RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘In Detail’

In Detail: Material Rights

03 Nov

We are all born because of someone else’s decision. We find ourselves in the world through no fault of our own. And in our current system, we find ourselves almost immediately taxed for that existance. Most of us grow up in families that provide food, shelter, and clothing, but the provision of these necessities is connected immediately to that family, and those who have the misfortune to be born into abusive or disfunctional families must choose between staying with them and facing a world where they must fend entirely for themselves. Children born into poor familes are put at considerable disadvantage compared to those born into richer ones, and all people, once they reach adulthood, must continually pay for things necessary to their continued existance. Indeed, as many of our nation’s homeless know, it is becoming increasingly difficult to even find somewhere you are allowed to stand without somehow paying for the priviledge.

Technosocialism approaches this differently. It is society that says that new people must come into the world, and chance that causes people to be born into one society and not another. People need food, clothing, and shelter, but they are not the ones who created their own need for these things: that lies at the feet of the society who created the individual. Therefore, society should be responsible for the basic costs of keeping that individual alive and well.

What does this mean in real terms? Basically, it means that every citizen is entitled to certain Material Rights for which they are not charged any Consumption value. These include the food required for a basic balanced diet, a place to sleep and keep belongings safely, adequate clothing for the season and climate, and medical care as needed. It also, though some will find it counterintuitive, includes a computer with internet access. Now, it is quite clear that internet access is not as necessary for survival as food or shelter, but it is necessary if one is going to act as a citizen in a technosocialist society. The free flow of ideas is as important to a society as the flow of goods is to an economy, and it is important that no one be excluded from that.

But the fact that food, shelter, and internet access are all essentially free in a technosocialist society does not mean that most people would be freed from the responsibility for working, it simply gives them more freedom in their choice of work. Citizens may have the right to free housing, but it doesn’t have to be extravagant housing. Someone living only on their Material Rights without earning any Contribution credit would have little or no choice in the things they recieved. A base-level housing unit would not need to be much bigger than 6′x8′ to hold a bed and some shelving for belongings. They would be entitled to a computer with internet access, but it would not need to have more than text capabilities. They would be entitled to food, but only to something that met their nutritional requirements, not necessarily something they liked. In short, if someone wanted to live without working at all, they would be able to do so, but they would not be able to afford anything else to do either.

The technosocialist view is that while people should not have to earn the right simply to survive, the right to choose more than the bare bones is one that they do need to earn. It should be possible for an author or musician to trade a spartan existance for the time to complete a masterpiece, but it does not need to be particularly comfortable. History has shown us that when comfort and idleness can be simultaneously achieved there is a significant segment of the population that will attempt to do so. Comfort should always be linked to productivity.

So if people who wish to count expeditures as part of their Material Rights have limited choices about what they recieve, how is what they recieve actually determined? Critics are likely to assume that there would be some sort of “government standard” that restricted what people could get, but it’s actually much simpler than that: it’s whatever is currently in the least demand.  If Steve needs a new pair of pants for the winter, he can submit a Need request for a pair of pants, and he can specify his size and the fact that they need to be warm enough for winter, but from there the Market is going to choose the pants that others seem least interested in: the pants that have stayed unclaimed in the Market for the longest. They might be plaid, they might be pleated, they might be clown pants. If he wants to be more specific, he will need to accept a charge to his Consumption score for the difference. (see essay on pickiness). As for what exactly constitutes a person’s basic Material Rights, that must be decided on by society as a whole. It is likely to change somewhat over time, but might include a living space of at least 6′x8′, a week’s worth of clothing, food that meets currently understood nutritional requirements, and a computer capable of running a basic text web browser.

One question raised by this approach is that of immigrants. Most issues of interaction between a technosocialist society and any outside society that still operates on a currency basis is a tricky one, and this one is no different. If everyone in a technosocialist society is guaranteed food, housing, and clothing, that is likely to attract immigrants from outside who see it as an opportunity to live without having to earn a living. The key here is that immigrants must go through the same process as the technosocialist society’s children before gaining full citizenship. Until that time they are given a certain amount of leeway in terms of maintaining their ratio, but their Consumption scores are still charged for things that would count as Material Rights for a citizen. This might seem like a double standard, but it isn’t. In the case of people born into the society, they were not the ones who made the choice about joining the society, their parents chose to create them. In the case of immigrants, while they are obviously still the creation of their parents, their entry into the technosocialist society was entirely voluntary, and until they become full citizens it is reasonable to expect them to earn their own way. (There will be another essay soon on the process of gaining citizenship for children and for immigrants, but I don’t want to take up too much space in this one.)

This brings us to the issue of ratios. Just as there are people in currency societies who go into debt, there will be those in a technosocialist society who bring their ratio below 1.0. Once a person’s ratio goes below 1, be it through overconsumption or criminal activity, they are restricted from purchases through the Market except for their Material Rights. This might seem harsh at first, but compared to the fate of the penniless in our modern society it is actually quite generous. They are still entitled to the necessities of life, but they cannot drive themself deeper into debt. Technosocialism makes it very easy for those who need and want to earn Contribution credit to do so, and most of the reasons that drive people in our current society into debt crises (medical bills, real estate market crashes, layoffs, unscrupulous interest rates) do not exist in a technosocialist context. There should be no reason for anyone who has not been convicted of a crime to be subject to ratio-related restrictions for any length of time. There will be further discussion of the impact of these restrictions in the essays on Real Estate and Private Property later on.

This idea that all citizens are entitled to certain Material Rights is one of the primary reasons that I have named this system of political economy Technosocialism. To those who have grown up with Capitalism setting societal norms, it seems like an alien idea, but it is quite logical when you think about it. It should not cost people anything to continue existing, when it is society that requires that continued existance of them. The freedom from uncertainty provided by that guarentee would carry innumerable benefits. How many visionaries throughout history has society been denied because they were too busy trying to make ends meet? Under technosocialism, anyone from any social or financial class can have the freedom to make the breakthroughs of a Henry Cavendish or the other gentleman-Philosophers. And even those without any ambitions of greatness can rest more easily in their beds knowing that no change in the market or suddenly layoff will leave them hungry in the streets. The ideals of Technosocialism owe quite a bit to the “Four Freedoms” speech of Franklin Roosevelt, and the idea of a citizen’s Material Rights are there to try to provide the last two: Freedom from want and Freedom from fear. Once those two are covered, the citizenry is freed up to look after the rest.

 
No Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

 

In Detail: Profiles

01 Nov

The other day, we had some of the neighbors over for an end of the summer dinner on the porch. We were chatting about random things when I happened to mention that I played World of Warcraft. Immediately, one of the guests perked up and said that she played too. It turned out that not only did we both play WoW, we were both multiboxers, a miniscule minority even among WoW players. We had been living three houses away from each other for several years without even realizing that we had such an obscure interest in common.

This is a fairly common occurance. You might know a coworker for years before discovering accidentally that you’re both ultralight backpackers, or donate some old shoes to a thrift shop, never knowing that your best friend has been looking for that style of shoe for a month. Not only does this negate opportunities for people to help friends and neighbors without needing to engage in the larger economy, it also leads to a greater feeling of isolation within and alienation from society. The average modern American interacts with dozens of strangers a day. But what it, instead of having the only information you know about the check-out cashier at the supermarket be the fact that his name is Ted, you also knew that he grew up in the same town you vacation in? What if you could know that your new landscaping client was also a fan of Neal Stephanson? More than that, what if you could know that the person at the next table at the coffee shop drove the same model of car that you’re thinking of buying, or that the person sitting next to you on the plane is about to undergo the same surgery you had a few years ago and is desperate for reassurance? Knowing our commonalities with others strengthens social bonds enormously. At its least powerful, it helps us see others as people and not simply strangers. At its most powerful, it can forge connections that may last a lifetime.

But how can we make these sorts of commonalities more apparent in our day to day interactions? If we actually asked the supermarket cashier a series of questions to determine whether we had anything in common, we would all spend most of our lives in line at the supermarket. Actually, this sort of informaiton transfer is fairly easy, and entirely possible with today’s technology. Imagine an app for your cellphone that stored your Facebook profile and alerted you whenever someone with a matching interest in their profile came within Bluetooth range. That would get you 90% of the way to what I’m talking about. Add a display incorporated into glasses so that the information is always within visual range, and you’ve just about got it.

But important as the humanizing influence of highlighting commonalities is, that is only a part of what a technosocialist profile system would accomplish. A Profile includes not only interests and biographical information, but skills, needs, work history, and education. When the Skills Needed/Available system suggests jobs to citizens, it is drawing the information it needs from their Profiles to figure out what jobs they would be qualified for. When the Market deals with a citizen’s Consumption and Contribution scores, all of that information is stored in the Profile. A citizen’s profile contains all available information about him, from interests and favorites he lists himself to all the data the system collects on him.

Now, to avoid Big Brother situations, it’s important that people have control over this information. While our concepts of privacy have shifted considerably with the dawn of the internet, most people would still object to the idea that all informaiton about them was available to anyone. And so connected to the Profile system there must also be a fairly sophisticated social networking aspect. People must be able to designate friends and aquaintences, organize them into groups, and choose which people and groups have access to what information about them. They cannot delete any of the system-gathered information about them, and even information they choose not to share can be subpeonaed by a majority vote of a jury in a criminal investigation, but other than that they have control over who sees what.

One thing that must be discussed here at least briefly is the problem of identity theft. With so much of a person’s life linked to a single account, how can we ensure that criminals can’t steal their entire life by stealing a password? I started out this essay admitting that I am an avid player of World of Warcraft, and this is where that fact actually comes in handy: Blizzard, the company that runs World of Warcraft, came out with a device called an Authenticator in June of 2008. A very simple device small enough to fit on a keychain, the Authenticator is hardwired with an algorythm that creates a string of six digits depending on the date and time. These digits change frequently, and a code is generally only valid for about a minute. To log in to a World of Warcraft account, you must first provide your username and password and then enter the current code from your authenticator. The login system, but knowing the serial number of the authenticator attached to your account, knows what code the authenticator should have generated at this particular date and time, and can therefore tell whether the person trying to log in has the actual physical authenticator. While this system is not entirely foolproof (losing or breaking your authenticator requires you to go through a long process of proving who you are to Blizzard before you can log back into the game) there has never been a confirmed case of someone’s account being hacked while they had an authenticator attached to it. And this is a $6 piece of plastic designed to protect a computer game. If society put in the effort to expand the idea into a foolproof tool for online identification, it would not be difficult to come up with something less likely to be lost or broken.

The idea of the Profile is probably one of the least foreign-seeming of the Technosocialist institutions. It largely exists already, but is simply spread out among many different sets of records. If you combined Facebook, online banking, and your resume, you would be very close to a Profile. But by taking all of these disparate types of records and centralizing them in one place, a Profile becomes far more than the sum of its parts. It creates a goldmine of data for society to utilize easily, it stops unscrupulous people from hiding previous bad actions, and it frees everyone from the tedium of paperwork by keeping information in sync across systems automatically. But more than that, it takes the first step towards a society without strangers, in which everyone is seen as an individual in their own right by everyone else.

 
No Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

 

In Detail: Contribution & Consumption

28 Oct

I just had an unbelievably bad idea for an Inside the Actor’s Studio-style interview show. “Today on In Detail, we’ll be talking to the Gross National Product. So, GNP, what made you decide that you wanted to be an economic metric?”

Sorry about that, too much tea and not enough sleep. I promise that is not what this series is about. Instead, it’s a chance to go through some of the underlying elements of technosocialism that have been touched on in other essays but not explained fully. Today we’re going to be covering the ideas of Contribution and Consumption, the role they play in a technosocialist society, and how they differ from a currency-based model.

When people ask me what I’m working on, my usual answer is “a post-currency social and economic model.” This generally surprises those who assumed that it was my diary, or possibly fan-fiction poetry, and they tend to assume that I’m joking. But even for those prepared to accept the statement at face value, it tends to be a confusing one. Currency is deeply engrained in our culture as the only possible way an economy can flow, and the only alternative people can think of is the barter system, which is a pre-currency rather than a post-currency system. So let’s start our discussion with a brief overview of the history and role of currency in our current economic system.

Currency has evolved a number of times in different parts of the world, but it tends to start at one of two roots: grain or shiny things. As surplus agriculture developed and towns as we know them began to form, graneries were built to protect grain stores from moisture, mice, and other threats. Rather than trying to track whose wheat was whose, these granaries issued representative tokens. If you dropped off five pounds of wheat, you got tokens entitling you to pick five pounds of wheat back up. Because grains were central to the food supply, the tokens could often traded to the emerging non-farming artisan class in exchange for goods more easily than farmers could carry around grain for barter, and so they became a currency. The idea of a currency backed by wheat or rice might seem quaint to today’s modern American, but it actually makes quite a lot of sense. It just strikes us as odd because our currency evolved from a system based on shiny things.

The key to a shiny-things currency was rarity and beauty. A particular metal or type of shell had to be available in an area but fairly rare or labor intensive to collect. It would become highly prized as a decoration and sign of status, and something which everyone in the community would want, the same way they would all want grain in a grain-based economy. The universal desire for the shiny thing would make it universally barterable, and from there it would become a currency. In the case of metals, the minting of coins was started to provide guarentees of the purity and quantity of the metal being traded, and from there cultures often switched to coins and paper money backed by the metal rather than made of the metal itself.

So what is currency, really? Why would I as a merchant accept a piece of shiny metal (or these days, a series of electronic digits which represent a promise of a piece of paper which is no longer connected even to the shiny metal) in exchange for tangible, useful goods? My favorite explanation of this actually comes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. One of the main characters has been placed in charge of the Royal Mint and is wondering just what makes a dollar coin worth a dollar. “It was the city, he realized. The city said, in exchange for that dollar we will give you all these things. The value wasn’t in the coin, or even in the gold that backed it. It was in the potential of the city itself.” When I sell you a hat for $20, what I am really getting from you is the right to request $20 worth of goods and services from other members of society.

What technosocialism attempts to do is erase this last illusion of individual-to-individual exchange, and instead focus on the exchange between the individual and society. Because if I’ve made a hat worth $20, I don’t actually care whether I’ve gotten $20 from the person now wearing the hat. It might have been a gift for someone else. All I care about is being able to now $20 worth of food from the grocery store, or $20 worth of electricity from the electric company. In our current system, that means that the hat needs to go to someone who currently has $20 they’re willing to part with, which is why drops in employment tend to spiral into larger recessions. Because technosocialism disconnects the two, it provides a more stable demand and thus a more stable economy.

So let’s start at the beginning. Just what are Contribution and Consumption? Basically, Contribution is a measure of the benefit you have given to society. Goods you have produced, services you have performed, etc.. Consumption is a measure of what you have taken from society, either in the form of physical goods or in the labor of others. What makes this model different from a currency-based model is that there are times when Contribution can occur without Consumption, and vice-versa. When someone reads a book, the author of that book has aided in the education or entertainment of that citizen, an inarguable Contribution to society. But the person reading the book isn’t taking anything away from society. There’s no limit on the number of people who can read the book, and it doesn’t take the author any longer to write if one more person reads it. No consumption takes place.

Those of you familar with economics in a more traditional currency-based approach are probably yelling something about inflation right now. There are two reasons not to. Firstly, because essays can’t hear you and yelling at them will make people think that you are insane. Secondly, because inflation is something that happens to currency, and this is not a currency-based system. It’s easy to slip into a familiar mindset and imagine a Contribution account where you earn Contribution credits and then spend them. But that’s not the case. Consumption and Contribution scores exist completely indepentently, and what matters in terms of buying power is the ratio between the two. A person’s Contribution or Consumption score is not a balance that goes up or down, but a lifetime tally of everything that person has consumed from or contributed to society.

So how are Contribution and Consumption values for a given item or service determined? Through a free market. This is the part where people tend to get really confused, if they weren’t already. If you’ve eliminated currency, and you’ve eliminated the idea of the individual-to-individual exchange, how can you have a free market? In some ways, more easily. We’ve already looked in an earlier essay at the idea of a single market being able to deal more directly with supply and demand, so now let’s look in a bit more detail at the mechanisms behind that. Fred, our individual craftsman of yesterchapter, has made a number of hats. Bill is one of a number of citizens who would like to have a hat. They both enter this information into the Market. Fred takes pictures of each hat, enters in the sizing information for each, is given the information that the materials and labor involved in the hat set the starting value of the hat at 20cnt, and officially marks them as available.

Now it’s Bill’s turn. He goes into the Market and opens the Clothing>Accessories>Hats section. He further refines his search by requiring the tags “flat cap” and “wool”, sets the color to grey, and enters his head size. Now, depending on how unusual that combination of factors is, he may or may not get any results. If he doesn’t, he has the option of expanding his search to the regional or national system, or submitting a Request into the Market describing the hat he’s looking for. In this case, however, he has several hats to choose from, including one of Fred’s. Each hat is listed with pictures, information about sizing and materials, and reviews of products made by the same artisan/manufacturor. Each also lists the Consumption value of the hat, which is based on the current market value of the various supplies used to make the hat, as well as for the labor required. A surge in demand for wool suits, for example, would also raise the Consumption value of hats made from the same wool cloth. And demand for wool knitting yarn would affect the Consumption Value of both hats and suits, since they use the same base material. This initial Consumption Value may go up if demand for the item in question is particularly high, but more frequently it will go down if the item is left unclaimed for a lengthy period of time.

So, after reviewing all of the hats on offer, Bill decides that he wants the hat made by Fred. He puts in his request for the hat and goes off to do something else. Meanwhile, Steve puts in a request for the same hat. (You can’t trust imaginary guitarists. They sneak up at the last minute.) There’s only one hat, so now the system has to decide who the hat goes to. In general, auctions are a good way to set values, but they give a definite advantage to the richer party. Thus, the auction mechanism at the heart of the Market is not based on straight amounts, it works through the citizens’ ratios. Let’s say that Bill’s residual Contribution from his various factory ventures, added to his direct Contribution, puts his Contribution score at 400,000Cnt and his reasonably large house, nice clothes, etc. puts his Consumption score at 350,000Cns. His C/C ratio is therefore 1.14285 and his Buffer is 50k. Steve, by contrast, lives far more modestly. His work as a laborer and his royalties as a guitarist only add up to a Contribution score of 50,000. On the other hand, he has spent most of his adult life living in baseline apartments and living as cheaply as he can. His Consumption score is only 38,000, making his ratio 1.31579 and his Buffer 12k.

When Bill put in his request for the hat, he was told that the initial Consumption value of the hat, 25Cns, would lower his ratio by .000074. He was then asked how much of his ratio he was willing to bid. He entered 0.00012. When Steve entered his request, he couldn’t see Bill’s request. He was only told that the initial Consumption value of 25Csv would lower his ratio by .00086, and asked how much ratio he was willing to spend. Being a bit of a cheapskate, he leaves it at the minimum bid.

Bidding stays open for 24 hours after the item is listed. In this case, due to the influence of an omnipotent narrator who wants to get on with the story, no one else bids. Two bids need to be identified here. The winning bid is determined by the ratio changes. Steve’s bid of .00086 is clearly higher than Bill’s of .00012. Steve gets the hat, and his Consumption score is increased to 38,025. But Fred’s Contribution earning for the hat hasn’t been determined yet, and it isn’t based on the winning bid, but the highest bid. After all, Bill’s bid was higher in actual Csv terms. By bidding a ratio change of .00012, he was indicated a willingness to have 38.942 Csv added to his consumption score. In a traditional individual-to-individual exchange economy, Fred would have beeen able to get the equivalent of 38.942Csv in currency from Bill. And so the Contribution that he earns for making the hat and putting it into the Market is the highest bid, and his Contribution is increased by 38.942. Let’s look at who is advantaged and disadvantaged in this ratio-as-buying-power model. One the one hand, those working with lower total C/C scores have a definite advantage when it comes to winning an individual item. Their actual Csv charge is lower to make the same ratio bid. On the other hand, this means that even relatively minor purchases can eat up significant amounts of their ratio score. Steve won the hat over Bill because the 25Csv was equivalent to a .00086 ratio change, but conversely that meant that he could not bid less than .00086. Bill will be able to bid on other hats, and is likely to eventually get one at close to 25Csv, which will have a much smaller effect on his ratio than it did on Steve’s.

Another advantage of the lifetime ratio model is that it includes a built-in retirement system. Someone who works to the age of 65 while maintaining a good ratio will probably have quite high scores in both Contribution and Consumption. Even Steve with his moderate lifestyle would likely reach a score of 250,000/190,000 by the time he’s 65. At that point, the “inertia” of a ratio based on such large numbers would mean that he could continue a moderate amount of consumption for many years even without earning additional Contribution before his ratio was seriously affected. There’ll be another essay about seniors and other vulnerable members of society later, but I thought I’d mention it while I’m here.

The last thing I’d like to bring up before ending the essay is that I know this sounds overly complicated and confusing. At face value, it certainly seems harder than the current money-for-goods exchange. But that current model is actually far more complex than is generally believed. The merchant sets his his price based on factors ranging from oil prices to the average income in the area, and citizens’ ability to buy the goods depends on unemployment, real estate prices, and the general availability of credit. It’s at least as complex as the Market I’m proposing, but the complexity is hidden away and only the financially educated few can begin to unravel how it works. Every algorithm of the Technosocialist Market is completely transparent, to be understood and even fine-tuned by the general citizenry as needed. And at the same time, the user interface hides the calculations involved from users who are not interested in them, making the Market as easy to use as any modern e-commerce website.

 
No Comments

Posted in Uncategorized