The RICH Economy - a different take on employment

[Seneca]

@ Felix- I think school is a big part of the problem, so I can't agree with the genius this time.
@EMJ- this isn't new. Newspapers used to be much more honest in admitting their biases, but that sort of thing extends back to Benjamin Franklin's time. It's not a function of new media, it's a function of media reflecting people's preferences...

[anomie]

There are better threads to post this, but wtf ..
http://io9.com/will-your-job-still-exis ... -509744081

[anomie]

I pull this quote from another recent thread:

You might like Charles Eisenstein's "Sacred Economics". I read the book (its free) a few years ago, but here's a video with the gist of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs

...

I think it underscores one interpretation of what a life without money would be like.

The online version of the book mentioned is here:
http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/

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Just imagine what life would be like if the potential of industrialization actually delivered on its promise of abundance - and people recognized this .....

[workathome]

One way to put it: many people don't want out of the cage, they just want to make sure their wheel, feed, and bedding are as nice as their neighbor's.

[workathome]

Instead of making sure everyone has an equal entitlement to consume an equal quantity of resources, wouldn't be far easier to simply control information input? For example, if TV simply didn't show people the 0.01% lifestyle and advertisements didn't constantly berate people with nonsense about how unsatisfying their life is without the next product X, general consumption levels would decrease. Perhaps we don't even need control, but simply to stop artificially inflating consumption drives.

This is a rather isolated area of experience, but it seems a lot of people would be happy with unlimited video games, pop and pizza (i.e. "The Matrix"). If something like the Holosuite existed IRL, I'm pretty sure 50%+ of the population would prefer to live in 10x10 cubicles until they die rather than participate in the less entertaining Real Life. I may be describing hell (or heaven?)-on-earth, but that's essentially what the RICH is asking for.

[Felix]

A ban on advertisement would do a lot for the general well-being.

There is a story (in a story) by Kurt Vonnegut, I don't recall which, he was too prolific , in which there was a planet whose population generally published the averages of everything (income, housing, penis size, etc.). It usually beat all alien invaders. It was finally invaded when the aliens changed the averages which were published upward.

But I think a ban on advertising is equally utopic to the RICH society.

[anomie]

We're already there. It's just that most consider work a small sacrifice in return for a ticket to consumerism. So they keep working.
ERE is the ticket out. A middle class life, albeit without all the useless product waste, after less than a decade of work. And it's voluntary to do. And no new public policy is required.

I like this idea. I understand this idea in this way:

Production is not the real issue.

Consumption is the real issue.

(Mainstream sociology teaches that Distribution is the issue, with focus on inequitable distribution. Other mainstream sources seem to reinforce this. )

ERE is the ticket out. A middle class life, albeit without all the useless product waste, after less than a decade of work. And it's voluntary to do. And no new public policy is required.

agreed.

And the only way that Consumption is even an issue is if you wish to try to re-engineer society / architect a utopia (which is the intent of the original post - imagining what could be done with existing resources and capabilities at a societal level).

I think the RICH idea was directed at changing the Distribution of resources, and then educating the population.

@workathome - I guess banning advertising would be one approach.

[jacob]

Lots of disagreement on poverty comes from the two different perspectives of "absolute poverty", which is not having access to food, shelter, clean water, and "relative poverty", which is not consuming as much stuff your your neighbor, e.g. being in the 20% percentile of the spending distribution. Relative poverty is a moving target. Absolute poverty is not.

Absolute poverty is a production issue.
Relative poverty is a distribution issue.

ERE turns it into a consumption issue.

Another way of turning it into a consumption issue is by institution consumption laws (not just for alcohol and tobacco but for cars, clothes, TVs, houses, ...) as mentioned above. Alternatively, if all humans suddenly 10x their maturity they would realize that working for the sake of consumerism instead of, say, meaning, community, harmony, building pyramids, spaceships ... is kinda dumb.

Frankly, I have little faith in education as a way of changing people's minds. Only indoctrination works and for that you have to start at age 4 and tell everybody the same thing so they acquire the same values. Religions and more progressive countries (see Scandinavia) have figured this out.

[Felix]

Today is copypasting from reddit day:

Bertrand Russell wrote an essay titled, “In praise of idleness,” in 1932. Russell argued that World War One showed how effectively production could be organized (millions of soldiers and still enough production for civilian life) and that the workweek should be cut in half, from 40 hours to 20 hours because of this efficiency. His main argument was that work itself was overvalued by society and this was the mentality of a slave state, which had no place in an industrial society. The reduction in work would be mentally beneficial for workers – it would give them more time to relax, play, and enjoy themselves. He was not naïve enough to overlook the class interests of the wealthy though. He knew they had vested economic and psychological interests in maintaining the status quo. They were appalled that the poor should have any free time at all. The upper classes regarded work as vital for keeping men from drink and children from mischief. Russell even runs a thought experiment of a pin factory that receives a technological breakthrough that doubles production. He argues the thing to do would be to simply cut the working hours in half for the entire staff. Instead, half the workers would be fired and the number of hours would remain fixed. The factory owners give workers two awful choices: starvation or overwork.

Another great Englishman intellectual also commented on the nature of work. John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that within 100 years we would either not need to work or that reality would be within sight. The essay was titled “Economic possibilities for our Grandchildren.” Keep in mind this was just after the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression, so he was a far seeing contrarian at the time. He argued more compounding interests and technological breakthroughs would continue and ever-larger groups of people simply would not have to work until everyone had joined the circle of leisure. Keynes was more naïve about the interests of the upper classes as a whole than Russell, but he foresaw how their own idleness led to personal problems. Wealthy women could not find enough to do to fill their time, yet they still would have servants do all their housework. He attributed the common nervous breakdowns among upper class women to this idleness and stated we would have to find meaning in our lives to avoid such a fate for all of society. In the long run, I hope he is right and we arrive at a leisurely future, however, I feel he doesn’t understand how much of a threat wide spread idleness would be to the ruling elites. He accurately describes the threat for individual wealthy members but not for the wealthy as a class.

To quote George Orwell, another great British intellectual, “If leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and once they had done this, they would soon or later realize the privileged minority had no function and sweep it away.” This quote comes from the book 1984, which was endlessly prophetic and it will continue to be for quite some time. I find Orwell’s logic to be both sound and frightening. Perverse as it may seem, our rulers are dependent on stupidity and poverty to maintain their position at the apex of the power pyramid. Orwell also ingeniously describes an economy geared towards destruction so that poverty and ignorance can be maintained. In the end, he concludes, a hierarchal society can only maintain itself through poverty and ignorance. It reminds me of stoires told about Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft Corporation (whose net worth exceeds 15 billion dollars). Ballmer was notorious for firing any manager who demonstrated too much competence and hence could be a threat to his position at the head of the company. Rumor has it that within Silicon Valley it became a badge of honor to have been fired by Ballmer. Ballmer’s attitude and actions provide insight behind the thinking of those of the ruling class; intelligence and competency are threats to be dealt with.

Orwell articulated the most by writing an entire book rather than an article, and so he gives the clearest picture. His analysis penetrates society and the minds of people to their very core. He has no bright optimism and offers no delusions about human beings. His description of the “proles” is depressing and believable. A mass of people constituting 85% of the population is kept at a subsistence level existence, and they are kept in almost total ignorance. They are occupied with alcohol, pornography, and gambling. They would perpetuate their powerlessness for eternity while being trapped in a catch-22; they must become conscious to rebel, and they can only become conscious once they have rebelled.

Orwell also remarked that to all thinking people it was obvious with the advent of the machine that all dirt, drudgery, and illiteracy could be wiped out in a few generations – if it were put to that use. He also showed how those same advances could create an iron cage worse than anything Max Weber imagined. (“Modern life is an iron cage of rational bureaucracies from which there is no escape”) The key component of Orwell’s nightmare, mass surveillance, is already upon us. Today, it is justified for commercial and safety measures. Cameras are at traffic intersections and all stores are under surveillance to deter and apprehend property crimes. Every person with a cellphone has a digital recording device and there are always more satellites being launched into the sky. The Internet offers endless pacifying entertainment and total surveillance simultaneously. It appears we are destined to become a pan-opticon society but whether it will ultimately be used for good or bad still is being played out.

When we view all three of these men’s notions, we find an interesting picture. Russell, the philosopher, said we ought to praise idleness and reduce the workweek to improve our lives. Keynes, the economist, said that the exponential growth of compounding interest and technology would pave a golden path to the end of work and retirement for all. Orwell, the social critic, said all of this was possible but irrelevant because the rulers would become all-powerful and impose poverty and stupidity on the majority of us to maintain their position. It is ironic that the technological advances that give us the power to create a life free of work also have the capacity to create a perfected tyranny. It is a crossroads of notions and it will be interesting to see which path we take.

I find all three men to have remarkable intelligence and insight. I agree with Bertrand Russell’s notion of reducing the workweek. Reduction in work can and should be done immediately. This is especially true in America where we work hundreds of hours more each year than our western European counterparts. I am hopeful for Keynes future where compounding interest and technology have freed us all from labor. He understood the psychological repercussions that we would have to find something to fulfill our time with and we all may be exposed to nervous breakdowns. Russell showed us the psychological benefits of reducing work, and Keynes showed us the psychological stress of having no work. Yet again, we are reduced to the same two terrible choices; overwork or starvation but this time the starvation is mental rather than physical.

My hopefulness for Keynes/Russell’s vision is matched by my terror of Orwell’s dystopic future.. I don’t think we will end up in a society identical to “1984,” but I do fear the basic scenario of centralized technological surveillance being controlled by a brutally oppressive elite for the sake of their own power. The Internet and cell phones already provide the necessary infrastructure for such a scenario. It will be fascinating to see what develops. Even the good scenario of a workless society will have its drawbacks. We will have to figure out what to do with our time, how to give our life meaning, and how to do things for the very sake of doing them. These drawbacks are insignificant compared to the alternative, however. We should do all we can to run towards the visions of Keynes/Russell’s and away from Orwell’s.

Tl;DR : Russell- We can and should work less

Keynes - Eventually nobody will have to work

Orwell - The ruling classes will force us to work

[mds]

Frankly, I have little faith in education as a way of changing people's minds. Only indoctrination works and for that you have to start at age 4 and tell everybody the same thing so they acquire the same values. Religions and more progressive countries (see Scandinavia) have figured this out.

It's depressing to me that it took 27 years for me to learn about ERE. I consider myself at least slightly smarter than the average American, but I wasn't able to conjure up the theory on my own. I had to stumble upon MMM via Hacker News, which led me to ERE.

So I agree that more education (e.g. learning more historical facts or even a subject like calculus) isn't the answer, but if someone had at least planted the seed (if net worth * 0.04 >= expenses, then FI), I would have been better off. I just happened to be predisposed to frugality, so I was more or less ok from 22 to 27 before finding out about ERE. I didn't necessarily need indoctrination, just exposure.

The other general idea to plant in the minds of kids that I unfortunately missed out on is the notion that only you are responsible for your life. By the end of my institutionalized time (22) I still expected Mom, Dad, doctor, dentist, university, employer, etc, to tell me what to do at any moment. I think this general idea is much more important than any one subject and I wish I'd learned it earlier. However, perhaps maturity and confidence, which only come with time, are prerequisites for this type of mindset. Either that or I was just a latent freethinker.

[Felix]

http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2012/12 ... g-welfare/
http://basicincome.org.uk/interview/201 ... e-poverty/

[Dragline]

My hopefulness for Keynes/Russell’s vision is matched by my terror of Orwell’s dystopic future.. I don’t think we will end up in a society identical to “1984,” but I do fear the basic scenario of centralized technological surveillance being controlled by a brutally oppressive elite for the sake of their own power. The Internet and cell phones already provide the necessary infrastructure for such a scenario. It will be fascinating to see what develops. Even the good scenario of a workless society will have its drawbacks. We will have to figure out what to do with our time, how to give our life meaning, and how to do things for the very sake of doing them. These drawbacks are insignificant compared to the alternative, however. We should do all we can to run towards the visions of Keynes/Russell’s and away from Orwell’s.

Tl;DR : Russell- We can and should work less

Keynes - Eventually nobody will have to work

Orwell - The ruling classes will force us to work

I think all three were erroneous, largely because they are attempting to apply an evolutionary model and linear construct to human society and interaction, which has not evolved in any meaningful way in recorded history and is not likely to change anytime soon. An evolutionary or teleological model is the wrong one -- it should be something cyclical. While technology evolves in short order, the human condition is essentially static.

Given human nature, I go with Huxley over Orwell: http://files.denarii.info/view.php?file ... orwell.jpg

[theanimal]

Given human nature, I go with Huxley over Orwell: http://files.denarii.info/view.php?file ... orwell.jpg

I find it somewhat scary how accurate that portrays society today.

[Felix]

http://occcu.com/index.php

[Felix]

If you live in Europe, you can sign this petition:
https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiativ ... c/index.do

[Felix]

http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/proj ... -europe--2

[Felix]

Research results on mincome:
http://vimeo.com/56648023

[Stahlmann]

hmm.

[Lemur]

Good bump @Stahlmann ....this has been an intriguing read. This was before 'Universal Income" became trendy from Andrew Yang (although I say trendy, I actually do agree with the general principle and ideas about the latter...but can't offer any further insight beyond that).