From: kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu (SunCat)
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp
Subject: Re: FAR future programs
Date: 16 Nov 92 23:19:05 GMT
Organization: Michigan State University

In article <37595@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> jfh@beach.cis.ufl.edu (James F.  
Hranicky) writes:
> In article <BxD9xx.MF3@ccu.umanitoba.ca> browns@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Stuart  
Brown) writes:
> 
> 
> >If society can painlessly produce all the basic needs for everyone,  
then
> >why this obsession with how each and every person can pay for thier  
needs
> >and get paid for thier choice of work?
> 
> Society cannot painlessly produce all the basic needs for everyone.
> In order to survive, someone must work...if you obtain things without
> working for them, someone else has worked for you. The idea that  
automation
> will eliminate the need for anyone to work is absurd. 

I believe he was talking about basic needs.  As is there are jobs to do  
and people to do them but plenty of things never get done.
[...]

> Ah, naivete!
> 
> So the answer is to just "automate" industries which produce these  
things,
> but who will do it?
> 
> In this world where noone works, who will build and keep up these 
> Utopian factories?
> 
> Build machines to keep up the machines, etc...eventually, people are
> going to have keep an eye on things, aren't they?

I would certainly work to make and maintain a better world if I only knew  
I could.

> 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?
Yes it does.  I see it as a kind of technological bootstrap situation.   
Something like a compiler--hard to write the very first one, but after  
that one's abilities are multiplied greatly.  Work actually pays off.
[...]
 I'm sure that
> >there will be an ample supply of tecnophiles to keep the gears of the
> >automated industy oiled as long as some attractive compensations are
> >offered.
> 
> Who will pay for their compensation?

They may do it because they like it.  

[...]
> This is exactly what capitalism is--each individual is a trader in 
> society, and in order to get something, he must give something in 
> return ("do ut des"). Capitalism is less fear driven than reward 
> driven.
You have described a society unlike present-day US.  Yet you call it  
capitalism.  Here those who work the hardest get the least reward.  And  
those who benefit from high federal deficits get a reward for something  
that undercuts America's ability to produce, inovate, support research and  
development, entrepeneurship.  
> 
[...]
the socialist
> countries are completely impoverished.
Cause or effect?  Are these countries being destabilized by the CIA.  Are  
they Stalinist or socialist?
[...]
> Jim Hranicky (jfh@reef.cis.ufl.edu)
James S. Albus wrote _Peoples' Capitalism: The Economics of the Robot  
Revolution_ yet he once said * that it probably wouldn't happen here  
first.  It would happen first in some small country that isn't so afraid  
of socialism (Scotland? Norway?)

See Bob Black's _Abolition of Work and other Essays_ for more "work sucks;  
productive play is good" talk.

Here is (IMHO) a relevant quote:
"The [Reagan] administration was committed to...a massive increase in      
the state sector of the economy in the traditional American way,
through the Pentagon system -- a device to force the public to invest
in high technology industry by means of the state-guaranteed market
for the production of high technology waste (armaments), and thus to
contribute to the general program of public subsidy, private profit,
called ``free enterprise''"
        Noam Chomsky, _Libya in U.S. Demonology_, Covert Action
        Information Bulletin #26, Summer 1986.


* in "Robot Welfare" by Ben Bova in _The Astral Mirror_

=========SunCat++++     | kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu
"Society is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.  
Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the 
better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty  
of 
the eater."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson