From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Subject: Re: black herring on econ
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 14:10:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep26.183553.6567@vela.acs.oakland.edu> wlee@argo.acs.oakland.edu writes:
>I'd like to just throw a black herring into the age-old econ debate between
>"right" "libertarians" and "left" "anarchists"...
>
>"Libertarians" think that Property = Liberty (Give me Property or give me
>Death!-)  Back in my "liberal" days I thought economic freedom meant having
>more than one fulltimepermanentjobwithbenefits offer to choose from. Now I'm
>hip to the fact that "economic necessity" is the string the archons pull us
>by.  So why aren't we using everything in our technological bag of tricks in a
>concerted battle against economic necessity?  To me this means attempting to
>create (in market terms) a permanent glut of necessity goods like food and
>housing.  Instead it is used to create a glut of labor, and of course most of
>us react to this situation precisely the way the archons want us to.  Another
>trick they use is that of turning luxuries into necessities.  I live in Detroit
>(where effective public transportation is effectively nonexistent) and work
>at an auto plant (through a temp agency of course) for $7.50/hr.  I'd have to
>say the automobile (IMHO the least appropriate technology outside the military)
>creates for most of us more economic burdens than economic opportunities.
>The capitalist assertion that the industrial "revolution" raised the general
>standard of living should be called into SERIOUS question.  Even the Amerikan
>Government is hip to the fact that the non-farm poverty level is more $ than
>the farm one.

I suspect that the present technological level is much too low for a really
good society. There is just so much shitwork involved in maintaining a
reasonably comfortable, interesting life that there's a strong incentive
to create/maintain systems for sloughing that work off onto other people.

(I've heard the idea that people in hunter/gatherer societies only needed
to work 4 hours a day, but (a) we can't get there from here--even if enough
people died off, someone would remember how to reinvent agriculture, (b) I
always wonder if that four hours includes child care, and (c) I understand
that they had a 50% infant mortality rate. I'm not enthusiastic about
utopias which only work if you don't consider babies to be of much value.
Besides, I _like_ heating, air-conditioning, books, medium tech music, science
fiction conventions, etc., etc.)

In re cars: I think that it would take two changes to make the
transportation system much more useful. One is to take away the government
monopoly on mass transit and permit jitneys. (Jitneys are privately owned
buses--I gather they're common in the Carribean.) 

The other is a social change of regarding drivers and hitch-hikers who
attack each other as guilty of an especially disgusting betrayal instead
of blaming the victim for being fool enough to trust a stranger.

>So anyone with me on this little project?  Don't underguesstimate what we're
>up against.  The Bible says that economic necessity is God's way of punishing
>us for Original Sin.

I think your project is a very good idea, though my temperment seems to be
more verbal than technological. (Sometimes there's a little voice in the
back of my head saying, "What are you doing to help with the Singularity?",
though. (The Singularity is Vernor Vinge's term for a great technological
change that will make the future incomprehensible to us-as-we-are-now. One
of the distinguishing features is intelligence increase.) 
>
>BTW I'm not a utopian...I'd settle for a world in which nice guys finish
>second last.

Good line.

>Walter Lee    wlee@argo.acs.oakland.edu, lee@plex-1.ann-arbor.mi.us
>
                              Nancy Lebovitz
                              calligraphic button catalogue available 
                                 by email  (170K)
                              nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu

Onomatopia--a social/political system that just sounds good