I am realizing that a number of the revolutionary ideas that I am getting from the Long Now seminars is a bit mind-boggling. As a skeptical analyst and as a pattern making human, I keep trying to make sense of it all. But I think that I have to be resigned to some shortcuts which are not of my own design. Pete Murphy offers the following:
I am author of a book titled "Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America." To make a long story short, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption begins to decline. This occurs because, as people are forced to crowd together and conserve space, it becomes ever more impractical to own many products. Falling per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty. Per capita consumption data gathered from around the world for a wide range of products bears out this relationship.
I really dig this kind of thinking because it begs a large number of questions which must be explained at length. That process is perhaps more interesting. What I don't know how to do is evade confirmation bias, nor do I think I have time as a layman. All I have to do is be stubbornly skeptical until my experiences contain enough memorable surprises that I conform to the notions. Not disciplined but a good way to handle those things which I am not expert enough to distinguish from generic brain spew.
I want to bring up a few of my own macroeconomic ideas so that perhaps a pattern emerges. In the first place I am, as a data architect and amateur philosopher pointedly interested in the ability to maintain frameworks of actionable theory and knowledge. So I am vitally aware in information economies - what decisions support the activity of human beings based upon their ability to logically justify actions disciplined by ethics. But I am also vitally aware of the agency of will. (sigh, another essay). Basically, the agency of will is a way of looking at a group of people's willingness to go out on a limb given imperfect information. An axiom of this idea might be 'the hungrier man works harder'. Another might be 'the confident man kills sooner'. Another might be 'the meek shall inherit the leftovers'. But you get the idea of what I mean.
This commonsense explains a lot to me with regard to poverty, liberty, etc. Given that men are motivated by greed, fear and honor, I think they seek their own interests. They make a way logically based on what they know - they navigate their way through life applying logical/ethical frameworks. Honor among thieves, do no harm, every man for himself, golden rule, all things in moderation - whatever. These are universal.
OK. So Murphy sounds a bit Malthusian. I think population density can be negotiated based on the means of production. What keeps southern Chinese rice farmers in place at a high density? They have a tried and true ethos about how to run a village that works extraordinarily well. What keeps berber traders in north Africa at a low density? They too have a very well disciplined nomadic ethos. They know how to work it. The population density problem is an urban population density problem. Certainly what works in Brooklyn cannot work in Hollywood.
I happen to think that falling per capita consumption is a good idea and that there is some kind of equilibrium to be met beyond market considerations. That is to say I think that there is some component of human progress that requires lower consumption and that this is a natural way for humans to challenge themselves. Why climb mountains? Why play piano? Why create poetry? So long as humans see such activities as a higher form of progress and evolution we should not consider that human consumption on the whole is open-ended. After all, there is something wrong with being fat and greedy and we all instinctively know this. Unemployment is also a condition of the idle rich , the surf bum and the cadging bohemian. It's not always a bad thing. The question is whether or not we are valuing such avocation and providing mobility towards that destination, or if in fact we tend to admire the bling socially.
At the bottom end, social mobility needs to be certain but not assisted. "Getting over the hump" should remain hard work and the Welfare State breaks the fundamental work ethic that makes enlightened living worthwhile.
I understand somewhere that relatively high unemployment in the US at least is based on the fact that we tend to have many more full time jobs than part-time jobs. The consequence is that it is harder to get a job, but they tend to be 'better' in that they are long term jobs.
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