Humans are not supposed to live like this. It is not in our biology to be like this. They have built an economy where they expect humans to be perfectly rational and work as efficiently as machines. Economists call these perfect beings Econs. “Humans are imperfect, emotional, and full of bias while econs are perfect, calculated, and objective”
We subject our youngest to bombardments of legalized manipulation but we don't call it manipulation. We call it marketing. They say it is a necessary evil for the benefit of the economy. Same as they said slavery was a necessary evil for the benefit of the economy. Must we have to fight off the half trillion dollar marketing industry just for our sanity? Why do we allow this?
They say the economy is a meritocracy yet corporations that manipulate, lie to and even poison us get rewarded with a greater profit for doing exactly that. And because of the increasing fierceness of competition a “good” corporation that does no such thing has no chance against an evil one so they must do necessary evils if they can even hope to compete.
The economic system is not only flawed but it is greatly inefficient. Economists have been saying this for quite a while. In the current global market economy the aggregate efficiency caps out at 20%. Essentially we are paying well over 5x as much with our inputs and therefore we work well over 5x as hard as the compensation we receive. It's estimated that it would only take 50 people and some automated systems to meet the necessary demands of 1000. And these numbers get better with scale.
In the countryside, where I grew up, you hear countless songs about the open road being a symbol of freedom. On the road you find lanes that confine you, signs and signals to control you, and now, because of endless consumption you'd be lucky to find any open road at all. But they paved over all the green of our beautiful world and said “Here you are free now. Just don't walk anywhere or you'll get run over”. They’ve designed outsides to sell you private vehicles and insides to sell you escape from the terrible world they’ve made outside. The past generations have perverted the world and expect us to work and pay to escape the ugliness they've created.
They have created a system that not only rewards greed but encourages instilling greed in others! Buddhist dharma has said desire/greed is the root of evil but, with a system built on competition, greed is inevitable. Evil is inevitable. These corporations need us to be greedy so that we will work for them. Where are our values? Why do we continue to do things that we know are morally wrong. Things that fundamentally contradict the values we've been raised on?
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” – MLK 1967 (56 years ago)
The current economic system thrives on isolation. The less you share the more you spend, the more you consume. Political analysts have documented the erosion of social capital for the last 30 years. We are more lonely than ever before and it's hard to believe it is not by design.
We sacrifice so much for our economies. Billions of dollars, trillions in human life satisfaction for the sake of keeping the economy afloat. And yet we face constant recessions. Why do we sacrifice so much for something that does not stand for us. It's insanity to keep repeating these sacrifices while things just get worse and worse.
It is time for REVOLUTION
After years studying engineering I got my first software job. It was a great company and the compensation was insane, maybe triple what other people my age were making. But I went insane. I couldn't believe that THIS is the world our parents and grandparents have created. I work at a job burn myself out for 40 years making someone else money? Or I start a business that steals the fruits of someone else's labour? Those are the only options??? It is clear now that it is up to us to start the revolution. I quit my job almost a year ago to figure out this problem. We may not be able to destroy capitalism but we MUST create an alternative economic system.
Humans may not be Econs but, luckily, we have created Econs. Automation is already here it is already taking jobs but it does not need to be seen as bad. Monopolies and automation have been twisted as being purely evil and bad but it is only in the context of an evil economic system.
As mentioned earlier, It is estimated that it would only take ~50 full-time (40h/w) people and existing automated systems to create all the necessities for 1000 people. If 800 people did the work of 50 people then that's 2.5 hours per person per week (assuming perfect communication). These numbers only get better with higher total populations. But I understand that work is an essential part of human life. Realistically we should aim to only eliminate “necessary work” and then simulate other hours of work for purposes of human stimulation and benefit.
This is what I came up with in brief:
– We automate food production. This is already being somewhat done in automated vertical farms. The issue is that staple foods like corn, wheat, potatoes and rice are not exactly economically viable. Luckily there is value outside of economical value. Automation of food production can recoup much of the cost of labour and improve efficiency to the point where at a certain point we can give away food for cheap or free and still retain decent profit.
– We invest in our local communities. We can set up arrays of automated farms in refrigerated shipping containers and connect them to hubs that can serve up to 10,000 people. Members of this community can be educated on maintenance of the automated container farms and only then would they would be eligible for free food and any future resources created by automated systems linked to the hub. Member would just occasionally need to do maintenance on these automated machines. Now a wild idea is that each Hub should be managed democratically by the workers and independently from other hubs.
– We educate everyone for free. Very few young people are educated in automation and even fewer in agriculture so it is paramount that we offer education and knowledge transfer systems in these hubs to get regular people up to speed. We should also have more team building and community building activities. A community that grows together goes together.
– We distribute the wealth. A novel idea by Nobel Prize winning economist Jeremy Rifkin suggests to create a network of storage devices that act as edge data centres which would also solve the problem of the global storage crisis that is expected to happen by 2025. Now automated shipping containers would also create a lot of IoT data and so would need sufficient data storage space. If we can invest such that each farm also doubles as an micro edge data centre not only would we solve another problem but we could create an opportunity for this system to passively generate actual revenue through partnerships. Not only that but if each micro edge data centre acts like a cache for internet services and the hubs act as a secondary cache then we could even see a speed boost in internet services. Then we could distribute this generated revenue to the working members of the hub.
– We simulate work. It seems ridiculous to want to rid work and then simulate work but I personally believe it is the right way to go. A lot of things we enjoy are in fact simulations. Sports can be considered simulations of war and masterbation simulation of sex and we already have video games as being a simulation of work. So it sounds a bit odd but IMO we should replace work with video games or at least use gamification to make work and learning more fun. Then, after necessary work is complete, IMO we should spend our time learning and problem solving through games.
I have made it my life mission to get this idea (or at least smth like it) up and running in Canada. With the average age of Canadian farmers being 58.0 years old in 2021, 40% of Canadian farmers are set to retire by 2033 and 88% have no succession plan. I believe this idea can help with the issues of food security in Canada and, hopefully, the rest of the world.
All I ask for you is to offer your opinions on this proposed system. In my coffee driven rage it's likely I haven't explained it perfectly here but what I explained should jump start your imagination for you to see potential issues and synergies.
It is up to us to end the greed. End the endless consumption. End the bullshit jobs. End all the evil. It is up to our generation to start the automation revolution.