From: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp
Subject: Re: FAR future programs
Date: 18 Nov 1992 17:02:44 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, tzs@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) says:

>jfh@beach.cis.ufl.edu (James F. Hranicky) writes:
>>So, no one who likes collecting garbage, treating sewage, producing
>>food, etc. just quits....geeze. How much will you enjoy this scenario
>>when you have to do all this yourself? If people do this, someone has
>>to then come up with ways to automate these things...but no one wants
>>to, because they hate to work, so nothing gets done. The automation
>>has to come first, doesn't it?
>
>I would imagine there would be two classes of goods: basic goods and
>optional goods.  Basic goods are produced by the automated factories
>in sufficient quantity to satisfy all normal needs for them.  Optional
>goods are those that are not produced by the automated factories or
>whose quantity is limited.
>
>If you want basic goods, you call up the factory and ask for them and
>they are yours.  If you want optional goods, you buy them.  To get
>money for optional goods, you take a job, such as collecting garbage
>or treating sewage.
>
>Basic goods would include limited housing (e.g., a studio apartment),
>ordinary food, and public transportation.  Optional goods would include
>larger living space, fancy food, and cars.  Some goods would probably
>be both: computers, for example -- if you want PC class computing,
>that would be basic, but if you have a hankering to play with a Cray,
>you will need to work for it.
>
>As technology advances, the boundary between basic and optional would
>move, with more stuff being included in basic.
>
Nice - 

The historic task of political economy was to figure out how to 
provide for the conveniences and necessities of a society -

Current economic theory seems to define itself as "the study of 
the allocation of scarce means to satisfy competing ends"

The task of political economy which seems to have been used up 
though the 1800's recognized that it was possible to create new 
social wealth through the processes of production.

And scientific economists like William Petty (1623-1687) writing
during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, explained
that creating labor saving machinery created a gift for the future
as well as the present.


>>
>>Who will pay for their compensation?
>>
>>What seems to be missing from these arguments is the fact that capitalism
>>is the driving force for technological advancement, that the socialist
>>countries are completely impoverished.
>>
>
But workers in the U.S. are completely impoverished as well.

It seems that capitalism is not functioning to go forward in general
now - the currentfactory closures and so called "restructuring" of
corporations like GM setting a pattern to have such happen for
the rest of U.S. industry, shows that the Soviet Union breakup was
the arrow to what is now happening in the U.S. economy.

Perhaps we are at a point of transition where capitalism is no longer
functioning to make it possible for there to be an increase in
the social wealth of a society - and there is a need for new social
structures.

Whether the Soviet Union was "socialism" is a point that is open
to debate. Workers in Flint, Michigan in the 1940's felt that
you couldn't have socialism if workers were not able to have
uncensored local union newspapers to watchdog corporate and political
structures. 

In the Soviet Union there were no "watchdogs" allowed.

In the U.S. currently, with the exception of the net, there is
no oversight of the political or economic structures.

The General Motors Coup from the Board of Directors was done 
without any real challenge from any newspaper or institutional
groups - most people in the U.S. don't seem to realize that it even
happened.

So I'm raising the question as to whether the example of the 
Soviet Union shows us anything about socialism - I'm questioning
that the Soviet Union was socialism - rather that it was a form
of state capitalism where the corporate owners and the government
were the same entity.

While in countries like the U.S. the corporate owners and the government
are two different entities, but closely tied together.

>Capitalism is better that socialism at dealing with scarce resources, but
>that doesn't mean it is better for dealing with non-scarce resources.  The
>question is, can technology make some things that are now scarce become
>not so in the future?
>
The model of scarce resources maybe needs to be subjected to
examination.

Production of goods like cars, food, clothing, housing, etc. 
requires natural resources and labor. In the process of labor
being applied to natural resources (for example in making clothing)
something new is produced that is in addition to what was used
in the process of production. That new entity is social wealth
-- different economic systems then deal with this increased 
social wealth in different ways.

But by going back to examine the process of the creation of 
the necessities and conveniences of life for the people of 
a society - perhaps it is possible to get to the basic elements
that are needed to go forward.


For example that labor and natural resources are needed to 
produce new social wealth.

And that labor saving machinery makes it possible to produce more
goods with less labor and hence also increases social wealth.

>Also, in *my* Utopia there would still be capitalism -- there would
>certainly be people who want, say, a Quadra 950 rather than the "free"
>Mac Classic II that everyone would be entitled to.  To get the Quadra,
>they would need money, which they would get by working.
>
What model are you proposing for the production of the necessities?

>Also, don't discount curiosity as an incentive for technological advance.
>My gut feeling is that if no one were required to work, there would still
>be plenty of people who would *want* to work on developing new technology.
>Look at the number of people now who spend their spare time writing free
>software, for example.
>
Or who have spent their time and energies to make usenet news 
and the net possible.

Is usenet a harbinger of the future?

>--Tim Smith
>

Ronda

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Ronda Hauben  Amateur Computerist Newsletter
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