Snelund lists what bureaucrats and functionaries do:
the day-to-day work
operate spaceports and traffic lanes
deliver mail
maintain electronic communication
collect and supply data
manage public health
limit crime
arbitrate
allocate scarce resources
Stop. Why should resources continue to be scarce? See:
See also previous discussion nine years ago here.
25 comments:
Scarcity is relative.
Agreed. Bot some things are so abundant that they do not need to be allocated like, for the time being at least, the air that we breathe while Earth. It would be an entirely different matter if we were in a space station with a limited oxygen supply.
while on Earth.
Kaor, Paul!
No, as Stirling said, scarcity is relative and always will be. Moreover, in the scale of the times and distances and planets seen in the Technic stories, there are going to be many times when resources are going to need being allocated, by various means.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But not on planets with advanced technologies. Diana Crowfeather says that the technology in her period could make every living being rich. We do not ration air and there will come a time when we do not have to ration/allocate/control the distribution of energy or anything else.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I remain unconvinced. Moreover, even on the wealthiest planets there are gradations of wealth. Meaning some have more wealth than others. That does not have to mean planets like Terra or Hermes have gross poverty or starvation. I would imagine almost everybody on such planets are amply comfortable, objectively speaking. Those gradations merely means A can do more with the wealth he has than B. So scarcity is relative.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Not when it gets to a stage where everyone has access to way more than they need. There will then be no distinctions in wealth any more than anyone now owns more of the atmosphere than anyone else.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree because, even if there are no material for feeling "poorer" than other, there will be gradations of "wealth" from people competing for greater status, prestige, power. Those things are always going to be relatively scarce.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If you are invited to imagine social consequences of technological change but you continue to imagine society as you know it, then you are failing in imagination and not engaging properly with sf. There is nothing that will always be the case. Mechanisms for power over others, bodies of armed men, need not always exist. Imagine a population whose members have the material and social basis for freedom and equality and have never known anything else except in the history of past ages which they regard with incredulity and horror.
Paul.
Paul: technological change has social consequences, but not limitless ones, because human beings are not limitlessly plastic and neither are their interactions. Some are learned; others are inherent.
For example, material goods can become more abundant, but -positional- (social) goods cannot.
Being powerful, for example. That's a positional good. That is, for me to be more powerful, you have to be less. The 'good' consists of our relative -positions-.
The -markers- for power may (and do) change; for example, always having enough to eat used to be a status-marker. Now being -thin- is a status marker, which would have seemed deeply weird not long ago.
But the competition for power doesn't. It remains as much a feature of all contemporary societies as it was of our hunter-gatherer ancestors 80,000 years ago.
Hence, logically, it probably always will.
Kaor, Paul!
No, it's not a failure of imagination on my part. I am simply being realistic about human beings as they actually are, not as some of us, like you, want them to be. Stirling's comments above explains why I can't believe what you dream of is possible. And, if it's not possible then neither is it desirable. Because unrealistic dreams keeps people from achieving what is possible.
People who strive for impossible dreams can also become fanatical and cruel, from sheer frustration with these intractable and "evil tailless apes," to use Trotsky's phrase. Iow, they become tyrants!
Ad astra! Sean
We have to find the limits of human potential without trying to force them. Education and training make enormous differences to what people can do athletically, intellectually, creatively etc. No, we don't need to try to force anyone, then get frustrated. I am sure that we can have a lot of progress still ahead of us for millennia to come - provided that we survive the next century or so and that is where the immediate problem lies.
Kaor, Paul!
Again, I have caveats. Invoking "education" is not good enough. What kind of "education"? For the most part the genuinely successful methods of education have not changed much Sumerian times. Also, the ideas, attitudes, beliefs, etc., of a particular era affects what will be taught and accepted. Unfortunately, Politically Correct woke insanity is destroying many schools in the US, esp. public schools!
Additionally, I don't share your optimism that "education" per se will somehow unleash all that much intellectuality and creativity. Bluntly, most people are not going to be creative.
I agree we live in "interesting times" as the Chinese curse puts it!
Ad astra! Sean
Also, most people just aren't very bright. As the saying goes, the average IQ is 100... and that's not very high.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Too true. And I don't exclude myself from that "most people." The very most I will allow myself is that maybe, sometimes, I can appreciate creativity in others.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You really did misunderstand my point about education. I argued that a sufficiently big technological change COULD change social relationships, thus affecting individual consciousness, not that education alone could transform anyone. Training was cited only as one example of how individual performance can be improved.
Paul.
Paul: training can improve individual performance, but genetics and other factors set the limmits of how.
No amount of training could make me a good basketball player, for example. Or a mathematician.
And I've helped a number of budding writers, but some of them were unimprovable.
For example, you have to be able to 'step back' and read your own writing the way someone else would.
Some people just can't do this, no matter how much help they get and how hard they try.
Sure. I am fairly confident that a really effective system of education of training would be able to find something that most people could do but they would be very different somethings. That's the whole point of being the human race, of course. If everyone was a clone of Mr Jones who wanted to be a joiner, then who would do the plumbing, let alone the brain surgery?
Kaor, Paul!
No, I did not misunderstand. Because there is only so much, or little, training can do. If the innate ability needed for any number of jobs, crafts, professions, arts, etc., are lacking in a person, then no amount of training will do him any good. Which means we are back in the situation seen in "Quixote and the Windmill."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I did mean that real change can potentially come from technology and society, not just from training!
Paul.
I think I see the problem. I wrote "Education and training make enormous differences..." but of course I meant that Olympic-level training makes Olympic athletes out of candidates who had some athletic aptitudes in the first place, not out of just anyone! So a society more geared to developing each individual's potential will find and develop whatever aptitudes there are in each person. Many will not be great but most should be able to achieve a lot more than they do now when some leave school illiterate or innumerate. (An Apprenticeship applicant was asked to multiply something like £6.53 by 8 and wrote out £6.53 eight times, tried to do it as an addition sum and got it wrong.)
Kaor, Paul!
I did not mention sports because I consider such things relatively unimportant. And we already have systems for searching out possible sports stars.
I still disagree about the rest of what you wrote. We already have systems for teaching students basic maths: the arithmetic tables. The best way to learn them is by intensive rote drilling of students in addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc., while they are children. And the same basic methods applies for learning how to read and write. But our woke crazed schools scorn such things!
Iow, not much different from how the Sumerians were teaching children more than 5000 years ago!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Any point that I try to make seems to get lost. Maths is only an example. An educational system that was focused on developing the full potential of each individual, which ours is not, would draw out a lot more from each individual. They would not all be athletes or mathematicians but they would be a lot more than they are now.
Paul.
Sports unimportant? It is all human activity and achievement.
Kaor, Paul!
Because I don't believe the kind of "education" you advocate will be possible or beneficial for more than a small minority of human beings. It's not realistic to expect more than that.
It's amply hard enough teaching basic literacy/numeracy using methods not much different from those used 5,000 years ago!
Sports have their place, despite my lack of interest in baseball or football, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
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