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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Dave,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>No you can’t have read it. Otherwise your life would have been completely transformed because you would have come to belief that sex- and mone- seeking are pathological distortions of human ambition. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I pretty sure nobody has read it because, so far as I know, nobody has been thus affected. Ergo, …<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick <o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>Nick Thompson<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"><span style='color:#0563C1'>ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"><span style='color:#0563C1'>https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> Friam <friam-bounces@redfish.com> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Prof David West<br><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, May 4, 2021 8:45 PM<br><b>To:</b> friam@redfish.com<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] The case for universal basic income UBI<o:p></o:p></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Diamond Age: Or, A Young Woman's Illustrated Primer</span></i><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> by Neal Stephenson<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Required reading for any discussion of economics when the robots produce abundance, or things are too cheap to meter.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Nick won'ty read, pretty sure Steve and other already have.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>davew<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>On Tue, May 4, 2021, at 3:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> I'm glad I held back from throwing in my own $.002 on this topic<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> earlier... I like the general arc it is on and is being articulated much<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> more gesturally than I think I am capable of. I can't say I *fully*<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> follow Glen's use of reduction and reconstruction in technical detail<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> well, but it suggests an abstraction that rings hopeful if not<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> (necessarily) true for me.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> Given that my trite belief that "when the road hazards are coming at us<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> faster than we can see much less avoid, that we should pump the brakes<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> and downshift" is based in an inapt (inept?) metaphor, and that in any<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> case we aren't going to do a whole lot of self-limiting under the<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> current aesthetic we (mostly) share (pedal to the metal and let 'er<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> roar!). <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> The Prepper/Survivalist community is mostly about trying to gather up<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> the resources they think will help them survive a crash or more<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> importantly the aftermath. The post/transhumanists seem to be trying<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> to figure out how to strapon (or grow out of their own bodies') wings<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> and jet packs and road armor to escape or survive the inevitable crash.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> Careening vehicle metaphors aside, I'm pleased to hear more and more<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> discussion that frames the economic aspect of "the culture war" as<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> *post* rather than *anti* capitalism. Whether technology makes<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> *everything* too cheap to meter or not, I think the relative abundance<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> of manufactured goods as well as commodities for the top 50% of the<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> first world is confronting the *scarcity* model that was (maybe?)<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> necessary to keep the engine (oops, vehicles made it back in) of<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> consumerist markets accelerating. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> I am not sure that Yang has all (or even many) of the answers but I do<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> give him great credit for having promoted the question on the national<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> (and world?) stage with his run for President. I had thought about UBI<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> and similar mechanisms before but somehow his presentation or affect or<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> maybe just timing brought it to me in a much more compelling way than<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> before.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> I very much appreciate Glen's point about UBI being an intrinsically<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> capitalist proposal to try to keep their system going as long as<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> possible, I just hope we will use whatever time that buys us without<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> significant disruption to plan out what things might/could look like on<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> the other side of a revolution in (socioeconomic?) thinking that now<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> seem inevitable to me. When I used to ski (poorly), on any given run,<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> there was likely a brief period of time when I realized I as absolutely<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> going to crash and burn, and if I had any choice in the matter it was<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> whether I was going to do it earlier rather than later and whether I was<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> going to take a big bite of ice-slicked mogul, some off-run powder, or<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> maybe a tree. Maybe I'll just leap off a mogul and evaporate in the<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> sunlight mid-air (Kurzweil's Singularity)?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> - Steve<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> On 5/4/21 12:52 PM, uǝlƃ </span><span style='font-family:"Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif'>↙↙↙</span><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> > 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> ><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> > 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> ><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> > 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> ><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> ><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> > On 5/4/21 11:16 AM, <a href="mailto:thompnickson2%40gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> >> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> >><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> >> 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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> >><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> >> 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. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>> <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>