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Posts Tagged ‘Steve’

The Challenges of Decentralized Law Enforcement

31 Oct

Someday, we will have a society without crime. Possibly by replacing the humans with robots. Or racoons. I’ve always thought that racoons had unexpressed potential. But in the meantime, we’re stuck with humans, and humans just seem to love committing crimes. Defining what is and is not a crime, catching the people responsible, and trying to deter crime is one of the principle jobs of government. In a society without any sort of centralized government, how can these things be organized?

As far as defining crimes goes, that part is fairly simple. Once the basics are outlined (theft, murder, assault, etc.) the rest can be finetuned through direct democracy. The more logistically challenging parts come from the enforcement end: catching people who have committed crimes, and punishing them once they have been caught.

Let’s look again at our friend Greg from the chapter on civic projects. While we were focusing on an in-depth look at Contribution and Consumption, he was devolving from mildly dishonest to downright criminal. In particular, he has stolen one of Steve’s guitars. Now, this might be a very short story. If the GPS/RFID/other tracking technology we talked about in the Postal System chapter has been realized, all Steve needs to do is reactivate the guitar’s tracking chip, and the various mail sensors in each building will automatically signal an alarm whenever the guitar coems within range. But even without the help of advanced technology, Greg would have difficulty in benefiting from his crime. He would not be able to offer it in the Market, because its unique item code would be registered as stolen. He might be able to keep it for his own use, but in general theft for personal use makes up a much smaller percentage of crimes than theft for sale, and is limited to more universally popular items. He might be able to barter it on the black market, but a black market is far more difficult to organize in a non-currency economy. Under our current system, it is entirely possible for a bookstore clerk to use his legitimate wages to buy a set of stolen car speakers from a theif, and for the theif to use that money to pay his electrical bills. The same cannot be done in a technosocialist economy. If that bookstore clerk wanted to purchase those same speakers from the thief in a technosocialist economy, he would need to barter. He could either steal something himself to offer in trade, or purchase something through the Market at the theif’s request. Either way would be considerably more complicated than a simple cash-for-goods transaction, and leave the otherwise law obiding clerk at risk. The difficulty in transferring value between the legitimate and black markets would significantly stunt the growth of a black market and probably limit it to low-level trading between criminals.

But Greg hasn’t thought all of this through, and he’s stolen the guitar anyway. How does Steve get it back? First of all, he reports the crime. This is done through an aspect of the centralized computer system, similar to the Market or the SNA. He fills in the item(s) stolen, in this case the guitar, and the time frame during which it most likely happened. He knows that the guitar was there when he left to run some errands at 1:30, and he knows that when he came back at 4:30, his lock had been jimmied and his guitar was gone. He enters all of that into the system. The system now notifies Steve’s neighbors and anyone else who might have been in the vicinity of Steve’s apartment during those times that a crime has occured and asks them for any information they might have. One of his neighbors realizes that he saw that Steve’s door was open at 2:30. At the time he assumed that Steve just wanted some fresh air, but now he thinks it must have been the thief. This means that the time window for the theft can be narrowed to 1:30-2:30. This new information is entered into the system.

Now a new character enters the scene. Sam has always loved puzzles, and he’s discovered that he has a talent for solving crimes. He notices this one pop up in the system and decides to investigate. He takes the reduced time window and begins asking people in the neighborhood if they saw a man carrying a guitar in the area between 1:30 and 2:30. He finds a couple of people who say that they saw a man with a guitar around two o’clock, giving him an even narrower time window to work with. He starts looking through security camera footage and casual photos taken at that time and in that area and loaded into people public profiles. Eventually, he finds a picture of a misspelled sign taken on the corner of Vimes St. and Tyler Ave. at 2:03pm that includes a man with a guitar in the background. He now has an exact time for the theft and a picture of Greg. If Greg has pictures of himself posted to his profile, Sam may be able to identify him with facial recognition software. If that doesn’t work, Sam can look through records of previous thefts in the area to see if anyone matching his photo has committed thefts and later been caught. He can try to track Greg through other photos in the area and see if he can follow him back to his living quarters. And if he becomes genuinely stumped, he can simply add all of his information to the crime’s profile including the photo, and hope that he will be recognized by other members of the community. In this case, however, there’s a facial recognition match to Greg’s Profile, and Sam officially accuses Greg of the crime.

Now we get into the courtroom half of our episode of Law and Order: Technosocialism. The perpitrator has been identified, and is now entitled to a fair trial. Sam has entered photographic evidence of Greg leaving Steve’s building with a guitar within the 1:30-2:30 window during which the theft took place. The neighbor who noticed Steve’s open door and Steve himself have entered statements confirming the time window and the theft. Greg has tried to counter with the explanation that he was picking up his cousin’s guitar from the building, and the guitar pictured is not in fact Steve’s. But, while he does in fact have a cousin living in the building and the cousin is persuaded to lie to support Greg’s story, there has never been any record that Greg’s cousin purchased such a guitar through the Market.

As soon as Same made his accusation official, a jury was empaneled. The jury consists of twelve citizens randomly selected from a pool of all adult citizens who have never been convicted of a crime, have never been the victim of a crime in the same class (burglary, in this case), and have no familial, business, or other official relationship with the accused or the victim. The job of the jury is to ask questions of all parties involved, weigh the evidence presented, discuss things amongst themselves, and eventually vote on the guilt of the accused. At one point, one of the jurors asks Steve how he knows that the guitar in the picture is his, and he points to some custom embroidery on the case, done for him by a friend of his. When another juror asks for confirmation of this, the friend in question joins the discussion, confirms that he did the embroidery, and provides a picture of himself with Steve and the guitar case soon after the embroidery was finished. With this added evidence, the jury quickly concludes that Greg is guilty. A vote is taken, in which ten of the twelve jurors must vote guilty to reach a guilty verdict. Thanks to the evidence of the embroidery and the photo found by Sam, the vote is unanymous.

For property crimes such as these, the sentance is based on two factors: the value of the item stolen, and the solve rate of crimes in that category. Let’s say that the guitar’s Consumption Value at the time of the theft was 600Csv, and that 80% of medium-level thefts in Imaginary City are eventually solved. THe formula for the fine Greg revieves would be 600Csv x 2/.8, or 1500Csv. This taking into account of the solve rate ensures that in cases where the solve rate goes down and the percieved risk of getting caught lessens, the punishment for those who are caught increases, hopefully keeping the disincentive the same. In addition to the fine, Greg will recieve a permanent notation of his conviction on his Profile, and a very noticable but temporary flag at the top of his Profile identifying his crime. How long this flag lasts depends primarily on his number of previous property offenses. For very minor crimes such as stealing something of little value or easily repaired vandalism, it might be 30 days for a first offense. But for any significant theft, such as Steve’s guitar, the first offense flag duration would be one year. From there it progresses in powers of two, so that a second offense would flag him for 2 years, a third for four years, and so on. This flag will make it known to all in his social group that he has committed a crime, and make it less likely that people will want to give him their goods through the Market.

One key point that I’d like to make here is that at no point did anyone involved have to go anywhere. One of the most annoying aspects of the modern American system of jury duty is that it generally requires jurors to spend all day at the courthouse waiting to even find out whether they will be selected for the jury. Under this model, they would simply be able to go about their daily business and participate at their leisure. Similarly, no one had to go catch Greg and physically bring him anywhere before he could be punished. One major advantage of punishment through economic and social means rather than restraint of physical freedom is that the offender cannor escape punishment through physical escape.

If Greg wished to appeal his verdict, another jury would be empaneled. Should they rule in his favor, a “tie-break” jury would be empaneled, and the decision of that jury would be final.

So that more or less covers Greg’s punishment. But what about the Contribution earned by those who participated in solving the crime? During the jury voting process, the jurors also vote on which pieces of evidence they felt were most helpful in their decisionmaking. The contributors of that evidence then split a Contribution reward equal to 3/4 of the total value of the fine. This link between the the fine and the Contribution earned by the investigators ensures that it is never profitable for a group of people to stage a crime and then solve it for the reward, because the Consumption value charged to the perpitrator will always outweigh the Contribution earned by the investigators.

So that more or less covers property crimes. But what about crimes against people? They are both much harder to deter with a society’s economic structure and much more detrimental to the citizenry. Investigation of such crimes would be largely similar, with the difference that most theft and property crimes occur in the victim’s absence. By definition, crimes of physical harm to people occur while the victim is present, and the victim may be able to record the incident, making investigation and trial much easier. The difficult part of bodily crimes is the sentancing. Obviously there can be no market value to help us determine damage to a person. The jury in a bodily crime case must determine not only guilt or innocence of the accused but also a number of points in the sentancing formulary. A summary of the sentancing point structure might go as follows:

Severity of Harm:
1pt.  Minor injuries, not requiring medical attention
2pts. Minor injuries, requiring medical attention
4pts. Severe injuries, not requiring hospitalization
8pts. Severe injuries, requiring hospitalization
16pts. Severe injuries, potentially fatal
32pts. Death

Intent to cause harm
1pt. Unintended, caused through negligence
4pts. Unplanned but deliberate
16pts. Premeditated

Miscellaneous Factors
10pts. Sexual violence intended or involved
5pts. Primary motivation of bias
10pts. intent to cause psychological harm

Self defense
If the jury finds that the defendant acted in self-defense, points are subtracted according to the appropriateness of the response. For example, if the defendant caused potentially fatal injuries to an attacker when doing less damage was  possible and appropriate, he might recieve eight points, in other words sixteen (the damage he caused) minus eight (the damage that would have been justified).

The severity of the punishment is determined by the total number of points accrued. For crimes of less than 5 points, the offender’s Consumption score is increased by the amount required to reduce his ratio by .01 per point. For any crime 5 points or greater, the punishment is more severe: the offender’s ratio is reduced to 1.0 before the .01/pt reduction is made. By ensuring that the offender is left with a ratio of less than one, we impose something similar to a prison sentance: the offender will be limited to the least desireable housing, food, and other neccessities and entirely unable to purchase non-neccessities until he manages to bring his ratio back to parity. For crimes of 25 points or more, or for a second offense above 10 points, the punishment is banishment. The offender is implanted with a transmitter which will cause alarms to sound and possibly incapacitate him should he try to come within the borders of any technosocialist community, and alert anyone traveling outside of those borders that there is a criminal nearby under a sentance of banishment. Those who attempt to reenter the community more than twice while under a sentance of banishment, or who attempt in any way to disable the transmitter are subject to the death penalty.

Those who have been banished may work towards reinstatement by gathering natural resources and doing other work for the community to earn contribution. They must raise their ratio to 1.2, at which point they will be able to present their case to a reinstatement jury. That jury will review the crime and the offender’s actions since banishment and vote on whether he should be allowed to return. It takes the unanymous vote of three consecutive juries to lift a sentance of banishment, and any further infractions will reimpose the sentance permanently.

This leaves one category of crime left, and it is perhaps the most difficult to define or to punish. These are crimes against society as a whole. Crimes that do damage not simply to a single individual, but to the fabric of society itself. Before we get into that discussion, let me make one thing very clear: Speech is never a crime. When I talk about crimes against society, that can never include statements critical of technosocialism, critical of currently enacted policies, or any other form of speech. Freedom of speech is an absolute. But there is a category of actions that might not have one specific victim, but nonetheless hurt society as a whole. I’m referring primarily to corruption, but these may also include pollution, terrorism, and similar crimes. These are incredibly difficult to define a sentancing rubrik for, and I’m inclined to deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Rather than try to define anti-corruption laws which the corrupt will immediately begin trying to circumvent, I think it’s better to simply define corruption as any attempt to subvert a technosocialist system for unfair gain, and leave the determination of whether individual cases meet that criteria up to the jury in a particular case.

A criminal justice system has two primary functions: to punish those who have committed crimes and to protect the rest of society from those with violent tendancies who might do it harm. The most immediate difference that most readers will notice between the current criminal justice system and the one that I am proposing is the lack of incarceration as a punishment. There is very little evidence that those who are incarcerated in our current system are in any way rehabilitated, and having such a large segment of the population incarcerated at any one time is an enormous drain on societal resources. We refer to convicted criminals who have completed their prison sentances as having “paid their debt to society.” But during their time in prison, they have typically contributed nothing to society and have cost society quite a lot of money to house, feed, and guard them. Instead, the technosocialist model creates a literal debt to society that must be paid not simply by punishment but by actual work on society’s behalf. The life of those with a ratio less than one is not an enviable one, and serves the same sort of dual punishment/deterrent role current served by the prison system. And the imposition of banishment on repeat and severely violent offenders ensures their separation from society as surely as keeping them incarcerated does. The different is that rather than taking the worst offenders and making society responsible for their food, housing, and safety, the technosocialist model punishes them by taking away all the benefits and protections of that society. Offenders are made entirely responsible for their own necessities without being able to rely at all on the society they have harmed.

But the most important part of the technosocialist model is that it requires very little dedicated infrastructure or effort. Resources that would otherwise be used for prisons, policestations, courtrooms, etc. can instead be used for the advancement of the rest of society. And that is what technosocialism is all about.

 
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Pickiness and Consumption

05 Jul

Let’s do a quick refresher on the current cast of imaginary people who have participated in our examples so far: we have Fred, the individual craftsman, Bill, the entrepreneur who invented the ear swab machine, George, the mechanical engineer who helped him build it, and Steve, the guitarist who works at the plant. They are all very different people, but they’re all humans and that means they all have one thing in common: they all eat food. This essay isn’t actually going to be about food. It’s going to be about choices, Consumption, and how they interact. But food is a very handy way of illustrating this.

We’ll start with Fred. Fred is a simple guy with simple tastes. He prefers to keep his Consumption score as low as possible because he likes to work on projects as they seem interesting at the time without facing too much pressure to increase his Contribution score. So when Fred orders his food for the week, he just orders 21 servings of “Food”. The system determines the food that is currently in the least demand relative to its supply, in this case a sort of hardtack nutritional biscuit, and after confirming that these are acceptable to Fred, sends him 21 servings of it. Fred is charged no Consumption credit for this food, because food is part of each citizen’s Material Rights.

Steve has similar concerns about keeping his Consumption score low, but he also prefers more variety in his diet, so he orders 21 servings of “Food”, but requests that it be distributed among at least 15 different types. The system determines the 15 foods currently in the least demand, confirms them with Steve, and sends him some of each. Steve is charged Consumption credit for the differences in determined Consumption Value between the lowest-demand food and the other 14, but this charge is very small because none of the foods are in particularly high demand.

Bill, meanwhile, does not worry much about keeping his Consumption low. Between the residual Contribution he is earning from the ear swab factory and his other projects, he doesn’t have much trouble maintaining a good C/C ratio, and besides that he is a real foodie. He plans out a full menu for the week, ordering servings of “Food>Bread>Challah”, “Food>Meat>Beef>Steak”, etc.. The system determines the suppliers in each category in the least demand, and sends its list to Bill.  Bill makes a few changes and submits his final order. As with Steve, he is charged Consumption credit for the difference between each item and the lowest-demand food, in this case a much more considerable amount.

Last but not least, we have George. George has a typical engineer’s Aspergian temperment, and he is extremely picky about his food. In fact, he prefers to have exactly the same thing for every meal, and he orders 21 servings of “Food>Bread>Crackers>Hardtack>Brand:Bluebird’s Nutritional Biscuits>Flavor:Original”. In other words, he gets as specific as he possibly could and narrows the field to a single possible product. The system has no choices to make, and so simply confirms with him the Consumption credit that he will be charged for that week, and sends it to him. He is charged Consumption credit for the difference between what he ordered and the least-demand food, which in this case is nothing. He happened to be ordering the same thing that Fred got by default. Yes, it’s a weird coincidence, but it’s my imaginary scenario and I can do what I want. Anyway, I include it as an example to highlight the fact that it’s not the degree of specificity that raises the Consumption value of a food item. In most cases, being more specific will result in a higher Consumption value, simply because the system automatically picks the cheapest option when it can. But people are not automatically penalized for expressing preferences if those preferences do not lead to consumption of a product that is in higher demand.

 
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Technosocialism and the Arts

27 Jun

Let’s look back at our friend Steve, who was doing shift work while trying to make it as a guitarist. What does that mean? How do artists support themselves in a society with no currency? How is Contribution measured when it is nearly impossible to calculate supply and demand for something like music? To put it simply, their reward is determined by the number of people who enjoy their work. When an artist makes a recording, it is it is made freely available to the public. Citizens can then indicate whether or not they like the song as they listen to it, and Contribution credit is awarded appropriately.

Let’s say that Steve eventually records a song that gains a moderate amount of popularity. Bill, George, and Fred all listen to it. Bill doesn’t like it. Apparently he isn’t a fan of fingerpicking guitar. So he indicates that he doesn’t like it, and there is no impact on Steve’s Contribution score from Bill’s having listened to it. George and Fred, on the other hand, both like it. George adds it to a playlist he has put together specifically for fingerpicking guitar. He doesn’t often listen to music, but he does like to listen to guitar while he’s cooking, so out of two hundred song-plays that George hears in a given month, Steve’s song comes up four times. Fred, on the other hand, listens to music constantly while he’s working. He adds Steve’s song to his main “random mix” playlist, and over the same month he hears it forty times out of the 3600 song-plays he hears. So which of them causes Steve to receive more Contribution credit? George. While Fred listened to the song more in absolute terms, George gave it a greater percentage of his “musical attention” for lack of a better term. Since quantifying someone’s enjoyment of any art is more or less impossible, we have to use their behavior as a more easily quantified metric.

So to restate all of this in a drier way with no imaginary people, each citizen’s attention and enjoyment is worth a certain amount of Contribution credit. The ways they choose to spend their time determines how that credit is distributed. There is one other key point: citizens are never charged Consumption credit for non-physical consumption of art. After all, when a book, movie, or piece of music is enjoyed electronically, no societal resources are being consumed except for bandwidth. Infinitely reproducable works of art like these can only improve the societal conversation and people should never be discouraged from participating.

Now how about physical pieces of art? They are actually much easier to calculate Contribution for. Any citizen can add a section to their Profile displaying their artwork. Other people who admire it can subscribe as fans of their artwork. When the artist puts a new piece of work into the Depot system, subscribers will automatically be notified and will have the opportunity to view the work and submit requests. From there, the standard Depot distribution system applies. When it comes to physical art, citizens are charged a Consumption value because they are recieving a physical object which then becomes unavailable to the rest of society.

One place where it gets a bit tricky is reproductions of physical art, eg. posters printed with the image of a painting. While Contribution credit for the artist can be determined the same way that it would be for music or books, Consumption credit for the purchaser becomes more complicated. Generally the best way to handle this will be basing the Consumption charge on the total supply and demand for poster printing regardless of the poster being printed.

There’s a reason that Adam Smith made the division of labor the first major topic he covered in The Wealth of Nations. Given a fixed labor force, division of labor and the production line dramatically increases the material wealth that can be created. Later on in his book, Smith also warns strenuously against the social impact of dividing labor too specificly, because workers acting as nothing but automatic machines rapidly lose pride in and satisfaction from their work, and over time may lose the finer intellectual senses that make us human. So it’s important not to see it as an unmitigated good. But it certainly does have a place in society and it’s important that it be possible under technosocialism. But how to allocate Contribution credit, and how to distribute the goods that are produced? It’s time for another adventure with imaginary people.

Meet Bill, George, and Steve. Bill is an entrepreneur with a great new idea for making cotton ear swabs out of scrap cotton and paper. George is a mechanical engineer. Steve is an amateur guitarist who wants to find a way to improve his Contribution score part time without having it interfere with his music. Bill registers his idea and gets in touch with George through the Skills Needed/Available (SNA) system. Together, they design a largely mechanized facility that takes either raw cotton or scrap cotton fabric, as well as paper that has been sorted for recycling, and with the aid of a small number of workers, turns them into cotton ear swabs. Once the system has determined there is sufficient demand for ear swabs and a randomly selected panel of engineers has confirmed that the design for the facility is sound, the various tasks required to build it are entered into the SNA system. At this point George goes on to other projects, his work as a designer finished, but Bill stays on to supervise the construction and the opening of the facility. While he’s waiting, he creates a profile for the facility in the Manufacturing section of the SNA system. This profile includes primarily the number of people required for the plant to operate, the materials required to occupy a full compliment of workers for a shift, and the quantity of ear swabs that will be produced in that time. He also designs the training program and qualification test for workers to pass before they’re able to work independently in the facility. These training programs and tests can be edited later by workers, but it’s important to have a solid base to start from.

Eventually the facility is finished and ready to begin production. This is where Steve comes in. Because Steve prefers to avoid long-term commitments that might interfere with club gigs he might get or prevent him from working on a song when he has a good idea, he gets most of his work through the Shift Work section of the SNA system. He maintains a full profile on the SNA, which tracks his qualifications, his experience, and his preferences. He can sort through available jobs manually or allow the SNA system to play matchmaker, and point him towards nearby jobs he is qualified to do that require labor. In this case, he is searching in the evening for shift work the next afternoon, and using the system’s matchmaking feature. The system looks through the facilities requiring labor for that shift, and selects several nearby facilities: a match factory where Steve has worked before and on whose equipment he has already been certified, a bakery that needs a one day temp to help move some heavy boxes, and our new cotton ear swab factory. In this case, because it is closer to his apartment and only needs one person to meet its minimum staffing level for that shift, it recommends the ear swab factory. And Steve, who doesn’t feel like lifting boxes all day and prefers something new to yet another shift at match factory, agrees to give it a try. Before his shift the next day, he takes and passes the online certification course on the ear swab factory’s equipment, which takes him about an hour and for which he gets a small amount of Contribution credit.

So the next day, Steve goes in, and he and five other people use the facility to produce 600 boxes of cotton ear swabs. What happens next? If mass-produced consumable commodities like these were placed in the same system as Fred and his handmade hats, they would swamp it and make it far more difficult to find the more individual items. Ear swabs have two important charactaristics that make them work well for this example: they are consumable and thus needed on a regular basis, and they are all largely the same. While there may be occasional specialist types of ear swab, and there may be occasional differences in materials, for the most part they do not come in different flavors, styles, or sizes. So when Bill is entering the facility’s information into the manufacturing system, he can simply categorize the product as (for example) Consumables> Bath & Body> Hygiene> Ear Swabs> Standard. Meanwhile Fred, our craftsman who turns out to have unusually waxy ears, goes through 60 ear swabs per month. He can go through the Recurring Request system and enter his need for 60 swabs per month. If he has previously liked the ear swabs made through Bill’s process better than others, he can specificly request swabs from that facility, but the specificity of his request may mean that he is charged a higher Consumption value than he might be otherwise if there is a great deal of demand for Bill’s ear swabs specifically and a larger supply of swabs from other manufacturers. The system tracks who in society is in need of ear swabs and ships them out appropriately, using the same priorities for people with high Contribution and low Consumption that we saw in the case of Fred’s handmade goods.

But how is the Contribution value attributed when so many people’s work went into producing those 600 boxes of swabs? Bill had the initial idea and supervising the setting up of the facility, George drew up the plans, Steve and his fellows did the actual manufacturing, and the materials were supplied by even more people who don’t get names because they’re only tangentially in the story and I can’t be bothered. Who gets how much Contribution credit?

Let’s start with the suppliers of the materials because they’re relatively simple. The Contribution value of materials supplied to the facility depends on the demand for that facility’s product at the time the materials are contributed. A supplier with two hundred pounds of recyclable paper can choose to bring that to a toilet paper factory or to our ear swab factory. Which he chooses will depend on whether there is more unmet demand for ear swabs or for toilet paper at that time, since that will dictate how much Contribution value he is given for his paper. But the system also needs to track the supplies in stock at each facility. Once a facility has enough materials to produce continuously for a month, it should stop accepting new contributions of that material.

On to Bill and George. The best model to keep in mind here is the current system of royalties in modern art-based industries such as book publishing and filmmaking. Most authors aren’t paid a salary while they write a book, or (usually) given a lump sum for the rights to a book. Instead, they are paid a royalty, or a certain percentage of the book’s cover price, when the book sells. In the case of the film industry, there may be dozens of actors and writers who recieve residual payments when a movie is shown on television, even if the movie was made twenty years ago. Similarly, both Bill and George are given a small amount of Contribution credit for every box of swabs produced, even though they may not necessarily be actively involved in making swabs a year down the line. This way there is still a strong incentive for innovators to bring new processes and products to society without creating the severe inequities that exist in our modern corporate culture.

Now Steve and his comrades. Their Contribution differs from Bill and George’s in that it is partially related to current demand for ear swabs, but it is also related to the current demand for shift-work manual labor. The portion of it determined by demand for the product they are producing helps them choose between different shift-work opportunities, but if too high a percentage of the population is looking for work as manual laborers, the portion of their Contribution that depends on demand for manual labor may encourage them to train in a specialty such as plumbing that will allow them to earn more.

 
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Mass Production

23 Jun

There’s a reason that Adam Smith made the division of labor the first major topic he covered in The Wealth of Nations. Given a fixed labor force, division of labor and the production line dramatically increases the material wealth that can be created. Later on in his book, Smith also warns strenuously against the social impact of dividing labor too specificly, because workers acting as nothing but automatic machines rapidly lose pride in and satisfaction from their work, and over time may lose the finer intellectual senses that make us human. So it’s important not to see it as an unmitigated good. But it certainly does have a place in society and it’s important that it be possible under technosocialism. But how to allocate Contribution credit, and how to distribute the goods that are produced? It’s time for another adventure with imaginary people.

Meet Bill, George, and Steve. Bill is an entrepreneur with a great new idea for making cotton ear swabs out of scrap cotton and paper. George is a mechanical engineer. Steve is an amateur guitarist who wants to find a way to improve his Contribution score part time without having it interfere with his music. Bill registers his idea and gets in touch with George through the Skills Needed/Available (SNA) system. Together, they design a largely mechanized facility that takes either raw cotton or scrap cotton fabric, as well as paper that has been sorted for recycling, and with the aid of a small number of workers, turns them into cotton ear swabs. Once the system has determined there is sufficient demand for ear swabs and a randomly selected panel of engineers has confirmed that the design for the facility is sound, the various tasks required to build it are entered into the SNA system. At this point George goes on to other projects, his work as a designer finished, but Bill stays on to supervise the construction and the opening of the facility. While he’s waiting, he creates a profile for the facility in the Manufacturing section of the SNA system. This profile includes primarily the number of people required for the plant to operate, the materials required to occupy a full compliment of workers for a shift, and the quantity of ear swabs that will be produced in that time. He also designs the training program and qualification test for workers to pass before they’re able to work independently in the facility. These training programs and tests can be edited later by workers, but it’s important to have a solid base to start from.

Eventually the facility is finished and ready to begin production. This is where Steve comes in. Because Steve prefers to avoid long-term commitments that might interfere with club gigs he might get or prevent him from working on a song when he has a good idea, he gets most of his work through the Shift Work section of the SNA system. He maintains a full profile on the SNA, which tracks his qualifications, his experience, and his preferences. He can sort through available jobs manually or allow the SNA system to play matchmaker, and point him towards nearby jobs he is qualified to do that require labor. In this case, he is searching in the evening for shift work the next afternoon, and using the system’s matchmaking feature. The system looks through the facilities requiring labor for that shift, and selects several nearby facilities: a match factory where Steve has worked before and on whose equipment he has already been certified, a bakery that needs a one day temp to help move some heavy boxes, and our new cotton ear swab factory. In this case, because it is closer to his apartment and only needs one person to meet its minimum staffing level for that shift, it recommends the ear swab factory. And Steve, who doesn’t feel like lifting boxes all day and prefers something new to yet another shift at match factory, agrees to give it a try. Before his shift the next day, he takes and passes the online certification course on the ear swab factory’s equipment, which takes him about an hour and for which he gets a small amount of Contribution credit.

So the next day, Steve goes in, and he and five other people use the facility to produce 600 boxes of cotton ear swabs. What happens next? If mass-produced consumable commodities like these were placed in the same system as Fred and his handmade hats, they would swamp it and make it far more difficult to find the more individual items. Ear swabs have two important charactaristics that make them work well for this example: they are consumable and thus needed on a regular basis, and they are all largely the same. While there may be occasional specialist types of ear swab, and there may be occasional differences in materials, for the most part they do not come in different flavors, styles, or sizes. So when Bill is entering the facility’s information into the manufacturing system, he can simply categorize the product as (for example) Consumables> Bath & Body> Hygiene> Ear Swabs> Standard. Meanwhile Fred, our craftsman who turns out to have unusually waxy ears, goes through 60 ear swabs per month. He can go through the Recurring Request system and enter his need for 60 swabs per month. If he has previously liked the ear swabs made through Bill’s process better than others, he can specificly request swabs from that facility, but the specificity of his request may mean that he is charged a higher Consumption value than he might be otherwise if there is a great deal of demand for Bill’s ear swabs specifically and a larger supply of swabs from other manufacturers. The system tracks who in society is in need of ear swabs and ships them out appropriately, using the same priorities for people with high Contribution and low Consumption that we saw in the case of Fred’s handmade goods.

But how is the Contribution value attributed when so many people’s work went into producing those 600 boxes of swabs? Bill had the initial idea and supervising the setting up of the facility, George drew up the plans, Steve and his fellows did the actual manufacturing, and the materials were supplied by even more people who don’t get names because they’re only tangentially in the story and I can’t be bothered. Who gets how much Contribution credit?

Let’s start with the suppliers of the materials because they’re relatively simple. The Contribution value of materials supplied to the facility depends on the demand for that facility’s product at the time the materials are contributed. A supplier with two hundred pounds of recyclable paper can choose to bring that to a toilet paper factory or to our ear swab factory. Which he chooses will depend on whether there is more unmet demand for ear swabs or for toilet paper at that time, since that will dictate how much Contribution value he is given for his paper. But the system also needs to track the supplies in stock at each facility. Once a facility has enough materials to produce continuously for a month, it should stop accepting new contributions of that material.

On to Bill and George. The best model to keep in mind here is the current system of royalties in modern art-based industries such as book publishing and filmmaking. Most authors aren’t paid a salary while they write a book, or (usually) given a lump sum for the rights to a book. Instead, they are paid a royalty, or a certain percentage of the book’s cover price, when the book sells. In the case of the film industry, there may be dozens of actors and writers who recieve residual payments when a movie is shown on television, even if the movie was made twenty years ago. Similarly, both Bill and George are given a small amount of Contribution credit for every box of swabs produced, even though they may not necessarily be actively involved in making swabs a year down the line. This way there is still a strong incentive for innovators to bring new processes and products to society without creating the severe inequities that exist in our modern corporate culture.

Now Steve and his comrades. Their Contribution differs from Bill and George’s in that it is partially related to current demand for ear swabs, but it is also related to the current demand for shift-work manual labor. The portion of it determined by demand for the product they are producing helps them choose between different shift-work opportunities, but if too high a percentage of the population is looking for work as manual laborers, the portion of their Contribution that depends on demand for manual labor may encourage them to train in a specialty such as plumbing that will allow them to earn more.

 
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