I was walking close to home with the dog, but in an area I hadn't been before. Prior to having a dog, there was little reason to walk into unfamiliar areas, because there isn't that much around. With a dog though, I end up taking some different paths and depending on the weather, walking a bit further. This place was like a dumping ground for the council, with skips, old signage and a heap of granite curb stones, which is what is used in much of Finland instead of cement curbs. Fancy. But I was thinking that all this stuff is just sitting here, and I reckon I could use some of those stones in my garden to build a brilliant stone fence.
Now I have to work out how to steal them, and lift them, as each probably weighs a metric tonne.
I am sure that at some point this area will be developed and turned into apartments and houses, to go along with the ten thousand or so other unsold and empty new dwellings in the country. Eventually, there will be pressure to fill them and with the birth rate at 1.2, well below the required replacement rate of 2.1 just to keep it steady, it can really only come through immigration. And this of course creates a lot of uncomfortable problems for governments and citizens, because they don't want immigrants to "take over" the country, but at the same time, they want to have valuable properties and business opportunities, which aren't possible in a declining population.
A declining population isn't all bad, because it takes pressure off the environment, but anyone who thinks that society becomes better, is likely fooling themselves. Because it doesn't change human nature to compete and want to maximise resources, so there will still be wars, and there will still be starvation and atrocities performed in the name of profit, and communities will continue to degrade and fall apart, with a furthering of disconnection and much of the issues we already face.
I reckon there are a lot of people who believe that technology is going to somehow save us, because it is going to replace nearly everything that we as humans can do. This way, even in a declining population we won't need people to plough a field or clean a toilet, work a register or drive a taxi - and apparently with all the free time we have (unpaid) we will have the space to be our most creative and live our best lives. I just don't see it though, as the meaning of life itself starts to rapidly slip away once we don't have anything meaningful to do.
Sure, the jobs mentioned are not necessarily meaningful in and of themselves, but they are part of the fabric of the economy in which we live, which means that even though (as I see it) the majority of what we do is meaningless busywork, most people get satisfaction of some kind from being a value-adding member of society. Those who would be considered disenfranchised and disillusioned members of society, are also those who tend to cause social disorder, crime and take a nihilistic view to all they do, which ends up being a wholly self-serving position, where me comes before all else, and by a long way.
Life is made up of many layers and a good life requires a fair amount of alignment between them, especially if part of the more complex world in which we live now. Yes, a simple life is possible, but it doesn't scale for the majority of people and in order to really live it well enough, you have to be highly self-sufficient, which most people are not and will never be, because to do so requires a huge amount of learning and compromise. So as I see it, most of us would need to find ways to make a good life out of the complex situation we have, but that isn't to say that what we have now is the only situation we can have.
Technology has always changed things and the current trajectory is going to see the largest change in the history of humanity, because it is going to lead us into a situation that for the first time, human expertise will be inferior to that of the technology. It has already started where for most people on earth, an AI can consume better, think better, and produce better. But it is going to keep on going, and going, until nearly everything we can do as a human, is made obsolete. And while it is still possible to "do it for the love" in reality, very, very few people will be able to maintain that, let alone get paid for it.
And that pay is incredibly important to consider, because without people getting paid, nothing gets consumed in the financial economy. While all the robots and AI can work out some kind of pay and tax system, ultimately the only reason for their existence, is to produce for us. And if we are unable to buy what they produce, what happens? This means that not only are we meaningless and irrelevant, but the technology we created to replace us, is also.
We are going to be forced to rethink what value is and how our economy works, because it is impossible to sustain in current if there are only middlemen, with no one producing, no one earning, and no one consuming. Therefore, we are going to have to work out what humans can do that is valuable and worth paying for, that doesn't include having to do any kind of traditional production or service work.
Non-traditional products and services.
As I have mentioned before, the world would be a wholly different kind of place if rather than profit at any cost, business success was aligned to human wellbeing. That way, goods and services would have to add wellbeing value to humanity in order to turn a profit in the economy. But even if all the machines were aligned to this purpose, we would still have a problem of how humans are going to organise themselves in society. So perhaps the non-traditional goods and services that people could use as a differentiator comes from service to the community itself. But even with this, there just can't be enough positions available to feed everyone, so some form of handout like a UBI would be required - unless there was no money whatsoever and we lived in a society where resources were distributed by an artificial intelligence based on what it thought was best for humanity.
Technology to the rescue?
It all seems to get pretty dystopic pretty quickly by my estimations. Having said that though, if the current course is not corrected, it is going to get dystopic very fast anyway, so perhaps it is better to try the dystopia directed toward wellbeing, rather than the one doubling-down on profits.
We have created a slow-burning dumpster fire of a society and instead of dousing the flames, we keep on adding more fuel. None of this might matter in a few decades, because at the rate we are undermining ourselves, we might not last that long anyway. Great for the environment.
Taraz
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