From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: The end of society as we know it (was Re: Currency Problems)
Date: 1 Oct 92 12:00:11 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

This has become longer than I'd expected, only tenuously related to 
British culture (though strongly to British and world problems), and a
bit polemical.  I don't apologise.  If you wade through it, though,
you'll have a good understanding of where MY side of the political
arguments we're so fond of in here are based.  And, of why it's all
your (and my) fault -- everything.  But not, unfortunately, of what
the answer is; though I have some feeling for the rough outline which
it needs to have.  I have tried to edit it to compress maximum information
into minimal words.

In article <qh2sumk@zola.esd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
>Which leads to an interesting question.   Why do leftists
>have this strange relationship with coal?   

My lefty friends accuse me of being a raving Tory, for saying the same
sorts of things that I say to Jon.  Simple answer is that coal is one
of the country's God-given resources, and it's useful.  Now, I think
burning it is a waste, as it has much more important uses.

However, the coal industry does serve as an easy example of economic
problems and realities, and you can see the social effects of the
closedown by a tour through the north of this country.

>What's so great
>about condemning yet another generation of other people's
>children to a lifetime in a dirty and dangerous environment,
>where they don't even have the satisfaction of working for
>an efficient and profitable industry.

I'm tempted to be flippant, and say that it's very nice of us then to
allow them to 'not work' in an efficient and profitable environment.
However, now everyone's had a little laugh at that, ignore it, because
there is a very real socio-economic problem here, which we refuse to
address, and worse, which we hide behind noble-sounding (and, even,
truly noble) words.  And, most of us are, I suspect, directly and
intentionally responsible for it.

It is my guess, by the nature of this medium, that most of us who
participate and who are out of school are either working in
'technology' jobs, or for 'technology' companies, or both.  Further,
I'd guess that most of the students who discover usenet are training
for such.

Now, what is the driving force behind this technology?  Put simply and
brutally, it is nothing more than 'putting people out of work'.

We hide it behind pleasant or worthwhile sentiments.  'If you buy X
from us, you will improve the efficiency of your company by 20%.'
Translation?  'If you buy this, you can sack 20% of your workforce.'
Even stronger: 'Y will protect people from having to do this
dangerous/unhealthy/unpleasant/boring task.' Translation?  'If you buy
this, you can sack 90% of your workforce.'

Now prima facie, that's very good.  There are more people than are
needed to produce the goods and services that they require, so why not
ease people's workloads?  There is no need for people to work in
dangerous (and so on) environments when machines can do it.  Very
noble.  I won't argue.

However, we tend to completely ignore the other side of the coin.  We,
you and I, are also producing, as a by-product, a growing class of
people who do not have jobs, and who, in many cases, may never find a
job.  We don't need them.  Almost.  We don't need them in the goods and
services PRODUCTION side.  However, to keep the economy running we DO
need them as consumers.

As a thought experiment, consider technology taken to its limit.
(After all, that's where we are trying to take it.)  It's now 2050, and
we have completely technified the country.  We can make everything we
need (goods AND services) using technological solutions.  No workforce
required.  But, since no-one has a job, no-one can afford to buy all
these products.  Not a good solution, but it IS the direction which
many of us are, if we're honest with ourselves, working towards.

Now, this requires a new paradigm, which is what I'm trying to create
for myself.  (This polemic is as much for my benefit as anyone
else's.)  In the simplest (and vaguest) terms, it will require that
society eliminate the stigma attached to being unemployed, and, harder,
that it figure out how to let the unemployed to share the benefits.

Neither socialism nor capitalism works.  Why?  Because everything is,
in a traditional sense, 'free'.  Socialism assumes that the true value
of things is in the labour of the workers; there won't be any.
Capitalism assumes that the value of things is a result of the people
who supply the capital; we won't need any.

Outrageous?  No, and, it IS what we are trying to achieve.  How are we
going to get there?  Well, end products will cost nothing to make.  No
labour costs; it's all done by machine.  No energy costs; we're using
sustainable, and virtually unlimited, energy sources (probably
solar-generated electricity, but maybe wave-power and/or wind).

It costs something to make the machines?  No, they are just end-products.
The labour and energy required cost nothing.

Raw-material costs?  No.  They reflect the labour and energy costs of
extracting/growing/recycling/... the raw materials, and we don't have
any labour and energy costs.  The raw materials are 'free' as well.

The result?  Neither labour, nor capital, have any value.  How do we
deal with that?  What do we do with the people?  (And, how do we
'ration' scarce resources, basically things which have to be dug out of
the ground, which can't be made or grown?  Central control doesn't seem
to work; look at the ex-USSR.  'The market' won't work, because 'money'
will be meaningless -- see above.  We do seem to be developing a knack
for making more from less, but I'd suggest that recycling also needs a
lot of work.)

Science fiction?  Maybe, but it is what we are working for, and we seem
to be getting there a lot faster than some people think.  We're seeing
the beginnings of this in computer networking.  Fiber and future
technologies are taking bandwidth up at a frightening rate, and
marginal cost down at the same speed.  Telecom are trying to figure out
how they will deal with a world in which communications bandwidth is
'unlimited' (meaning, more than we could all possibly use), and 'free'
(meaning, the incremental cost of providing or using more of it is
approximately zero).  It's coming quickly; they are planning for it
now.  It will require (or allow) a much different view of how the world
works.  Comms is not the only field where this will happen.

There is one major force which could stop it; ironically it's precisely
that group of people who would benefit the most who present the
greatest danger.  Specifically, if we don't figure out, pretty
quickly, how to extend the benefits of this world we're making to all
the have-nots, we'll see a backlash that will make the Luddite movement
look like an afternoon tea party at Buckingham Palace.  And, in my 
opinion, it'll be totally understandable, and all our fault.  The
Communists have now learned that you can only suppress people's
aspirations for so long, before things break.  The Capitalists haven't
had as graphic a lesson.  Yet.

>Oh, wait.   I think I remember the answer.  It's because
>jobs in service industries aren't "real" while jobs in
>mining are.   Wasn't that it?

No.  I 'sell' services myself, and mine is certainly a 'real' job.  I
don't believe, though, that you can base a healthy large economy on
services alone.  You need a mix.  And, anyway, as outlined above,
service jobs are going to vanish under the impact of technology, just
as hard-product jobs are.  It's not a question of whether, only when.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132