@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax "scarcity management" is a great term, but markets do most of the work there. Capitalism in pure form is about allocation of surplus, and its model kinda works when economy is tied to *labor scarcity*, and usufruct ties equitably to yields coming from labor and investment.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax Tech always puts downward pressure on value of labor. [See Veblen Engineers&Price System] In early days of industrial labor and capitalism, this happened at a rate such that older generations of workers could re-skill or work a lifetime w/o re-skilling.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax Last 40 yrs of globalization of labor and credit/finance mkts, PLUS massive labor devaluation through computer tech, means that while legacy capital system gave many in tech industry great profit sharing, a huge amount of economic labor base was pushed out of the market.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax It was palatable/unnoticed by masses for a little while b/c of mass media-driven consumption culture, coupled with opening up of Asian labor markets & nonstop oil. "Middle class" slid backwards but could feel they were keeping up with Joneses.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax But as tech pushes into building lower-tier white collar and entry-level knowledge work, this mirage will also start to evaporate. Ppl will be forced to re-skill every few yrs, starting from ground floor each time. They will not be happy, and tech will take the blame.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax Ultimately, I think humane tech has to be funded and developed in things that look like cooperatives, with participation in "upside" given in proportion to capital, geeks, and the community that the tech is enriching. We cannot sustain "wage slavery for most, upside for geeks".
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax Recent hand-wringing about sustainability of OSS is actually early manifestation/realization of this dynamic. 4 ppl maintained OpenSSL (part-time). Core pandas & numpy maintainers could fit in a minivan, yet power billions of dollars worth of compute&algorithms.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax It's blindingly obvious to me that 19th century mercantilism and 20th century capitalism have very little to say about this kind of exponentiating productivity gain. UBI is not the right answer because it fixates on the wrong tool, i.e. income. At best it's transitional.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax We need to revisit concepts of property, participation in society, boundaries of communities & sovereignties, now that the vast majority of "wealth generation" is based on knowledge products. Need to separate usufruct of intellectual artifacts (i.e. profit-right) from copyright.
@benjohnbarnes @worrydream @tristanharris @edelwax Oh, and we need a debt jubilee: medium.com/emergent-cultu…
Fractional reserve banking has gone off the deep end with our modern federated creation of massive private debt. It's a form of indenture that will take the middle class a generation or more to unwind if dynamics continue.
Fractional reserve banking has gone off the deep end with our modern federated creation of massive private debt. It's a form of indenture that will take the middle class a generation or more to unwind if dynamics continue.
