that tells us where goods and services are needed by society by monitoring and prioritizing requests in real time, as well as monitoring “purchase” data (having people swipe an ID card and enter an ID when “shopping” online and so on). Like all that data gathered and put to use for good rather than evil…
Like seriously, imagine an economy run based on wants and needs, prioritized by data gathered about human happiness and life expectancy and shit, the thing tells us when we need more workers in whatever sectors because of demand, predicts what products people want so you don’t end up with shortages historically associated with planned economies.
Like I believe capitalism is an IT problem and also like imagine all those algorithms used to show you ads, used to curate your netflix and your facebook and everything used to benefit humanity rather than to shill crap?
I mean we have the ability to gather and interpret immense IMMENSE amounts of data, can you imagine what we could do with a records of everyone’s consumption of products and services? Of everyone’s requests?
Imagine the society we could build with all that data used for good, maximizing human happiness would be so easily within our grasp.
I like the ideas. I think this has been thought since at least since 60s e.g. Socialism ou Barbarie’s “On the Content of Socialism” mentions computer algorithms that try to do something like that, although not on the level of detailed personal data.
TBH I prefer impersonal computer algorithms determining all this rather than endless meetings and voting over next year’s production of shoes with people I probably so not want to talk to.
That being said I think it is a bit naive to say, “it’s ok, computers will do it all for us”. Such a system of production will require a lot of thought and lots of debates, and LBR will be set up in a world situation which is far from ideal (global civil war against capitalism, climate change, shortages of resources).
LBR?
I mean I think aside from energy we actually have a surplus of resources. Like we can produce not just enough food for the entire world but also enough video games and pointless tchotchkes.
I mean I don’t think computers will do it all, but I figure if you gathered enough data on what different stuff does to human well being, you could eventually just get it to like maximize human well being, y’ know?
It’s all a matter of having enough information.
I do not think productivity or even collecting information is the issue.
It is more the issue of coordination, assigning priorities (e.g. we would prefer to have sufficient housing over luxury yachts) and what is done with the information. It has never been done before, so we can only speculate as to what could possibly work. If FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY can be done well it would be cool but it will be a challenge for a lot of people to work on.
Well like we’d gather data on what effect stuff has on human happiness like “turns out the happiness produced by luxury yachts is cancelled out by the misery of being homeless” (though that one’s pretty obvs) or “huh it turns out that blenders have a greater net positive effect on human well being than toaster ovens, prioritize the blender orders”
Like we collect the data, use it to accurately predict what stuff and how much of it will want/need next like “Well ten thousand people got duct tape today, which with average rates of duct tape usage, means that we’ll need ten thousand new rolls of duct tape in 10 months time” or I mean if it collects individual data anonymously the system could ultimately predict how often every individual needs duct tape and so get production numbers down to a nearly exact science (how much we need of what, when) add people self reporting stuff they will want in terms of like novel shit like say people putting in requests for handbag designs for next seasons, and systems resembling Amazon’s subscription services, and people doing things like reporting of clothing sizes plus like demographic and aesthetic taste data would mean exactly the right number of bras in each size produced.
Like I mean if Netflix can predict what movies we’ll like based on what other movies we’ve liked, if google can predict our searches, and facebook can detect our moods (and have effects on them) and I mean obviously this kind of monitoring should be something you opt in to, but like if it was something done voluntarily, by a large community for the common good, like think of what we could do with all that data on human happiness and wellbeing, on what affects it, and then we could maximize it.
Something about this makes me really uncomfortable
it’s probably because you’ve read foucault lmao. any apparatus of this scale is somewhat terrifying.
well I just think like, free access to resources and autonomy is more valuable than supposedly predicting aesthetic preferences. at the very least I think it’s wrong to think that’s how aesthetic tastes develop either.
Well like people would be entitled to get whatever stuff they wanted and needed and would have free access to resources, that’s part of the idea. The idea is that we make stuff and do stuff and distribute it to whoever wants it, and structure society around producing and giving people whatever material possessions they want basically no questions asked, and providing whatever help people need no questions asked on a voluntary basis the idea is a program to help us figure out how much of different stuff to make and where it needs to go to so that it’s easy to give everyone access to resources and autonomy, and like all labor is performed on a volunteer basis, but like I trust people to want to do stuff that’ll help everybody else (and the algorithm collates data to help us figure out where we’ll be most helpful)
Like the idea isn’t to be like “you want X” the idea is to be like “Well we know that bras the most popular color choice for bras in size 32E has been green with all of the styles avaliable so far, so we should definitely make sure to make enough green 32E bras, we also know that fluorescent yellow is the least popular color choice for 32E bras so we’ll make less of those”
Basically it’s to help avoid accidentally making too much of something no one wants or making too little of something they do want
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 