I've created a "new" economic philosophy, "technostism"

[Yuli Ban]

Vanilla technostism: fully automated workplaces and/or wanting fully automated workplaces. As you may know, jobs are being automated, but automation has always created new jobs. This is due to the fundamental nature of automation being a physical process. This won't last forever: at some point in the near future, we will begin automating mental processes. We usually call this "artificial intelligence" and "synthetic intelligence." At which point, humans workers are no longer necessary. Actually, in this case 'workers' refers to everyone from janitors to the CEOs. With no way nor reason for humans to participate in the workforce, the economy effectively shuts down since the consumer class has no way to earn money. No way for a worker to earn money means no way for a boss to earn profits.

Technostists want to find a way to profit from automation in an egalitarian manner. The prevailing thought right now is through the use of worker-run businesses and co-operatives (the libertarian option), and another thought is the creation of a wealth tax on the produce of automata, so that a UBI can be funded directly from the result of droid labor (the statist option).

The hub for discussing technostism is here—

https://www.reddit.com/r/Technostism/

There's also a wiki.

http://technostism.wikia.com/wiki/Technostism

It's basically an ultra-high tech revival of syndicalism. Also, Karl Marx talked about this exact same thing 200 years ago, so it's sort of a "getting back to roots" thing. Return to the original communist idea (i.e. people are freed from labor by droids), before all the BS of Leninism and Stalinism and Trotskyism and Maoism and shaggism and baggism, and continue on from there.

Erik Brynjolfsson calls this the 'Digital Athens' scenario.

The Athenian citizens had lives of leisure; they got to participate in democracy and create art. That was largely because they had slaves to do the work. Okay, I don’t want human slaves, but in a very, very automated and digitally productive economy you don’t need to work as much, as hard, with as many people, to get the fruits of the economy. So the optimistic version is that we finally have more hours in our week freed up from toil and drudgery.

The block of text up above describes what I've termed the Parable of the Capitalists.

TL;DR

Free the workers, enslave the robots! I don't want to spend the rest of my life forced to chase the dollar just to survive, so let a droid do that for me and I can be allowed to do what I will. It shouldn't matter if that means write 1,000,000 novels or laze around with an Oculus Rift and on a water bed.

Edited September 19, 2015 by Yuli Ban

[Nepenthe]

I think fundamental problems with getting everyone to stop working is that humanity doesn't simply work for money. If you are not making enough you have to of course, but how are you going to argue against the fundamental desire for us to produce and serve others? We'd been working and bartering and creating and cooperating for centuries before capitalism was even a concept, and in general having a robot that makes animation for money is not going to make me suddenly not want to animate for a living because that's simply one of the many things that gives my life meaning. So first, you're going to have to figure out a way to argue against emotional concepts concerning the passion and dignity one finds within doing work that they enjoy, to make me understand why I should give up my job despite my love of it, and I think that's fairly insurmountable. Human beings aren't robots themselves and, at our best and most humane, are not driven solely by money and numbers.

A second problem I notice is that I see no reasonable entryway and continued course into this system as you've presented it. Let's say a country is already on a fully automated droid system and I immigrate there. How do I get a robot to work for me? Who is making the robots (and if a human is making the robots, you're still enclosed within a capitalistic society because monopolies)? What is the cost of owning and maintaining this robot? Where is the money for a human to pay for anything even coming from if we're not even guaranteed an income? The only way I can see this sorta kinda working out is if a person's current capital is all that a robot has to work with- where the robots essentially act as body doubles for the work- but then what happens when my money runs out or people stop patronizing my robot or the robot makes a risky maneuver and I'm thrown into debt?

This seems like a fairly undefined and thus broken system if you're throwing money into the mix. The only reasonable thing to do if we're trying to go with a fully automatic work system is to simply abolish the idea of even paying for stuff altogether.

[Patticus]

If nothing else, there will always be a market for hand-made or hand-reared goods. In a world where everything is automated and everyone is able to live the life of Riley (a world I can't see coming about, even with A.I.), things made by human hands will naturally be big sellers - among the luddites especially.

[Yuli Ban]

I think fundamental problems with getting everyone to stop working is that humanity doesn't simply work for money. If you are not making enough you have to of course, but how are you going to argue against the fundamental desire for us to produce and serve others? We'd been working and bartering and creating and cooperating for centuries before capitalism was even a concept, and in general having a robot that makes animation for money is not going to make me suddenly not want to animate for a living because that's simply one of the many things that gives my life meaning. So first, you're going to have to figure out a way to argue against emotional concepts concerning the passion and dignity one finds within doing work that they enjoy, to make me understand why I should give up my job despite my love of it, and I think that's fairly insurmountable. Human beings aren't robots themselves and, at our best and most humane, are not driven solely by money and numbers.

A second problem I notice is that I see no reasonable entryway and continued course into this system as you've presented it. Let's say a country is already on a fully automated droid system and I immigrate there. How do I get a robot to work for me? Who is making the robots (and if a human is making the robots, you're still enclosed within a capitalistic society because monopolies)? What is the cost of owning and maintaining this robot? Where is the money for a human to pay for anything even coming from if we're not even guaranteed an income? The only way I can see this sorta kinda working out is if a person's current capital is all that a robot has to work with- where the robots essentially act as body doubles for the work- but then what happens when my money runs out or people stop patronizing my robot or the robot makes a risky maneuver and I'm thrown into debt?

This seems like a fairly undefined and thus broken system if you're throwing money into the mix. The only reasonable thing to do if we're trying to go with a fully automatic work system is to simply abolish the idea of even paying for stuff altogether.

The first point is that you're right— humans don't work for money only. Except think of the disheveled single mother working 2 jobs just to keep her children fed. She's working a BS job she doesn't want to have anything to do with, but she has no choice if she wants her and her kids to eat. Think of the jobs crisis plaguing recent graduates. The jobs they were promised and studied for aren't the same jobs they actually get, and every evening their hands smell of greasy fries and burgers because of it.

Technostism is taking away the need to work. Any work after should be of your own volition, which makes such work all the more fulfilling. It's more fully explained on the subreddit, but the gist is "digital Athens: Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato didn't sully their hands with labor, so they could come up with great ideas."

2- It's probably for the best to research these following things— deep learning, neural networks, co-operatives, worker co-operatives, and 3D printing. They'll help out trying to discern what the hell I'm talking about. No human will be making or maintaining these robots, and people should own these droids in common.

That said, this seems like an undefined system because it is. Right now, I'm throwing it out to (hopefully educated) people so they can tolchok it and make it into something presentable. I'm doing this precisely because there's no really well fleshed out idea of what happens when we reach this point. We assume the nice ol' gubmint will givvus some cash (UBI) and that'll be it, but just reading 10 minutes into this scenario, I discovered that there are many, many problems with that idea.

So c'mon, my fellow droogs— let's tolchok this mutha!

Edited September 18, 2015 by Yuli Ban

[Nepenthe]

There is a job crisis in America, but I don't think we solve it with giving everyone robots. We solve it with wealth redistribution through taxation, universal healthcare, ending the War on Drugs, better child care services, more objective hiring practices and standards, more education and networking opportunities for the poor, paid internships, a minimum wage that actually takes into account inflation and increased standards and living, and a host of other short and long-term solutions. It's not like the social democratic European countries haven't already figured this shit out.

Subsequently, I'm not willing to research this on my own mainly because I don't believe in the tenability of the idea, as you haven't presented this as anything more than a pie-in-the-sky concept that cannot even directly address or answer the questions I put forth. Will we have to eventually figure out how to live in a post-worker society? Perhaps, yes. Do I think the answer to that issue is "Hey, every gets a robot and never needs to lift a finger again!" No, I don't. If you want me to be more on board with this idea, then you yourself are going to have to do the research legwork and convince me, if only through simple logic and rationality, that this isn't yet another libertarian utopian dream being peddled as the best thing ever without taking into account simple economics and human behavior. I've seen Rapture and I don't like it.

[Yuli Ban]

There is a job crisis in America, but I don't think we solve it with giving everyone robots. We solve it with wealth redistribution through taxation, universal healthcare, ending the War on Drugs, better child care services, more objective hiring practices and standards, more education and networking opportunities for the poor, paid internships, a minimum wage that actually takes into account inflation and increased standards and living, and a host of other short and long-term solutions. It's not like the social democratic European countries haven't already figured this shit out.

Subsequently, I'm not willing to research this on my own mainly because I don't believe in the tenability of the idea, as you haven't presented this as anything more than a pie-in-the-sky concept that cannot even directly address or answer the questions I put forth. Will we have to eventually figure out how to live in a post-worker society? Perhaps, yes. Do I think the answer to that issue is "Hey, every gets a robot and never needs to lift a finger again!" No, I don't. If you want me to be more on board with this idea, then you yourself are going to have to do the research legwork and convince me, if only through simple logic and rationality, that this isn't yet another libertarian utopian dream being peddled as the best thing ever without taking into account simple economics and human behavior. I've seen Rapture and I don't like it.

That's just it, this kinda is a pie-in-the-sky idea. You're not going to create it today or any time in the next 5 years. If anything, your solutions are what would aid the arrival of a technostist order (though you forgot to mention an expansion of worker-ownership, but I'll chalk that one up to the other 'short/long-term solutions). 

Technostism is for when artificial neural networks + robotics become cheaper than human workers and can learn new tasks. The Parable of the Capitalists is more or less the logic/rationality you're looking for. 

[Nepenthe]

It's not necessarily about creating the idea immediately. It's about discussing and debating the logic of the idea and its syllogisms, to make sure it's rationally sound so one can actually make a case for its supposed future implementation to the wider world at large. If there's no real parameters or scenarios with which to work from, no data, no examples, nothing to this economic system beyond philosophical ramblings, then it's not an idea worth debating in terms of actually seeing it as a reality. I'm a pragmatist; I want to know what solutions to a problem works the best and how it works.

[Badnik Zero]

Well...

It's like, aren't some things with a human touch irreplaceable? Let's say creativity for instance. This is larger to me than an economic system, although certainly it goes into the basics of a society. It's like how they say humanity developed culture when it learned to plant crops. Because we had time to do things besides follow a herd of wildebeests for food. Supposing we don't have to work for anything, what else do we develop with our idle hands? Do we transcend our current mindset? Do we slide into torpitude and debauchery? Not really sure if this is relevant but I'm also reminded of how people complain that the US has moved from production of goods to basically retail jobs. If jobs are so easily automated, then I wonder if work itself would become a commodity in a system like this. But I wanted to say something about creativity. What about entertainment, or the industry of new ideas? We'll always be looking for new ways to amuse ourselves, or produce new ideas and not just things. Assuming the robots are not intelligent then this is a job that falls to people and will always fall to people. If the robots are intelligent however, well then we're probably fucked.

[Tani Coyote]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've had this idea for years, and I imagine there's probably a technical term that's already been invented to describe it. It's not hard to come up with this sort of system, since it's a logical end result of mass automation.

 

While it's a new spin on the Marxist idea of the workers owning things, as it's now all people, it will still undermine capitalism as we know it: capitalism survives because its advocates have created the idea that everyone can become rich (never mind lumping all forms of socialism together so they can be pseudo-intellectuals and claim "communism doesn't work"), which while true in many individual cases, is logically impossible on a social basis. Without jobs, however, the main means to achieve this wealth - making money through long hours/smart labor and saving/investing it - is taken away. The wealthy will swiftly be forced to abandon most of their wealth or get in touch with the guillotine. Capitalism destroying itself is indeed an inevitability, as a desire for more and more profit will force more workers out of jobs, until the current system becomes untenable.

 

I don't think we'll ever get rid of economic hierarchy completely though. If there is still some sort of market and monetary mechanism in place, it stands to reason that creative individuals who are more liked are going to end up with more wealth than those who aren't.

 

On the other hand, I don't think the J.K. Rowlings and Picassos of the world are going to be oligarchs. Artists as a whole lean very socialist in their sympathies. The same can't be said for businessmen.

Edited September 19, 2015 by Ty the Tasmanian Ogilvie

[Badnik Zero]

Well, haven't we had this kind of system before? This is essentially a slave society, no? Except the slaves are not people and so the results of their work are guilt free. If everyone lives like a Pharaoh, what eventually comes of that? I don't know the answer. Were the aristocrats of slave cultures necessarily productive people? Or did they simply get fat off the rewards of their slave enterprise? A system like this would probably create two classes of people. The producers and the lazy people. I wouldn't imagine this kind of world is a utopia either. Let's say your system abolishes money entirely. Currency then resides with people with influence, whoever has more of what people want. Which in this case, I think would be jobs, as funny as that sounds. The ability to work and produce something new would be currency in a world with no jobs.

[Yuli Ban]

Well, haven't we had this kind of system before? This is essentially a slave society, no? Except the slaves are not people and so the results of their work are guilt free. If everyone lives like a Pharaoh, what eventually comes of that? I don't know the answer. Were the aristocrats of slave cultures necessarily productive people? Or did they simply get fat off the rewards of their slave enterprise? A system like this would probably create two classes of people. The producers and the lazy people. I wouldn't imagine this kind of world is a utopia either. Let's say your system abolishes money entirely. Currency then resides with people with influence, whoever has more of what people want. Which in this case, I think would be jobs, as funny as that sounds. The ability to work and produce something new would be currency in a world with no jobs.

Indeed, in fact it can be compared to a Digital Athens.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've had this idea for years, and I imagine there's probably a technical term that's already been invented to describe it. It's not hard to come up with this sort of system, since it's a logical end result of mass automation.

 

While it's a new spin on the Marxist idea of the workers owning things, as it's now all people, it will still undermine capitalism as we know it: capitalism survives because its advocates have created the idea that everyone can become rich (never mind lumping all forms of socialism together so they can be pseudo-intellectuals and claim "communism doesn't work"), which while true in many individual cases, is logically impossible on a social basis. Without jobs, however, the main means to achieve this wealth - making money through long hours/smart labor and saving/investing it - is taken away. The wealthy will swiftly be forced to abandon most of their wealth or get in touch with the guillotine. Capitalism destroying itself is indeed an inevitability, as a desire for more and more profit will force more workers out of jobs, until the current system becomes untenable.

 

I don't think we'll ever get rid of economic hierarchy completely though. If there is still some sort of market and monetary mechanism in place, it stands to reason that creative individuals who are more liked are going to end up with more wealth than those who aren't.

 

On the other hand, I don't think the J.K. Rowlings and Picassos of the world are going to be oligarchs. Artists as a whole lean very socialist in their sympathies. The same can't be said for businessmen.

1- Of course I'm not the first. I came up with the idea by combining multiple versions of it and giving it its own "-ism"

2- The other technical terms are "Venus Project", "Zeitgeist Movement", and occasionally "Technosocialism." The reason why I created this -ism was to give automation economics a general term. Automating a factory is a technostist action. Wanting to automate a factory is technostism.

Edited September 19, 2015 by Yuli Ban

[Patticus]

Something else you have to consider is that once society becomes fully dependent on its machine slaves to do all the work, even if their intelligences are capped, it's still only a matter of time before true, sentient, even sapient A.I. emerges. And it's probably going to be treated every bit as badly as human slaves are treated. Cue rolling clips of the Animatrix, Automata, Chappie et al.

What's going to happen when the slave workforce doesn't want to be a slave workforce any more?

Edited September 19, 2015 by Patticus

[Yuli Ban]

Something else you have to consider is that once society becomes fully dependent on its machine slaves to do all the work, even if their intelligences are capped, it's still only a matter of time before true, sentient, even sapient A.I. emerges. And it's probably going to be treated every bit as badly as human slaves are treated. Cue rolling clips of the Animatrix, Automata, Chappie et al.

What's going to happen when the slave workforce doesn't want to be a slave workforce any more?

Actually, this is already considered. Artilects are the sapient ones you're referring to, rather than the larger, sentient but limited technotariat. The technotariat is forcibly kept away from sapience, in part due to artilects. It must be understood that an autonomous, hiveminded slave workforce incapable of demanding freedom is the most productive mode of production (hence why it's never worked for humans). I'll dare to say that, if it's not achieved by humans, it will be achieved by artilects. 

Then there's the issue of transhumanism. In this case, humanity matches artificial intelligence by becoming a hybrid intelligence of photonic— perhaps even quantum— neural processing, eventually becoming posthuman.

There is no hope for droids. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a droid face— forever. And the droid is incapable of realizing this through basic design.

[Tani Coyote]

Food for thought:

 

Would it be unethical to create a race of humans who don't complain about exploitation, long hours, etc., and are in essence human robots?

 

After all. Our concepts of rights, liberties, etc. only really apply to beings who can think about these sorts of things. That is why we put animals lower on the hierarchy; they don't think in the abstract like we do. Is it wrong to make a GM human work 16 hour weeks for no pay, when they have no concern other than performing labor?

Edited September 20, 2015 by Ty the Tasmanian Ogilvie

[Nepenthe]

There is evidence that animals ranging from rabbits to mice to dogs to crows to, of course, apes that can think abstractly to varying degrees, and it's pretty much reigning theory that animals mentally and emotionally suffer when treated like shit. It's going to be hard to convince most people at this point that a chicken lacking a language cortex means it's totally fine with being shoved in a cage all its life to lay eggs or be fattened up. We consider most animals property because they lack the ability to understand the meaning and nuances of law (and of course because they simply aren't human, because we still value vegetative people and infants over functioning work animals despite the disparity in utility), but there is still a general acceptance of the concept of "animal welfare"- this idea that non-human beings deserve some level of respect to their bodies- that justifies the disgust towards animal abuse.

Which means that you are going to have an impossible time producing a race of beings borne from human DNA that can be treated any kind of way without some kind of significant moral debate about life value, even if they had the same emotional and self-serving faculties as a desktop computer. Just make robots.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

If nothing else, there will always be a market for hand-made or hand-reared goods. In a world where everything is automated and everyone is able to live the life of Riley (a world I can't see coming about, even with A.I.), things made by human hands will naturally be big sellers - among the luddites especially.

Have you been reading the Diamond Age, by any chance? Because that's exactly how that setting is like regarding hand-made goods being big sellers over replicated stuff.

[Yuli Ban]

Just popping in to say that I'm doubling down on worker-owned businesses. I feel that the less the State is involved, the better— unless and only unless it's government owned by worker-owners. I've been working it out Libertarian Mutualism, which is really just a very fancy word for free market socialism.

You see, there exist in the world a worker-owned business that's extremely successful— Mondragón Cooperative Corporation. It's located in Basque country, Spain, and is part of the reason that region is so wealthy and has so little income inequality. Another is John Lewis in the UK. And as it happens, Cuba is transitioning from the failed model of state socialism into a potentially extremely successful model of market socialism.

Once the masses own the means of production (without State interference, and with a free market), artificially intelligent automation won't be seen as a threat, but an opportunity.

Hence why I support free market socialism. Small-s socialism; worker ownership, not State ownership. 

Edit: accidentally'd my brain and wrote a Medium article.

Technostism— Free the Worker, Enslave the Robot

Edited October 7, 2015 by Yuli Ban