The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Govt Dependency will end in Chaos

Govt Dependency will end in Chaos

I agree with this in principle, but typical solutions proposed by the right are not workable for a number of reasons: a) they are almost always revolutionary, no evolutionary. Your typical soapbox speeches by GOP start with "I will eliminate...". There is no guarantee that such drastic changes will produce better result than status quo; b) too many sacred cows - changes have to be systemic, focusing on a small part (for example PBS or some politically unpopular Department) will have hardly any net effect. If your elected officials are not speaking about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Corporate Subsidies and Defense (all of them), then they are bullshitting you and are not serious about budget.


Still, I think log-term we will have to completely rework governance. Industrial Age is all but ended, we are now entering Information Age. Automation and early efforts into AI make more and more typical employment areas irrelevant. We are withing 5 years of eliminating Tier 1 Customer Support, we can now automate most of the manufacturing and are getting to the point where robots are cheaper than Third-World sweatshop labor. I predict that within 20 years we will need less workers than today all while maintaining or exceeding historical productivity and GDP growth. Implications of this prediction is that unemployment is here to stay, simply because society does not need that many workers. Sure, bright and educated will always be in demand but not everyone in the society is capable of it. So what going to happen when only PhDs with 120+ IQ are employable? More importantly, what kind societal pressure would all these unemployed put on the system, especially if they are abandoned by the government? I can see return of religious wars, riots, walled cities...

The only logical conclusion that many of you going to hate is that Welfare State is the future's mode of operation. As society's efficiency increases, and population increases there is ever-increasing need to maintain social contract to avoid complete breakdown.

Well, I think Ron Paul and even myself would agree with your first paragraph. Ron gets asked about all sorts of things "like" PBS etc often, he always says more or less: " Well, it probably wasnt intended in the Constitution but its really so inconsequential that its not really what we need to be focused on right now". And then goes back to talking about cutting defense, foreign aid and corporate welfare.


As to your second paragraph, both Paul and myself would disagree - because we both have a fundamentally view of economics and human action.

At least as long as Govt stays out of peoples way enough that people are still *able to do things, without being harassed. While more heavy industry will surely become automated, you are only thinking in subtractive terms. The free market has long found ways to create new employment. Four hundred years ago, most of the population was stuck in the agriculture field. Automation and improved processes changed that, and a lot of those jobs went away.

Even though robots and AI will be able to do more, there will still be plenty of things robots and AI cannot do, or do well. Still , things are changing. I think the new tech makes it more imperative than any time in history that a philosophical stand against large govt needs to be taken. We are at a point, where if we do not check the size of govt now, soon govt will be able to control all facets of society in a mostly automated and extremely totalitarian way.

I brought it up before, but here it is again. Increased productivity due to automation is reality today, soon automation multiplier will be big enough that couple system integration engineers will be able to out-produce 200-workers typical union shop of the last century.

What we do at this point is important, but not for the reasons you stated. Current trend is that all this increased productivity is get channeled into corporate profit. Engineers are not get paid more, they simply have jobs that allow them to live at a level of foreman from the example above. Investor class get disproportionate benefits from increasing productivity, while working class gets all the societal burden of the change. I don't understand how could you not see such outcome as problematic. Society, social contract, is that everyone has equal opportunity to partake in fruits of their labor, only some don't labor at all, and others have no opportunity whatsoever.

Possible future outcomes
A. Market is energized by new tech that countines to advance.
B. War, is used to reduce the population.
C. Mankind makes a full stride effort to expand beyond Earth, and moves to inhabit all areas of the Solar System.
D. With the centralization of power into the hands of the Feds, a class of people will start performing domestic terriosts acts. For example Weather Underground.

The first question we should be asking, is why the investor class as such reaps the benefits while the engineer does not. More "regulation" is not an answer here, leaving aside whether regulation is the "solution" for the moment - in this context I mean it is not the "answer" because I am talking about the actual factors that create the condition. In other words, we need to separate the "answer" to the question regarding the origins of the problem from the "solution" to the problem. So while more regulation may be a "solution" - I think first the answer to the question of why the status quo exists in the first place needs to be thoroughly understood.

I see the inability of people to prosper without the aid of "investor" classes , at least on a macro scale, as the result of said classes rigging the govt system. Not in terms of lack of opportunity, but in terms of govt interference. The interference comes in many shapes and sizes, from anti competitive regulations and laws (and no this is not an indictment against *all* regulations or laws) that are clearly designed to favor the connected, to subsidies and loans to the connected, to no-bid contracts, and so on and so forth.


Without coming to a concrete understanding of how the dynamics actually operate - I see no chance of proactively engineering a solution that is workable, let alone just or equitable. Other than simply withdrawing the level of interference.

Hayek propositioned that doing it is an utter impossibility, due to the scale of the contributing factors involved. He maintained that interference by govt was at best bumbling, and at worst cynical. (Note a couple of things here to keep this discussion on track - 1) Austrian economists do not actually argue for no regulation. Dumping toxic stuff in rivers for example should be illegal. But there are different types of regulation. -- 2) Hayek in particular advocated a social safety net. He did not think that there should be no social safety net, and in the same vein neither do I. )

I remain open to the possibility that Hayek might have been wrong - but it is going to take a plan that understands and accounts for *all* contributing factors and addresses *all* possible outcomes and side affects, at least as far as *all* can be ascertained.

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Secondly, I think you are missing the point regarding what I said in my earlier post. I think this highlights the fundamentally different way we view things. I am quite aware of the state of automation, and have a keen interest. I do not disagree with your general assessment.

Where we differ is in 2 key places.

The first being that as I said, you are being entirely subtractive. You assume that lost jobs mean that there can be no upsurge or replacements. Human nature tends to drive people to find new things to do. Much like the agricultural revolution, the information revolution might well show us for example (as long as cronyist govt does not prevent it) that new types of activities are profitable now that base manufactured materials costs are so low and labor so easy to come by. People find new ways to prosper, and build on what has come before. You often cannot tell what is going to happen, but in free societies something *always* happens.

People who got put out of work went to the cities to work in the heavy factory, eating the mass produced food they didnt have to make anymore. People who got put out of work in a heavy factory, went to an assembly line, using the refined materials that were now more efficiently made and machined to assemble more complex parts. And so on and so forth.

There are always ways to provide value, and people seek ways to find value. I just do not see half the population as having nothing to do, just because machines mass manufacture things on a larger scale. Plus that type of automation will probably be a net benefit for the USA, as the types of labor most significantly impacted will be developing world labor.

Plus there are many things that machines will not be able to do, at least anytime soon. And there are probably things we should never allow machines to do - but thats a different topic altogether.

I think this is part of human condition, you can't talk about elimination here, rather lessening impact of corruption. As to regulation, you have to balance the need to diminish plutocracy vs. controlling direct destructive behavior. Idea of a corporation and maximizing of profits above all forces society down regulation path, corporation social construct completely lacks internal controls and can only operate "for greater good" within rigid regulatory framework.

I don't think this system could be fixed from within, with less (or more) regulation, but only by decoupling it from political system. For example criminalizing lobbying, forbidding corporate and anonymous political contributions, and setting and enforcing personal contribution maximums will result in much better elected government capable of creating rational policy that leads to reasonable regulation. If this is not enough, then direct representation is within our technological reach.



Interesting. Where you see a utopia driven by intellectual pursuits, I see dystopia of 99% living in the slums and 1% taking conspicuous consumption to new unprecedented levels. If all the wealth (and power) concentrated in 1%, who and more importantly with what money, are going to pay for all these new and novel activities. We already see RIAA and the likes creating various Mikey Mouse laws to control flow of entertainment, imagine if this is taken to a whole new level with a control over all flow of information!

Open up your wallet till you have just enough to make it from paycheck to paycheck, then you can come back here and preach about ineguality.