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.
Sounds better than what we have now yeah but I could see it being abused by someone corrupt to benefit themselves or someone bigoted to oppress people they don’t like. Which…happens now so it’s kind of a moot point but I guess I’m trying to say that people could still ruin it by being terrible.
Which is another reason why I think it would have to be a voluntarily formed leftist organization that not everyone has to participate in and like the database would have to be transparently run (no actual names attached, only the computer knows who’s who) and the code would have to be open source for everyone participating in the thing.
If we were all like living in one society, collectively administered we’d probably have to extrapolate suggested production numbers based on “sales” and the data we have from participants.
But like to me capitalism is an IT problem, we use currency as a rough way to get goods and services where they need to go and what to prioritize production-wise, but like it creates wild inequality, and kills people. So what if we came up with a rational way of distributing them based on actual data and hard evidence. If we built the algorithm and data collection right it’d be amazing, and like if we built it to truly tell us what stuff we needed to do and make to make people happier and prevent illness and what not and we could have like a community website to tell people where we need more people helping out like “we need more people to sign up to work in the washer factory this month, there have been an unusual number of reported breakdowns” or “hey if you’re looking to train for a new career, young people or people who want to learn a new career, we’re seeing a probable shortage of tree doctors and mixologists in four years time”
All labor would be voluntary, but I’ll bet a lot of people would choose to go where they’d be useful.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 