h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>With sufficient technological progress, there is no particular reason why every single living human shouldn't have all their needs and most of their wishes catered to.

Very true, but I get the feeling that a lot of the 'haves' instinctively feel there needs to be a lot of 'have nots' just to make themselves look good in comparison. Why else would they covet status symbols with no particular utilitarian value, unless they wanted to flaunt their wealth as a tool to make them seem better than everyone else?

If there were no 'have nots' to make them seem comparatively wealthy, then boring, ugly, rich people would have nothing to use to attract beautiful mates.

What's more, I'm sure we've all met people in charge who seem to enjoy ordering people around rather too much. If there were no 'have nots' to boss around, these people would lose their sense of power.

And your post, quotes, summarises why this little boy, among quite a few others, is very wary of step changes in the system we have
(... or any of the systems /they\ have, whoever they are.)

Be wary of human nature, innit.

"a lot of the 'haves' instinctively feel there needs to be a lot of 'have nots' just to make themselves look good in comparison"

Really, truly? I find that quite hard to believe. I would like a garage full of supercars, a collection of Rolexes, a mansion and a personal jet. I would like these things even if every single other person in the world had them, because they are, objectively, nice things to have. The fact of other people having them doesn't make them (for me at least) any less desirable.

Example: I was one of the first people I knew with a really big flatscreen TV, and proper surround sound for my DVD player. It was, objectively, very nice to have this stuff, fifteen years or more ago when hardly anyone I knew had it. I still have all the same gear, but now most of my friends have similar. Do I like it any less? No. Are iPhone users any less in love with their phones now that they're almost ubiquitous?

As for controlling the means of production - what happens when "the means of production" doesn't, at any stage, involve human effort, other than efforts people might choose to make volutarily for their own spiritual or intellectual enrichment? I know that's a utopian fantasy, but that is what we're talking about.

Well, at least to some extent it's true. How many of the world's most frequent consumers of caviare, for instance, would find it as attractive if it was available in Lidl at five pence the bucketload? Similarly with Rolexes, you can get a completely accurate and reliable watch for £5. Ok, so the Rolex is gold - but what's so special about gold? Scarcity.

Also, labels. People will pay fortunes for the right label on their clothes, even though they are no better at being clothes as those in ASDA.

It's not all inflated prices there are differences in quality ~ however I also think there are people who have to have the latest or the biggest.

Technological Progress.

The thing is...we can't all sit around and wait for The Culture to happen. And even if we're the technologists *making* it happen...who pays us?

This is the tough nut to crack. Quite obviously Capitalism isn't going to get us there. It simply can't. If it makes things cheap enough that nobody has to go without, how does anyone make a profit? This 'The Crisis of Capitalism'.

re, Friedman.

pedro's distinction between Profit and Wealth is an important one. If we look at things from the enterprise level - yes, the name of the game is to produce profit.

But the Marxist would say that Profit is the one way accumulation of Wealth from the Labour of workers. Indeed, for an enterprise to succeed in a competitive environment it is inevitable that the relative degree of accumulation must increase.

It makes no sense to talk about enterprises generating 'Wealth'. That only makes sense as a societal concept, something akin to 'the ability of people to share in the fruits of labour.' This is where pedro's externalities come in again. Capitalism creates unhealthy inequalities. We need mechanisms to mitigate inequalities through redistribution. We don't need to do this *just* to be nice. If we don't we get the good old Crisis of Capitalism.

I'm wondering what the overall economic impact of luxury goods is. Rolexes, designer labels and the like. Is it just a minor side issue? Or does it have dramatic effects such as, say, the price of wheat?

Surely luxury goods are just (jargon alert) 'The Alienated Accumulation of Labour' - somewhere where all the accumulated money uselessly sits?

I wonder if there's a sensible way of measuring the accumulation of wealth in terms of stuff like all the useless crap like gold sitting around not even being reinvested into the economy?

Or pretend value in ever-increasing house prices that are essentially meaningless because nobody can afford to pay them, and the householders have to borrow against the value to meet increasing costs in other fields.

"we can't all sit around and wait for The Culture to happen"

Er... yes, we can. In fact, we're going to have to, most of us. The best most of us can do is not actively work against it.

"And even if we're the technologists *making* it happen...who pays us?"

Strange question. The technologies which enable post-scarcity will, in their development stages, be monetarily valuable.

For instance: when Gutenberg developed movable type, could he have foreseen a day when printing technology was so ubiquitous, and so cheap, that a major concern with printed material is tonnes and tonnes of it lying around the place in the form of *litter*? Could he have foreseen a day when if you're doing the decor for a certain kind of pub, you can buy books by the yard to fill shelves to look nice? When it comes to ink printed onto paper, we're post-scarcity, or near enough. But at every stage between Gutenberg and now, someone was making money enabling that transition.

"obviously Capitalism isn't going to get us there. It simply can't. "

I don't believe this is true, let alone obvious.

"If it makes things cheap enough that nobody has to go without, how does anyone make a profit?"

Interesting question. Let me answer it by posing a question of my own, and attempting to answer that:

We used to live in a world where you could make a very comfortable living by recording some music onto a piece of plastic, and then selling those pieces of plastic to anyone who wanted to listen to that recorded performance. Depending on who you ask, that is either very soon going to be, or already is, a dead industry. Certainly I haven't paid for recorded music for *years*, nor do I envisage ever paying for it in the future. If music is cheap enough, and available enough, that I and anyone who can be bothered can have it for free - how does anyone make a profit?

Two answers:
1. "anyone who can be bothered" - people will pay for convenience. The product is available for free, if you put in an hour's effort to find out where and go there. Or it's available for pocket change, delivered instantly to your door. People are lazy enough that that is a viable business model until it getting the product free is literally effortless.
2. Live performance is where you make your money. You can't bittorrent the experience of actually being at a gig. The recordings are essentially advertisements for the concerts.

No amount of AI or nanotech or automation will ever change the fact that as humans we crave variety and richness of experience. Right now, for many, variety and richness of experience comes when we shell out cash to go places to do things, and the more cash you have, the better your access to experiences. But there's no reason why in principle we can't reach a point where anyone with a functioning mind can access basically any experience they wish.

Personally, on a geological or even historical timescale, I don't even think it'll be very long before we reach that point. It won't be in my lifetime, worse luck, but it might, possibly, be in the lifetime of some people alive today. Fingers crossed, eh?

profit vs wealth:
Europeans banks borrow money from the Central Bank at 1% of interest. Those banks lend money or buy debt to countries at 5%.
Banks are making profit at the expenses of ordinary citizens. As the debt must be cut, those countries cut on the easy target: citizens.

There´s no wealth, there´s only profit for a few, who are already obscenely rich.

That is a mafia, those are criminal actions carried out by politicians who belong to the same gang.
That´s not Capitalism, if Capitalism laws would have been applied to those who were gambling and risking their money instead of being rescued by the State, we wouldn´t be suffering this situation, or at least not so hard.

indeed - basically, Maria, we're screwed.
Under Friedman's methods those without stay without and in a mixed economy where the banks are too big to be allowed to fail (or else the politicians and the wealthy classes will lose out) those without (or with less) have what little they have cut...

Aerosmith had it right: Eat the rich... *burp*

That was Lemmy and the lads, Sho!

possibly, but I only have it by Aerosmith.

seems to be two different songs, much as I love Lemmy and the Lads, I prefer Steve Tyler and his boys (mind you, is that two of the ugliest bands in rock'n'roll?)

It might come down to eating the rich though...

Hmmm, funny you said that. I was just thinking Steve Tyler's too much of a pretty boy to carry it off, but I could actually imagine Lemmy eating the rich. Not sure about Aerosmith, but surely Motorhead have to be the ugliest bunch around...

I may not have made my point clear enough, SoRB, about not just sitting around and waiting for The Culture.

In Capitalism, the motivation for investing in an enterprise is the expectation of a profit. What is the motivation in investing in an enterprise (e.g. developing a technology) when the outputs are given away for free? Even if this situation is approached only gradually - at what point does enterprise grind to a halt because investment isn't worth it?

At best, there is a paradox at the heart of Capitalism.

Pedalling back from the fantasy end point of The Culture and into The Real World. Sort of. Let's say that the great engine of Capitalism, fuelled by investment banking, develops means of providing more and more of the necessities of life cheaper (and here's the rub) with fewer people. Then who has the money to buy them? And how do the banks get their loans paid back?

The Crisis of Capitalism.

"who has the money to buy them? "

I think I made it clear - you're fixated in this old-style world where the only possible thing a worker can do with their labour is manufacture objects.

Imagine for a moment we wake up tomorrow in a halfway-to-the-Culture society. There is literally no need for me to go to work, fixated as my work is on the business of turning one arrangement of atoms into another. At that point, what do I have to sell? How can I make money? Any of half a dozen ways which, in today's world, are either much riskier or less valued than what I do currently. I could teach you to kitesurf, snowboard or paraglide (well... not yet. No instructor rating yet...). I could amuse with a performance of juggling and magic. I could write you a sonnet. Plenty of people even now make their living in ways that don't involve "production", which is why this bloody obsession Communists have with it seems so backward-looking.

We've passed through phases where nobody "worked" for anyone else, when we were hunter-gatherers. Then some bright spark invented agriculture and people started working on other people's farms. Then we had factories, and the farms started dying as we industrialised. They're still *there*, they're just not central to how the world works any more. The factories WILL go the same way, sooner than the farms did. And when they do, the majority of humanity will start earning its living in a different way, just as we went from being gatherers/hunters to being farmers to being factory workers to being call-centre jockeys.

Well I'll explain another time why the competitive structure of Capitalism causes society to striate into Classes.

For now...not everyone can afford paragliging lessons. In fact for some to have the spare money for paragloding lessons, it requires others to be still in the world of labouring for basic necessities.