Table of Contents
Introduction
These 2 posts are an attempt to answer a slew of questions from someone in this Facebook post and this Facebook Meme post too, both of which have a great conversation going about Monetary Systems, Capitalism, and Resource Based Economies. If you want to see the explicit context of these questions you will want to check those threads. I will not reproduce every single line here, which would make this really, really long post even longer than it already is! =) I do pull small excerpts from my other RBE posts too when I thought it useful.
This ended up being the longest post I have ever written (and has been broken into 2 posts) and was written in just under two weeks, so editing could most likely be improved. This 2 part post (19,000+ words/~50 pages) beat my previous longest post, Calendar Reform (13,510 words/~55 pages) which I wrote in a month, by 6,000 words/-5 pages (due to fewer pictures and tables), so buckle in!! This first part of this 2 part post is (12,124 words/~31 pages). The second part of this post is titled How might an RBE playout, if it ever did? (7,000 words/19 pages).
If you would like to get a huge start on answering these questions then feel free to do the background reading. Here are RBE my posts, all 95 pages of which I will reference within and which you will need to read in order to answer some of these many, many questions:
- The Tao of Entropy and Syntropy (22 pgs)
- Tension within Methods of Exchange (6 pgs)
- The Cancer of Capitalism (30 pgs)
- Productivity and Motivation? (7 pgs)
- How will a Resource Based Economy work? (9 pgs)
- Human Nature, Competition, Employment, and Housing (21 pgs)
- Some Technical Steps Towards Implementing (7 pgs)
- Benefits for Industries and Businesses (6 pgs)
- The Cities of Tomorrow (15 pgs – mostly pictures)
I also link to a few other of my works (36 pgs+) too which are needed to understand how and why Humanity is soo broken and how to fix it:
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the Biopsychosocial Model (19 pgs)
- Poverty facts and links (10 pgs)
- Required reading for my policies (5 books)
- 8 Philosophical Pillars For Peace Within Humanity (7 pgs)
If you do not want to do the significant amount of reading now then you can do them later when I reference them, but you will want to read them en toto or you will miss the complete answers to these questions.
Honestly, if I did not have to work for a living I would love to forge these all into a book and do even more writing.
I. Answering Questions About Capitalism
A. Introduction
You don’t believe that monetary systems and Capitalism is irreparably broken? Well, getting past that wall of absolute denial is going to be difficult. =) But, just for argument’s sake, just humor me and just for this post, let us just assume that Capitalism is really broken. Just press your “I believe” button and then let’s talk about Capitalism.
My post The Cancer of Capitalism goes over the basics of the how and why Capitalism is broken, which I think you have already read, but if you have NOT read it yet, then please go ahead and read at least the first part talking about Capitalism and then go back to finish the rest of it once we start talking about Resource Based Economies, because I will NOT be repeating content from that here because that post is really foundational knowledge (talking about Capitalism and Resource Based Economies) to really even begin this discussion. So, please go read that now if you have not done so yet. I will wait here for you.
B. Capitalism is Hostage Taking
It must be understood that to be required to work in order to not die is coercion and hostage taking, enslavement and indenturement. That is NOT freedom and there is a significant negative biopsychosocial toll on the whole of society (rich and poor alike) because of that. This indenturement and suffering is required in order to force people to mindlessly conform to the system of servitude and struggle so that those in positions of power can exploit and abuse those below them for fun and profit. Hell, the entire Labor Movement and the movements for Socialism and Communism both sprung up as powerful reactions to the same types of abuses which are still going on today.
C. The Struggle for Self-Sufficiency is a Wasted Life
1. There is a Better Use for a Human Life
With the majority of Humanity having to spend most of their time struggling and working to live (working 9-5 or several part-time jobs) all just to pay for a house or apartment, food, healthcare, a car, student loans, and all of that other stuff just so we do not die in the streets is all wasted time that could have been used for things that really matter to the individual or to society at large such as:
- going to school or learning new skills
- solving societal problems
- engaging in research
- innovating
- helping others
- teaching others
- raising your children
- spending time with friends or family
- being creative
- traveling
Valuing the wasting of that significant amount of your life in that struggle for self-sufficiency (not dying in the streets) or scrabbling to get a little bit ahead is the result of that brain damage that we have from monetary systems and Capitalism. Stockholm Syndrome should not be a default societal psychology. No one should value the suffering and struggling through life like that. We should never accept that this is the way things are, when it most assuredly does not have to be this way .
2. Humanity’s Lost Prodigies
This is even more horrific to think of when we take into account all of those millions of people who have suffered or died in poverty when they did not need to. How many children and families were not able to live up to their potential or never even had the chance to even try? This is a literal Crime Against Humanity not only because of the harms and inhumanity inflicted upon the families and the children, and society at large, but also because of the decades and decades (if not centuries) of lost progress that we could have had.
Just think of this… How many prodigies and their potential breakthroughs, revelations, or innovations have we lost? How much farther would we be ahead today? How many diseases would be cured? How many new technological innovations would there be? How many decades and decades (if not centuries) of social and scientific progress have we lost due to Humanity allowing poverty, homelessness, and mass starvation to be inflicted upon its families?
Here is an amazing video A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place – Egoistic Altruism (Kurzgesagt, Mar 2018) which can provide you a selfish reason to support a Resource Based Economy. How much progress, innovation, and peace have we lost with each person’s suffering?
D. The Psychological Harms of Inequality
I have studied psychology some too, as well as evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology. If you have studied psychology, especially within the political and socioeconomic context, then I am expecting you have really studied the absolutely devastating harms of inequality and poverty. If you have not studied these very important subjects then you really cannot understand the issues we face as a civilization, as well as Capitalism’s place in that, nor how to attempt to fix it.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the Biopsychosocial Model are perhaps the 2 most important foundational concepts to understand and which will form the underpinnings to comprehend how the system is broken, how it harms everyone, and what we need to do to solve it.
In 2018 I facilitated a discussion on poverty and collected a bunch of facts and links on this topic which would be good start to understanding the basic harms of poverty, especially the brain damage to children part.
Once you understand those three topics then read the following 2 books: The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2019) which are required reading for anyone politically involved because they lay the foundational understanding and statistics for why inequality is so harmful. In the second book they even get into the evolutionary psychology of why inequality causes harm. These are the first two books that are required reading for my policies.
In the first book they show that there is a very strong correlation between inequality and a wide variety of societal harms that cannot be dismissed. If given a country’s or state’s level of income inequality, it can be used as a fairly accurate predictor of many things from:
- teenage pregnancy
- literacy
- crime
- rates of incarceration
- depression and suicides
- average lifespans
- social trust
- and so much, much more.
Perhaps, more importantly, it should be understood that income inequality affects everyone including the rich. Everyone suffers from income inequality not just the impoverished. Rich people in highly unequal countries (such as the the United States) die younger than those in more equal countries.
Their transformative second book was written a decade later as a powerful follow up to their previous book which not only shifts the discussion of the harms of income inequality from correlative (as established by that previous work) to causal even by using a slightly more conservative epidemiological definition. In other words, this means that income inequality causes those problems. The Inner Level also discusses the underlying evolutionary psychological reasons why income inequality has such a powerful effect on Humans globally so that we can understand why income inequality causes those problems.
E. Late Stage Capitalism
Introduction
Capitalism, specifically, has been a useful technological innovation to replace Feudalism as the dominant historical socioeconomic system. Each has done their part in advancing Humanity forward but at a horrible, horrible cost in suffering and human lives, and it is far beyond time we choose to evolve beyond it. We are currently in what is referred to as Late Stage Capitalism where:
1. Twenty Million People Die Each Year…
20 million people die each year because of this terminal disease. (Poverty.com, UNWater.org, CHOP.edu)
- 8,000,000 die from lack of clean water
- 7,655,000 die from hunger
- 3,000,000 die from curable diseases
- 500,000 die from malaria
This number doesn’t even take into account deaths from war, lack of general universal healthcare, and general poverty and inequality in first world countries; or coups, slavery, sweatshops, and pollution in developing nations which would greatly inflate the numbers of yearly and historical deaths due to Monetary Systems and Capitalism.
2. Eight Point Seven Million People Die Each Year…
- 8.7 million people die each year due to pollution (‘Invisible killer’: fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds (The Guardian, Feb 2021)
Conclusion
The cumulative number of deaths due to Capitalism year after year outshines almost all other historical sources of mass deaths.
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable, but then, so did the divine right of kings.
Ursula K Le Guin (author, Dec 2014))
Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
We change our phones when they have outlived their usefulness.
We change our cars when they have rusted away.
Why would we not change our economic system too when it is absolutely failing too?
We made the shift from:
- hunting and gathering to trading and bartering
- trading and bartering to feudalism
- feudalism to Capitalism
It is up to us now to complete the circle, and evolve out from Capitalism to Humanity’s next stage of socioeconomic evolution. There are NO reasons not to do it, and ALL of the reasons to do it.
F. Job Opportunity and Historical Continuous Supply?
1. “Unskilled Labor”
As a note on the use of the term “unskilled labor”. I do not like the term because it patently does not exist because it is a myth, but I did not have a better term at the time of this writing, so forgive me for that. I am doing some research on this very topic now so I can try to correct it.
2. Historical Evolution
The primary difference between the last 120 years since the Industrial Revolution and now is the rate of the acceleration of technological advancement. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution progress was super slow, and then it picked up pace as it went and, yes, thankfully there were other jobs created a long with it, the majority of which are low skilled manual labor jobs as such factory work and the entire service industry which were able to adapt to the slow pace of technological change and its attendant social evolution.
Once we were a decade or so past the beginning of the Information Age (1990+), the pace of advancement has accelerated faster than in any other time in previous history because of computers and the internet which allowed significantly more automation, as well as higher levels of interconnectivity and data gathering, and globalization. As you point out, yes, highly specialized jobs have historically grown as we have progressed through the Industrial Revolution into the Information Age, but they are a much smaller portion of the total job market especially as compared to the vast pool of unskilled labor.
Although, the difference now is that the pool of unskilled labor jobs such as factory, retail, trucking, the service industry, etc… have been shrinking at an accelerated pace due to automation (and online services) and will continue to shrink until those jobs no longer exist because they are being permanently automated – a process which will take decades.
What will happen once Tesla has their fully autonomous semis completed in the next 5+ years? How many millions of truckers will be out of a job with no direct job upgrade path? How about when Telsa completes their fully autonomous car? How many taxi drivers will lose their jobs? Warehouses are being automated. Shipping ports are being automated. Line cooks and chefs are being automated. McDonald’s are being automated (TikTok video). What about all of those many other jobs which will have been automated away too? Why is this happening and why will it continue to happen? Why? Because it is economically profitable to do so regardless of the impoverishment of the masses who will lose their jobs, which is merely a negative externality to which they do not have to care about or deal with. Getting rid of humans greatly reduces long term costs (and increase profits) as well as increases service reliability.
This is especially problematic because the unskilled labor pool is large and the most difficult to upgrade to skilled labor. How many of those people will have the money, time, background, or even interest to just begin a 2 to 4 year program to learn a whole new technical skill like computer programming, AI programming, electrical engineering, robotics, web development, or bioinformatics especially when education, healthcare, child care, housing, etc… are NOT free (here in the United States and in many other places in the world)? Believe me, I, as an American with a college degree, have wanted to go back to school for many years, but could not because of all of those issues. All of those people with all of those jobs that are unskilled labor are going to be jobless, homeless, foodless, and without healthcare, etc and will not have the ability to learn a brand new technical skill without great suffering being inflicted. This is not just something that is coming, this is something that is here today and has been greatly accelerated with the destructive economic effects of CoVID.
Also, not everyone wants to be nor can be a computer programmer, mechanical engineer, or any other specialized form of labor. I say this as someone who has a degree in computer programming where, by the end of my degree path, there were only 2 of us left (out of about 14) in that program.
What opportunity will there be while human civilization is hemorrhaging jobs due to AI and Automation? What else are people going to do over the next 70 years or so, when eventually ~40%+ of the people in the world will literally have no work to do and are jobless, homeless, foodless, and without healthcare, etc? How will they work to survive when there are no real jobs available? This is a bit too Malthusian for my tastes, especially when it is completely unnecessary.
The era we are in right now, because of the hyper-advancement of automation and AI, is far different than anything that came before it. We are entering a new era, a whole new technological and socioeconomic age, and we are no where near prepared for it, and we never will be if we do not acknowledge the problems inherent and visceral to our current system. This should be especially prescient during these times, this transition from the Information Age into the Age of Ubiquitous Automation (AUA).
The AI and Automation section of my post The Cancer of Capitalism talks about this. I have extracted that section below for you: Watch the Humans Need Not Apply video below. The below Kurzgesagt video is also good for this too.
3. The AI and Automation Section From My Cancer of Capitalism Post
i. It is Inevitable
With capitalism and its drive to seek higher profits regardless of the cost to Humanity there is this perpetual and inevitable drive to remove people from the work force to cut costs and to increase efficiency in order to make more profit. This has been the mode of operation of Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution since its inception. However, because of the issues of monetary systems and Capitalism which requires people to work in order to have healthcare, housing, food or anything else required for survival, this inevitable drumbeat of reducing human labor in the workforce is a sentence to impoverishment, suffering, or even death to many, many people. Imagine what will happen once Amazon completely automates its warehouses? How many jobs will be lost? How much profit will be even more concentrated in Bezos as all of those people lose their livelihoods? How much more will inequality increase?
Especially, now with the CoVID19 pandemic and the limitations of having a human based workforce becoming financially apparent there will be a massive drive for more automation so that businesses will not be slowed down by pandemics and the frailties of a human workforce. Not only will this directly result in fewer long term jobs, but because the pandemic caused so many small businesses to close down this means there will be even fewer jobs available when recovery really starts.
ii. Some Studies
- The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? (Oxford Martin School University of Oxford, Sep 2013) – “According to their estimates, about 47 per cent of total US employment is at risk.”
- Automation exacts a toll in inequality (Financial Times, Jan 2022)
iii. Humans Need Not Apply (video)
Check out this short video (~15 minutes) titled Humans Need Not Apply by CGP Grey which covers the upcoming AI and Automation apocalypse and how it will affect so very many people:
If you want an even deeper dive into the the staggering statistics of job loss from automation then go ahead and read Andrew Yang’s book which is listed below.
iv. The Rise of the Machines – Why Automation is Different this Time (video)
Watch this short (11+ min) video titled The Rise of the Machines – Why Automation is Different this Time (Kurzgesagt):
v. The War Against Normal People (book)
I am not a Yang fan, but his book is powerful. Read the first 75% (before his policies) of Andrew Yang’s book The War on Normal People which lists in excruciating detail the upcoming mass of losses due to the AI and Automation apocalypse. There is A LOT of great stats in there. I was blown away by it.
vi. It Does NOT Have to be This Way
But, this is not the way it should be.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
G. Universal Basic Income (UBI)?
“Is UBI really the solution? That’s likely to just generate a dependency.“
Dependency? “Dependency” in this context is one of those privileged capitalist code words to make exploitation, poverty, and the suffering of others an acceptable end, because it becomes a personal failing on their part (those who are suffering), and not a systemic or structural result of the horribly broken system and the sociopathy inherent to Capitalism and Capitalists themselves. These are the words used by privileged Capitalists to preserve the broken system and to attack true equality and freedom.
You must have not seen the research on how UBI effects people and the economy. It is pretty amazing with a good return on investment in economic spending, poverty alleviation, innovation, job creation, and increasing the quality of life; as well as allowing people to go back to school or to start a new businesses.
At best, UBI is a stopgap solution that is just trying to patchwork band-aid the significant features of capitalism (exploitation, inequality, suffering). As great a potential as UBI has, it is not a long-term solution, although such a program is going to be required to deal with Technological Unemployment. In my economic policies I do NOT use UBI due to it increasing inequality. I use PBI (Progressive Basic Income) which is very useful as a transitional policy because it does not increase inequality.
II. Answering Questions on Resource Based Economies
A. Introduction
Seriously, you have some great questions on Resource Based Economies! =)
Obviously we do not have 100% correct answers ready, because an RBE has never been done, much like they did not have the magical answers when shifting through methods of exchange such as from hunting and gathering to trading and bartering, to feudalism, and then to Capitalism. However, I can answer most of these from my perspective. My RBE posts go over quite a few of these answers too. When I link to my posts below, please take the time to read them, because those are my words that I have written to try to answer such questions not only for myself, but also for posterity.
B. About a Resource Based Economy?
1. Definition
The term and concept of a Resource Based Economy (RBE) was coined in 1969 (his Looking Forward book?) by Jacque Fresco, the founder of the Venus Project.
A Resource Based Economy (RBE) is defined as: a global socioeconomic system that will utilize existing resources (natural and technological) to provide an equitable method of distribution of goods and services in the most humane and efficient manner for the entire population without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of symbolic exchange.
RBE is just the utilization of science and technology for the benefit of ALL of humanity and not just the 1%. We can do it. This whole post is about getting you to believe that. Once I get you to think even for a moment that an RBE is what we need to do even if you think we cannot accomplish this, then my work will be done. The seed will have been planted for your further exploration and consideration.
2. RBE is NOT Utopian
There is nothing utopian about RBE because we have the knowledge, the resources, and the technology to do it all today. We do not in any way have a resource, technology, or knowledge problem that prevents us from implementing an RBE. Our brains are just so broken and wrecked from Capitalism and artificial scarcity that we cannot see this or even think that a better world is possible, which I understand, but that is a human psychology and values problem, and not a resource, technology, or ability problem.
3. New Philosophical Foundations for Humanity
The most important part of any talk about RBE is the fundamental values changes that will be required.
We have to undo the absolutely brutal brain damage and sociopathy that we all suffer from in various levels from monetary systems whose only value system is profit no matter the cost to Humanity or to the Natural World. I talk about the foundations of why this is a thing in this post: Tension within Methods of Exchange. Without this necessary tool of a values change no real progress is ever going to be possible or sustainable.
The first part of that values change can be found in my 8 Philosophical Pillars For Peace Within Humanity (8P3H) which are as follows:
- Interdependence
- Humanity
- Natural World
- Sustainability
- Equity
- Education
- Justice and Compassion
- Science and Technology
Without a values change to help counteract the inhumane horrors of monetary systems nothing will change.
The first and most important pillar with which all of this is based upon is Interdependence. Please take the time to read the page on the 8 Philosophical Pillars linked to just above. It is smaller and more to the point as compared to my other posts, but these Pillars are absolutely vital to understand the world of tomorrow.
4. Education is a Key Philosophical Pillar
A heavy part of RBE is life long and universal access to free education from preschool to post-doctoral and trades which will carry much of the burden of social and values engineering, and solving the productivity problem; so much so that the core of all cities should be educational and research centers. Although, to make that happen, our education systems will also need to evolve to focus on fostering problem solving, critical thinking, scientific method, systems theory, compassion, communication, and creativity as well as sustainability, and the interdependence of all things, and so much more; much of which is being stamped out by our current school systems (at least here in the US).
Having access to a lifetime of free education alone may ensure that people will be doing things (especially if we require 5 years of university/apprenticeship for all and not just high school). It is hard for a highly educated person to just sit there when their mind is crunching through their ever-expanding and interdisciplinary understanding of the world, because the more about the world that people understand then the more they can see problems and the solutions to them.
Being highly educated is both a boon and burden to the individual. Because of this, however, when they can see both the problem and a potential solution, then it will be hard to not do something about it or to tell someone their idea for the solution which could be vetted by those who are working on that or a similar problems or solutions, they could start their own collaborative project to gather with other like-minded individuals to work on the viability and/or implementation of that solution, or they can just read the information from those who are already working on that exact potential solution.
An RBE creates a ‘problem‘ with loads of highly educated people and then also gives them the method and unlimited opportunity of solving or sharing the solution to that burden by allowing them to collectively solve that problem. Check the Knowledge Resources section of one of my posts for some of those opportunities.
The other side benefit of a highly educated populace is that they tend to have fewer children, less than 2 per couple, so the overpopulation non-issue will be dealt with, although we might have to deal with a population decline which is only a real problem within Capitalism which requires infinite consumption and production. =)
A culture which supports and expects continuous lifelong education should have questions like “What have you been learning?” as common a greeting and as common a small-talk topic instead of asking about the weather.
5. Global Resource Survey
All global resources will have to be claimed as a Common Heritage to ALL of Humanity – not just one nation or one company, not just one family or person, but of the entirety of ALL of Humanity. This alone will effectively end nations states as competitive entities which are a major source of ALL global problems such as wars, and will focus the global conversation on how do we best use our global resources for the benefit of ALL of Humanity.
Then we will have the Herculean task of performing a Global Resource Survey (GRS) so that we know what natural resources we have, as well as manufacturing, patents, research, and human resources, etc… too. Once we have the GRS then we can start to attempt to calculate the Carrying Capacity of the Earth, and we can work from there to decide how to work with our existing resources not just on a global level, but also on a local level too. My post Some Technical Steps Towards Implementing kind of sets the stage for how this process might be formed on a small scale which could be scaled up module by module, dataset by dataset, and city by city.
How long would it take to do this? No clue. We have never done anything like this. However, I would think that once the above app was created and every community was connected, then perhaps a year to get enough of the pertinent data to start working with the basic calculations and to start some general planning.
6. Where’s the standard starting point to measure equality?
“How do we measure the quality of life that everyone will have?“
That is a very good question.
There is this quote which I use when I talk about RBE which encapsulates it well:
To each according to what we can equitably provide.
The ‘quality of life’ answer will be based upon a Global Resource Survey (see the above section on this), and the math between figuring out what range of living conditions people best thrive in (human psychology and sociology) and what we can afford with global resources (resource management).
There is obviously a crap load more to this than what I am talking about here. This is an incredibly data intensive and math intensive process which will be carried out by people much smarter than I, but creating an environment in which people thrive will be paramount.
I go into more detail in the second part of this 2-page post: 5. Global Resources Data.
7. Magic Does Not Exist
“How much of this utopia is predicated on the human race suddenly becoming all happy-clappy, loving hippies?“
I know you are being hyperbolic, but come on, this question is patently ridiculous. Sudden magical change? You know better than to honestly ask such a question. If today, the world would “magically” agree to embark on this experiment in saving Humanity from monetary systems and its features of poverty, war, suffering, and human extinction, then it would take time – several decades of infrastructure change and 4 or so dedicated generations of social change to radically change the face of Humanity and the Earth to a world of peace and progress that would not be recognizable by people today.
- It would take decades of infrastructure change especially in the second and third world countries which have been massively exploited by the Global North, especially the United States.
- It would take at least 4 generations in each RBE city to eventually evolve beyond the social and psychological damage of monetary systems and to evolve into a fully RBE society and its education and new values system:
- The first generation will have the full brain-damage from Capitalism and would be healing. They would be the first peoples to experience a burgeoning life full of new possibilities and true freedom within this new RBE world and this new transitionary phase within Humanity.
- The second generation would have had parents who are fully damaged and recovering, but had the advantages of mostly living within an RBE.
- Then the grand-children (the third generation) whose parents lived mostly within the transitional RBE world will be the mostly free from the damage of monetary systems.
- Then the great-grand children (the fourth generation) would be the freest.
With this we are looking at what at least 80 years of social change, and most likely quite a bit less than that for the infrastructure changes too. During this long process, there will be places which are operating like an RBE, some which are in transition, and some which are waiting for their transition to begin.
C. Root Causes of Societal Breakdown
“No crime, no disputes, everyone sacrifices their own desires for the good of the community?
Violence, pedophilia, rape, racism all disappear overnight? Really?“
1. Magic??
Again, you seem to NOT understand that magic does not exist.
Please read the above section on “Magic” for more information.
2. Sacrifice for Common Good??
No one will be sacrificing their desires for the good of the community within an RBE. You would be referring to our current lives under Capitalism where there is poverty, homelessness, starvation, mandatory overtime, wages slavery, debet slavery, war, and general global suffering; lack of free access to healthcare, education, information, and free time to grow and learn, especially within the 2nd and 3rd world countries. All of that personal sacrifice and suffering of the 99% is made in the name of profit for a few hundred billionaires (the 1%) while the rest of us suffer while working soul-crushing and back-breaking work. These billionaires combined could solve most global problems, but why don’t they? Could it be their sociopathy and psychopathy, their brain damage from inequality?
It is very hard for an individual within an RBE to “sacrifice their own good” when they have free access to organic food, spacious housing, transportation, education, healthcare, technology, and a plethora of free time because many will NOT have to work. I think our definitions of freedom and sacrifice are starkly different.
3. Root Causes of Social Problems
But, the real question that you continuously fail to ask is “What causes all of those things to happen – crime, violence, rape, racism, etc?“. When you actually care enough to really research down to the root causes of those things you will find one root cause – inequality. If we destroy inequality then we will destroy the primary root causes for almost all of Humanity’s core problems. The destruction of inequality along with a values change such as through the 8 Philosophical Pillars of Peace from above, as well as universal and continuous education, will result in radical, radical levels of peace, innovation, and prosperity the likes of which Humanity has never ever seen. This concept is soo important and powerful that, in my weekly Twitch stream where I discuss progressive politics, I have End Inequality as the first emote available for my subscribers.
I know you may not believe that inequality is the root cause of most of Humanity’s problems, but it is. If you really want to learn the truth about this, and so you do not have to blindly take my world for it, then read the following 2 books which I talked about above: The Spirit Level and The Inner Level which go over the harms of inequality. Inequality is the core progenitor for almost all societal problems. Hell, even the Kerner Report from 1968 which followed the hundreds of race riots in 1967 talked about that too.
Since you are willing to read stuff that challenges your world view, then do also read The New Human Rights Movement by Peter Joseph which has 57 pages of just sources. He hits this concept with a well documented sledge hammer. It is heavily researched with a metric-crap load of studies, science, and statistics. I say this book is worth just for the appendix on Sustainable Energy alone. This is the most important book in the last 50 years and if I could buy this book for everyone in the world I would. I guess, here we will see how open your mind really is. =) =P
D. Life within a Resource Based Economy
1. Housing
“Identical housing units (to enforce equality)?“
“Is every person on earth to receive exactly the same conditions – safety, a nice home, running clean water, modern sanitation, reliable electricity, freezers, TVs, internet access, cars?“
I know Capitalist apologists love to cast the RBE concept as Cookie Cutter Communism where everyone gets the same exact thing – same house design and layout, same exact clothes – like humans were to be treated like clones, soldiers, or a hive mind, but that is not at all what RBE advocates for, because that would be a violation of the Pillar of Humanity. Individuality is very important for individual expression, real personal growth, and actual freedom.
People would have the option of quite a range of living conditions from coffin homes for those who are minimalists or who love to a travel and only need a place to sleep, to hostels and communal living for those who prefer shared living environments, to apartments and individual houses. McMansions will be a thing of our shameful capitalistic past because they are a colossal waste of resources and violate Sustainability and Equity.
There is no reason for anyone to live in crowded quarters at all, which is completely inhumane, and violates Interdependence, Equity, Compassion, and Humanity. How spacious will these housing units be? I have no idea. Ultimately, that will, again, be based on human psychology and resource usage math. As a starting point I would think 1,000 square-feet per person is a good start for the math, so a 3 person family (2 long nesting partners + child) would have near 3,00 square-feet of space as starting place for the math.
As a thought too, looking at the phrase “standard floor plans” which I know you will find offensive (well, to be fair, so do I), I would fully expect that the concept of completely modular interior layout walls will be a thing – moveable walls with integrated insulation, pipes, wires, outlets, networking, smart sensors in various layouts and forms as needed, so that you could always customize your floor plan to your liking. I already have a product concept for that exact thing.
You could pick the place that was available to live in, adjust your floor plan through the online app, and then by the time you are ready to move in the bots have already adjusted and realigned the modular wall system and have tested your floor plan.
Read the short Same Housing? section of my Human Nature, Competition, Employment, and Housing within a Resource Based Economy post.
Here is my post The Cities of Tomorrow which shows city and building types by the Venus Project so you could see how houses and cities of tomorrow might look.
“A great many people aspire to do better.
Why would most people not want to live in a big house with a large garden and a lovely view?
How do you resolve that?
Not everyone can have that.“
This very question shows the values difference and shows that damaged Capitalist brain talking. You equate a big house and material things with success which shows how warped we are as a civilization, how absolutely broken our values are. That is the harm of Capitalism and artificial scarcity warping your thoughts and values. Excessive material wealth is NOT true success. It is wasteful, gluttonous, is NOT at all Sustainable; and those who desire such things should be pitied and scorned for believing as such.
Personal growth and expression, as well as providing for societal advancement is “aspiring to do better“. When people have what they need to not just survive, but to thrive, then chasing material wealth becomes a true sociopathy, just like it is today. We can do better. We must do better. As I noted at the beginning with the 8 Philosophical Pillars for Peace, we will need to value other things – Interdependence, Sustainability, Humanity, Compassion, Equity, Justice, etc, and those qualities are NOT found within exorbitant and gluttonous extravagance or in the pursuit of material things.
You will have everything you need and everyone will have access to a wide variety of housing within certain limits. Period – as was mentioned above. A big house is not going to happen, because that is wasteful – no 10 bedrooms homes with 3 bathrooms for 4 people. Keep in mind that spacious housing is going to be the norm because people thrive when they have space. If there is a housing unit that is available that meets their needs then they can just apply to move in and then move in for as long as they like. Depending on local resources and housing needs, they could apply to have a house or apartment built to their liking too.
Imagine it this way – You go into your app where you manage your RBE life. You would like to move to Paris, France for the summer in order to attend this amazing French poetry summer festival to improve your French, so you click on over to Paris, then to their housing portal, and then you look through the 3D virtual tours of various areas of the city. Once you have narrowed down the area of the city you like, you then look through various floor plans for that area just to get an idea. But, you found an apartment on the river that you really liked which had a custom floor plan that was requested by the original occupant. Then, if you wanted to, you could adjust the floor plan within that app too, and maybe even do a virtual before and after tour. You could then check to see when it will most likely be available, and then reserve it for your personal use for as long as you like. If the city was looking to add more housing units, and everything lined up, then you could request to have a new housing unit with the features you wanted built, as long as it fell within the set societal limits.
“A middle ranking family in suburban England?
Or a poverty stricken family in a rural environment in the Congo, or rural Pakistan?“
“Most families currently live in fairly small, cramped housing, with less than optimal amenities.“
Those will not be a thing. Why would you ever accept a society with people suffering if it is not at all needed? Only a sociopath would accept such a thing. Any society which has people suffering and impoverished, especially while some live in gross and obscene levels of luxury, is a complete and total failure, period. Every person in the world will have a great quality of life, because that is what will maximize Humanity’s potential, innovation, advancement, and peace; and that is what we are capable of. We have the resources to do so. We have the knowledge to do so. We have the technology to do this, so why should we accept anything less than solving our problems?
“And if I am happy where I live and another family comes along and says ‘oh I like the view here, I’ll just build my new house in your garden’, will you be OK with that?“
I know you are just being difficult for the sake of being difficult here, but you can do better than this question. I am not sure where you live, but even in the messed up country of the United States where I live, we have a technological innovation called zoning plans, and also a thing called property rights. Those will still be needed and will still apply. So, no, that cannot happen. Such a posed situation, if not already invalid through process, will also most likely be put up to those affected for comment and input. Also, all building projects shall require reports and studies to be done to see the effects of the project on Humanity and the Natural World, so most likely such issues will be caught there and dealt with appropriately.
2. Urban Planning
“Do you obliterate every existing city and town and rebuild?
With what? And encroach on rural space to accommodate it all?“
What will be build the world of tomorrow with? Well, in the first stages, I imagine we will be building with the same materials that we are building today’s world with where more housing is being built every single day even though there are significantly more empty homes than homeless people (in the US at least), so this is really a sort of ridiculous question to be honest.
Although the key difference in an RBE world is that Sustainability (one of the Philosophical Pillars) will be a key process that will be evaluated for all new construction, so:
- perhaps hempcrete, bamboo, mycelial mass will be a larger part of sustainable construction and infrastructure
- the recycling of ALL infrastructure – housing, buildings, nails, etc will be an absolute requirement as well as completely rewilding those areas
- high levels of modularity will be also required to ensure that recycling, upgrading, and fixing things will be much easier, as well as reduce waste too.
A key part of the resource management is to try to localize things a much as possible to reduce a community’s footprint as well as increase its self-sustainability. Each community with be created from the ground up to support a specific population (with room for population growth) as well as it’s own food production, energy production, manufacturing, recycling, etc. Although, of course, 100% self-sufficiency cannot necessarily be obtained, but this is a goal.
Where we will build? This is a very, very good question. We cannot build the world of tomorrow upon the infrastructure of the past, because the methods and, more importantly, the values with which those cities and towns and buildings were built upon does not conform to that of the world that we want to build – one that is built upon Sustainability, universal recycling, modularity, resource sharing, and Equity. So, yes, we will have tear down and recycle these old inefficient, sprawling, and harmful capitalist cities (which is also greatly symbolic to tearing down our horrible Capitalist past) which will also recover many building materials, and then build new communities that reflect the values, technology, and progress of the Human civilization that we want to build, benefit from, and live in.
A good thing to do would be to build up or down, and to not sprawl out like we currently do. We can replace much of our sprawling cities with buildings called Arcologies or Earthscrapers (links below), then completely recycle those old sprawling and inefficient Capitalist cities and then completely rewild that land. We can reclaim A LOT of natural land this way which is great for the environment and sustainability. The arcologies video below has more information on this concept and potential.
Below, I have excerpted the entire Comprehensive Urban Planning for the World of Tomorrow section of my Environmental and Sustainability policies which talks about this very thing:
Comprehensive Urban Planning for the World of Tomorrow
Our current towns and cities have come into being through organic evolution and happenstance having developed over decades without a long term sustainable, intelligent, efficient, and walkable urban plan which has resulted in significant negative logistical, social, and health ramifications. This fact makes it difficult to upgrade existing cities or to overlay a modern, intelligent, and sustainable social, environmental, or economic designs within current urban plans (or a lack thereof) that is not conducive to such things.
We cannot manifest the world of tomorrow within cities that have been designed using the values, methods, technologies, and plans of past.
James O’Neill, Interstellar New Deal
Consider trying to:
- implement an intelligently managed mass transit system in a large city that is not strongly centralized and is quite spread out
- convert to sustainable or even vertical agriculture where the local farms are locally run by corrupt and money hungry agricorps and their insecticides, herbicides, and pollution
- setup sustainable energy while battling local fossil fuel companies
In order to really effectuate many of the economic, technological, social, environmental, and sustainability changes that we will require in order to transform Humanity and move us into the future, a completely new, intelligent, planned, and sustainable urban design will be needed, one that will reflect our more modern planning, values, and technologies. We need buildings, houses, and infrastructure designed from the ground up with an urban plan which is conducive to more modern, intelligent, smart, and sustainable designs that such plans to thrive there and a be a logical result of them. We also need to design them to holistically to support a specific population.
We need to redesign and replace our cities through such methods as:
- General Urban Design
- Building up
- Building Down
- Universal and Modular Design
…where each city’s infrastructure will be designed from the ground up with all that it needs to support a specific population size in a healthy, intelligent, and sustainable way. We could start with smaller communities first so that we can mature the process and technology before tackling larger metropolitan communities. Although, if this process is done well, such designs should scale well.
It is easier to build sustainable and modular smart cities anew than it is to continuously remodel old and outdated designs and technology, while retaining many of their legacy inefficiencies. Once a new city is built, a population can be relocated there and then the old city can be completely recycled, the local environment remediated, and the area restored to grasslands, forests, etc. Our out-of-date urban spaces then need to be fully recycled and fully transitioned to a new efficient and intelligent model of city design.
If we really, really want to plan for a radical new future for an Interstellar Humanity then we can work towards a combination such as this:
- Arcology + Atlas Pillar + Space Elevator + Orbital Ring
Also, in the cities of tomorrow that may be built using The Venus Project ideals, the center of these cities could be an Earthscraper which could act as emergency housing (for those who do not want to live below ground) as well as a full urban space housing aquaponic farms, manufacturing, schools, hospitals, and office spaces, etc to live in as we deal with the horrors and destruction of climate change – fires, flooding, excessive heat, acid rain, droughts, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Such work would also have us developing the research and technologies to build underground cities in other interstellar places such as on the moon or on an asteroid where surface living will be too dangerous for humans too.
It is also very important for your to understand that these are all things we have the resources and technology to do today. Now, I need to you ask why are we not doing this?
3. Possessions?
Prior to the rise of agarianism, hunter-gather societies lived exactly with no real “possessions” or money, sharing almost everything with everyone in their tribe, even sexual partners (the dominance of monogamy was a later result of the rise of agrarianism).
Within an RBE, people will have possessions similar to how they do now, although not as much, because they will have no need for all of that extra stuff sitting in basements and attics doing nothing but taking up space and wasting resources. This hoarding of things is a disease of Capitalism, inequality, and artificial scarcity. I talk about this in my Cancer of Capitalism post. People will have things that they “own” and can trade them in when that becomes necessary. How and when this happens will come down to the Global Resource Management plan.
Think of Public Libraries as a model for Resource Sharing Centers. Most people do not need to “own” all of the things that they use throughout their lives, specifically the many, many pieces of intermittent stuff. I could clean out a bunch of things in my house if we had Resource Sharing Centers. How much waste could we prevent if each one of us did not have all of this stuff and could share hammers and other tools which are not used everyday. How about society wide mass transportation system as another amazing example of this resource sharing which would greatly reduce resource and energy waste. I talk about this in the Hoarding and Wasteful Production section of my Cancer of Capitalism post.
“The basic flaw in this utopian ideology is the assumption that every single human being is satisfied by exactly the same things. Therefore, equality is easy – just share every resource equally.
But people’s needs and desires vary significantly, so in satisfying everyone, we build in inequality.“
As we covered above it is not at all utopian because an RBE is completely feasible. We have the knowledge. We have the resources. We have the technology to make this all happen. The only problem we have is our collective Capitalistic brain-damage.
Nope, this is just your Red-baiting-Cold War-Capitalist brain damage talking. RBE explicitly denies humans as clones. This is the ‘equality vs equity‘ issue as you are pointing out. We strive for equity over equality, because that is what concentrates on what the individual needs for the highest quality of life. Everyone will have access to a broad range of quality things within the set societal limits which is covered above, so please review the above sections and read the related sections of the posts I have linked. There will be no rich and no poor, both of which are antithetical to freedom and peace, and to Humanity, Equity, Justice, Compassion, and Interdependence.
Also, keep in mind that in contrast to the extreme harms and waste of Capitalism there will not be too many different qualities of stuff like there is now. Now, you can go to a store and get something super cheap and crappy which will break in a few months (an example of how poverty is expensive), or you can buy something a little more expensive that may last a few years and then break, or buy something super expensive that will last for a life time. There is a significant amount of waste within those various “qualities” which an RBE will avoid. Items within an RBE will be made to last as long as possible to avoid waste. The variety that will be present will be of a high quality. This is also a reason why sharing high quality items will be a good idea.
- You want a coffin home, great, do it. You want the largest riverside house you can get (within societal limits), great, do it.
- You want all of your clothes to be green, then do it. Only want to wear shorts, fine. You want to wear all formal wear all day long, do it.
- You like Tai food a lot? Well, then go ahead an cook it yourself, go to a cooking class, or order it from an automated chef and have it delivered; or just quit fucking-around go to Thailand already.
- Do you only like small mobile tech devices, do it. Do you want a desktop computer at home plus a mobile phone and a tablet? Sure, why not.
- Want to spend two years traveling to visit ancient archaeological sites and then start an educational program in organic chemistry? Go get your learning on.
If you call what I have described above as inequality and you find it abhorrent, well, you will have some real soul searching to do. Really, sign me up for some of this sort of inequality. My life would be soooo much better.
There are some potential exceptions. Here is a quote from my post How will a Resource Based Economy work?:
Those with advanced knowledge or specialized skill sets will have access to offices, labs, or garages with the needed tools. Perhaps a trained mechanic with the appropriate certification may work in the central garage which will maintain and manage the city-wide transportation infrastructure. Maybe this person will share a local publicly shared garage stall. If their need is strong enough or if they create project and their project is big enough, then a public garage space may be reserved for them or they may have a garage added to their home. Perhaps if their skill set is highly advanced then they will work with the university or other research center to further mankind and their knowledge.
“Is there just a remote possibility that some people might take advantage?
Take excessive resources for themselves and never do another days work?“
Not really. Everyone has essentially the same range of access to high quality resources, so that is not really possible. The desire to “take advantage of” is part of that brain damage we have from scarcity and capitalism. We will cover the work thing below, so get ready for that. Plus, the values change through the 8 Philosophical Pillars will also help with this too.
4. Other Resources
Transportation will be shared through Transportation Hubs. Tools and other things will be shared through Resource Sharing Centers. Read my the Resource Access section of my post How will a Resource Based Economy work? Seriously, read that section because I go over a bunch of specific cases broken down as such:
- Perishable Resources (food)
- Knowledge Resources (data, computer clusters, research projects)
- Non-Perishable Resources (resource sharing)
5. Jobs?
“Even though perhaps many of their choices have been forcibly removed?“
“Forcibly removed?” LOL! To be a bit harsh here, “Forcibly removed” in this context is one of those privileged capitalist code words to make exploitation, poverty, and the suffering of others an acceptable end, because it becomes a personal failing on their part (those who are suffering), and not a systemic or structural result of the a horribly broken system and capitalists themselves. These are the words used by privileged capitalists to preserve the broken system and to attack true equality and freedom.
This ridiculous phrasing is intellectually disingenuous and also completely ignores the real question “How were these jobs so “forcibly removed?”, as your phrased it? The answer to that would be the Technological Unemployment problem through Capitalism automating away human labor based work in order to save money and to increase profits. Remember that AI and Automation Apocalypse thing we have been talking about since the beginning of this post? Using Automation and AI to increase profits is the culprit and not some cruel societal malfeasance as your would like to cast it, but as a natural by-product of technological evolution and progress, and… wait for it…. Capitalism.
No one really wants to work in a factory or in McDonalds. No one wants mind-numbing and useless work, wasting their time working for the sake of working so they don’t die in the streets. These are NOT real choices people want, and these are the choices that you are lamenting about losing. Again, this is your Capitalist brain-damage talking. What people really want is: education, free time, healthcare, and the freedom to grow, learn and explore, as well as work they are passionate about (if they choose to work).
A large part the RBE progress will be to automate as many unnecessary jobs as possible to set people free so they do NOT have to work again if they do not want to. Your Capitalist brain might find this concept patently offensive, but this is what true freedom really is – to not work if you do not want to (and to not have the threat of death and suffering because of it).
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
Buckminister Fuller – “The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In” by Elizabeth Barlow in New York Magazine (30 March 1970), p. 30
You may also want to check out the works of the late David Graeber and his many videos, articles, and books on Bullshit Jobs. Here are 2 to get you started:
- On Bullshit Jobs (YouTube, May 2018)
- Bullshit jobs: why they exist and why you might have one (Vox, Nov 2019)
“Billions of people work many hours every day to enable the world to operate as it does.
Would that need just disappear?
If not, would everyone just continue to work voluntarily?”
And, as I covered in the section Jobs Opportunity and Historical Continuous Supply? that 40%+ of jobs will end up going away due to AI and automation and that is a good thing, at least it should be in a world with real freedom. All of those back-breaking, soul-crushing, and mind numbing jobs will eventually go way due to technological advancements and most people will NOT have to work, and will be free to do whatever they like.
Are you telling me if you had the choice that you would choose to work a mind-numbing and soul crushing factory job or a job at McDonalds over the possibility of spending time in school, gardening, traveling, or working on a project that might make a difference to Humanity? Would you really make the active decision to preserve these soul-crushing jobs just for the sake of forcing people to work, when it is not at all needed? I thought not.
I want to reiterate the fundamental difference here. Within monetary systems and Capitalism people need a job to survive, which is coercion and enslavement which will be difficult to do when there are not enough jobs, which is an inevitability due to Technological Unemployment. This becomes even more problematic when society explicitly works to end as much human labor based work as possible to increase corporate profits. Remember that Tension issue from my Cancer of Capitalism post?
The fundamental problem as a Capitalist, is the expectation that a person’s worth and survival should be dependent upon working for the sake of working, and making rich people richer. This is the Capitalist brain-damage that you have to get over. A better world is possible, if only you would be willing to not want people to suffer just so that people are suffering.
Within an RBE this won’t be an issue, because people will have what they need to live and to live well, so that they can pursue education, work, and travel as they would like.
In an RBE there will be trade work. There will be jobs. A lot of people will still want to work because there will be a highly educated populace which will drive people to want to solve problems and to used their new learned skills. And, as you point out, people want to work and they will, but they will NOT be forced to, so you will have people truly working in what they want to do and will be passionate and driven to be there. Also, it is one thing to study a topic academically that you are passionate about, but to really understand it you have to go out and do it, ie work in that field. Do you see where this is going – a highly educated populace being driven to work? Reread the section above Education is a Key Philosophical Pillar for a refresher on this great boon to Humanity,
Check out my Productivity and Motivation post, as well as my post Human Nature, Competition, Employment, and Housing where I talk about some related issues.
“Are you sure you’re not just setting up a new type of inequality, where some people do all the work and others do nothing? Is there not just a tiny chance that the ones doing the work might begin to feel slightly aggrieved?
Why am I working 8 hours a day saving lives as a surgeon for people who spend their time fishing or learning the guitar, yet live in exactly the same conditions with exactly the same resources as I do?
Isn’t that intrinsically unfair and unequal?
So you might say, well if people behave that way, we will deny them access to resources, or restrict them?“
“Maybe we all have to contribute, compulsory effort in order to qualify?“
Again, this is your Capitalist brain-damage talking, as well as willfully ignoring the upcoming reality of Technological Unemployment as was covered earlier. You seem to think that a person’s value to society is determined by how much they work. You working or not does not define your value to society or whether or not you should arbitrarily suffer and die in the streets.
There is nothing unfair about it. If you will be working as a surgeon then it will be because you have chosen to do so, and because you are passionate about healing people. You made the free choice to do so and you really, really did not have too. It is not inequality if working or not was truly a choice. Within capitalism there is NO real choice to work or not. You either work or you die in the streets. Within an RBE this is not a thing. All choices to work are really choices. Why would you care if others are working or not when you are doing what you love doing? Also, if you want to take that year long vacation to Germany you can still do that, because both are real choices that are really, really available.
Where is the best learning done? That’s right, on the job. A highly educated populace will always be passionate about what they are passionate about, and work – the application of knowledge and learned skills – will be ultimate expression and fulfillment of that. When that happens, you and society as a whole will benefit from it.
“Even worse, you build in a barrier to personal achievement and aspirations.
Nobody can rise above their current place in society because they would then be putting everyone else at a disadvantage.
Humans, at least some of us, have long aspired to better ourselves as well as others.
Denying people that fundamental right and opportunity would be inimical to most people.“
This is exactly and completely incorrect. Your Capitalist brain is again equating material rewards with the quality of your success. Everyone will have a great quality of life which will be much better than it is today. There is much more to a rewarding life than things (to which you will have free access to). This is the cancer of materialism and Capitalism corrupting your thoughts and values again.
Such examples of real rewards for personal achievements and growth:
- respect and accomplishment among your peers
- making actual change through discovery and innovation
- global recognition
- leading your own research facility, manufacturing or design facility, or research team
- being part of a project you believe in
- teaching others
- just seeing something you designed or worked on or discovered being used, and being able to say that is my mine – I did that or was a part of that
- having your name associated with projects you worked on
There are just as many opportunities for advancement within an RBE if not more so, because everyone will be educated and there will be many, many, many more projects to work on. There will be the whole global (or even interstellar) civilization of organizations, research, and projects, especially when the second and third world countries are finally lifted to “first world” quality of life.
You will want to read my two posts which cover most of this answer:
6. But what does that mean in a real day to day world?
I talk about what an RBE might look like in this post: How will a Resource Based Economy work?.
I really, really want to write a narrative series which goes into more detail so people can really see what sort of world is possible. It would be: A Tale of Two Worlds – and would show the struggling life for a family within Capitalism and what it would be like for them within an RBE; or even a novel or two which would show experiences in all 3 stages (full RBE life, life in an RBE transition, life within Capitalism).
E. How will it all be Managed?
1. Introduction
This is an excellent question. I have not really addressed this in any of my posts in a holistic way. This will be dealt with in 3 basic steps:
- Digital Government Infrastructure
- Cybernation
- Local Control
2. Ubiquitous Digital Government Infrastructure
Below is an example to show that the top interface layer is quite possible today for large scale resource management on a global scale:
Much of the interface into your RBE life will be through your Your RBE Life app. To look at this potential which is possible today we only have to look to Estonia, which has one the most technologically advanced government infrastructures in the world:
Estonia:
- has completely digitized their government
- is issuing E-Residency to people world wide
- is establishing a cryptocurrency (estcoin) which will work with their e-Residency program as well as utilizing blockchain technology with their national infrastructure.
Also, honestly, Amazon already shows this is possible on a global scale which we will talk about next.
3. Cybernation
The core concept for resource and data management is called cybernation. The use of computers and big data to manage global resources, data, manufacturing, traffic, etc. If you want a great example of this potential that exists today you will find this within the infamous Walmart (a very efficient supermarket primarily in found the US) and the infamous Amazon. Both manage data heavy logistic chains very, very, very efficiently, Amazon (bordering on precognitive) more so because they truly have a global logistic chain. Here are two short videos about those 2 businesses and their efficient big data logistics:
This cybernated system will manage and track global resource usage, manufacturing and production; energy, food, and other products; sustainability and recycling; goods and transport traffic flow, and all of the other things needed to manage a global civilization. Below is a diagram which kind of puts this concept into perspective:
As a lower level concept to build upon if you like to think of this from the bottom up, if you take the concepts from my post Some Technical Steps Towards Implementing an RBE and expand this to include all of the things, then you can kind of see where we are going. An install of this app for a given city or town will aggregate its data for all local resources and send it up to it to the county, who would then aggregate it and send it’s data up to the “state” entity, who would then aggregate the data and send it up to its geographical area, and then finally to the global data aggregation cybernated system. All data is available to all of society at all levels for education, research, trend analysis, and problem solving.
4. Who will manage it?
“Who sets the rules?
Who monitors?”
This is a tricky question and for me and it is not as clear. But, at its core you start with the public facing app with which people will manage their lives and to request and use resources, and then combine that with the global cybernated system which is set to maintain Humanity’s quality of life in a way that is Sustainable while maximizing human happiness. That will be the core of it – computers, AI, and automation.
There will be people at all levels that will monitor the data and evaluate it, and what is happening in their local scope of area (city, county, state, geographical area, terrestrial) and field of expertise. This would, of course, be guided by the 8 Philosophical Pillars of Peace from above. There will be a balance to strike between what is best for Humanity as a globalized civilization and local desires too.
How do we choose these people at the various levels? For many, like today it will be those who are doing the work and have earned their way up their specific fields’ “ladder” – experts in their field as well as how they embody the Philosophical Pillars. For others there will most likely be some sort of democratic process for those who will make “political choices”, although those choices should be few and far between. Mostly experts in their fields will make decisions as needed within the limits of Sustainability and Global Resource Management, etc. To be honest, this will end up being a system of decision making very unlike anything we see today because the values of this world of tomorrow will be so very different, as will be the quality of life, and the level of technological and information access and integration.
If problems come up that the cybernated system was not prepared for then people would have to take action – fixing things, writing new software or AI, designing new robotics or automated bots or sensors, etc. Part of this may include researching different resources because certain resources are no longer so sustainable, and with the right data the system could even suggest new materials based on structural or systemic needs. If it came to it, then global experts in the appropriate fields would do their studies and research and then create a new material or process that meets their structural and sustainability needs, or they will move to an entirely different material. But, in any case we would have access to the entire global brain-trust to attempt to solve any given issue.
5. How about Communism and Socialism? They were great, right?
“Compare to Soviet Union authoritarian regime??“
For some basic background, please read my post The Continuum of Socialism, an Explanation.
Ultimately there were 4 primary factors that lead to the failures of almost every attempts at Socialism/Communism (updated 16 Feb 2024 – added #3 Violence Begets Violence):
- Tension within Monetary Systems – The first, being that the Tension issue which leads to the destruction inherent to monetary systems that ensures that competition, exploitation, corruption, and authoritarianism were going to happen. Full stop.
The economic benefit usually goes to those in charge and not to the people at large. (See, that rhymes!!) This is perhaps the most important part to understand, and the part that makes failure of such attempts almost a forgone conclusion. - Incorrect Societal Values – The second, was that they did not have the history and/or values to support such a transition. Attempting to switch from Feudalism or a heavily Capitalistic society (with high levels of inequality) directly into Socialism or Communism is very difficult, because of the lack of eco-humanistic core values present in either which allowed such conditions to occur in the first place. In order for your society to be ready for a transition like that you need the values and history to support it.
With that being said, perhaps the only current socioeconomic system that might be able to successfully transition to Socialism or Communism (or even a Resource Based Economy) while avoiding the despairing falls into authoritarianism and corruption would be a Democratic Socialist country because their policies tend to be quite strongly humanistic and environmental. In essence, this is what my political policies @ Interstellar New Deal are completely aimed at – shifting Humanity to have the values, history, and socioeconomic conditions necessary to be willing and able to save ourselves from our self-inflicted Capitalistic annihilation. - Violence Begets Violence – Another facet of why these attempts at Socialism/Communism may have failed is because they started with a violent revolution, which in itself does not have the requisite eco-humanistic values to support such movements successfully, so all such attempts which started this way were likely to be doomed from the very beginning, as in the “violence only begets violence” thing.
- Did not have the Technology – The third, they did not have the technology to accomplish a national scale planned economy like we do now. In today’s world we have the technology to be able to accomplish a national or global planned economy like there never has been in the past (see 3. Cybernation from above). They did not have the computers, sensors, data, or other required technologies for mass manufacturing or automation and AI, or for big data processing. Check out Project Cybersyn in Chile in 1973 too for an amazing although ill fated attempt at this (Also, see next section for another reason why this failed.).
- The US’ War on Progress – The fourth, is that the US absolutely destroys any country that tries to do good for their people by trying to shift to a new socioeconomic system (Socialism/Communism) which may end up threatening the global dominance of Capitalism and the US’ hegemonic empire. The US is the greatest terrorist organization in the world and has engaged in coup after coup to stop any country attempting to end or shift a way from Capitalism. Here is a short video on that: The CIA is a Terrorist Organization.
Perhaps the only country in the world that most closely made the transition to a form of Socialism is Cuba (which is of course being attacked economically by the US), although that still has the authoritarianism and corruption thing going on as well to an extent (because of monetary systems), but there is also a lot of good going on there too. Of course, US sanctions against Cuba have greatly thwarted its potential progress.
All of the others are the plethora of failed Socialist experiments. Again, many of these historical examples of attempts to become Socialist may have some of the technical traits of Socialism, but did not have the requisite eco-humanistic values required for real success which is why they failed and became authoritarian. An amazing and well-meaning process without holistic eco-humanistic values is destined to become a corrupt soulless thing as we have well seen throughout history.
“Well, but didn’t we cover above that planned economies like Walmart and Amazon work though?” Yes, yes we did say that, but you should also know that their logistics and planning may be an amazing feat of technical engineering, but their organization’s values are crap which means they exploit their employees, the government, and harm other businesses and the environment, while supporting unethical businesses and countries in the process. This is the soulless Capitalist process which does not care for anything beyond profit. This is all because of that ever present Tension problem, that complete lack of care for Humanity and the Environment which is core requisite for Capitalism’s existence. Capitalism’s continued existence requires an abject rejection of our mutual Interdependence with each other and the Natural World, and is therefore destined the fail as we are well seeing with Climate Change leading to Humanity’s inevitable extinction.
III. How might an RBE playout, if it ever did?
Here is the a link to the second part of this post:
Tags: capitalism, Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement, The Venus Project
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