I keep hearing about the threat of AI to take away jobs. Amazon firing thousands of workers to replace them with robots ~ is this a big problem, or what ? I think that if modern technology, whether it be AI or robots, be able to replace workers and increase productivity and efficiency, that is wonderful news. There seems to be some idea that “we need more Jobs !” Everyone needs to have a Job, to make money and live the good life. But what about a vision of the world that doesn’t require everyone to have a job ? As for Amazon hoovering up all our money ~ not a problem ~ just tax the bejesus out of them, and apply those funds to support some of the ideas mentioned here ~
I have long advocated Free Farms, “where everyone is welcome and everything is free.” I believe that the cheapest way to deal with the hungry people of the world is just to feed them. If anyone, anywhere could just go to the nearest free farm and find food and shelter for free, that would solve so many of the world’s problems at a stroke. It would single-handedly obviate the need for war. So many people and companies are engaged in useless activity just to make money. But what if we didn’t need money ? Of course, most people would still prefer to work and make money so they could enjoy a greater standard of living than that afforded by the free farm, which would be just minimal provision for a decent life, with dormitories, and cafeteria meals. If you have some real work to do that provides some real benefit to the world, then you may receive reward sufficient to live in a higher style. But for large numbers of people with nothing better to do, why not just let them live their lives in peace, as an alternative to war, theft, fraud, murder, mayhem, and rampage ?
This would streamline the working world to consist of just important, valuable, and useful stuff, without all the useless junk that is clogging up the works. The important issue here is the claim that setting up free farms would be cheaper than any alternative. First of all, free farms would be very easy and cheap to maintain. It actually wouldn’t cost that much to provide the essentials of life to people, and the benefits could be really extraordinary. It is similar to the idea of operating inner city busses for free, avoiding all the cost of selling and collecting tickets. The benefits would include improved access to the inner city’s commercial activities, so the overall benefits would pay for the cost of providing the free transit. The small cost in taxes to the commercial businesses would be repaid in increased business, so everyone would be happy. Just compare the enormous amounts of money that are totally vaporized into nothingness by endless war, whose net result is utter destruction, loss of life, advance of climate catastrophe, and devastation on every hand, while the arms merchants are rubbing their hands in glee, giggling in their sleeves.
And what a much nicer world this would be if no one had to wage war, rob, steal, or engage in criminal or fraudulent behavior just to generate money ? If you lose your job loading baskets at Amazon, just retire to the free farm and live your life in peace, tending the gardens; or not, as you please. The expectation of the free farm is that residents would contribute to the operation of the community ~ cooking, cleaning, gardening, growing food, or participating in any other useful activity, but I think it should be mostly voluntary. The world is full of totally helpless people, many of them brought to that pass because of the unrelenting stress of the effort of survival. But, rather than push these people into criminal behavior, why not just let them live out their lives in peace ? If they are unable to do anything beyond smoking cannabis and staring at the wall, just let them do it, and let the rest of the world carry on with the elements of a more useful life. Not everyone wants to learn to play a Baroque oboe (or go to the effort of reading my books, he hints), but that is their loss.
I have viewed many social, economic, and political problems from the point of view of Sharpening and Leveling, or Sharpeners and Levelers. The problem is that excessive leveling produces mediocrity and a dumbing down “to the lowest common denominator.” Sharpening, on the other hand, while it stimulates excellence in moderate degrees, becomes intolerable fascism at the extremes (e.g., the Unites States, circa 2026 under Donald Trump).
There are two possible solutions to this situation ~ one is to find some optimal level of sharpening that encourages excellence without extending to fascism. But the other solution, which I advocate, is to allow the complete leveling of the “free farms” along with the simultaneous freedom of the sharpening class for those who wish to be part of that world.
The United States illustrates all the problems of excessive sharpening ~ gross disparities in wealth and income, discrimination along racist or class lines, abandonment of responsible stewardship of the planet in favor of unrestrained profit seeking by the voracious few, endless war which benefits the arms merchants at the expense of everyone else on the planet, etc. So my solution would be for an institution of Stewardship that would provide free farms on the one hand, and restrain and tax the rapacious corporations on the other hand.
I have described my idea of such stewardship many times, but not lately. For those new to the idea, here is my earliest mention of the idea ~ New Solutions to the Problems of the Present Day ~ a Blueprint for International Prosperity and World Peace, 1992. I have modified some of my views since then, but, in the main, I stand by what I have written. I notice that I was bothered by the unimaginable national debt of $7 trillion (pocket change in these days of a $40 trillion debt), so my advocacy of printing up 7,000,000 one million dollar banknotes would have to be updated to 40,000,000 one million dollar banknotes in order to pay off the National Debt with one swift blow to the world economic system. Of course those new dollars would be relatively worthless, but the major losers would be those who are holding cash instruments like Treasury Bills (ha, ha !). But that is only a semi-serious attack on the Ponzi scheme which is the United States federal government scam. I have a whole new idea of money, which is not developed in this very early New Solutions article, but may be seen in some of the following essays ~ Money, Power, Politics, & God, A One World Total Makeover, Economic Theory, Fiat Currency, Solution to the Question of Deficit Financing, Two Economic Fallacies, and Money, Sex, and Power.
Curriculum Vitae ~ links about the Author and his work.
