"All the old panaceas have failed." (p. 87)
Four panaceas are considered:
Education
Birth control
Redistribution of wealth
Return to a natural and simple existence
Education
It is argued that it is impossible to educate a person of normal intelligence into special abilities that he was not born with and that the demand for routineers is low and falling.
Demand from whom? If society is able to function without requiring people of normal intelligence to perform routine tasks in exchange for a wage or salary, then normal people ought to be able to enjoy the benefits of technology without having to perform routine tasks. There are "3V screens for everybody..." (p. 87) but there should be a lot more than passive entertainment for everybody. Social interaction and AI interaction give a lot more meaning to life.
Birth Control
It is argued that peoples cannot be asked to make themselves extinct.
Birth control does not mean extinction. There are conditions in which parents limit family size without reducing it to zero.
Redistribution
"The conservation laws hold as true in economics as in physics." (ibid.)
This requires elucidation. Conservation does not require that, when vast wealth has been produced, there should continue to be immense deprivation and poverty at the base of society.
Simpler Existence
"A precondition is the death of 90 per cent of the human race." (ibid.)
Yes.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Under "Education" I disagree because I don't believe most people want to be philosophers, theologians, intellectuals, aesthetes, artists, writers, etc. If they can't find some sense of self respect from even "routine" work they will sink into despair, anger, frustration, etc. We will get what we see in "Quixote and the Windmill."
Birth control? Bleah, gross and disgusting. And I dislike the implicitly anti-child outlook.
And I am absolutely opposed to all forms of forced, compulsory "redistribution."
At least we agree about that last point.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Most people do not have to become philosophers etc. They can be themselves and respect themselves all the more when liberated from drudgery at someone else's behest.
I am absolutely opposed to the continued maintenance of wealth and poverty side by side - this is maintained by force - when technology can now make everyone wealthy.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I think you have a very peculiar attitude to "employment" if you think it's somehow wrong to work at someone else "behest." You need organization and lines of authority for work to be efficiently carried out.
And I remain absolutely opposed to any kind of violent and forcible seizure of what other people have.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I remain absolutely opposed to continuance of society as it is. "...what other people have..." includes the billions owned by a very individuals who have not produced all that wealth and do not need it.
I do not have a peculiar attitude to "employment." Of course we need organization and lines of (accountable) authority but we will not need the employer-employee relationship when technologically produced abundant wealth is held in common. Everyone will be a shareholder. You do not seem to understand the massive socioeconomic transformation that this involves.
Paul.
few
Kaor, Paul!
We cannot agree, because I do not believe in absurdities and impossibilities like the "common ownership" of property. What you dream of will not work because it conflicts with human nature, urges, drives, desires, ambitions, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are not trying to agree! Clarify disagreements and move on to something else.
When there is vast wealth, there will be no need for anyone to hoard it, possess some part of it individually, prevent others from accessing it, make others pay for it etc, any more than we currently fight over the air that we breathe or over the water that comes cheaply out of a tap.
Human nature is to change our environment with hands and brains and to change ourselves in the process, not to remain unchanging. Urges, drives, desires and ambitions all exist in social contexts. Someone can be ambitious to be a millionaire only in a money economy. Money will be unnecessary when wealth is abundant.
What is absurd and impossible in one context is not in another. It was "impossible" to go to the Moon before 1969.
You seem to think that we are trying to agree and you intensify the argument when we clearly fail to. This is unnecessary.
But I am clearly not understood if it is thought that, when I say that the employer-employee relationship can become redundant, I mean that every kind of social organization and cooperation will then cease.
Paul.
Sean: "Birth control?...anti-child outlook."
Since we got such disease preventions as vaccination and decent sanitation, women don't have to go through half a dozen pregnancies to be reasonably sure of having 2 or 3 children survive to be adults. Is it anti-child to want 2 rather than 12?
Jim,
Right on.
Paul.
Kaor, Jim!
No, it is not anti-child, per se, to have 2 instead of twelve children. It is anti-child to use deliberately drugs and devices that frustrates what is the purpose of sexual intercourse between man and woman. Even worse, the contraceptive mentality has encouraged tolerance of, and "legalization" of cold blooded murder of the unborn via abortion. And at least one disgusting politician (a Democrat, of course!) has proposed "legalizing" killing of infants up to one year after birth.
If couples don't want children they could either abstain from sexual intercourse for long periods of time or use the rhyme method, sexual intercourse during a woman's infertile phase.
Ad astra! Sean
Traits that originally evolved for one purpose often also get used for another.
Eg: sexual intercourse also helps bond father & mother of a child so they are more likely to stay together long enough to successfully raise the child. A *reliable* method of contraception makes the other purpose doable without resulting in too many children to sucessfully raise.
(I will leave out arguments about whether objections to pleasure for its own sake have any validity)
Kaor, Jim!
Actually, I agree, the year around openness of human females for sexual intercourse was one of the means used for binding males to a female, to help care for the young. I recall Anderson making similar points in one of his stories.
Regrettably, we can't agree about contraceptives. I agree sexual pleasure is not wrong, per se.
Ad astra! Sean
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