-Sandra Miesel, CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION IN Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, January 2009), pp. 487-492 AT p. 487.
"...early industrial operations in space offered the hope of rescuing civilization, and Earth, from ruin..."
-"The Saturn Game," p. 17.
Meanwhile, in our twenty-first century, the established world order is breaking down, competition is intensifying at every level, and accelerating the ecological crisis especially in the southern hemisphere, while there is also a transition to new ways of organizing and managing the global economic system but no prospect of any space-based industries.
21 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I do not put any stock in something as vague and undefined as "...a transition to new ways of organizing the global economic system..." What needs to be done is going back to the only system of economics and politics that has truly worked for mankind: free enterprise economics and the limited state, in whatever form. And Christianity would act as a check on human weakness, foolishness, arrogance, and hubris.
Readers should also keep in mind the tremendous progress Elon Musk/SpaceX has made in bringing down the cost of shipping cargo off Earth. In fact, it's getting very close to the cost of ordinary air freight levels, meaning it will become much easier to start DOING things off Earth.
Elon Musk reminds me in some ways of both Heinlein's D.D. Harriman plus Anderson's far more fully fleshed out Anson Guthrie, esp. as we see him in THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Free enterprise and economic competition will have made themselves redundant when technologically produced and democratically controlled wealth has become abundant!
I do not take any stock in new ways of organizing the global economic system but I understand that that is what is happening as neoliberalism fails to reverse the existing and long term decline in the rate of profit. That vague and undefined phrase is borrowed from an analysis that I have just read. The working of the present chaotic economic system are mostly a mystery to me.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Your first sentence simply makes no sense to me. If free enterprise economics works why on Earth should it become redundant in the future? It should still work a thousand years from now. What do you even mean by "...technologically produced and democratically controlled wealth..."? It makes no sense to me, looking like it's just another way of saying politicians and bureaucrats trying to run an economy from the top down. No matter how "democratic" they claim to be I would not trust anyone with that kind of autocratic power.
The real problem is not some vague "...existing and long term decline in the rate of profit," the real problem is the continued interference of politicians and bureaucrats getting in the way of the most efficient functioning of an economy.
As for developing the potentialities of space I sent you an article describing some hopeful possibilities.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Your questions make no sense to me. When technology regularly produces everything that everyone needs, then competition for resources, for profits made by employing others and by competing against other producers in a market place etc will have become redundant. I mean wealth that is produced by humanly controlled advanced technology and that is then controlled by us, by the whole of society, not by politicians and bureaucrats trying to run an economy from the top down. That is not democracy. We, everyone, can discuss, decide and vote, especially by using advanced communications technology. I do not trust any self-proclaimed "democrat" with autocratic power and I cannot understand how you thought that I meant that.
Haven't we been through all this before?
As for developing the potentialities of space, it is taking a very long time to happen.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Your hopes still make no sense to me. This "technology" you keep talking about will only be thru the efforts of innovators and entrepreneurs striving to maximize profits by satisfying demand for new products and services. And the "mass" of humanity will not be able to control that because they will not have the knowledge to manage that technology.
I don't believe one bit in stuff like advanced tech being "...controlled by us, the whole of society, not by politicians and bureaucrats..." There's never going to be a perfect, angelic society/state. Any attempt at some kind of mass control of the economy will end with politicians and bureaucrats trying to run things from the top down. It's the same old socialist futility.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course innovators and entrepreneurs will bring about "technology" but, once that "technology" exists, then it will have its consequences. If it produces everything that is needed, then there will no longer be any need to compete for anything. We do not need to understand the workings of technology to vote on how it should be used. We can vote that aircraft should drop food and medical supplies instead of bombs. (And we can also, in principle, be educated much better so that there can in future be a more general understanding of science and technology.)
We do not need to be perfect or angelic (far from it) to debate and to elect recallable delegates to local, regional and national congresses with the power to decide policies for society as a whole and to overcome the present invidious distinction between politics and economics which means that unelected economic power can override any decisions made by elected political representatives so that in the present set-up it has become a truism that politicians cannot fulfill their promises and are "all the same."
Of course I am talking about a qualitatively different kind of society but surely it can at least be agreed that society WILL be qualitatively different in future (just as it is now very different from hunting and gathering) even if not along the lines that I suggest? In fact, I go further and confidently predict that future society (of course if we do not destroy ourselves first) will in most respects be very different from anything that any of us now can possibly imagine.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Impasse, I don't believe at all in the realism or plausibility of what you hope for, for reasons discussed in other blog comboxes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Society will remain essentially unchanged indefinitely? It doesn't.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, because it is human beings who are not going to change in the ways you want them to do. The best way to reasonably expect people to behave in the future is how they have behaved in the past and how they are behaving now. Mere technological changes and superficial political tinkering is not going to change mankind. As Flandry said in Chapter XI of THE REBEL WORLDS: "You have insufficient faith in man's magnificent ability to ignore what history keeps yelling at him."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But technological changes are not "mere." Are electricity, automobiles, aircraft, television and computers "mere"? Greater changes are coming. Producing abundance will make conflict for physical necessities and even for comforts and luxuries redundant. Fully democratizing society including production and distribution processes will not be "superficial political tinkering." It will completely transform every individual's perceptions and expectations. History is about periods before such changes and therefore does not tell us what will happen in qualitatively different material and social conditions in the future. You are consistently ducking the issue.
Paul.
Sean,
I expected you to acknowledge that society has fundamentally changed (from hunting and gathering to a high tech competitive global economy) but to deny that it could change any further but instead you denied the fact of social change. If fundamental change were impossible, then pre-human apes would not have become rational linguistic human beings. And human beings act very differently in different social contexts. Your denial of the possibility of further changes is unrealistic.
Paul.
Arguments for the possibility of real change are not properly considered or discussed in detail but ignored or summarily dismissed because they contradict a very strongly held presupposition which I think becomes a barrier to real dialogue which in turn requires serious consideration (not necessarily acceptance) of alternative views.
Space-based industries are a matter of cost per pound to orbit. Starship will bring that down to air-freight levels, and will open up a number of economic opportunities -- asteroid mining, for example, and orbital data centers for AI.
Let us hope for industrial expansion into space - and beneficial consequences on Earth.
What I really hope for is not only a better life for many on Earth but also human populations surviving in many places off Earth so that we will not only avoid the fate of the dinosaurs but also avoid cutting off the ground from under our own feet which is what our current major decision-makers are still doing.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, mere technological advances are not going to transform mankind, because such things cannot "reach down" into what makes all of us so flawed, strife prone, and susceptible to folly.
Any attempt at "democratically" controlling and managing an economy will fail because no giant committee of the whole, which seems to what you want, can possibly make the many millions of decisions, large and small, that shapes real world economies. It inevitably boils down to bungling politicians and bureaucrats trying to run it from the top down.
There's no need for something so crude and clumsy! Bakeries, shoemakers, lawyers, dentists, plumbers, etc., are guided by market signals such as demand, supply, etc., in what goods and services are most desired and what the costs of using them will be.
You also miss an important point: you cannot have a democracy unless it is also competitive, politicians struggling to gain power and office by wooing the voters. And it will work only as long as everyone agrees to abide by the rules. A defeated, disgruntled minority might become so enraged that it refuses to accept defeat--which in extreme cases might mean even civil war.
I don't believe in the realism and plausibility of what you hope for.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Recallable delegates paid only the average wage or salary of their electorates are not self-seeking bureaucratic politicians. You fail to imagine a qualitatively different society.
Certainly many details of running a complicated economy in a different way cannot be predicted and will have to be learned in practice.
Every single thing (including a complicated organism) exists only in relation to every other thing. Change the relationships completely and you change the thing completely. There is no inner unchanging essence. If there were, evolution could not happen.
Paul.
I should have written "...not self-seeking bureaucratic PROFESSIONAL politicians." (The adjectives, "self-promoting" and "self-serving," are also appropriate.) I have been a trade union shop steward: a thankless task that involved representing members' interests without any personal reward but some of us did it because we believed in it and thought that it contributed to a better future. The best experience was when normally quiet and respectable union members were so incensed at threatened redundancies that they took action, demonstrated and lobbied in work time without any stewards giving a lead. We had to run to catch up. That is the sort of ethos that can build a better society.
Kaor, Paul!
It's no use, I'm never going to believe in what I consider futile and unrealistic suggestions of the kind you wrote above. Certainly not in such superficial tinkerings as recall elections.
I refuse to "imagine a qualitatively society" because I believe in facing up to what real human beings are like: flawed, imperfect, prone to strife and folly. I see no reason to think that's ever going to change. The wise statesman takes human beings as they are, not as he would like them to be.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The purpose of an exchange like this is not to convince anyone, not even of my fruitful and realistic suggestions. We will live into some kind of future and our ideas and actions will shape it. Our ideas are worked out in argument and struggle which is happening now. Full democratization of society and the economy is far from superficial tinkering.
Refuse to imagine? Scientific theory, sf and futurology demand imagination. Our society is already qualitatively different from many in the past. I am taking human beings as they are - plastic and dynamic - not as I would like them to be.
I have argued in detail how we are not flawed, imperfect, prone to strife and folly. Strife occurs in some conditions but not in others. If it occurred at all times and in all conditions, then we would not survive.
We are just as prone to cooperation - more so, in fact, since, without cooperation, we would not have language and therefore would not be human. I am making some very basic points here which are not being considered and I am trying to get to the point of having these points seriously considered, not necessarily accepted.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, "full democratization" is not possible or even desirable because there are many situations where such a thing won't work. E.g., fire brigades have to be organized as quasi-military units with specialized training and equipment in a hierarchical command if they are going to be effective.
Absurdities like recall elections has been shown over and over not to work well when tried. Because politicians and office holders affected by them have an obvious interest in resisting them. In the US the disgusting Democrats used to yelp and howl for recall elections--but these hypocrites were also among its fiercest opponents when anyone tried to use it against them. I dismiss recall elections as mere tinkering.
Your arguments trying to unsuccessfully prove that we human beings are not flawed, imperfect, prone to folly and blundering, etc., are not convincing and never will be. Not when I can see both in myself and all around me how flawed we all are--to say nothing of how all you have to do is watch any TV news show too proofs of that. I also believe, as a matter of divine revelation, that we are Fallen. We are not infinitely "plastic," another error.
I have never denied "cooperation" is possible, but cooperation takes many forms, in both good and bad ways. Your error is insisting that it will be possible to eliminate all bad types of cooperation, which is not going to happen. E.g., we will need the State to keep criminal forms of cooperation under some control and to defend against outside aggression.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that "...disgusting Democrats...yelp and howl... hypocrites..." is inappropriate, even hate-filled, language. Recall elections WOULD be mere tinkering in the present system. You fail to imagine a radically different system.
Of course a fully democratic society needs fire brigades and other emergency services that operate effectively but at the same time are fully accountable. When I was driving a car full of passengers, I decided to halt as a light was turning red at the risk of losing the car that we were following. I did not take a vote!
I am not trying to convince you! This seems to be the basic misunderstanding here. We discuss these matters because they need to be discussed and because discussion deepens understanding, not because either side in a disagreement like this is suddenly going to capitulate and acknowledge that the other side is right. We know from a great deal of experience that that is not going to happen and, if that were the only object, then we should not even have started. But I am learning something here. These issues will not be resolved by mere argument. The future of the world is being decided now. And views CAN change over time. Over a lifetime, my views have changed completely.
Of course you have not denied that "cooperation" is possible! Why the quote marks? Cooperation is essential to humanity and of course it takes many forms. My point about human society is that it can and does take many forms, whether good or bad, far beyond the forms that we are familiar with. I am not making an error. I am disagreeing with you.
Criminal forms of cooperation will not exist when abundant wealth is democratically controlled and equally distributed so that there is longer any poverty, theft, embezzlement, misappropriation of funds etc. We will not always need a State, a body of armed men, courts, prisons etc. They will become redundant just as it is no longer necessary for us to hunt animals or to band together to drive a mammoth over a cliff.
Your experience of yourself, of the people around you and the TV news do NOT prove that individuals and society must remain as they are now forever more. We are not Fallen but have risen from animality by Darwinian processes. We are not "infinitely" plastic but we are very plastic as well as dynamic. This is not an error. It is how we are and how we became human.
I sense that you are very strongly attached to a fixed view and that you have to try to annihilate any alternative views instead of just accepting that multiple views exist and interact.
Paul.
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