next steps into the future.

Imagine - #GSP12 Postscarcity Abundance Remix

2012-08-03T21:52:00.001-07:00

How Much Is Enough?

2012-08-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

"Instead of redistribution, we offer people debt; and of course that is a very, very insecure way. Another would be an Unconditional Citizen's Income ..."

"The economics of the future are somewhat different." - Jean Luc Picard

2012-01-15T15:13:00.000-08:00

Perhaps too much data on this site is making some aspects of immediate and inevitable change seem overwhelming. Maybe a little make believe will help those trapped in the current make believe world.

But wait, there's more.

The Great American Poverty Tour

2011-08-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Is this the model we expect from the Greatest Society On Earth? Or this? Or this?

Beginning Friday, Cornel West and PBS host Tavis Smiley will take to the road with a 15-city “Poverty Tour” to raise awareness about the plight of impoverished people.

They’ll visit soup kitchens, public housing projects, and farms. They’ll stay with low-income families and along the way they’ll try to assess whether Obama’s policies are working.

“This is a way to galvanize as opposed to complain,” West said. “Both parties have rendered the poor invisible. The only thing we have left is to dramatize their plight.”

It's long past time to grow up and out of emotionally hijacked redistribution rhetoric.

Read: An economy is like a body's Circulatory System

New American P.I.I.E. - Permanently Inadequate Intermittent Employment

@CornelWest: I try to tell the truth.

When 40% of our children are going hungry,

I'm going to get morally outraged at that. http://ow.ly/5WsIH

The End of Poverty

2011-05-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

A Feature Film

John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, author, "24,000 people die every single day from hunger and hunger related diseases. At least 24,000. That doesn't need to happen, we have plenty of resources, so that shouldn't happen; it happens because of the system we've created. We can say, without a doubt, that this system is an absolute failure. From the most rational, objective economic standpoint it's a failure. Less than 5% of the world's population live in the United States. We are consuming over 25% of the world's resources and creating roughly 30% of it's major pollution. That's a failure."

FRIDA: Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-Arm Assembly

2011-04-28T10:19:00.001-07:00

Idiocracy vs Postscarcity

2011-04-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Mark Taylor in Nature News suggests that we mustReform the PhD system or close it down. Awesome. Are we so pathologically obsessed with the status quo that we'd actually institute a systemic policy that intentionally retards the advance of knowledge and the continued growth of human intelligence? Really? It's not news to readers of this space that:

Higher education in the United States has long been the envy of the world, but that is changing. The technologies that have transformed financial markets and the publishing, news and entertainment industries are now disrupting the education system.

We'd rather shut down universities than contemplate ways to transcend this brief blip, this historical aberration known as the industrial capitalist, and post-industrial information revolutions? Why not declare victory, and move on to the next model? On the other disheartening hand, if the best that our best and brightest "surplus PhD's" can collectively figure out is to turn back to pre-middle ages, perhaps we deserve the inevitable zombie apocalypse idiocracy, after all.

Dude, that would totally suck. Let's please not.

A Poison Pill for the Scarcity Zeitgeist Zombie

2011-04-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

In How to Kill a Debt Monster (The Ingenesist Project) explains:

Suppose someone discovers a new form of energy that is free for all to use with no negative environmental impact. Suppose that another person creates a device that allows people to communicate telepathically. Suppose someone discovers an anti-gravity machine that can transport people and objects cheaply and rapidly. Suppose someone invents high-yield perennial food crops that don’t need to be replanted every year.

Each would deposit huge amounts of economic value while simultaneously wrecking havoc on the financial system. Oil companies would go out of business, telecoms would go bust, transportation industries would cease, and agribusiness would fail, etc. Millions would lose their jobs and mortgages would collapse, etc.

This is the straightforward conundrum humanity faces at the inflection point from a scarcity to postscarcity existence. We achieve such overwhelming surpluses, in so many domains, that the Scarcity Game is literally laughed out of existence.

While the scenarios above illustrate the point well, we don't have to wait for telepathy to see these forces at work, right now. Today. Present tense.

We have the "new form[s] of energy that is free for all to use with no negative environmental impact." They are called solar, wind, and geothermal.
We have the devices that allow people to effectively communicate telepathically. They're called smart phones, bluetooth headsets, mobile chat, and SMS. We all have fun with this every day as we use this "digital telepathy" to talk with friends about the other people who are standing right there in front of us.
As for perennial food crops, okay, this one maybe has a little ways to go; however, there's no debating the magnitude of the productive disruption created by improved technologies, genetically modified crops, and the bombastic Brute Forced Scarcity of various subsidies which are only in place in order to prevent the collapse of food prices described, above.

Obviously, postscarcity isn't evenly distributed, yet. However like William Gibson's future itself, postscarcity is indeed already here. What's a bit counterintuitive is the discovery that it actually isn't about distribution at all, it's about circulation, sustainable flows, transpiration at the economic capillary level; at the edge, where all True Value is -- and always has been -- ascribed, created, and exchanged.

Highest Market Value is in Things That Weigh Nothing

2011-01-24T15:33:00.000-08:00

Debunking Postscarcity: 5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.

2010-10-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

Gotta include a mix of this type of content in order to keep it real.

5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S. | Cracked.com

There's truthishness here.

What is Progressive Postscarcity?

2010-10-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's as simple as Teddy Roosevelt 2.0.

"With its crowning invention of the Internet, the corporate-state apparatus has laid the seeds for its own obsolescence."

"We must usher in an era of flexible manufacturing networks, digital fabrication, and distributed production. This sort of resilient model is our only hope against the converging crises we are experiencing, from the economic to the ecological."

Zeitgeist: International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment

2010-10-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

“Agree with me if I seem to you to speak the truth; or, if not, withstand me might and main that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my desire, and like the bee leave my sting in you before I die. And now let us proceed.” - Socrates

"In the past, throughout almost all of human history, the main threat to survival was nature. Today, it is culture. Not only does structural violence kill more people than all the behavioral violence put together; structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence."

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Official Trailer- [ Extended ] from ZeitgeistMovie.com on Vimeo.

SYNOPSIS: Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which will present a case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society.

This is hardly a new anthem. Martin Luther King, Jr., December 18, 1963:

"Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is the word: maladjusted. ... I would like to say to you today, in a very honest manner, that there are some things in our society and somethings in our world of which I'm proud to be maladjusted. And I call upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted to these things until the Good Society is realized."

"I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of God's children smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society."

"In other words, I'm about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment ..."

Star Trek Replicator: Dot Matrix Edition

2010-09-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

Start replicating today at shapeways.com

Reinventing the Wheel

2010-09-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is another small data point perhaps indicating that, as a population, we have so much Cognitive Surplus available, and are seemingly so collectively bored, that we literally turn to finding all manner of new ways to reinvent the wheel.

The old cliche says, "don't waste time reinventing the wheel," it's all about worshipping ever greater commodity efficiency. But the new reality is, "don't waste mind rolling around on wooden wheels." Keep innovating. Keep incrementing. Keep adapting. Keep accelerating.

Efficiency for it's own sake is great, it has taken us so very far. Yet, to move forward, we must increasingly encourage Ingenuity, Inspiration, Inventiveness and find the resource circulation models that foster development and reward the outputs of the best of these human characteristics, which are notorious in their inability to generate rapid profits, yet are also undeniably the source of the greatest stores of enduring and sustainable human value.

Please Pay Machine ONLY. BEWARE Do Not Pay Any Person.

2010-09-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: Philip Greenspun

Homeless? Just Hit Print.

2010-09-14T06:37:00.001-07:00

NYTimes: 3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution

"A California start-up is even working on building houses. Its printer, which would fit on a tractor-trailer, would use patterns delivered by computer, squirt out layers of special concrete and build entire walls that could be connected to form the basis of a house. It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods."

"Contour Crafting, based in Los Angeles, has pushed its limits. Based on research done by Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, the University of Southern California, Contour Craftin printing device for building houses. The start-up com commercialize a machine capable of building an enti machine that fits on the back of a tractor-trailer."

Change Is As Change Does

2009-11-13T13:46:00.000-08:00

In 1959 Sputnik was no ISS.
In 2009 mechanosynthesis and electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) are no Star Trek Replicator.

Yet.

There were many people who may have talked a good game about the promise of space and telecommunications 50 years ago, while privately despising and even undermining the very people who Actually Made These Changes Happen. Doubt and fear-bound humans have never understood change on that scale, much less at that velocity. Sputnik and the space race didn't cause that. However, they do provide a vivid depiction of technological change.

It's not entirely the doubters' fault. It's in our monkey genetic code. Different kinds of change frighten different types of monkeys (humans) on various levels. Even when we vote for change, we often don't really mean it. Often, what we really mean is: can I get that in blue instead of red? None of us is entirely immune to this desire for change that's not change.

Today, as in 1959, many continue to talk a good game about the promise of accelerating change, but privately they do not believe it for one second. They want to be perceived as hip and knowledgeable, while hedging their bets in private company; this, in order to not appear foolish, later. Ironically, that's the very strategy that ultimately exposes the timidity and indecisiveness that they attempted to hide.

We want change that's not change. We like our scarcity thinking. It's what we've always known. It puts some nebulous "they" in charge of the economy; the economy in charge of our everyday reality; and our dispassionate circumstances thereby dictate our every waking decision. Safe. Stagnant.

Postscarcity means that I may have to rethink all of that. I might have to make new decisions, based upon better conclusions, derived from closer inspection of the current situation.

What if postscarcity is not a cute little theory, but the long predicted result of the past 200 years of industrial development and success, the past five thousand years of cultural evolution and uplift? What if postscarcity brings with it today all the attendant organizational and institutional challenges that one might reasonably expect as we witness the last gasps of a dilapidated, pre-industrial ideological infrastructure that worked so very well, for so very few, for so long?

This is what cultural metamorphoses feels like; a gut wrenching transmutation of the vestigial, collective assortment of expectations and norms that forged the comforting mythological consensus reality affectionately referred to as emergent industrial America.

Scarcity and myth were our center, but the center didn't hold.

It's as if the forecasted inversion of the Earth's magnetic poles has occurred. East is the new West.

It's a confusing time. An uncomfortable time that just feels somehow unfinished, not properly planned, incomplete.

Value Flows from Abundance

2009-08-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

"Plentitude, not scarcity, governs the network economy." -- Kevin Kelly

"Dealing with this plentitude is critical because the totals of everything we manufacture in the world are only compounding." -- Kevin Kelly

So this too is all brand new and shocking news, right? Wrong. Try 1998.

More Self-Destructive Addictions: Scarcity Through Coercion

2009-08-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Abbot comments on Accelerating Future:

So far, human society has a poor track with abundance. We don’t know what to do with it, so we typically invent scarcity through coercion. We’ve had the technology to provide material comfort to everyone on the planet for decades now. It hasn’t happened.

Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies

2009-07-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

"My friends, it is time to establish Abundance as a field of study.

Our task is dauntingly difficult, as most of humanity has slumbered in a scarcity stupor for so long they cannot be easily awakened. The goal is ambitious: From 2009-2010 to lay out the central concepts and theoretical foundations of Abundance Studies.

Establishing a journal is a way to focus our intellectual efforts, build a "brand" and create a home for this new field." - Joseph Jackson

How can I possibly express sufficient professional appreciation and personal respect for the groundbreaking work of Joseph Jackson and all of those involved in this rigorous trailblazing academic work? Mere words or actions can never suffice. May this essential community of scholars forgive my own early participatory negligence, born only of one's own human limitations; and may the coming transition for our emergent global community and subsequent history itself render their due recompense to these incomparably prescient and bold leaders.

Paul Romer: Many Hong Kongs

2009-05-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 12:28:40 -0700
From: Stewart Brand
Subject: Many Hong Kongs (Paul Romer talk)
Repost from: [SALT] mailing list

This talk was the first public launch of an idea that Romer has been working on for two years.

His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules.

Technologies rearrange materials with ingenious recipes and formulas. More people create more technologies, which in turn generates more people. In recent decades technology has enabled the "demographic transition" which lowers birthrates and raises income per person even higher as population levels off.

Rules structure the interactions between people. As population density increased, the idea of ownership became an important rule. A supporting rule for managing violations replaced the old idea of deadly vengeance with awarding damages instead: simply shifting value replaced destroying value. For the idea of open science, recognition replaced ownership as the main event, which means that whoever publishes first is most rewarded, and that accelerates science.

Rules can amplify or stifle technological progress. China was the world leader in inventing new technologies until about a thousand years ago, when centralized dynastic rules slowed innovation almost to a stop

.Romer notes that business keeps evolving as new companies introduce new rule sets. The good ideas are copied, and workers migrate from failing companies to the new and old ones where the new rules are working well.

The same goes for countries. Starting about 1970, China took some of the effective rules of Hong Kong (which was managed from afar by England) and set up four special economic zones along the coast operating as imitation Hong Kongs. They worked so well that China rolled out the scheme for the whole country, and its Gross Domestic Product took off. "Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history."

Romer suggests that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe import administrative control); rethink citizenship (support residency, but maybe import voice in political affairs); and rethink scale (instead of focusing on nations, focus on cities---on city
states like Hong Kong and Singapore.)

Paul Romer proposes that developing countries could invite instant Hong Kongs---new cities in new locations run by experienced governments such as Canada or Finland. They would enrich the country where they are built as special economic zones while also rewarding the distant government that makes the investment of building the new city state and installing a set of fair and productive rules. Over time, as with Hong Kong, the new city is turned over to the host country.

The idea is getting some traction in the developing world. This summer Romer is going public with a Bridge Cities Institute website for further exploration and eventual application of the idea.

One miracle of cities is that they sometimes renew themselves brilliantly. This could be a whole new form of that.

-- Stewart Brand -- The Long Now Foundation -- Seminars & downloads at http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/

Missed Paul Romer in Realtime

2009-05-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

Darn it. Missing this event Right Now ... in realtime. Maybe it will be on the Video Podcast.

Star Trek: Postscarcity Economics for Dummies?

2009-05-11T14:40:00.001-07:00

As far as I'm concerned, it's generally the chickenshit Status Quo Credibility Hedgers that hide behind the word "utopian," mostly because they are just too lazy or afraid to make the effort required to promote, provoke, and perpetuation progressive change. However, knowing that the world is as it is -- at least until we so-called utopians make it better for all of you; no thanks to your ankle biting -- it's worth noting small advances of popular awareness like this from Salon.com:

[I]n the long run, suggests Romer and as potentially demonstrated by "Star Trek," the benefit of expanding knowledge and technological change will be widely distributed prosperity: an end to scarcity, a future where the fundamental challenge of providing for our basic needs has been solved.

Click to read the rest of the story ...

4 Day Work Week as Labor Productivity Dividend

2009-04-10T06:39:00.001-07:00

The four day work week is not as uncommon as first thought, with forms of it popping up all across the US. The USA Today article notes that “The four-day work week is fairly common among city and county governments…” and it continues:

Jacqueline Byers, director of research at the National Association of Counties, says the four-day work week is gaining in popularity among county governments. Marion County, Fla., has a mandatory four-day work week for employees; Oconee County, S.C., and Walworth County, Wis., have it for road work crews, while Will County, Ill., has it for the auditor’s office. Oakland County, Mich., is seeking volunteers for a four-day work week, and Miami-Dade County, Fla., and Suffolk County, N.Y., are moving toward it, she says