Posted on 11/26/2002 6:27:01 PM PST by Momaw Nadon
I hate my job. I wish I could live a comfortable life without having to work.
Can the best and brightest Freeper minds devise a way of life in which nobody has to work, yet we are all living comfortably?
There could be a technological solution to this problem.
What if we created intelligent robots to do our work for us, while we all relax and enjoy life?
The pace of advances in computer technology is increasing and a solution to the problem of having to go to work may occur in this century.
My hope is that we will all be able to live in a leisure class like the idle rich.
How can this be implemented?
Who would own the robots: individuals, the government, or corporations?
My challenge to all at Free Republic is to devise a Constitution of a political socioeconomic system in which nobody has to work but in which we are all wealthy.
Any takers?
Too many people now and too few resources just to reach out and take what is needed.
So we are doomed to living by work instead of living by play.
Eze 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
2Th 3:10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.
Many people have been unhappy in their jobs or present circumstances. You aren't a slave. Go get a different job.
For you (or anyone) to expend wealth, someone must have previously created it, else there is no wealth.
If the creation of wealth were a mechanistic process, some huge number of people would have employed such a process long since. They have not, therefore, such a process does not exist.
As regards 'robots', or some other flavour of automaton, providing the effort to let you lie in the hammock forever, there are numerous formal demonstrations of the impossibility of this notion. Purely regarding automatons, Turing theory demonstrates this quite elegantly. From a more traditional humanistic logical standpoint, Kleene, and before him Godel (not to mention Fitch and Thomason, and for that matter Ruth Barkan-Marcus) have all generated insoluble paradoxes, or, if you prefer reductio ad absurdem arguments against the postulate of the availability of 'infinite leisure'.
For my part, I would simply observe that SOMEONE must plant and harvest the corn, and feed the cattle (scr*w you, you silly vegetarians), and deliver same to market, and butcher them, and pack the product, and deliver product to stores.
Planning to raise all your own food, are you? Takes a bit of work...cuts into to your notion of 'infinite leisure'.
The business leaders would be the first to use them...and you'll be without a job and means of support. No relaxing, no ease, no joy. Big bills, no cash.
Off by a decimal place, it would be $3200/person/year.
At the risk of turning this from a vanity post into a discussion about politics . . .
If a union is a voluntary association, then there is no reason to be against it. I am opposed to anti-monopoly legislation as well. Businesses should be permitted to co-operate in order to create efficiencies of network, of scale, and of scope. Malefactors should be punished by market mechanisms, not by politicians, who are, just coincidentally, accepting protection money from industrial competitors. See U.S. vs. Microsoft.
And if businesses should be allowed to act collectively, then so should workers. And, again, if they are not prudent, they will end up being punished by market mechanisms. Look at the UAW as an example of what happens when you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
All power to the producers!
But that's not idle at all. Idle is sitting around the pool drinking Bloody Marys. The trick is to find a way of making the things you like to do profitable, rather than being compelled to draw revenue from activities you would not voluntarily pursue.
And, now about those wargames . . .
Scale? period? rules?
Can you think of a way to avoid such a situation?
I think that individuals owning worker robots would be a solution.
What if we all lived at the expense of robotic workers?
Unions
No, robotic workers will raise my food.
Ray Kurzweil is a leading theorist in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.
Judging from sales of Algore's book the answer would seem to be "no".
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