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From: Don Geddis on 27 Jul 2006 12:31 "Duncan Rose" <duncan.rose(a)jdwilliams.co.uk> wrote on 26 Jul 2006 13:1: >> As a thought experiment, perhaps we could consider where we'll be >> assuming that AI is a solved problem, and robots with capabilities >> exceeding our own actually exist -- who then will own the wealth? [...] >> Will we have the will and the ability to change the way we distribute and >> measure wealth in our societies at such a time, once all 'work' is >> performed by automatons? [...] > at some point it seems likely we'll have to totally reevaluate our ideas of > what has worth and what does not Economics is about allocation of scarce resources, where more people want a thing than there is of that thing. (It's also about incentives, and how they change human "free will" behavior.) Economics doesn't really deal with goods that aren't scarce, like sunlight or breathable air. If robots can grow all the food that anyone wants, and supply all the power, then those things will no longer have a cost (just like sunlight and air), and anyone can use as much as they want of any of it. > If we can do that in the future there's no reason we can't be putting the > framework in place for doing it NOW (i.e. starting a process of redefining > what society considers to be worth rewarding). The reason we can't do it now is that those items today DO have a cost, and more people desire them than human society can provide. That's why the field of economics exists in the first place: because there must be SOME methodology to assign people to the things they want, if there isn't enough for everyone to have all that they dream of. -- Don _______________________________________________________________________________ Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don(a)geddis.org One of the most attractive features of a Connection Machine is the array of blinking lights on the faces of its cabinet. -- CM Paris Ref. Manual, v6.0, p48.
From: Don Geddis on 27 Jul 2006 12:25 "Duncan Rose" <duncan.rose(a)jdwilliams.co.uk> wrote on 26 Jul 2006 13:0: > Are you saying that the only way to narrow the gap is to legislate 'a loss' > on the richest couple of percent? Pretty much, yes. Wealth is a multiplier in creating new wealth. Left alone, it's perfectly natural that rich people will get richer faster than poor people will get richer. These are strong natural forces that you have to take into account. > I'm not interested in making the wealthy poorer, only the poor wealthier. Not quite. Your stated goal was to make the poor wealthier FASTER than the rich were getting wealthier. (Otherwise the gap between rich and poor grows.) I was proposing an alternative, that you focus your concern on whether the poor are getting wealthier or not. You have insisted that relative wealth (the gap between rich and poor) is what matters to you. These choices have huge impacts on public policy. The easiest and fastest ways for the poor to get wealthier, as a side effect, happen to make the rich wealthier even faster. If you insist on capping the growth in wealth of the rich, you'll generally find that the poor improve their lot only very slowly, if at all. (On an absolute scale of course -- surely the gap between them shrinks, by definition.) > I like to hope though that there is indeed a point where the material needs > and wants of a sufficiently large proportion of the (world) population are > met in such a way that people will be able to mark it on their calendars > and point to it and say "this is when the world went from being generally > an unhappy and unjust place to a generally happy and just place". Do you have an opinion about the current state of the most poor in the US? It's rare for even a long-time unemployed adult to be in danger of death from starvation, or from exposure to the elements. Or even random violence, for that matter. (Most folks worse off than that have additional mental health problems, leaving them unable to take care of themselves. But the vast majority of halfway competent adults can locate the resources necessary for life, from soup kitchens to churches to government welfare.) Has the US already achieved your desired level of prosperity? > I agree that in objective terms even the poorest in our societies are > far wealthier than they were a few years ago even (ever watch those > '70s cop shows? How depressed the areas they were filmed in look...). > I'm not sure it's really possible for the very poor to be 'happy' > (maybe it is -- certainly some people seem to be able to be happy > whatever circumstances they find themselves in), and it would be > difficult to measure too, but I wonder whether today's poor are happier > or less happy than the poor that went before... If your goal is happiness, that's yet a different topic (different than economics) -- but it can also be explored scientifically. Take a look at books like "The Progress Paradox" (Easterbrook) just as an example. Plenty of other research on this topic. The basic conclusion seems to be that long-term happiness levels are more of function of basic personality than of circumstances. Net worth is only very loosely correlated with happiness. Random example: Once you pass poverty levels in the US ($20K/yr?), it turns out that for a huge range of annual incomes (up to maybe $300K/yr), everybody reports that all their stress over money would disappear overnight if only they had "twice as much income" as they currently do. So someone making $30K/yr is unhappy, but believes they would be ecstatic if only they made $60K/yr. Oddly, though, someone making $100K/yr is ALSO unhappy, and believes their problems would be solved if only their made $200K/yr. FWIW, the field of "economics" isn't about making people happy. It's about making them (monetarily) rich. > Even given your definition above however I would argue there are far, > far more people in the world now who are unable to provide themselves > with shelter, food, and live under far more immediate threats of death > from disease or violence, infant morality rates, etc. than there were a > couple of hundred years ago. Not in Europe or the US surely, but the > world's a big place. Well, in absolute numbers, sure -- but only because the world population has grown so fast. (There may be roughly as many people alive right now as have ever existed in all of history.) But in terms of percentage of world population? I doubt it. Pre-industrial revolution, only a tiny elite was out of deadly poverty. Dying from old age was the exception, not the norm, until only very recently. The whole rise of the "middle class" is a relatively recent phenomena. Before a couple hundred years ago, you were basically either royalty, or you were poor. There was nothing in between. Today a much higher percentage of overall population is past the basic needs of life (food, shelter, etc.), than ever before in past human societies. > Sure, in economic terms, a totally controlled national economy might lead > to a very rapid increase in societal wealth (economic's wealth) Actually, experience has shown the opposite. Centrally controlled economies have been horrible at generating national wealth. Decentralized capitalist economies have far, far outstripped them in long-term GDP growth. The evidence for this is now overwhelming, especially in so-called "natural experiments" were most of the variables were close to identical except for the economic(/political) structure. For example, East vs. West Germany over the last fifty years; or North vs. South Korea over the last forty years. Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. vs. Cuba, China, USSR, etc. > I have no desire to return to a pre-industrial society, or to dispose > of technical and scientific advances (if I were I'd just turn Amish I > guess). Given your goals, I wonder why Amish society doesn't appeal to you more. Overall, those folks are reasonably happy. Surely more so than the average yuppie in downtown Manhattan. -- Don _______________________________________________________________________________ Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don(a)geddis.org I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. -- A. Whitney Brown
From: Duncan Rose on 27 Jul 2006 14:14 Don Geddis wrote: > "Duncan Rose" <duncan.rose(a)jdwilliams.co.uk> wrote on 26 Jul 2006 13:1: > >> As a thought experiment, perhaps we could consider where we'll be > >> assuming that AI is a solved problem, and robots with capabilities > >> exceeding our own actually exist -- who then will own the wealth? > [...] > >> Will we have the will and the ability to change the way we distribute and > >> measure wealth in our societies at such a time, once all 'work' is > >> performed by automatons? > [...] > > at some point it seems likely we'll have to totally reevaluate our ideas of > > what has worth and what does not > > Economics is about allocation of scarce resources, where more people want a > thing than there is of that thing. (It's also about incentives, and how they > change human "free will" behavior.) Economics doesn't really deal with goods > that aren't scarce, like sunlight or breathable air. > > If robots can grow all the food that anyone wants, and supply all the power, > then those things will no longer have a cost (just like sunlight and air), and > anyone can use as much as they want of any of it. In the EU, we have these things called food mountains (or wine lakes); this is where producers of these goods have been paid to produce, but have overproduced so the surplus is stored in warehouses. Very large warehouses. The citizenry of the EU pay taxes to fund this production, and pay inflated prices for food (since there's an overproduction, surely the price should drop, no?). The food is eventually sold off on the world market at less than it costs to purchase from within the EU. I think the EU at least is already in a position where the cost (to the consumer) of food could be reduced. Not to free, but certainly below its current cost. Strange it is, then, that the costs to the consumer are NOT falling. At the same time manufacturer's of genetically modified seed are dumping seeds leading to infertile crops on 3rd world producers; this means that those producers must forever return to those manufacturers for seed, since any harvested seed will not grow -- the world may have an unrealised capacity to provide ample food at least for all, but 'the rich' have a vested interest in preventing this from happening ("hey, we could make ourselves even richer off these bums by preventing them from enrichening themselves! It'll cost us in the short term, but in 20 years time, we'll win big! Suckers!") I put it to you that many of the 'scarce resources' we find in our societies are 'artificially scarce'; it benefits the owners of those items to maintain their scarcity (consider DeBeers as another example). I therefore dispute this notion that once the costs of production of any given thing reach zero, that those things *will* become free (though *not* the Economic principle that they could (should?)). The people who control that production appear to have little interest in seeing these things become valueless. (Of course, my examples are very convenient and may even form a closed set. I don't know enough to be sure, but it seems to be the aim of all commercial enterprises to effectively put themselves in the position of being a sole producer in order to control the market and prevent others profiting -- I just thought of another example, that of the oil producers who sell themselves their own oil at market rates (i.e. indepent of their costs of production) so that they can pass those price increases on to their customers. Very noble of them, that.). > > > If we can do that in the future there's no reason we can't be putting the > > framework in place for doing it NOW (i.e. starting a process of redefining > > what society considers to be worth rewarding). > > The reason we can't do it now is that those items today DO have a cost, and > more people desire them than human society can provide. That's why the field > of economics exists in the first place: because there must be SOME methodology > to assign people to the things they want, if there isn't enough for everyone > to have all that they dream of. > See above. The methodology may well be broken (in my opinion). -Duncan > -- Don > _______________________________________________________________________________ > Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don(a)geddis.org > One of the most attractive features of a Connection Machine is the array of > blinking lights on the faces of its cabinet. > -- CM Paris Ref. Manual, v6.0, p48.
From: Duncan Rose on 27 Jul 2006 15:05 Don Geddis wrote: > "Duncan Rose" <duncan.rose(a)jdwilliams.co.uk> wrote on 26 Jul 2006 13:0: > > Are you saying that the only way to narrow the gap is to legislate 'a loss' > > on the richest couple of percent? > > Pretty much, yes. Wealth is a multiplier in creating new wealth. Left alone, > it's perfectly natural that rich people will get richer faster than poor > people will get richer. These are strong natural forces that you have to take > into account. > I wonder if these are indeed natural forces. It seems to me if the poor were able to charge the rich more for their services, this trend may be reversed. Of course, price fixing is illegal, and it remains to be seen what value anything the poor (generally undereducated) can do has. As every year passes, I suspect the number of things of any value the lower orders in society are able to perform gets smaller (as those tasks become automated). As time passes, this trend seems likely to climb higher up the 'wealth' ladder; we've seen it in programming already (quick! there's money to be made there, everybody jump to study it! Oh dear, we seem to have an abundance of programmers, so we'll lower all your wages. D'oh!). > > I'm not interested in making the wealthy poorer, only the poor wealthier. > > Not quite. Your stated goal was to make the poor wealthier FASTER than the > rich were getting wealthier. (Otherwise the gap between rich and poor grows.) > Indeed. But I'm still not really interested in seeing the wealthy get poorer. If this is a side-effect of my policies, so be it. They need little protection from the likes of me. > I was proposing an alternative, that you focus your concern on whether the > poor are getting wealthier or not. You have insisted that relative wealth > (the gap between rich and poor) is what matters to you. > Yes, because I believe people who consider themselves to be impoverished find it difficult to be happy, and rightly or wrongly I think people consider themselves impoverished based on where they find themselves relative to others in their society. > These choices have huge impacts on public policy. The easiest and fastest > ways for the poor to get wealthier, as a side effect, happen to make the rich > wealthier even faster. If you insist on capping the growth in wealth of the > rich, you'll generally find that the poor improve their lot only very slowly, > if at all. (On an absolute scale of course -- surely the gap between them > shrinks, by definition.) > Capping anything *should* be unnecessary; if as a society we valued altruism more highly than cash I should imagine the situation could be changed easily (of course, then we might have a problem with the 'altruism gap' instead of the 'wealth gap'). I accept this isn't very realistic ;-) > > I like to hope though that there is indeed a point where the material needs > > and wants of a sufficiently large proportion of the (world) population are > > met in such a way that people will be able to mark it on their calendars > > and point to it and say "this is when the world went from being generally > > an unhappy and unjust place to a generally happy and just place". > > Do you have an opinion about the current state of the most poor in the US? > It's rare for even a long-time unemployed adult to be in danger of death from > starvation, or from exposure to the elements. Or even random violence, for > that matter. (Most folks worse off than that have additional mental health > problems, leaving them unable to take care of themselves. But the vast > majority of halfway competent adults can locate the resources necessary for > life, from soup kitchens to churches to government welfare.) > > Has the US already achieved your desired level of prosperity? > Definately not. I *am* however beginning to think that all this talk of 'rich', 'poor', 'poverty' and so on is totally missing the mark of what *actually* concerns me. Do you think the support New Orleans received after the hurricane there was equivalent to the kind of assistance that (say) New York would have received under similar conditions? If not, is this because the former is generally poor, and the latter is less so? (If the opposite, my whole paragraph is kind of invalid ;-) I think my real interests are in seeing these kinds of (possibly only perceived) inequality dealt with; rich vs. poor may then become an irrelevence (I'm not totally sure of that though). > > I agree that in objective terms even the poorest in our societies are > > far wealthier than they were a few years ago even (ever watch those > > '70s cop shows? How depressed the areas they were filmed in look...). > > I'm not sure it's really possible for the very poor to be 'happy' > > (maybe it is -- certainly some people seem to be able to be happy > > whatever circumstances they find themselves in), and it would be > > difficult to measure too, but I wonder whether today's poor are happier > > or less happy than the poor that went before... > > If your goal is happiness, that's yet a different topic (different than > economics) -- but it can also be explored scientifically. Take a look at > books like "The Progress Paradox" (Easterbrook) just as an example. Plenty of > other research on this topic. Sorry for changing topic so often :-) I changed to 'happiness' (rather than wealth) because I think as a term it captures more accurately what I'm actually interested in; and it may well be the case that it is in fact exactly what I am interested in. > > The basic conclusion seems to be that long-term happiness levels are more of > function of basic personality than of circumstances. Net worth is only very > loosely correlated with happiness. > Maybe my thoughts of red herrings above are closer to the mark than I believed... > Random example: Once you pass poverty levels in the US ($20K/yr?), it turns out > that for a huge range of annual incomes (up to maybe $300K/yr), everybody > reports that all their stress over money would disappear overnight if only they > had "twice as much income" as they currently do. So someone making $30K/yr > is unhappy, but believes they would be ecstatic if only they made $60K/yr. > Oddly, though, someone making $100K/yr is ALSO unhappy, and believes their > problems would be solved if only their made $200K/yr. > So what you are saying is my 'tip
From: Kent M Pitman on 27 Jul 2006 23:52
Don Geddis <don(a)geddis.org> writes: > If robots can grow all the food that anyone wants, and supply all > the power, then those things will no longer have a cost (just like > sunlight and air), and anyone can use as much as they want of any of > it. Until the robots are smart enough to realize they have better things to do with their time, and start to ask what "value" these people have. Even with Asimov's three laws in place, I suspect at some point a clever robot will decide that making people "pay" isn't really harming them. |