<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;"><i>Diamond Age: Or, A Young Woman's Illustrated Primer</i> by Neal Stephenson<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Required reading for any discussion of economics when the robots produce abundance, or things are too cheap to meter.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Nick won'ty read, pretty sure Steve and other already have.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">On Tue, May 4, 2021, at 3:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I'm glad I held back from throwing in my own $.002 on this topic<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> earlier... I like the general arc it is on and is being articulated much<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> more gesturally than I think I am capable of. I can't say I *fully*<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> follow Glen's use of reduction and reconstruction in technical detail<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> well, but it suggests an abstraction that rings hopeful if not<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> (necessarily) true for me.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Given that my trite belief that "when the road hazards are coming at us<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> faster than we can see much less avoid, that we should pump the brakes<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and downshift" is based in an inapt (inept?) metaphor, and that in any<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> case we aren't going to do a whole lot of self-limiting under the<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> current aesthetic we (mostly) share (pedal to the metal and let 'er<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> roar!). <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> The Prepper/Survivalist community is mostly about trying to gather up<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> the resources they think will help them survive a crash or more<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> importantly the aftermath. The post/transhumanists seem to be trying<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to figure out how to strapon (or grow out of their own bodies') wings<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and jet packs and road armor to escape or survive the inevitable crash.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Careening vehicle metaphors aside, I'm pleased to hear more and more<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> discussion that frames the economic aspect of "the culture war" as<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> *post* rather than *anti* capitalism. Whether technology makes<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> *everything* too cheap to meter or not, I think the relative abundance<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> of manufactured goods as well as commodities for the top 50% of the<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> first world is confronting the *scarcity* model that was (maybe?)<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> necessary to keep the engine (oops, vehicles made it back in) of<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> consumerist markets accelerating. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I am not sure that Yang has all (or even many) of the answers but I do<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> give him great credit for having promoted the question on the national<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> (and world?) stage with his run for President. I had thought about UBI<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and similar mechanisms before but somehow his presentation or affect or<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> maybe just timing brought it to me in a much more compelling way than<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> before.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I very much appreciate Glen's point about UBI being an intrinsically<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> capitalist proposal to try to keep their system going as long as<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> possible, I just hope we will use whatever time that buys us without<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> significant disruption to plan out what things might/could look like on<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> the other side of a revolution in (socioeconomic?) thinking that now<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> seem inevitable to me. When I used to ski (poorly), on any given run,<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> there was likely a brief period of time when I realized I as absolutely<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> going to crash and burn, and if I had any choice in the matter it was<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> whether I was going to do it earlier rather than later and whether I was<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> going to take a big bite of ice-slicked mogul, some off-run powder, or<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> maybe a tree. Maybe I'll just leap off a mogul and evaporate in the<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> sunlight mid-air (Kurzweil's Singularity)?<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> - Steve<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> On 5/4/21 12:52 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> > Reduction. All things in moderation, including moderation. Reduction is a triumph, if it captures what you're looking for. And fiat currency has done great things for the world, a cultural technology that allows us to explore possibilities we wouldn't have otherwise explored. Financial instruments have allowed us to spread ownership across demographics that would never have been allowed based on real property.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> > But those instruments are a reconstruction of the space that currency reduced out. And I think we're seeing that the reconstruction is trending dysfunctional. So, it's time to reconsider the initial reduction and, importantly, why the reconstruction isn't a cover for the original (full) space.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> > We are doing that in both ad-hoc ways (e.g. the Psychology today article, finding other dimensions by which to bolster the reduction) and fundamental ways (e.g. transhumanist experimentation of "what are we"). UBI is a reasonable suggestion to reduce suffering. But, ultimately, it's a capitalist suggestion, proposed by *conservatives* who want to prolong the status quo, to milk the current system for as long as they can. That's OK, of course. We try to balance exploitation with exploration and nobody knows crisply when to emphasize which.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> > On 5/4/21 11:16 AM, <a href="mailto:thompnickson2%40gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a> wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> >> Ah, now THIS is the Glen I know and love. Your 10:00 post rekindled old rage concerning the incentive-value of money. Here I go. Up on my high horse. Hi, Ho, Silver. Budda bump, budda bump, budda bump, bump, bump.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> >><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> >> The very little Marxism I know tells me that it is the "triumph" of capitalism to reduce all relationships to money. This seems right to rich people because the richer you get, the truer it becomes. I can imagine Besos, Gates, and Musk falling asleep at night, musing about which of them will first reach a trillion. If you've lost your soul and you've lost your wife, what else could they possibly want. Such people even turn women into a kind of coinage. (Cue Waspish Moral Outrage). But isn't that the point of UBI; that it frees people to think about something else? And yes, what IS this so-called "productivity"? The "happy ditch digger" and the "carefree slave" are all part of the same self-serving capitalist iconography. I am sure there are people who love to dig ditches, but if that's what they love to do, give them a thousand dollars a month for free and let them dig ditches for Habitat for Humanity in Peru, if that's what they feel like doing. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> >><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> >> Glen, keeping your ad hominem firmly in mind, I am again going to use your post as opportunity to flog my old work which argues that it is capitalism's reduction of all ambition to coinage that makes it so toxic. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div></body></html>