So far in these essays, I’ve talked quite a bit about things are made, and how things are distributed. But how do physical objects get from the point of production to the point of consumption? And while we’re at it, how do people get from point a to point b?
The two are connected more than you might think, because the decentralization of the technosocialist model applies to the postal system as well. Basically, as people go about their business they have the option of bringing packages with them. Let’s try another adventure with imaginary people to see how it would work.
Fred is running some errands. He needs to go to a Depot that specializes in fabric, meet some friends for lunch, and visit a student who he is teaching to juggle. He plans to walk to the Depot, since it’s only half a mile and it’s a nice day outside, but both the restaurant where he is meeting his friends and his student’s house are farther away and he plans to take public transportation. He enters all of this into the system, as well as the dimensions of his knapsack, and is shown that with minor detours to his trip, there are a variety of packages that he can help transport. He begins his journey.
Right in his apartment building, there are two packages to be picked up. He finds them in the outgoing mail box in the lobby and places them in his knapsack. Sensors in his personal computing device register the tags in the packages and confirm to the system that he has picked them up. One of the packages is only going a few streets away, and he drops it off in the incoming mail box of the building it’s addressed for, and sensors in the mailbox acknowledge the delivery. The other stays in his pack for the time being as he continues his trip. Now he picks up another package from a mail transfer point at an intersection. These transfer points are basically boxes that act as temporary storage locations for packages once the direction the current bearer is going and the direction the package needs to go are no longer the same. For example, a package that needs to go northwest of its starting point might be initially picked up by someone simply going north, and left in a mail transfer point once it had gone sufficiently north and now needed to go west. With these two in his pack, he makes his way to the fabric Depot.
After doing his shopping, he alerts the system that he is looking for a ride from the Depot to the restaurant. Rather than having a set of fixed bus routes that run whether or not there are passengers who need them, the system collects real-time information from people wishing to travel and dynamically routes busses in the most efficient manner. Depending on the number of other people traveling that day, he may have a short wait, and he may be asked to walk a few blocks so that the bus can pick him up while remaining on a more direct route. Eventually the bus comes, and he is taken to the restaurant. After lunch he drops off both of his packages at a downtown mail transfer station and picks up several more that are going to the neighborhood where his student lives. He is unfamiliar with this part of downtown, but the system lets him know that he is only a couple of blocks away from a light rail station and that the light rail will take him to within blocks of his student’s house. He makes his way to the light rail station, picks up several more packages going to his student’s neighborhood from the large mail transfer station there, and gets on the train. After a brief ride he gets off the train at the right stop, drops of several of his packages at the nearby mail transfer station, picks up an additional local one, and makes his way to his student’s house, dropping off the packages still in his possession at their destinations on the way. After giving his juggling lesson, he tells the system to find him a bus home, and because it’s getting close to dinner time and he’s a bit tired, he opts not to carry any more packages.
Now let’s look at Fred’s Contribution and Consumption during his travels. Not counting whatever he obtained at the Depot and his meal at the restaurant, he has not been charged any Consumption credit. Getting from point A to point B is something that all citizens have to do from time to time, and by using the dynamicaly-routed public transportation Fred has automatically done that as efficiently as possible. Now how about Contribution for all of that mail carrying he was doing? Contribution credit for carrying mail is determined by a similar supply and demand calculation to those that pop up everywhere else in technosocialism. The total number of package-miles needed is compared to the number of citizens willing to carry those packages and for how far, and the Contribution value of each package-mile is determined appropriately. Fred is then rewarded, not on a per-package basis, but based on the distance that he carries each package.
So there is the basic outline of the postal and public transit systems. But there are a few other issues that I’d like to address while I’m on the subject. First, the security of the mail. Most people will have concerns about having anyone who happens to be passing through handling their mail. The key is the interaction between the tags in the packages, the system as a whole, and individuals’ personal computer units. The only people who can open a mail transfer station or an outgoing mailbox are those who have been assigned to pick up a package from that mailbox or who are the addressee of a package inside. Once a package is removed from the mailbox, the personal computer of the person removing it recognizes the tracking tag on the package and registers the transfer of possession. If a package is removed without the remover officially taking possession within a set time limit, the package is flagged and alarms will sound whenever the tracking tags on the package come within range of a reciever. Depending on technology levels and the level of detail in item tracking, this would make it very difficult for items stolen in this way to be of use to those living in the borders of such a society. I will be addressing the details of a technosocialist law enforcement system in a later essay.
Secondly, there is the matter of professional mail handlers. Depending on how much citizens in a given area move around and how much mail is being sent, relying on the efforts of those who were traveling anyway may not be enough to ensure delivery of all of the local mail. In this case, demand for the transportation of mail would probably raise the Contribution value of that transportation to the point that people would consider devoting themselves to it full time. In this case, the system should not have too much trouble designing efficient routes for the collection and distribution of all local mail based on the mail to be distributed that day. One interesting aspect of the rewarding of such work is that on the sunny spring days when everyone thinks that they would like to be a mailman, the Contribution value of carrying the mail would probably be much lower, and it would rise on days with bad weather. Someone with a good set of rain gear and a waterproof satchel could probably maintain quite a nice C/C ratio by carrying the mail three or four times a month on stormy days.
Thirdly, there is the matter of letters. You’ll have noticed that I’ve been using ‘mail’ and ‘packages’ more or less interchangably in this description of the system, and that’s intentional. The primary purpose of the mail system under technosocialism is the moving of physical objects. Bills and advertisements, two of the primary staples of the current postal system, would not exist in a technosocialist economy, and in a society so thouroughly permeated with technology it would be a matter of course that all informational and personal correspondence would take place electronically.